{"id":243,"date":"2023-09-17T16:53:10","date_gmt":"2023-09-17T20:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/?p=243"},"modified":"2023-09-17T16:53:10","modified_gmt":"2023-09-17T20:53:10","slug":"beware-maga-christians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/2023\/09\/17\/beware-maga-christians\/","title":{"rendered":"Beware MAGA Christians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s no secret that organized Christianity is bleeding members at a significant rate, and it\u2019s turning out that the Republican Party is emerging as a leading reason why.<\/p>\n<p>Another largely overlooked reason, and it may be connected, is that many departing Christians simply do not understand what they are rejecting.<\/p>\n<p>The Republican hypothesis, which is strong and gaining strength among social scientists, is that people are increasingly identifying Christianity as MAGA Christianity, and MAGA Christianity with the Republican Party.\u00a0 That brings MAGA Christianity into politics, and politics is disagreement, conflict, argument and castigation of one\u2019s opponents.\u00a0 That\u2019s a far cry from Christianity\u2019s basic teaching of love thy neighbor, and a growing number of people want nothing to do with a church like that.\u00a0 They are voting with their feet.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a dangerous movement.\u00a0 In a recent article written for ProgressiveChristianity.org, pastor\/writer\/activist John Pavlovitz explains the danger of it this way:\u00a0 \u201cThe ungodly marriage of Christianity and MAGA Republicans could ultimately destroy the Christianity that was founded by a brown-skinned, Middle\u00a0 Eastern Jew.\u00a0 His messages of love and inclusion (particularly for those on the margins of society) were everything that MAGA Christians are not. His willingness to stand up to the heavy-handed Empire of his day flies in the face of the way MAGA Christianity desires to adopt itself into the U.S. political system in order to create its own version of the Empire.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Pavlovitz is obviously right.\u00a0 Jesus tells us to help the poor while MAGA Republicans oppose safety nets.\u00a0 Jesus taught peace while Republicans worship at the altar of guns. Jesus taught us to render unto Caeser that which is Caeser\u2019s where MAGA Republicans oppose taxes.<\/p>\n<p>Maga Christians and MAGA Republicans are not the only reasons Christian churches are losing membership, of course.\u00a0 Several reasons have been advanced.\u00a0 But one major reason flying under the radar and not getting nearly enough thought is that many Christians who reject\u00a0 Christianity simply do not know what they are rejecting.\u00a0 They think MAGA Christianity <em>is<\/em> Christianity.\u00a0 Or they know little or nothing abut Christianity.<\/p>\n<p>The first time I realized that came quite suddenly and wholly unexpectedly one August day in 1989.\u00a0 I was religion editor and columnist for Charleston\u2019s News and Courier and The Evening Post then, and for a column I planned to write I spent one Saturday in shopping centers around Charleston asking people who self-identified as Christians three questions, questions that at first I feared were so easy that anyone who self-identified as a Christian could answer them.\u00a0 I expected a high rate of correct answers.<\/p>\n<p>But I was wrong.\u00a0 Oh, boy, was I wrong.\u00a0 The questions were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Who preached the Sermon on the Mount?<\/li>\n<li>Name a book in the Bible that tells of Jesus\u2019 life.<\/li>\n<li>What is the basic difference between the Old and New testaments?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The result:<\/p>\n<p><em>First Question: Who preached the Sermon on the Mount?<\/em> Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount.\u00a0 It is not literally a sermon, but a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 compellation of everything Jesus ever taught.\u00a0 It is the very bedrock of Christianity.\u00a0\u00a0 And only 29 percent of persons who self-identified as Christians knew that.<\/p>\n<p>The answers I heard most often were Abraham and Moses, both of whom lived thousands of years before Jesus was born.\u00a0 I also heard the names of two local pastors.\u00a0 One man said he knew the name and it was on the tip of his tongue but he just could not think of it.<\/p>\n<p><em>Second question: Name a book in the Bible that tells of Jesus\u2019 life.<\/em>\u00a0 The only answers are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.\u00a0\u00a0 Only 39 percent answered correctly, but when I asked them a follow-up question \u2013 can you name them all? \u2013 at least a quarter of them\u00a0 could not.<\/p>\n<p>Among the answers that got more than one mention were Genesis and Exodus, which are the first two books of the Old Testament, and they were written at least 1,000 years before Jesus was born.\u00a0 Other mentions included Peter, James, Proverbs, David and John the Baptist.\u00a0 David and John the Baptist are not even books in the Bible.<\/p>\n<p><em>Third question: What is the basic difference between the Old and New testaments? <\/em>\u00a0The correct answer is that the Old Testament is the Hebrew Bible, and the New Testament is a collection of distinctly Christian writings.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some of the answers I received, and trust me, they are typical:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThe Old Testament tells of when Jesus lived.\u00a0 The New Testament tells of when he died.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThe New Testament tells of what will happen in the future.\u00a0 The Old tells about what happened in the past.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThe Old Testament is for olden times. The New is for today.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThe New Testament has some stuff the Old Testament does not.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cOne has more information in it.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cIn the New Testament, the words are clearer.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThey\u2019re both the same.\u201d <em>(Five mentions)<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Oh, sigh.\u00a0 And that was in Charleston, a city in the Bible Belt<\/p>\n<p>That problem \u2013 not knowing the basics of\u00a0 Christianity &#8212; has been hitting home to me in a new way recently, but just as strongly.\u00a0 Quora Digest is a social Q-and-A website that answers questions on a whole slew of topics, and because I have a background in religion writing Quora asked me (among others) to answer questions dealing with religion.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a sample of questions I\u2019ve been asked.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cIs it better to say your daily prayers in the morning or at night?\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWhat if I forgot to end my prayer?\u201d<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Can people make things happen by decreeing them in prayer before they even happen?&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>\u201cCan you smoke while you pray?\u201d<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;What are the shortest everyday prayers of gratitude?&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>\u201cCan you pray in your pajamas?\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Oh sigh again.\u00a0 It should be simple to understand that Jesus\u2019 only two commandments about how to live a joyous life are to love God &#8212; that is, love the creative spirit of love &#8212;\u00a0 and love one another.\u00a0 Do those two things, Jesus promises,\u00a0 and you will experience a joy beyond human understanding. Christianity is as simple as that.<\/p>\n<p>But would it really matter to society as a whole if true Christianity in the United States were to die?<\/p>\n<p>The answer, according to years of research by the Gallup organization, is a resounding yes.\u00a0 It would matter deeply, even to atheists.\u00a0 A recent Gallup report put it this way:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe evidence is clear that more religious people have higher levels of wellbeing and happiness.\u00a0 And religion has a number of other positive functions in society, including its influence on morality and pro-social behavior, its influence on charity and giving back to the community, and its contribution to social cohesion and solidarity.\u00a0 A continuing decrease in overall religiosity in American society, like the continuing decrease in faith in other American institutions, can have significant consequences for the health and viability of the country going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Oh, sigh<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s no secret that organized Christianity is bleeding members at a significant rate, and it\u2019s turning out that the Republican Party is emerging as a leading reason why. Another largely overlooked reason, and it may be connected, is that many departing Christians simply do not understand what they are rejecting.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":244,"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions\/244"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}