The Dark Side of Christianity ~ When the Monks and the Ministers Pick Favorites.

 April 20th  3

The Dark Side of Christianity ~ When the Monks and the Ministers Pick Favorites.

Jesus Christ didn't pick favorites, he was emphatic that all stood before their Maker as equals. He "appeared" to play favorites because of the disproportionate amount of attention he gave to those who were ignored, castigated or abandoned by their people and their leaders. These were people like; sex workers, gentiles, females caught in the very act of adultery, the poor, the landless, the insane, the handicap (the halt"), Romans, day laborers, the divorced and remarried, and the widowed to name just a few. Not only was he preaching to the Great Unwashed, he was NOT teaching the approved curriculum! Without checking with anybody, he reduces the ten commandments to just two, "Love God and love your neighbor like yourself", he trashes the importance of tracking bloodline lineages, by teaching "Everyone is your brother!" Crazy stuff like, "Forgiving your brother 7 times 70, The poor inherit the earth while the rich have to squeeze through a needle just to get into heaven"!

This went over like a lead balloon with those in positions of power and authority. This rich, educated, elitist minority felt so threatened by Christ's activities they killed him. More precisely they arranged for the Romans to kill him, which they did. Well he stayed dead for about three days and then came back to life (see, The Easter Story, 1st edition) and this surprised just about everybody and made him very famous and controversial.

The followers of Jesus were rightfully devastated as eye witness reports of his dead body being speared by a Roman soldier circulated. Many, knowing full well they lived in a time of false messiahs, still felt this Jesus was different, there was something just different about him, his message, "Know that you are loved", of the kingdom-to-come and the kingdom-now, his constant reiteration that each and everyone of them was known and treasured by The Father never left them. It is not unreasonable to presume some in search of a tangible reminder of him took splinters from the wooden timbers used to construct his cross and carried them away. Relics they were called, holy relics they became.

The small group of core of believers was reinvigorated as sightings of the resurrected Jesus proliferated as well as reports of him performing miracles and assuring them he would never again leave them without a Comforter. About 40 days after he had been crucified he informed his followers he was to return to heaven to "prepare a place for them" and that he would then soon return to gather them up and take them back to heaven with him. At this point he was lifted into the clouds above and the small group was left under the care of the Holy Spirit.

The group experienced miracles at the hands of the 12 Apostles who Jesus left to lead the group in his absence. Before he left, he bestowed upon the 12 "the power to bind or to unbind" the sin(s) a follower may have committed (more on this later). The 12 were in high demand as the group hammered out a mission statement but especially to perform miracles of healing or to raise a loved one from the dead. It was soon reported that healing miracles occurred when the sick were placed in close proximity to one of the pieces of wood taken from Jesus's cross. These relics were moved into the facilities used by the group as worship centers and were frequently brought out and paraded about the masses seeking miracles of healing.

As the group expanded it established new worship centers and the new worship centers, now called churches, demanded their own relics. To meet this need the original pieces of wood were continually subdivided until only a small splinter remained. Churches with holy relics drew crowds and saw very significant increases in donations from these crowds. The priests that controlled who was allowed to come into the presence of the relics accumulated considerable power both within the leadership of the group as well in the surrounding secular world. As the relics became too small to divide, the priests scoured the area of the crucifixion and lo and behold!, additional pieces of Christ's cross were found and distributed under the watchful eye of the priesthood. It has been said by scholars, the total volume of relics was greater than the total wood found in a redwood tree.

As time passed the fervor of the group cooled, secular concerns began to dominate and the power structures of the kings and the power structures of the church began using each other to further their own political goals. Out of this marriage of convenience two groups were born; The Christian Nationalist Movement and a small group who tenaciously opposed the CNM, claiming the CNM to be the worst of the worse heresies. The king's belief in The Most Almighty God himself, personally approved of the social and political narrative the ruling secular leadership was weaving, provided the kings with cannon fodder driven by a religious zeal the world had never seen.

