• uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    6 months ago

    The thing is its simply not true. We know what Jesus is like. (🐪🪡💰) And yet most ministries in the 21st century see the right to property as central to Christianity rather than the duty to feed and clothe the destitute.

    Behind The Bastards did a recent two parter on How Capitalism Ate Christianity, starting with the ministry of James W. Fifield Jr. that reinterpreted scripture to veer away from charity and mercy and towards the righteousness of capitalism. It was largely helped after WWII by the red scare in which the Soviet Union provided a fine example of the singular alternative.

    So Christianity was repurposed into the Christian Nationalist movement that seeks to turn the US into a one-party autocracy with fascist features.

    Why would Adonai allow His holy scripture to be subverted to serve plutocrats? In fact it is done all the time, and has been done to advocate monarchy, to endorse slavery, to oppose war, to endorse war against specific belligerents and so on.

    Dan McClellan on his YouTube channel notes scripture does not feature univocality, inerrancy or divine authority according to scholarly consensus (which commonly runs contrary to what apologists might suggest). As McClellan notes the people of any era has to negotiate with the scripture to affirm their own morality, whether that’s pacifism and charity or standing your ground and massacring degenerates.

    But that is also to say the ministries will justify violence when it serves them, whether that’s torturing POWs and massacring villages during the Iraq war or forcing conversions at swordpoint as per the crusades and holy inquisition. And yes plenty of Christians when told they need to load for bear and hunt the sinners will do so, especially if they’re in precarity and fear for the security of their home, family, job, survival, etc.