Deconstruct to Save Democracy
Yes, Christians, I’m talking to you.
And before you clutch your pearls and jump to a predictable state of defensive victimhood, let me share that I used to be you. It might be hard for some to image but I was 100% a die hard conservative Christian.
My kids missed the entire Pokeman and Rugrats phenomenons because secular music and those types of shows didn’t get airspace in my home for a very long time. James Dobson, Family Research Council, and the Veggietales were staples on our shelves back then.
Today, I’m a sage-burning, crystal collecting, card reading, spiritually-connected woman with a Bible on the shelf for reference when needed. You might even call me a little “witchy”. lol (If you knew how long it took me to be able to say that without imagining burning in the pits of hell for eternity, you’d chuckle too.)
It has taken years of intentional work to become who I am today and I am grateful for it all. Without the “church hurt”, the patriarchal manipulation, and the racial discrimination, my journey, and thus the place I have currently arrived, would be much different. So first, let me be clear - I am grateful for the lessons that have come from my experience of Christianity. I am most grateful though, for the internal wisdom - that knowing we all have inside - that brought me through the religion of Christianity to something much greater.
It’s a place that observes and respects the beliefs, lives, and rights of all other people without judgment or condemnation.
It’s also a place that doesn’t need definitions or labels to identify who I am or what I believe.
At its most basic level, my faith is Love. Not the Christian love (that most often shows up in judgment and hate) that I was neck deep in for much of my life… and not the agape love preachers shouted about from the pulpit but rarely seemed to practice in public… no, the Love I’m talking about is different.
It’s a balance between honoring myself and being of service to others. Like many of you, I struggle with the balance because I live in a world and practiced a faith that drilled into me that I’m a “sinner” and “retch” that only has value if I believe in a particular Jesus as written about and expressed by a particular religion. So yeah, the “honoring myself part” can still be a challenge, but this post isn’t about that.
It’s about where we are today as a society and, in the United States of America, where we will be if we continue to let extremist Christians take over our government.
Yes, I said extremists.
Many of the people today are using extremist, even terroristic, language when describing the kind of country they desire to create and the lengths in which they are willing to go to achieve it. You just don’t recognize them as the radical religious zealots they are because it’s draped in rhetoric about God and "Christian values”... and white.
The truth is that “Christian values” are rooted in patriarchy, racism, ablism, and homophobia. And an even more uncomfortable truth is that these “values” have been used to commit some of the greatest atrocities this country and the world has ever seen. From chattel slavery to spousal rape, Christianity has been used to do more than spread the gospel and a lot of it is horrific.
Now, to be clear, I’m not saying not to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. That guy was pretty on point in the things he said and did. I mean, if people simply followed his lead, we’d be in a much better place and I wouldn’t be writing this article.
What I am saying is that if you cannot question the religion in which you practice, you might be doing the whole faith thing wrong. I mean, even the Bible says to study to show thyself approved. (2 Tim. 2:15) And it doesn’t say to only study the Bible or the things that confirm and reinforce what your preacher says or what you already believe.
Jesus was a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew.
If that line was triggering for you, great. That’s your signal to dig in and discover more about the religion you practice.
Conservative Christianity and its evolution into the moral majority behind the Republican party weren’t in response to Roe v. Wade. It was because Jerry Falwell, Bob Jones University and other white Christian schools didn’t want to integrate. After all, the Bible supports segregation (and slavery), right?
Triggered again? Slightly bothered?
Awesome!
Lean in and start to dig. The best thing you can do in this life is to challenge what you believe and why you believe it. When you come out on the other side, you’ll have a solid foundation that is unshakeable, even in breaking environments. If not, you’re like James 1:8 - a double-minded man who is unstable in all his ways.
I know it’s scary.
I mean, even if the fiery pits of hell stuff turn out to not be true, unpacking who you are without all the things you’ve been taught to believe is frightening AF. And that’s before you get around to asking who you are without those things or what it says about you that you subscribed to a faith that has and continues to do tremendous harm to a large number of people in the name of God.
I get it.
Do it anyway. Do it scared. Just do it.
I too was raised as a “christian” in the Catholic Church. By age 14 I had rejected most of the manipulative and controlling dogma, but it wasn’t until age 22 that I had begun doing the self-work that you describe, and it took a long time, nearly ten years. Kudos to you for doing this work and writing about it.
Tremendos Harm In The Name of God……makes me just sad. Great Job Dani☮️