truthteller's blog

Jesus Christ taught and practiced nonviolent resistance. In a time of oppression, as Jesus and fellow Jews experienced, nonviolent resistance takes on a heightened importance, and peacemaking becomes more than an art.

While speaking to a hillside crowd Jesus proclaimed, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” The speech Jesus gave came to be called the “Sermon on the Mount.” Going beyond mere appeals to his listeners to live in peace, he told them to go out and make peace. Much of his audience were not expecting a Messiah who extolled the virtues of peacemaking, but one who led the Jewish people in violent and triumphant revolt against their Roman occupiers.

My church always has a stack of voter’s guides from the California Pro-Life Council. The guides are based only on whether a candidate is anti-abortion or not. However, being a pro-life candidate means supporting legislation that helps people in all stages of their lives. A true pro-life candidate should want to end the occupation of Iraq and provide healthcare for all Americans.

Ending the occupation of Iraq

The online publication, Just Foreign Policy estimates that over a million Iraqi civilians have been killed by U.S. troops since the beginning of the war in 2003. Last month, on January 16, the House passed the National Defense Authorization Act for 2008 which continues to fund the occupation of Iraq.

Only forty-six representatives voted against the Act, including former Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich.

Providing healthcare for all Americans

“Every other industrialized nation in the world provides universal health care to its citizens” Rep. Jim McDermott (D) of Washington says on his website. The U.S. is in fact the only industrialized country which does not provide a form of universal health coverage.

“America is the light of the world,” President George W. Bush proclaimed in a 2001 speech. I was reminded of Bush’s words recently when a well-meaning friend insisted on reading the so-called “prophecies” of Kim Clement, a regular on the Christian fundamentalist channel, Trinity Broadcasting Network, to me. I politely sat and listened until she came to the part where he said, “America, America, you are the salt of the earth. America, America, you are the light of the world.” My mouth dropped open, and I must have had a look of undisguised disgust on my face, for I felt disgusted. I reminded her that Jesus said he was the light of the world. I went on to explain Clement had misappropriated a verse in the Bible, and substituted the word “I” for America. Unfortunately, she was nonplussed by my remarks.

Clement is not the first one to think of America as having what I term a ‘divine magnate from God.’ The idea stems from the teachings and theology of a group of English colonists referred to as the Puritans.

The Puritans city on a hill

The Religious Right stole Jesus; the Jesus of the Gospels who fed the five thousand, treated women with respect, and subverted the religious and political structures of his day. They have taken the Jesus who was a political radical and executed for his radical politics; replacing him with a smiling, weak, and money-loving Jesus.

They stripped Jesus of his politics. They have made the politics of Jesus all about taking away the rights of women. They have made Jesus into something he was not, someone he would despise.

They stole Jesus, but I am taking him back from their sexist theology. I am claiming the Jesus that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote about; the Jesus who talked to a Samaritan woman, healed women, and hung out with people society tossed away. I am taking back the real Jesus and casting aside their Jesus. I do not need that one any longer.