OOoo, the vicar is SO PISSED!!
Correspondent:: HellPope Huey
Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2005 03:05:05 GMT
--------
If I was "religious" instead of manic heathen, this guy would be one
of my heroes.
Empires prefer a baby and the cross to the adult Jesus
From Constantine to Bush, power has needed to stifle a revolutionary
message
by Giles Fraser
Every Sunday in church, Christians recite the Nicene Creed. "Who for us
and for our salvation came down from heaven. And was incarnate of the
Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary and was made man; was crucified also
for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried; and the third day
rose again according to the Scriptures." It's the official summary of
the Christian faith but, astonishingly, it jumps straight from birth to
death, apparently indifferent to what happened in between.
Nicene Christianity is the religion of Christmas and Easter, the
celebration of a Jesus who is either too young or too much in agony to
shock us with his revolutionary rhetoric. The adult Christ who calls his
followers to renounce wealth, power and violence is passed over in
favour of the gurgling baby and the screaming victim. As such, Nicene
Christianity is easily conscripted into a religion of convenience, with
believers worshipping a gagged and glorified saviour who has nothing to
say about how we use our money or whether or not we go to war.
Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire with the
conversion of the emperor Constantine in 312, after which the church
began to backpedal on the more radical demands of the adult Christ. The
Nicene Creed was composed in 325 under the sponsorship of Constantine.
It was Constantine who decided that December 25 was to be the date on
which Christians were to celebrate the birth of Christ and it was
Constantine who ordered the building of the Church of the Nativity at
Bethlehem. Christmas - a festival completely unknown to the early church
- was invented by the Roman emperor. And from Constantine onwards, the
radical Christ worshipped by the early church would be pushed to the
margins of Christian history to be replaced with the infinitely more
accommodating religion of the baby and the cross.
The adult Jesus described his mission as being to "preach good news to
the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and to set at liberty
those who are oppressed". He insisted that the social outcast be loved
and cared for, and that the rich have less chance of getting into heaven
than a camel has of getting through the eye of a needle. Jesus set out
to destroy the imprisoning obligations of debt, speaking instead of
forgiveness and the redistribution of wealth. He was accused of
blasphemy for attacking the religious authorities as self-serving and
hypocritical.
In contrast, the Nicene religion of the baby and the cross gives us
Christianity without the politics. The Posh and Becks nativity scene* is
the perfect tableau into which to place this Nicene baby, for like the
much-lauded celebrity, this Christ is there to be gazed upon and adored
- but not to be heard or heeded. In a similar vein, modern evangelical
choruses offer wave upon wave of praise to the name of Jesus, but offer
little political or economic content to trouble his adoring fans.
Yet despite the silence of the baby, it should be perfectly obvious to
anyone who has actually read the Christmas stories that the gospel
regards the incarnation as challenging the existing order. The pregnant
Mary anticipates Christ's birth with some fiery political theology: God
"has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the
lowly, he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away
empty", she blazes. Born among farm labourers, yet worshipped by kings,
Christ announces an astonishing reversal of political authority. The
local imperial stooge, King Herod, is so threatened by rumours of his
birth that he sends troops to Bethlehem to find the child and kill him.
Herod recognised that to claim Jesus is lord and king is to say that
Caesar isn't. Christ's birth is not a silent night - it's the beginning
of a revolution that threatened to undermine the whole basis of Roman
power.
Little wonder, then, that influential US Christian commentator Jim
Wallis created a storm earlier in the year when he penned an attack upon
"Bush's theology of empire", helpfully illustrated with a picture of
Bush made up to look like the emperor Constantine. "Once there was Rome,
now there is a new Rome," argued Wallis.
Constantine was converted to Christianity by a vision that came to him
on the eve of the battle of Milvian Bridge: "He saw with his own eyes,
up in the sky and resting over the sun, a cross-shaped trophy formed
from light, and a text attached to it which said, 'By this sign,
conquer' ". Soon the cross would morph from being a hated symbol of
Roman brutality into the universally recognisable logo of the Holy Roman
Empire. Within a century, St Augustine would develop the novel idea of
just war, trimming the church's originally pacifist message to the needs
of the imperial war machine.