The kings supported the church by suppressing (or allowing the church to suppress) those who stood in opposition to church practices or who were thought guilty of gross sin. The priesthood, already adept at storytelling, took the narrative of the Jews being taken captive and then ultimately fleeing that captivity and then as God's "Chosen" people, and then committing mass rape, pillaging and genocide all while under Divine protection as in fact God's Divine plan for his people! As the story unfolds through the centuries God's Chosen people vacillate between being fanatical zealots in the practice of their faith and then vacillating to the opposite extreme by completely rejecting Yahweh and worshiping his competitors. Yahweh did not abandon his Chosen People but reprimanded them by once again bringing them crushing military defeats, death and enslavement. Eventually his people see their error, repented and the redemptive narrative repeats.

All the priests do is extend the story by substituting the king and his citizens for the Jews as God's chosen people and then, wah-la! the secular desires of the nation become part and parcel part of God's divine plan. Throughout history this intertwining of the gospel with nationalist visions and perceptions has found Christians who fell under its spell, supporting programs that are complete opposites of the teachings of its founder, Jesus the Christ. In America it is seen in the unwavering support of the evangelical Christians for Trump and his agenda despite irrefutable evidence of gross failures in his own morals as well as his proposed agenda being in direct conflict with the founding principles of the nation and foundational beliefs of Christianity.

In Africa the absurd lengths this can be carried to, can seen in the following content that was originally written for an undergraduate Master's program:

In a time span of one hundred days, between April and July 1994, Rwanda’s political arena imploded. The country collapsed into chaos, and violence escalated into the genocide of one million people among members of the Tutsi ethnic group and moderate components of the Hutu ethnic majority in the country. The genocide occurred in one of Africa’s most Christian regions, with ninety per cent of the population identifying itself as part of a Catholic, Protestant, or Seventh-day Adventist Church as of 1991 (Longman, 2001; Henning, 2001). Inevitably, in the aftershock of the genocide, many questioned the role, and attempted to fathom the association of Rwanda’s Churches with the genocide. As a consequence, the Church has faced numerous criticisms from diverse fronts, and has been repeatedly blamed of culpability in the violence that occurred during those obscure months (Longman, 2010). However, it was only in 2017 (23 years the event, bb) that Pope Francis, upon meeting the Rwandan President Paul Kagame, officially asked for forgiveness for the Catholic Church’s role in the 1994 genocide, stating that, in Rwanda, the “sins and failings of the Church and its members had ultimately disfigured the face of Catholicism”.

To what degree were Christian Churches involved in the genocide of 1994? Does the Church’s guilt lie merely in a sin of passivity, in the actions of few bad apples within the sacrosanct lines of the Clergy, or did it have a role on actively shaping the ethnic and political realities that made the genocide feasible and possible?

In the years following the genocide, a major denunciation has imputed the Church for its passivity and inaction in the face of the slaughters, committing a sin of omission and lack of action. Others have acknowledged the allegations against specific individuals within the clergy, yet deny the universal responsibility of the Church as an institution – including Pope John Paul II (The New York Times, 1996); in a communication released by the Vatican in 1996, John Paul affirmed that ‘the Church could not be held responsible for the guilt of its members that have acted against the evangelic law’. In support to this claim, it has been argued that, in Rwanda, the Church ‘was also one of martyrs’ (The Tablet, 1994), and neglecting this aspect would certainly result in an unbalanced account of history. Yet, the case for Christian Churches’ deep and direct implications in the Rwandan violence, with their responsibility going well beyond silence or the actions of a few, remained strong over the two decades following the genocide, and eventually prevailed with the statements made by Pope Francis in 2017 (Bartov & Mack, 2001; Longman, 2001, The Guardian, 2017). Whichever reading of history one should adopt, it remains undeniable the role of the Church in the Rwanda massacres was far from a simple phenomenon, but should instead be analyzed as the result of a set of intricate dynamics.

A less immediate, yet fundamental element is the role performed by the Church in actively setting the grounds for the racial framework within which the genocide occurred (Longman, 2001; 2010; Ahlbäck, 2006; Van ‘t Spijker, 1997). Peculiarly, in the context of Rwanda, religious convictions did not function as organizers of group identity (Longman, 2010). The genocide was not pursued on the dividing lines between religious groups, as it happened in other theatres of violence such as Lebanon, India, Sudan, Sri Lanka, or Northern Ireland (Ibid). Nevertheless, Christianity and its proselytizers were essential in defining and crystalizing lines between ethnicities in a context where ethnic differentiation would have otherwise been negligible (Katongole, 2005). Eventually, the genocide was pursued by the regime precisely on the base of this racialization of ethnicity.

