What is Christianism?

Christianism is a political cult with Donald Trump at the center which uses Christian forms and images but whose actual *practice* is total dedication to moral values at war with the actual teaching of the faith and favor of whatever the Party of Trump’s culture of death demands. It is what Paul calls “having a form of godliness but denying its power” because it believes not in the power of the cross but in the power of money and violence.

So, for instance, if Roy Moore wins today it will be because his base of Christianists both told and believed the lie, “We must support a child molester because Jesus was accused too and beside Mary was a teenager so that means sexually assaulting teens is great. And besides God can use sinners and if you don’t vote for him you love abortion and hate Jesus!”

Christianism uses the unborn as human shields while making open war on the Church’s teaching on a host of issues.

Christians support the dignity of human life from conception to natural death according to the Church. Therefore they ask, “When do we tragically *have* to take human life and how can we avoid it if at all possible?”

Christianists passionately love the taking of human life whenever the Party of Trump wills it. So they ask, “When do we *get* to take human life and how can we read Scripture in such a way as to maximize our opportunities to kill when our ideology calls for it?” So they work extremely hard to rationalize killing and torturing people in wars Republicans push, killing the maximum number of death row inmates, and even sending refugees (including Christian ones) back to situations where they will face death–all for the sake of precious, precious paperwork.

Christians call the mass murder of innocents by atomic weapons a crime against man and God.

Christianists are the first ones to defend the mass murders of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Christians labor to cure the sick.

Christianists celebrate the destruction of CHIP health care for poor children.

Christians don’t care who gets the credit for helping the poor. They care that the poor get the help they need.

Christianists would rather a poor family be forced to busk on the internet for their sick child and, if they cannot raise the money, watch their child die so that the Christianist can sit in judgment of whether they are “worthy” to receive help. Christianists care that they get the credit for their five bucks in “charity” and complain loudly about having two bucks taken from their paycheck for a social safety net of guaranteed health care.  For Christianists, giving is all about them.

Christians feed the hungry.

Christianists celebrate the destruction of Meals on Wheels for poor people and lie through their teeth that it is “compassionate.”

Christians support a living wage for workers so workers can support a family of however many children they choose to have.

Catholic Christianists support threatening those who seek a living wage with firing. They tell people at starvation wages that they cannot have a living wage to support their children and gloat when those workers are replaced by a machine for seeking a living wage. Catholic Christianists tell such workers they cannot use contraceptives under the pain of mortal sin, and they will go to hell for abortion, but absolutely refuse to acknowledge that if we truly believe in the Church’s teaching about reproduction, then it is on us to make sure families can afford to be large.

Christians realize that means an educated population and assuring it can be afforded without going into hock for decades.

Christianists call the working poor lazy and dumb and tell them to go to school if they want a better job, then call them fools for going into debt to go to school.

Christians are committed not merely to “life” but to helping poor families choose life.

Christianists are committed to lip service to life in the abstract and committed at a practical level to driving up the abortion rate.

Christians care about victims of sexual assault because they are human beings, regardless of the ideological affiliation of their assailant.

Christianists pretend to care about victims when they are useful in attacking the ideological enemies of the Party of Trump while calling the victims of Trump and Moore and any other member of their party nuts and sluts and heaping contempt on them.

Christians believe the law was made for man, not man for the law and that destroying a family for the sake of paperwork is wicked and evil. They can still remember a time when Christians cared about Elian Gonzales even though he did not have correct paperwork.

Christianists passionately *enjoy* the cruelty of tearing parents and children apart and committing the grave intrinsic evil of deportation against them out of spite and blind love of mere bureaucracy–especially when the victims are poor and brown.

Christians celebrate the Feast of the Incarnation and the joy that God Almighty entered the world as a baby for our salvation.

Christianists celebrate the “War on Christmas” and seriously believe that the true meaning of the holiday is forcing some exhausted clerk in a Temple of Mammon to say “Merry Christmas” or to scream bloody murder and cry “persecution!” if she does not. They are all about weaponizing Christmas in order to accuse people of some mythical “agenda” if they make the mistake of saying “Happy Holidays”. And they cherish and spread the complete lie that “Obama banned Christmas but Trump saved it” because they are not about celebrating Christ, but Trump.

Christians reject the offer of all the kingdoms of the world for the sake of merely earthly power and say, “We must obey God rather than men.”

Christianists have no faith or hope left in Christ and believe only in earthly power and Mammon and Mars for salvation. Their sole interest in lies is not whether they are wrong, but whether they work. They will lie that Trump is not a self-confessed sex predator, that torture is “enhanced interrogation”, that robbing children of health care is “prolife”, that war is peace, slavery is freedom, and black is white.

Christianism is a diabolical parody of the gospel and it will, in all likelihood, win another earthly victory (and inch closer to its ultimate doom) by deliberately and spitefully electing a child molester in its grasping for power.

Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. (Galatians 6:7-8)

Alabama: You have the chance to do the right thing today. Do it. Live not by lies.  Live the gospel, not Christianism.