TO HELL WITH IMPERIAL CHRISTIANITY ....June 24, 2023

What an excellent preaching effort by Jim Rigby of Austin, Texas. To put into words for today what was originally wordless and unexplainable living symbols. Symols that captured many persons' hearts in early first century Palestine. The experience brought with it a clarity beyond ordinary words or preaching. A clarity, which seemed from God, of how one person supposedly modeled for others how humans are designed to highly value each other human. This indescrible falling-star beginning was quickly, within two centuries at most and probably sooner in some places, undermined by its own leaders for self serving power. We can hope for such a collective clarity, that fits our times and needs,again.

"TO HELL WITH IMPERIAL CHRISTIANITY When Christianity spread into the Roman Empire it went through a terrible reframing. The Roman emperor Constantine forced bishops to come up with creedal statements that had little or nothing to do with the original teachings of Jesus. For many, the Christian religion was reduced to supernatural claims and cultic moralisms. For many, Christianity was reframed from a religion of empathy to one of mind control. If the new imperial Christians were superstitious and ignorant about this world, it was okay because they became experts on the world to come. If they couldn’t be good neighbors to the poor and outcast, it was okay because they were good neighbors to their new and improved Jesus who was no longer concerned with the poor and outcast. I believe there is confusion in calling the Christianity of Constantine and that of Jesus by the same name. I’m not saying we should argue about who gets the label, but it is important to remember that, if some Christians want to force their dogma into the public square- it is the Christianity of Constantine, not Jesus. If some Christians are more concerned with maintaining their culture's norms than including their culture's scapegoats- it is the Christianity of Constantine, not Jesus. If some Christians are more concerned about the the success of the American economy than with liberating workers enslaved in sweatshops all over the globe- it is the Christianity of Constantine, not Jesus. And, if the cross is a symbol of Christian exceptionalism instead of a call to suffer on behalf of the oppressed- it is the Christianity of Constantine, not Jesus!"   

Jim Rigby