Surely the first Christian missionaries to reach Rwanda did not construct ethnicities from scratch (Longman, 2010). Yet, in pre-colonial Rwanda the terms Tutsi and Hutu were empty of racial significance. Instead, these groupings represented mainly trans-ethnic identities and established societal classifications on which communities in Rwanda centred their economical and power interactions (Vail, 1989; Katongole, 2005). Otherwise, the groups formed ‘a single cultural community of Kinyarwanda speakers’ (Mamdani cited in Katongole, 2005, p.71) not only united under a common language, but also costumes, traditions, and beliefs. In their attempt to comprehend the local organization of society, the first missionaries – known as White Fathers – applied their very own European understandings of race and ethnicity, and managed to solidify previously elastic social categories into rigid ethnic ones (Longman, 2010). In fact, the White Fathers applied misleading sociobiological theories to local social constructions. This was seen with the so-called “Hamitic narrative” and its racist interpretation of Rwandan society. This narrative assumes that “Negroid” populations – from which European’s claimed the Hutu descended from given their physical characteristics – were inferior to pastoral “Hamitic” groups of “Caucasoid” origin, distantly related to Europeans (Ibid), from which the Tutsis were believed to originate. This racist interpretation of Rwandan society – even if a less immediate factor in the historical analysis – set a fundamental premise for the 1994 genocide because it promoted and directed the internalization of these notions in the country (Ahlbäck, 2006).

The crystallization of ethnic lines is a necessary but insufficient condition to understand the Rwandan massacres and to assess the involvement of the Church in such events. To fully grasp the dynamics behind the Church’s role, it is essential to reflect on a number of more immediate aspects.

By openly supporting the political regime and legitimizing ethnic discriminations, the Church was crucial in rendering the action of the Hutu government morally justifiable, and the participation in the genocide ethically acceptable to the rest of the population (Longman, 2001; 2010). Only one year after the genocide, historian Doris Bergen, pursued research on the role of religion in the Holocaust. She claimed that ‘Christianity did play a critical role (in the Holocaust), not perhaps in motivating the top decision makers, but in making their commands comprehensible and tolerable’ (Bergen, 1994, p.329). These findings are also valid regarding the Rwandan genocide. In the overwhelmingly Christian country, most of the population assumed that the bloodbaths of Tutsis were coherent with the teachings of the Church (Longman, 2001). In the eyes of the persecutors of the massacres ‘God had abandoned the Tutsis’ (McGreal, 2014). Furthermore, a number of disturbing testimonies of local ecclesiastics, gathered by Timothy Longman (2001; 2010) throughout years of remarkable field research, depict how death squads would attend mass, prey, and kneel in front of the altar. Subsequently, the same people would commit massacres, at times at the foot of those same consecrated altars – not out of a lack of respect for the Christian faith, rather driven by the politicized and discriminatory nature of Christian institutions in Rwanda (Ibid). As a Tutsi priest reported, ‘people came to mass each day to pray, then they went out to kill’ (in Ibid, p. 3).

From these accounts, it appears evident that the Catholic Church in Rwanda not only failed to forcefully condemn the massacres but also played a main part in the legitimization of the government’s actions in the eyes of its people. At the same time, it also chased a hazardous pattern of encouraging popular submission to governmental authority.

The most current glaring example of the complete failure and bankruptcy of Christians to the most fundamental tenets of their faith by endorsing Christian Nationalism is in the Russian Orthodox Church and its relationship with Vladimir Putin. Here is what a 5 minute Google search turns up;

To Vladimir Putin, Orthodox Christianity is a tool for asserting Moscow’s rights over sovereign Ukraine. In his February televised address announcing the recent invasion of Ukraine, he argued the inhabitants of that “ancient Russian land” were Orthodox from time immemorial, and now faced persecution from an illegitimate regime in Kyiv.

Led by Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Church is one of the most tangible cultural bonds between Russia and Ukraine. The gilded domes of Kyiv’s Monastery of the Caves and St. Sophia Cathedral have beckoned pilgrims from across both lands for nigh on a thousand years.

