Crazy Faith Ministries
During the recent Alabama senate race, it was troubling, to say the least, to hear candidate Roy Moore, an alleged pedophile, refer to “the Lord Jesus” and lift his “Christian values” as a way to attract voters.
What was more troubling was that so many people aligned themselves with him, also referring to their “Christian values.”
Moore, who had a host of issues against him, said boldly that he was being attacked because he was a Christian, and at least one person interviewed echoed that belief. Sandy Rios of the American Family Association said that the attacks on Moore were attacks on all Christians.
Moore was presented as the persecuted victim – like Jesus was, his supporters said, even as they justified any sexual encounters he had with underage girls years ago because Jesus’ mother, Mary, was a teen when she became impregnated by the Holy Spirit in order to conceive Jesus.
Moore, his wife and his supporters called on a god that seems far removed from the notion of the sovereign God revealed in the Christian Bible. The god of evangelicals is a god of obstruction, a god who, they say, supports the Second Amendment and traditional marriage and condemns abortion. This god is the same god who has been called upon throughout American history to support and defend White supremacy and racism, sexism, the massacre of Native Americans and, as Dr. Martin Luther King reminded us, the three evils of our society: imperialism, materialism and militarism.
The god of the evangelicals is not egalitarian at all. This god allows people to talk about “Christian values” out of one side of their mouths while voicing support of a man against whom a multitude of women have come forth, charging sexual harassment or worse. Adherents of the pro-life strain of society, “life” for them apparently does not include teen girls who are accosted by grown men.
After Doug Jones was declared the winner of the Alabama senate race, some of Moore’s supporters immediately got on their knees and began to pray, but the whole scene was troubling. Whose god, which god, were they praying to? Even as Moore lost, he continued to evoke the name of god, saying that they were on god’s side and god was on theirs.
Their god is angry, it seems, at the diversity that has become a part of American life. Their god is partisan, clearly a god who aligns with Republican Conservatives. But if that is true, “the least of these,” i.e., those who are not White, not Conservative, not Republican, not male, not straight, not young – those who are, in this, the most wealthy country in the world, hungry and homeless – are just out of luck.
The god of the evangelicals gives them peace and makes them comfortable and smug in their theology. Their god turns his eyes away from the suffering of the world and instead spends valuable spiritual energy in support of a man like Roy Moore, a man as arrogant as he is unfit to be anyone’s senator. The god of evangelicals teaches that it is the will of god that this country be White and that paternalism is theirs to practice as they work to subvert others and expose them to abject inequality and dehumanization.
Why would a sovereign god, who made everything and everyone, throw his own creations to the wind? A god who would do this is not the god I learned about in Sunday School. The evangelical god is biased, as biased as is the most rabid racist.
That god is not my god. It never was and will never be. The Sovereign God has to be weeping as his name is being used for nefarious gain and to justify ignoring the cries of the dispossessed and castaways of this society. We were taught the song, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world…”
Not so much, if this evangelical god is the one true God. This god ignores his own children if they do not fit into the white supremacist mode.
This god is not my God.
Rev. Dr. Susan K Smith is the founder and director of Crazy Faith Ministries. She is available for speaking. Contact her at revsuekim@sbcglobal.net.