"THUG CHRISTIANITY"

I'm very rarely envious of anyone, but I'm envious now, in that I never thought of the apt term, "Thug Christianity," for much of what I've been dealing with on this blog for the past couple of years. My friend, Bishop Leland Somers, coined that term, and I intend to use it again (giving him the credit, of course), as it puts most of the problems created by the institutional Church in perspective.

Here's an excerpt from his excellent October 9th post on the subject that promises to be one of many:

"Thug Christianity has stolen Jesus, God and Christianity in the USA. It is a perverse and disgusting replacement of the real Jesus with a fake and a fraud who will support war, capital punishment, oppression and exploitation based on corporate greed and all of the other evils embraced by the American Empire of the 21st Century under the morally degenerate leadership of George W. Bush and the Republican fraud machine, aided and abetted by the Democrats, most of whom owe their souls to the rapacious corporatist cabal that actually runs the United States Government."

For his full post, please see here.

As I've written before, LGBT people can be seen to be canaries in the mine shaft! Miners would place a canary in the mine so that if there was any poisonous gas being emitted, the canary would die and, thereby, warn the miners that they were in danger of facing a similar death. Hence, the way LGBT people are treated by the institutional Church shows the true nature of most of the institutional Church, and its toxic effect on all who align themselves with it, in a way that nothing else currently does!

As LGBT people are treated by the institutional Church and others, we can see the true colors of those who disparage, denigrate, discriminate; the leadership and membership of the institutional Church, be it through their rhetoric and actions and/or through their silence and inaction, show their hypocrisy and mendacity by their helping to lead the way in justifying homophobia both within the institutional Church and within society in general.

Beyond the many gifts LGBT people have given to the Church and to society, they are providing an extra "gift," in that they are now called upon to play a crucial role to bring into sharp relief for all to see the true animus that lies behind so much sanctimonious rhetoric and professions of "love" given by all too many clergy and their followers.

LGBT people are now the recipients of the hatred and naked hostility that has emanated from most of the institutional Church as long as there have been minority groups against which to discriminate. LGBT people are now in the cross hairs of "Thug Christianity," and, thanks to LGBT people, its hateful animus is again being brought into the light of day!

Christians worthy of the name must educate people as to what Christianity truly is, lest we turn over the term, "Christian," to the thugs who will do just about anything to consolidate their power and, of course, to keep that money rolling in!

Share |