Photo by Natilyn Hicks Photography, Unsplash
Photo by Natilyn Hicks Photography, Unsplash
MAGA Americans do love the Bible…. well, not reading it or studying it or learning its history or understanding its cultural context, or doing much of what it says...
Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz
As someone who is regularly branded a hateful leftist by self-identified God and Country MAGA Americans, I’ve been thinking a lot about what these people actually love.
Well, not God, per se. They love God with caveats and asterisks, with qualifiers and conditions.
Not the “love your neighbor,” “feed the hungry,” “care for the sick,” “don’t live by the sword,” God of the New Testament.
And not the “do not kill”, “do not lie,” “do not worship false images” God of the Old Testament either, for that matter.
Not the God who warned of the dangers of wealth or the adoration of money or the corruption of power.
They certainly don’t love the God who spent his life teaching his followers how to live an empathy-centered existence that sees every other human being as bearing the image of their Creator and worthy of respect and protection.
They don’t love the God who said that the way they treat the vulnerable, oppressed, and disregarded was the way they treat him.
And they don’t love God revealed through any other religion outside of the most narrow, rigid, and fundamentalist version of Bible Belt Evangelical Christianity. Those other Gods and the people who find meaning in them merit only contempt and eradication.
MAGA Americans do love the Bible…. well, not reading it or studying it or learning its history or understanding its cultural context, or doing much of what it says—but it makes a great hammer with which you can beat the hell out of your neighbor while feeling righteous in the process.
The God MAGA Americans do seem to love is the vengeful, joyless, avatar of a deity they can fashion in their own bloodthirsty, morally inverted, miserable, and malicious image; one who justifies their cruelty and consents to their hatred.
They love a God who is white, straight, American, and Republican. Period.
I mean, not its Constitution or its Bill of Rights (outside of the 2nd Amendment, of course)—but not the rest of the stuff about the inherent worth of every human being or about each person’s inalienable rights or about the ability of each human being to live freely and fully.
Not the “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” America etched beneath the feet of Lady Liberty.
They don’t love America’s freedoms of speech and expression, at least not for anyone to the Left of them.
They don’t love due process or habeas corpus or body autonomy or voting rights or marriage equality.
MAGAs don’t love immigrants in America—or Blue voters or people with brown skin or Muslims or queer people or disabled people, or those in poverty or hunger or illness.
They don’t love tens of millions of people who call this place home or who wish to, branding them as threats and enemies and monsters because their pastors and politicians tell them to.
MAGA Americans love a white Christian nationalistic America; a flag-waving, bottle rocket-flying, chest-pumping gated community where diversity, critical thinking, Science, and compassion will find no welcome.
And that is the irony here.
It turns out that the God and Country Americans who accuse people like me of being hateful have very little love for the wide, sprawling, disparate community of human beings whose theology and politics do not align completely with their own.
They love their vulgar, amoral messiah of misery through whom they can vicariously injure and erase others.
They love the whitewashed nostalgia of a past iteration of this nation whose greatness was defined by the number of people it excluded.
They love the bullies and braggarts who mock the vulnerable and ridicule the outcasts.
They love the brimstone-breathing preachers who spew the Jesus-less culture war sermons that now sound like God to them.
They love the network that daily rots their brains with an unceasing feed of porn, prejudice, paranoia, and propaganda that allows them to condemn three-quarters of this nation as evil and inhuman.
As a hateful Leftist, I can readily tell you who and what I love, and that expansive list includes the very people who despise and condemn me. I love people to the Left and to the Right of me. I love them enough to fight for education and healthcare and personal liberties for them as much as for me. I love this country enough to believe that no one here should have fewer rights than I do.
I wish MAGA Americans had the same love.
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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