Like Constantine, George Bush has borrowed the language of Christianity
to sup port and justify his military ambition. And just like that of
Constantine, the Christianity of this new Rome offers another carefully
edited version of the Bible. Once again, the religion that speaks of
forgiving enemies and turning the other cheek is pressed into military
service.
The story of Christmas, properly understood, asserts that God is not
best imagined as an all-powerful despot but as a vulnerable and pathetic
child. It's a statement about the nature of divine power. But in the
hands of conservative theologians, the Nicene religion of the baby and
the cross is a way of distracting attention away from the teachings of
Christ. It's a form of religion that concentrates on things like belief
in the virgin birth while ignoring the fact that the gospels are much
more concerned about the treatment of the poor and the forgiveness of
enemies.
Bush may have claimed that "Jesus Christ changed my life", but Jesus
doesn't seem to have changed his politics. As the carol reminds us: "And
man at war with man hears not the love song that they bring, O hush the
noise ye men of strife and hear the angels sing."
· The Rev Dr Giles Fraser is vicar of Putney and lecturer in philosophy
at Wadham College, Oxford
--
HellPope Huey
No good deed goes unpunned.
Somewhere between the Angels and the French
lies the rest of humanity.
- Mark Twain
"Oh, you hate your job?
Why didn't you say so?
There's a support group for that;
its called 'Everybody'
and they meet at the bar."
- Drew Carey
Correspondent:: "Rev. Billy Bob Buck"
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2005 22:37:00 -0600
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"HellPope Huey" wrote in message
news:NoRestraint-447158.21051604012005@news1.west.earthlink.net...
> Like Constantine, George Bush has borrowed the language of Christianity
> to sup port and justify his military ambition. And just like that of
> Constantine, the Christianity of this new Rome offers another carefully
> edited version of the Bible. Once again, the religion that speaks of
> forgiving enemies and turning the other cheek is pressed into military
> service.
Over the edge in a perilous time, lemmings.... Nobody's getting away with a
thing... The chickens are coming home to roost:
http://www.mixposure.com/song.php?songid=1572
right click on download link, save target as
Correspondent:: endus
Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2005 10:40:24 -0500
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On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 03:05:05 GMT, HellPope Huey
wrote:
>
> If I was "religious" instead of manic heathen, this guy would be one
>of my heroes.
Anyone who is trying to make Christians see the insane hypcrisy of
their ridiculous rhetoric and evil actions is a hero to me even though
I'm NOT religious. Great article. Thanks for posting that.
--
endus at endus dot com
The hippies are a menace in the form of an anachronism,
a noisy reminder of values gone sour and warped...of the
painful contradictions in a society conceived as a monument
to "human freedom" and "individual rights," a nation in
which all men are supposedly "created free and equal"...a
nation that any thinking hippy will insist has become a
fear-oriented "warfare state" that can no longer afford
to tolerate even the minor aberrations that go along
with "individual freedom". -Hunter S. Thompson
Correspondent:: HellPope Huey
Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2005 01:16:57 GMT
--------
In article ,
endus wrote:
> On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 03:05:05 GMT, HellPope Huey
> wrote:
>
> > If I was "religious" instead of manic heathen, this guy would be one
> >of my heroes.
>
> Anyone who is trying to make Christians see the insane hypcrisy of
> their ridiculous rhetoric and evil actions is a hero to me even though
> I'm NOT religious. Great article. Thanks for posting that.
Religious thought and honest clarity are so rarely seen together in
public, its as if Entertainment Tonight broadcasted footage of Selma
Hayek on the arm of Rush Limbaugh. Its TECHNICALLY possible, but when
you see it, you still feel as if you caught a snapshot of a unicorn
goring your crabby neighbor in the privates. If Jesus likes this
particular vicar, He wins extra points at my house, yee haw!
--
HellPope Huey
No good deed goes unpunned.
Somewhere between the Angels and the French
lies the rest of humanity.
- Mark Twain
"Oh, you hate your job?
Why didn't you say so?
There's a support group for that;
its called 'Everybody'
and they meet at the bar."
- Drew Carey