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May 19, 2013
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 A Holy Week EntreatyPosted on Apr 4, 2012
The Easter season is a celebration of deliverance and the liturgical calendar sets Easter Week up as a kind of catharsis. Holy Thursday and the Last Supper have an ominous feel because they are preparation for Good Friday and the dolorous story of Jesus’ crucifixion. Yet two days later, the tale ends in triumph and resurrection. Whatever questions Christians may have about the meaning of that empty tomb, most of us have experienced a sense of joy when the words “He is risen, alleluia!” are shouted out on Easter Sunday. Christianity, like the prophetic Judaism with which it is inextricably linked, is rooted in the idea of liberation, and I have long seen the Exodus and Easter as twin narratives involving a release from oppression and the victory of freedom. These promises have left a permanent mark on the culture outside the traditions from which they sprang. Yet even in the Easter season, it’s hard not to notice that Christianity hasn’t been presented in its own best light during this election year because Christians have not exactly been putting forward their best selves. My colleague Michael Gerson wrote recently about the “crude” way religion has played out in the Republican primaries, including “the systematic subordination of a rich tradition of social justice to a narrow and predictable political agenda.” Advertisement What I’m not saying is that Christianity should be disengaged from politics. In fact, the early Christian movement was born in politics, in oppositional circles within Judaism fighting Roman oppression. There is great debate over how to understand the relationship between Jesus’ spirituality and his approach to politics, but his preaching clearly challenged the powers-that-be. He was, after all, crucified. But because Christians have a realistic and non-utopian view of human nature, they should be especially alive to the ambiguities and ambivalences of politics. The philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain captured this well in reflecting on Augustine’s writings. “If Augustine is a thorn in the side of those who would cure the universe once and for all,” she wrote, “he similarly torments critics who disdain any project of human community, or justice, or possibility.” Christians, she’s saying, thus have a duty to grasp both the possibilities and the limits of politics. This, in turn, means that the absolutism so many associate with Christian engagement in politics ought to be seen as contrary to the Christian tradition. And that’s the case even if many Christians over the course of history have acted otherwise. Similarly, some Christians encourage a view of their faith as profoundly anti-intellectual. Faith is seen as more about experience than reason, more about loyalty than dialogue. The desire to assert The Truth takes priority over exploring productively and honestly what the truth might be. In his important book “Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind,” the great evangelical scholar Mark Noll urges Christians down the second path. He argues that “if what we claim about Jesus Christ is true, then evangelicals should be among the most active, most serious and most-open minded advocates of general human learning. “Evangelical hesitation about scholarship in general or about pursuing learning wholeheartedly is, in other words, antithetical to the Christ-centered basis of evangelical faith.” Noll might have added that a devotion to higher learning does not make anyone “a snob.” So if Easter is about liberation, this liberation must include intellectual freedom. It entails a tempered approach to politics involving a steady quest for human improvement, not false promises of perfection or wild claims about the demonic character of one’s opponents. Elections, even an election as important as this year’s, should not be routinely cast as Armageddon. Oh, yes, and a compassionless Christianity is no Christianity at all. I have always been moved by this presentation of Jesus from a Catholic Eucharistic prayer: “To the poor he proclaimed the good news of salvation, to prisoners, freedom, and to those in sorrow, joy.” To which one can say: Alleluia.
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By Don Farkas, April 9, 2012 at 1:55 am Link to this comment
When you hear distortions of religion by those trying to serve their own political purposes, it is good to try to remember the actual message of great moral teachers like Jesus Christ that can perhaps be summarized as follows:
* Do not be quick to anger nor seek revenge, but rather be merciful to those who have wronged you, even including your enemies.
* Be generous with giving aid and charity to help the needy that are unable to help themselves. Love your neighbor.
* Obey the civil laws and respect your governors, but do not seek to have the laws of men force compliance with God’s laws or interfere with the freedom of individual conscience because judgment and vengeance of those things belongs only to God.
* Be the master of your habits and do not let them master you. For example, do not drink alcohol to excess, be unchaste in marital faithfulness, or use the name of God idly in common talk.
* Do not lie or cheat or steal to profit yourself at the expense of the innocent, but rather treat others as you would have them treat you.
* Above all, you should love God with all of your heart and all of your mind and all of your soul.
I think those were Christ’s actual teachings. Please let me know if I left any important thing out.
Report thisBy Angel Gabriel, April 5, 2012 at 9:17 pm Link to this comment
I’ve never understood why Christians call the Friday Christ was dragged through
Report thisthe Streets crowned with thorns lugging a big cross to be nailed to “Good”? Seems
pretty twisted really!
Then again, all Religions are pretty much haven’s for twisted types, so maybe it
makes some kind of sick sense?
