THE ORIGINS OF RELIGIOUS INJUSTICE
Traditional Jewish and Christian religious beliefs are incubators for religious sex abuse, racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, cults, bigamy, conspiracy theories, religious conflict, hate crime, Christian Nationalism, wokism and a multitude of other social ills. The injustices religious people do in churches, synagogues, on the streets, in businesses, in government, in businesses, in voting booths and in their homes, are all products of those beliefs. Bad behaviors by religious people will not change until their wrong beliefs are exposed and replaced by the correct interpretations of the bible. None of these abusive behaviors would be evident in a culture that obeys God’s Commands About How to Relate to Him and to One Another. There would be no need for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies if everyone routinely practiced the Doable, Common Sense Strategies for Achieving Political and Social Unity: Overview.

Sexual abuse is a crime and a sin — not just bad behavior. Christian Nationalism is not just bad behavior. Many aspects of Christian Nationalism are flagrant crimes. More than violations of human civil laws, or breaches of cultural norms, however, clergy abuse and the many injustices perpetrated by Christian Nationalists are crimes against God’s spiritual laws that include, but are not limited to God’s Commands About How to Relate to Him and to One Another and God’s Commands About Doing Justice for Others. God has two words to describe violations of these his laws: sin and injustice.

God’s way of dealing with sin and injustice is to inspire his people to share the truth about his laws with lawbreakers. That is what Old Testament prophets and Jesus did. When read carefully and with respect for biblical symbolism, most bible stories depict  truthtellers confronting lawbreakers/sinners. Jesus’ ministry can be described as confrontation with the religious nationalists (i.e. Pharisees and Scribes) of his day with the truth about the many ways their religious activities violated God’s spiritual laws. This is what God wants today’s truthtellers to do. But truthtellers don’t need to be prophets or pastors or teachers or even be religious to tell the truth. Anyone can tell the truth — even about religion and the bible. No special degrees or training is required. Truth can be shared from any public or private platform by anyone who knows truth and has courage to share it an a social, political and religious environment that too often rejects truth and punishes truthtellers.

While it is true that the benefits and power of truth telling expand greatly when everyone knows the truth and applies it consistently in their daily lives, the primary target for truthtellers today should be Christian Nationalists.  There is an urgent need to confront Christian Nationalists because, as they aggressively and brutally violate God’s Commands About How to Relate to Him and to One Another and God’s Commands About Doing Justice for Others, too many innocent Americans suffer in spirit, soul and body as victims of Christian Nationalist legislation. Failure to arrest the movement amounts to criminal complicity.

There are some exceptions, but most Americans see Christian Nationalism as a political/religious movement. Regardless of how it is seen in philosophical terms, the fruit of Christian Nationalism is legislation that oppresses marginalized communities with legalized injustice. The movement’s destructive effectiveness is in the news daily, but the strategy to confront it — if indeed there is a coherent strategy — for arresting the movement has been political activism. This makes sense for people who see Christian Nationalism as a political movement, but it makes no sense at all for anyone who sees it as religious extremism. Political activism will not arrest, or even slow down, Christian Nationalism because the focus is on changing politics — not on changing the hearts of Christian Nationalists who perpetrate unjust, oppressive governmental policies. 

To be fair, it must be said that some religious people employ prayer as a strategy to deal with all kinds of social issues, but prayer does not work and cannot work because God does not and will not intervene in human affairs. The only kind of intervention God does is to change hearts. Meddling in politics and government is not something that God has ever done. If he was inclined to intervene in the affairs of men, we would not have the Christian Nationalism problem today and most wars and religious atrocities in human history would not have happened. 

Christian Nationalism is, at root, a religious movement that is based on literal interpretations of select parts of the bible that Christian Nationalists believe to be true in their hearts and minds. These beliefs inform everything Christian Nationalists say and do. These beliefs cannot be altered by reason or logic because they are lodged in the hearts and minds of Christian Nationalists in the same way that affections religious people hold for their chosen religions are lodged in their hearts and minds.

Truthtellers who want to change hearts and minds don’t think in terms of changing political ideologies because that is a losing battle. The only way to successfully confront Christian Nationalism is with the only spiritual weapon that has the power to destroy the movement’s religious roots: Truth.

 Since truth cannot be seen, truth is, by nature, a spiritual commodity. And since journalists trade in truth, it is up to them to expand the scope of their work to include truth about the antecedents of Christian Nationalism. They must see that their job is more than reflexive reporting truth about religious events. They must expand their vision of  truth telling to include the truth about the religious roots of Christian Nationalism. If journalists don’t research and report this truth, no one else will.