Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds

Spiritual people use religion to become better people. Fundamentalists use religion to pretend they’re better than other people.

remember—if your church isn’t telling you to love your enemies but keeps telling you who your enemies are, you’re not really in a church.

Jesus was: A peaceful, radically nonviolent revolutionary Who wasn’t American and never spoke English Who hung around lepers, hookers, and crooks Never sought tax cuts for rich Nazarenes Was anti-wealth and anti–death penalty Anti–public prayer, too (Matthew 6:5) Never asked lepers for a co-pay Never called poor people “lazy” Never even slightly antigay Never mentioned abortion Supported paying taxes

Jesus asserts that his true followers are the people and societies who care for the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the immigrants, and the incarcerated. And he tells you who his fake followers are—the ones who are openly religious but indifferent to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the immigrants, and the incarcerated, the lowest of the low. How we treat them is how we treat him.

And that’s the point. We’re called to follow Christ, not the Bible. In fact, please understand this: the Bible does not tell us to follow the Bible. The Bible tells us to follow Christ. But Biblical Christians follow the Bible. They do not, in fact, attempt to follow Christ.

All four Gospel writers specifically cite Jesus rejecting the accepted cultural norms and treating women with respect. Not only did he break rabbinic laws of his day by teaching and talking to women, but he allowed women to touch him—including those considered “unclean” by the culture at large.

If you want to trigger and enrage Christian nationalists, Jesus will show the way. Stand up for the oppressed, welcome the stranger, love your enemy, fight poverty and injustice, resist violence, and choose compassion. Or just ask them which Jesus teachings justify their politics.

Christianity is under attack—but by divisive right-wing fundamentalists who publicly worship Jesus while fighting against, voting against, and legislating against his actual commandments.

And if there’s one thing the Bible shows us, it’s that authoritarian government, aligned with some extreme conservative religious fundamentalists, literally killed Jesus.

In focusing on what cannot be proven, many Christians fall into the trap of a Christianity that’s more about defending the supernatural than embodying the moral teachings of Jesus. It’s not the miracles driving people away from religion, it’s the Christians who don’t live by Jesus’s words about how we’re supposed to treat each other.

I generally trust people who are seeking the truth; I tend to be wary of those who claim they’ve found it.

It’s not the miracles driving people away from religion, it’s the Christians who don’t live by Jesus’s words about how we’re supposed to treat each other.

if your church isn’t telling you to love your enemies but keeps telling you who your enemies are, you’re not really in a church.

The primary driver of most global conflict, oppression of women, suppression of science, persecution of gay people, and abuse of power is not religion. It’s the extreme fundamentalist wings of all the world’s religions that provide all these dramas for the rest of humanity.

Imagine the hecklers: “Meh, I didn’t trudge all the way up Mount of Beatitudes just to hear some virtue signaling from Woke Jesus.

Care for the sick? No. Turn the other cheek? No. Render one’s taxes? No, sucker. Be kind to the incarcerated? Hell no. Welcome the stranger? Bitch, please. Modern right-wing Christians have been suckered into an anti-Christian trap of aligning with power, instead of challenging it. But conservative power was what Jesus stood up to—not for—time and time again:

Under Rome, Christianity transitioned from a persecuted little faith into a force powerful enough to persecute others. Once the empire got their hands on Jesus’s movement, they enacted huge changes in its theology, narrative, organization, and relationship with political power. Gone was the simple, direct message of love from the homeless Jewish faith healer. In its place sprung up new hierarchies, ecclesiastical institutions, and endless dogma and doctrines. More importantly, the merger of Christianity with imperial power led to it becoming a tool for political control, with countless spiritual teachings twisted for authoritarian purposes. Emperor Theodosius issued a series of decrees that enforced Christian rule—and suppressed pagan practices. As religion merged with empire, pagan temples were destroyed, pagans were executed for heresy, and marginalized pagans faced persecution for not conforming to the new normal. Jesus’s movement was now officially being used to justify violence, oppression, and authoritarian control.

Not only are Christians supposed to prioritize following Jesus’s words above the other parts of the Bible, that’s also quite literally why this religion got its name.

The New Covenant established by Jesus marks a massive shift from the religious law and customs Jesus was raised with, to a different kind of faith-based user experience. It’s Jesus’s software update, from Law 1.0 to Love 1.0. Calling oneself “Christian” is to accept the new terms and conditions.

Trump defenders may be intrigued to know that while Jesus never once condemned abortions, immigrants, or gay people, he was seriously not a fan of adultery, and spoke out against the divorce laws of Moses because he thought it should be harder for men to dump their wives.

And I was taught—relentlessly—that Christianity was about the things Jesus prioritized: Service to others. Forgiveness. Caring for the poor, the sick, the stranger, the prisoner. Fighting injustice with nonviolence, like Dr. King and Gandhi. Standing up for the less fortunate, like Dorothy Day and Catholic Charities. Love. Empathy. Compassion.

But Christian nationalists are here to fight for Jesus—not listen to him.

Kristin Kobes Du Mez is professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University and author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. I asked her about this Christian obsession with power. “Conservative evangelicals have tended to prioritize interpretations that justify exercising power over others—men’s power over women, and Christians’ power over society,” Du Mez says. “Many theologians argue that Jesus rejected this approach to power. He emptied himself and refused to claim earthly power, which was very much within his reach. He said the first must be last, and that to follow him meant to take up one’s cross, to sacrifice oneself for others. These are hard teachings, however. If you want to build a movement and claim power for yourself, these teachings will get in the way.” Christian nationalists want the US to be a Christian nation, but they don’t want to follow the words of Christ. It’s like irony and hypocrisy having violent hate-sex. It’s also the culmination of what Rome did to the Jesus movement—the triumph of Christian dominance over Christ teachings. And because Christian nationalists believe that God really does support anything they do, they’re quite possibly the most dangerously entitled non-billionaires in America today.

We’ve all known conservatives who were capable of being inclusive. Right-wing people, not so much. But Jesus was a revolutionary, and calling out the ultraconservative hypocrites among the religious authorities is part of what led to his death.

Jesus’s admonition to not look on women lustfully is not anti-sex—it’s anti–sexual harassment.

Jesus taught love for all humanity, regardless of their nationality, ethnicity, or religious affiliation. But Christian nationalists are here to fight for Jesus—not listen to him.

It’s a gospel of control over caring, power over humility, and judgment over mercy. They won’t fight for the words of Jesus, but they’re profoundly committed to stuff they believe he said.

It’s hypocrisy to call yourself a Christian and chase away a refugee or someone seeking help