DOMINIONIST DEMENTIA: WHAT'S JESUS GOT TO DO WITH IT?

[rainbow4321]

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0412/S00212.htm


As we navigate the religious holiday season and attempt to psychologically and spiritually prepare ourselves for the ''second'' (or third or fourth or fifth) term of the current regime, I thought it might be appropriate to examine this fellow Jesus whom the Dominionists of the religious right claim to follow. In doing so, one will notice that the historical Jesus bears almost no resemblance to the Jesus of Dominionism.

Were Jesus with us today, he would be an enormous problem for the Dominionists, and we can be certain that he would be perceived by them not unlike a homeless street person or an antiwar protestor. Jesus and his followers would be marginalized, arrested, and imprisoned. Contrary to the Jesus contrived by the Dominionists, the historical Jesus did not perceive himself as a savior of anyone. Whereas today's fundamentalist Christian insists that one must accept Jesus as one's "personal savior," Jesus never taught this concept. Rather, he was a spiritual mystic and an activist on behalf of human rights and social justice.

Moreover, it is highly likely that the historical Jesus was not the pale, white-skinned, ethereal, civilized-looking caricature of two thousand years of Christian artistic depictions, but rather an untidy, hairy, wild-looking desert-dweller who drank wine and danced at weddings. Increasingly, new historical evidence strongly suggests that he was in relationship with and married to Mary Magdalene. Two of the most reliable sources are Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln, and Richard Leigh and The Woman WithThe Alabaster Jar and The Goddess And The Gospels, by Margaret Starbird. Written before the Da Vinci Code, these sources point to the birth of at least one child of Jesus and Mary and the reality that rarely was a devout Jewish man in the ancient world unmarried. In addition, Jesus was often addressed as "Rabbi", and in his day, rabbis were almost always married.


Knowledge of the historical Jesus illuminates the appalling chasm between what he lived and taught and Dominionist ideology. Empire, a perpetual war on terror, the "reworking" of the U.S. Constitution, the destruction of civil liberties, the privatization of public services, the devastation of the environment, the looting of the U.S. Treasury, the recriminalization of abortion, the persecution of gay and lesbian human begins---what's Jesus got to do with it? Absolutely nothing. To those who advance these atrocities, he would only reply: "I never knew you."

[Maat]

1. Thanks for the post.

And I agree with you. To me, Christ was a highly enlightened individual, and represents a 'consciousness' if you will, just like Buddha. They were Master Teachers.

[housewolf]

2. Jesus & New Testament - NO; Old Testament - YES

From what I've seen, it seems these dominionist/theocrats/reconstructionsists are more interested in bringing back the Old Testament than Jesus and his New Testament. This seems to be where they are going for their ideas about judicial law.

Tem Commandments: Old Testament
Leviticus (anti-gay): Old Testament
Dominion Theory: Old Testament
Creationism: Old Testament

Last year one of them introduced a bill into Congress that limited/required the Supreme Court to review Old Testament law and the US Constitution when reviewing cases (couldn't look at any other US law or International law, for example)

These people call themselves Christians, but they don't seem to base much of their theories or behavior on the teachings of Christ.

[rainbow4321]

7. You think Bushites would learn a thing or two...

http://edstrong.blog-city.com/read/925284.htm

The Soviet Union had its religion. It was Marxism, and its adherents believed in the apocalyptical withering away of the state. In its place would emerge a workers’ utopia where no one worked more than forty hours and the profits of one’s labors filled one’s own pockets.

Similarly, the Bushites have their own rigid faith: an evangelical Christianity that wants to turn back the clocks to the Old Testament.

Just like the communists, they await a promised apocalypse. The end days are coming, they say, when the faithful will be beamed up to heaven and the rest of us will have to hang with Satan for a really long time.

Let’s add up what we have so far — one party rule; a bureaucracy that rewards loyalty over talent; the suppression of dissent; a rigid orthodoxy of belief; imperial ambitions; a war going badly in a Muslim country, make that two Muslim countries; a news media that can only echo the party line. Yup, sounds like the Soviet Union to me.
Does anyone remember what happened to the Soviet Union?

[pacifictiger]

3. founding father quotes you won't hear on the 700 club

http://www.deism.org/frames.htm
----------
George Washington

"The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy."

Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11:
“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”
-----------
more

[bobbieinok]

4. don't see how Holy Blood, Holy Grail can be viewed as valid scholarly

work.....it's absolutely fascinating, but most of the footnotes to the interesting info read something like this....

.....'found in a letter in XXXX archive in the Paris library; when we went back to confirm a (date...or whatever), the letter was missing....the librarian could only tell us it was misplaced

I'd sure like to be able to publish with this type of documentation!!!!!

[Warren DeMontague]

5. He was a hippie.

I know that's a dirty word for some people, but, it's the truth.

[cali]

6. That's so silly I don't even know where to begin.

What do you mean by a hippy? Someone who dropped out of the prevailing social order? That hardly fits Jesus. Some other explanation? Please elaborate. BTW, I certainly have nothing against hippies. I was one. Moved to Vermont to live on a Commune, etc. My son insists I still am one.

[Warren DeMontague]

8. Well, at the very least, he might have had long hair and was probably

a pacifist.

Although if you google "Jesus" and "Long hair" you will find plenty of right-wing sites arguing, very emphatically, that "Jesus did NOT have LONG HAIR!"

See, some people take this subject REAL seriously. I don't.

[XemaSab]

9. Jesus

....for sure dropped out of the prevailing social order.

He told his disciples to go preaching with only their cloaks, he kicked the moneychangers out of the temple, the whole Sermon on the Mount... Jesus made a lot of people pretty angry, because they thought he was trying to overthrow the government.