By jaabirlx, April 5, 2012 at 3:12 pm Link to this comment
Holy Week, of course, has very little place in the Frankenstein-creature christo-conservative discourse at all. A sort of reactionary ecumenism has welded the fundie-evangelical Protestants (what Frank Schaeffer calls the Fifth Column) with the Fox News-National Review Catho-cons into something which is as impervious to socially-conscious evangelicalism as it is to the social magisterium which Leo XIII began articulating 130 years ago. While E.J. Dionne’s column is welcome, it perpetuates the problem that Protestantism and Catholicism remain separate and antagonistic faiths despite the attempt of leaders on both sides to pretend that they can be unified. They can’t be—anymore than the slave-supported Jeffersonian 18th century deism can be with ex-slave Frederick Douglass’ mid-19th century version.
Report thisBy jr., April 5, 2012 at 2:28 pm Link to this comment
E.J.Dionne, Jr.;
‘Tis a shame none of you self-anointed experts are the expert doctors you claim to be. And, it doesn’t take a master know-it-all doctor to sense that one out. Alleluia!
Report thisBy Arouete, April 5, 2012 at 1:20 pm Link to this comment
“I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” (Frederick Douglass: (1818-1895), African-American abolitionist leader.)
“The church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. ... For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! Welcome atheism! Welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by these Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done!” (Frederick Douglass: (1818-1895), African-American abolitionist leader.)
“We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen, all for the glory of God and the good of souls. The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave trade go hand in hand.” (Frederick Douglass: (1818-1895), African-American abolitionist leader.)
“Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions.” (Jerry Falwell: (1933- ), American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and leading excrescence.)
“I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies.” (Thomas Jefferson: (1743-1826), third U.S. president.)
“Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man. ... perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind ... a mere contrivance [for the clergy] to filch wealth and power to themselves.” (Thomas Jefferson: (1743-1826), third U.S. president.)
“In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty, he is always in allegiance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection of his own. ... History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. ... Political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves [of public ignorance] for their own purpose.” (Thomas Jefferson: (1743-1826), third U.S. president.)
Report this“There’s a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them.” (Michael Moore: (1954- ), American documentary filmmaker and author.)
By Arouete, April 5, 2012 at 12:56 pm Link to this comment
Inside every religious mind is a God shaped vacuum.
Report thisBy Allan, April 5, 2012 at 10:18 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Thank you for an excellent article for this Holy Week season. I agree that a compassionless Christianity is no Christianity at all. For right wing politicians to call for funneling more and more of our nation’s wealth from the poor and vulnerable in order to better serve the wealthy and powerful is, as Chris Hedges often says, heresy.
Report thisBy the way, as I was reading the article, I knew to expect at the end the usual beside-the-point insulting comments from those here who feel the need to denigrate whenever matters of faith are raised on this site. I can see that they have not disappointed. I guess enjoying their sense of smugness is more important than building a broad based progressive coalition that doesnt exclude the over 90% of Americans who believe in God.
By James M. Martin, April 5, 2012 at 5:54 am Link to this comment
Dear E. J., the only god there is is the one between your ears. There is no god but Man. The sooner you shuck that delusion, the happier you will be.
Report thisBy Big B, April 5, 2012 at 5:35 am Link to this comment
Allen Lunn
It’s all about the “gospel of prosperity”. Jebus wants everybody to rich!
Funny, I was taught in sunday school that Jesus wanted you to be a good person.
Oh Jesus, save us from your followers.
Report thisBy Alan Lunn, April 5, 2012 at 4:57 am Link to this comment
There are Evangelicals who have not followed their
fellows into the right-wing mire we see expanding
today. Something has happened to the Christian Right
since the debacle of 2008, where their right-wing
media sources have galvanized them with fear and
dumped into their angry brains the most egregious
misinformation and love of corporate political greed.
It reminds me of early 20th century Germany who faced
prolonged economic recession and depression, followed
by right-wing austerity, and moving into a climate of
hopelessness and fear, longing for a political
savior. Their savior came in the form of a
charismatic icon with messianic promises of
deliverance and a new society, who mangled the
Christian message beyond recognition—and the
German people welcomed it with hyped enthusiasm as
the cross was replaced by the swastika.
As I look at the Christian Right today, and how it is
Report thisbeing manipulated, I’m aghast that I was ever part of
it. More than anything, they were sucked into a
moralistic political rationale reminiscent of that of
Germany’s savior, who railed on homosexuals,
abortion, and similar social issues. And what did
they finally get? We must not forget history, because
it has a way of repeating itself.
By kerryrose, April 5, 2012 at 2:49 am Link to this comment
Perhaps Christianity will take the same route as Evangelicalism- All the complexities of a spiritual relationship to the Almighty being reduced to ‘The Lord wants me to prosper! Financial salvation is the Real salvation!’
Why should Christianity lag behind as the good neighbor in the United States when it and it’s followers can jump on the ‘the Lord will give me mine’ bandwagon.
Report this