Today America crossed a threshold. All of its inherent darkness was laid bare for everyone to see. It happened at a ‘Prayer Breakfast’ in Washington, followed by a celebration of decadence, where all participants were branded with the badges of absolute complicity.
What was on view was a world that is ending. The grinning Christians at the prayer breakfast may have been rejoicing at the apocalypse. They listened rapturously to the obscenities spewing from the mouth of their master and their mirror. Frightened rich white people, arrogant in their confidence that the church that they have constructed out of hatred, racism and xenophobia will be consecrated by some imaginary God and somehow last until the Rapture.
While the real Christians in the crowd were castigated and attacked, the true believers and the cultists bonded together like an indistinguishable mob of fallen angels in some engraving by Gustavo Dore in an edition of ‘Paradise Lost.’ The stench of hypocrisy and decay was overwhelming.
I grew up as a Christian. I sang in the choir and performed in the Christmas plays. As a Boy Scout I studied under my pastor to receive the ‘God And Country’ honor. I was baptized and born again. Nowadays, when I drive through the suburbs of Albuquerque and Denver with their mega churches and institutes of sanctified oppression I feel the kind of revulsion that only fades when I’ve left them behind.
There are actual Christians in this world, but the American version has become seriously afflicted by a disease that, if not repudiated and exorcised, turns it’s most public representatives into creatures of darkness. The words that now rise to my mind when I hear the word ‘Christian’ are not words reflecting peace, forgiveness or truth, but words of violence, distrust and hypocrisy. Many Christians have turned their faith and love into obsessive dedication to dogma and political ideology, making them willing servants to the masters of war and power and wealth. At their prayer breakfasts they now listen to sermons given by the worst of us.
I imagine American Evangelists will get the Apocalypse they deserve. When their true Gods are bigotry, misogyny, racism and hatred, it’s inevitable that the consequences of these impulses eventually come to collect a price. The road toward Armageddon won’t be pretty for any of us, but in the end those with true courage and true Christian love will turn and walk away, and the congregation of fear will fade back into the dark corners where they came from. Their world, as powerful as it is on it’s face, will finally come to an end, as the rest of humanity turns away, the desecration of our institutions is repaired, and those who inherit the earth turn again toward the truth and the soul of survival.
In this outcome, I have faith.
Arclist 