Caricature by DonkeyHotey, Wiki Commons
Caricature by DonkeyHotey, Wiki Commons
Vance may be able to B.S. his boss’s sycophantic disciples with this fraudulent, heretical, Jesus-less parade of hypocrisy, but the rest of the world (Christians and non-Christians alike) knows they’re full of it.
Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz
He wears his religion openly, brandishing it at every opportunity in performative piety and finger-wagging condescension, while justifying the harboring of pedophiles, the rolling back of human rights, and the indiscriminate assaults of brown-skinned people by government-funded, masked mercenaries.
Vance is doing all this while breathlessly doing the bidding of a man he only a couple of years ago compared to Hitler: a court-adjudicated rapist and 34-count felon indicted several times for high crimes; a man whose racism, misogyny, and immorality are at stratospheric levels.
The theological gymnastics he and those like him have to engage in to reconcile their idolatry of a sociopath with the teachings of Jesus are at Olympic-gold-medal levels.
I remember Vance giving an interview talking about immigration, and trying to justify prioritizing the American people, saying:
“You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world…”
This is made-in-the-USA, homegrown, sanctified horse shit.
The idea that there is anything anywhere in the teachings of Jesus to support this means Vance is either willfully ignorant, purposefully misleading, or he’s never actually read the Bible.
And when rightly called out on his blasphemous Jesus makeover, Vance took to social media to peddle some asinine, Christian nationalist “ladder of compassion” nuttery, writing:
“The idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does anyone really think someone’s moral duties to their own children are the same as their duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away?
Does anyone?”
Yeah, JD, someone does: Jesus.
That’s essentially the heart of the whole friggin’ thing: loving our neighbors, our enemies, and the least of these: caring for the marginalized, the left out, the foreigner, the people we’ve previously seen as not being our own.
Vance and his morally inverted, cultic brethren have been bending the knee to their vile, belligerent, spray-tanned savior for so long that the actual teachings of Jesus aren’t really a concern at this point.
This is why they spend their days try to connect un-connectable dots between mass violence against immigrants and a poor, dark-skinned, itinerant refugee preacher commanding his people to love everyone.
For God so loved the World ain’t America First, no matter how stridently Vance or any MAGA Christians believe or declare it is.
I realize that to disciples of the Predator-in-Chief, these words will likely all be white noise, much like the Gospel teachings themselves have clearly become to them.
If not, instead of trying to justify abject cruelty in the name of Jesus, JD Vance and people like him (really anyone who simultaneously claims Christianity and MAGA) would be severing ties with Donald Trump and repenting of the prejudices, phobias, and white supremacy that led them to fall prostrate before him to begin with.
If they actually gave half a damn about the non-American, non-English-speaking, “blessed are the peacemakers” center of their faith tradition, they’d work the rest of their lives to undo the grievous damage they have done in such a short time to so many beautiful human beings created in the image of God, who do not share their pigmentation, native language, or nation of origin.
Jesus taught that love for neighbor was the highest calling and the greatest priority we have here. And when asked by a man in the crowd (likely someone Trump Christians would identify with), who he actually had to consider his neighbor, Jesus tells the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
Most people, whether Christian or not, are likely familiar with the story about a man beaten and robbed by the side of the road who is ignored by several religious passersby, finally being cared for by a Samaritan man who stops to tend to his wounds and get him to a place of safety and rest.
Jesus making a Samaritan the hero was striking and scandalous, as people from Samaria were thought to be morally impure half-breeds, likely reviled by Jesus’ hearers.
By doing this, he is reminding them (and us) that our love and concern for humanity is not organized and prioritized by nation, ethnicity, place of birth, or geography. We are to show equally lavish mercy on the hurting, terrified, assailed humanity in our path—period.
The Jesus of the Bible didn’t just love his own. He didn’t choose his family, friends, students, over strangers. He healed people he’d never met. He expanded the table and fed a vast multitude who showed up to hear him speak, not because they were the right people, but because they were hungry.
In fact, Jesus said that in showing obedience to his call for expansive, borderless compassion, we may even experience turbulence within our own family.
I’m fully aware that most Republican Evangelicals probably don’t care about any of this; they have a Jesus-free Christian that is doing everything that they want it to do, so self-awareness, let alone repentance, isn’t likely.
I just want to say that people like me, tens of millions of people of faith in this country, know that what this arrogant, posturing cadre of cosplaying Christians (Vance chief among them) are doing to immigrants and refugees and people of color and gay couples and Mexican families and trans teenagers is a vile, predatory rejection of everything Jesus stood for.
And people of earnest faith in Jesus, along with every decent human being who can’t abide hypocrisy, aren’t going to let these charlatans get away with it, at least not in his name.
Vance may be able to B.S. his boss’s sycophantic disciples with this fraudulent, heretical, Jesus-less parade of hypocrisy, but the rest of the world (Christians and non-Christians alike) knows they’re full of it… and it ain’t the Spirit.
John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities. When not actively working for a more compassionate planet, John enjoys spending time with his family, exercising, cooking, and having time in nature. He is the author of A Bigger Table, Hope and Other Superpowers, Low, and Stuff That Needs to Be Said.
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