A mean-spirited religion
Henry Idema: A mean-spirited religion
Somewhere along the way, the Republican Party "got religion." I am not sure when this happened. The party of Eisenhower was a party of fiscal discipline, e.g., balanced budgets. Ike warned us about the power of the military industrial complex. Religion was not part of his administration. Contrast Ike's GOP to the party of Trump. He added about $7.8 trillion to the national debt and upped military spending at the expense of education and health care, among other items affected by all this spending.
Maybe the GOP discovered religion when Pat Robertson and the "moral majority" became strong political forces, and the Republicans saw here an opportunity to build a religious base. White Evangelicals are now the heart of Donald Trump's support, justified in their eyes by his three Supreme Court judges and their decisions on abortion, gay rights, affirmation action, etc. Over 80% of these Evangelicals supported Trump in two elections and continue to do so.
I have one simple point to make here: The form of religion the GOP has adopted as its base is incredibly mean-spirited and dominated by white men.
The fact that Trump does not attend church nor have a core set of religious beliefs means little for his religious base. White Evangelicals see results and that is what counts for them. That Trump is a serial adulterer also means little. Can you imagine if Obama were a serial adulterer? The reaction would be a lynch mob in spirit, and perhaps in reality if white Christian nationalists could pull it off.
The religion of white Evangelicals and Christian nationalists is not the religion of Jesus, who taught us to love each other, including our enemies. Jesus taught us to feed the hungry, visit the sick and prisoners, and house the needy. Jesus taught us to treat others as we want to be treated. In the midst of the concern for the unborn by white Evangelicals, you hear little about the health care problems Dobbs has created for so many women, especially poor women and women of color. Women are dying because of Dobbs and their inability to get medical care, but white Evangelicals are silent on this. They want the government to control a woman's body once she is pregnant.
I do not like abortion — who does?! But I am pro-choice because I want a woman and her doctor to make health care decisions, not the government, not white men in churches and Congress.
The recent Supreme Court decision that a woman, who was planning on setting up a marriage website (she had not even done this yet!), could discriminate against a gay couple (who did not even exist) and refuse to serve them has enshrined discrimination in our society once again. She justified this decision on her religious beliefs, which in my view are mean-spirited.
The Supreme Court has now made it possible that a gay couple could be denied a meal in a restaurant because of religion. Who is going to stop someone from denying health care services to Blacks or serving them a meal because this would go against his or her religious beliefs?
What makes a mean-spirited religion? In my view, Evangelicals and Christian nationalists are using religion to repress natural human desires, such as the desire to love. This is an old playbook. Prohibition, inspirited by Christians, wanted to repress desires to drink alcohol. Mean-spirited Christians are now banning books that they fear will arouse forbidden desires.
We are witnessing a new form of Puritanism not all that much different than what Hawthorne depicted in his novel "The Scarlet Letter," or what Arthur Miller portrayed in his play "The Crucible."
One of Freud's main discoveries is that repression leads to frustration, and frustration creates the desire to destroy that which one most desires. The natural human desire to love is repressed at a huge human cost. Look at the sex scandals in all Christian denominations. The Roman Catholic requirement that priests be celibate is in my opinion unnatural. The proof of this opinion is seen in the data that thousands of priests have abused children. White Evangelicals and all denominations have their own sex scandals. The use of religion to repress a person's natural desires, and the use of religion to impose upon others one's own religious beliefs, have created havoc in our society.
There is no more urgent time than the present to separate religion from the state. The mean-spirited religion around us — in our courts, our churches, our legislatures, etc. — will in the end fail to repress natural desires when it comes to who we choose to love, and what books we want to read. The sad thing about a mean-spirited religion is that it is turning away millions of people from organized religion, especially young people. They see the hate and prejudice and repression and say, "no thanks."
Churches must return to the teachings of Jesus, his teachings about love and service, and reject a mean-spirited political agenda that is being foisted upon us by a mean-spirited religion that is harming so many Americans.
— Henry Idema lives in Grand Haven. He can be reached at henryidema3@yahoo.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Henry Idema: A mean-spirited religion
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