Chrissy Stroup has written an interesting article at Religion Dispatches about
the competing portraits of Jesus on display in public political debate.
In contrast to “fundamentalism,” she coins the term fandamentalism to describe public attempts to harness Jesus as the religious mascot for whatever political policy position one prefers.
Her challenge is both provocative and challenging. The article is entitled, “Stop Trying to Save Jesus: “Fandamentalism Reinforces the Problem of Christian Supremacy.”
I have excerpted the article below, or you can read the entire piece by click on the title above.
But wait, you say, Jesus would of course disapprove of Trump! Let me respond with a modest proposal, as it were: Jesus does not need you, or anyone, to save him, so perhaps you could hear me out? If you do find yourself becoming angry on Jesus’s behalf as you read this, I would ask you to take a breath and try to consider how your very defensiveness might be belying a subtler, but still problematic, form of Jesus fandamentalism.
As I’ve argued on a number of occasions, Christian supremacism is baked into the American public sphere to the extent that it’s very difficult to get many people to see how American cable news and legacy media outlets whitewash the power and breadth of Christian Right extremism. They let “respectable” evangelicals dominate the conversation unchallenged by critical outside researchers, ex-evangelicals and those who are most harmed by white supremacist patriarchy. When the trauma and abuse inherent in fundamentalism and Christian nationalism come to light, too often they are represented as mere “hypocrisy,” while the Christians behind them are dismissed as “fake Christians,” conveniently shielding Christianity from any systemic criticism. . .
. . . admitting that the Jesuses of our headcanons and our church traditions are shaped by our own values, “opens possibilities” for believers to ask “why Jesus appears the way he does in our communities, readings, and theologies,” according to Onishi. “What does it say about us? How does our shaping of Christ reflect our values? How should becoming cognizant of that image and those values transform us? Those are questions I think Christian communities would benefit from asking.”