With religious rhetoric, Putin taps into a long tradition that imagines a Greater Russia extending across present-day Ukraine and Belarus, in a combined territory known as Holy Rus’. Nostalgic for empire, this sees the spiritual unity of the three nations as key to Russia’s earthly power as an exceptional civilization. Encouraged by Putin’s “special operation,” Russian Orthodox nationalists are excitedly recalling the prophecy of a twentieth-century saint from Chernihiv, now one of Ukraine’s beleaguered cities. “Just as the One Lord God is the indivisible Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” this monk foretold, “so Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus together are Holy Rus’ and cannot be separated.”

or;

When Vladimir Putin rose to the presidency of Russia in 2000, he inherited the remains of a once-fearsome communist-atheist imperial state. In the intervening 19 years, he has transformed Russia back into an imperial power with global ambitions. One of his key tools in that transformation has been the Russian Orthodox Church.

Putin often invokes the Russian Orthodox Church in his public speeches, giving the church a much more prominent place in Russian political life than under his predecessors. But these invocations hardly seem sincere in the religious sense. Rather, he has used the church to justify Russian expansion and to try to discredit the West’s influence in Eastern Europe.

Many conservative figures in America, including Pat Buchanan and Franklin Graham, have been attracted to Putin’s rhetoric, with its heavy emphasis on traditional Western-Christian values and its seeming rejection of the culture of “degradation and primitivism,” which Putin says has produced “a moral crisis in the West.” Putin has cleverly cast himself as a belligerent in the culture war. In doing so, he has appealed to some conservatives in America who have grown skeptical of the liberal democratic tradition inherited from the Enlightenment, which they believe contains the seeds of America’s spiritual and cultural demise.

Putin has set himself up as a defender of traditional morality—for instance, by opposing homosexuality, penalizing divorce, and supporting the “traditional family.” He loves to pose for photo-ops with the Russian Patriarch Kirill, and has even published calendars of himself featuring traditional liturgical celebrations. But recent conflicts with Ukraine suggest that Putin’s public affinity for Christianity may have more to do with geopolitics than religious sincerity.

or;

The Russian Orthodox Church has been in lockstep with Putin, and has in fact served to advance his ends. A case in point is its position on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Since the year 1686, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church had been under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Moscow. But last October, the Ukrainian church announced that after 332 years, it was splitting with the Patriarchate of Moscow in an attempt to gain independence from Russia. This split was facilitated by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and approved by the head of the Orthodox Church, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, based in Turkey. Yet the Russian Orthodox Church protested and said the split was illegitimate. It continues to maintain that the Patriarchate of Moscow holds jurisdiction beyond Russian borders into Ukraine and Belarus.

The Kremlin’s use of Orthodox Christianity makes perfect sense, given religious trends in the region. Orthodox Christianity has enjoyed a marked revival in Eastern Europe in the last two decades. In nine of Russia’s regional neighboring states—Moldova, Greece, Armenia, Georgia, Serbia, Romania, Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Belarus—more than 70 percent of people identify as Orthodox.

Russian Orthodox Christians—express pro-Russia views. … Orthodox identity is tightly bound up with national identity, feelings of pride and cultural superiority, support for linkages between national churches and governments, and views of Russia as a bulwark against the West.

and lastly we return to the relics;

The sinking of the Moskova. "So unlikely was the loss of the ship in Moscow’s eyes that in 2020 Orthodox Christian officials said it had been designated to carry a piece of the “true cross,” a relic from the wooden cross on which Jesus Christ is said to have been crucified".

This is the same Muskova that was sending missiles to reduce maternity wards to bloody rubble, making craters where bomb shelters boldly marked as refuges for children once stood.

This is the Putin who turns whole cities into smoldering rubble, who orders the shooting of babies while they are clutched to the chests of its mother. Who ties a grandmother and grandfather to chairs and then leisurely executes all their offspring in front of them.

Brothers, why are our pulpits so quiet on this heresy? With the election over, the heresy is over???

I heard louder, more sustained outcry from the pulpit as it rails against same-sex marriage or socialism in medicine than anything murmured in regards to Christian Nationalism. And that brothers, is a crying shame.

Luvya,

bobb