Doing Theology in the Age of Trump: A Critical Report on Christian Nationalism (Westar Seminar on God and the Human Future Book 0) by Robbins Jeffrey W

Author:Robbins, Jeffrey W. [Robbins, Jeffrey W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2019-01-08T16:00:00+00:00

Part 2

American Exceptionalism, Evangelicalism, and Trumpism

9

The Time of America

John D. Caputo

We have chosen the expression “Christian nationalism” with a chip on our shoulder, to get in the face of the Christian nationalists—the phony nationalism of so-called Christians is what we mean. The expression drips with irony; it is accusatory, a term of abuse meant to expose something hypocritical, dangerous. This is a corruption of Christian and nation , which have fallen into the hands of people unworthy of these names, where they signify something ignorant, thoughtless, mean-spirited, angry, exclusionary, oppressive, reactionary. In theology, this is called blasphemy, a desecration of something sacred. We are gathered here to mock the mockery.

First as tragedy, November 8, 2016, then as farce, then as a circus, then as a sick joke—like using the gospel story of Joseph and Mary to justify child molestation. I hesitate to use a timely example, however applicable, because the stream of timely examples in Trumpworld, is so steady that examples become obsolete in a matter of hours. We can calculate their shelf life only with a stopwatch. We have a hard time keeping track of egregious offenses that would otherwise, in a time not so very long ago, be completely unforgettable, career ending. This is not normal; this must not become the new normal. This is not a paradigm shift; this is the implosion or explosion of the prevailing paradigm, pure and simple, with nothing to replace it. If, as Heidegger says, the sense of Being goes back to the sense of time, this is the sense of time in Trumpworld: where nothing is, and everything mutates; where even Heraclitus would begin to complain at the fast pace of the flux; where everything instantly evaporates in billowing clouds of confusion and contradiction, in tidal waves of deceit, denial and dissemblance, in a tsunami of twittering tweets. This is Kierkegaard’s worst nightmare, a profusion of mediatized Gerede , of spurious, devious, misspelled duplicity, appealing to the base, the basest instincts of the base, the very worst instincts of the people. This is the corruption of the people, of “we the people,” of the “people of God,” of the nation . All this, God help us, in the name of Jesus, a name so badly abused, so defiled daily, that I prefer to say Yeshua, to decontaminate him from these so-called Christians.

In the blasphemous simulacrum that passes for Christianity on the Christian Right today, owning a gun is a right but having health care is a privilege; in the election of public officials, character matters, until it does not—until it serves the political interests of the Right to dismiss personal character, then it suffices to support a mendacious narcissist who brags about the obscene things he can do to women because he is rich and famous. In the blasphemous simulacrum that passes for “nationalism,” these Christians rejoice in Christian militarism, just when Jesus said to put down their sword; when the Scriptures say to welcome the stranger, they dig in against

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.