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Why Evangelicals Hate Jesus
This article was co-authored by Dan Cady is an assistant professor of
history at California State University, Fresno. He publishes on the
history of the American West, music, and religion.
The results from a recent poll published by the Pew Forum on Religion
and Public Life (http://www.pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Tea-
Party-and-Religion.aspx) reveal what social scientists have known for
a long time: White Evangelical Christians are the group least likely
to support politicians or policies that reflect the actual teachings
of Jesus. It is perhaps one of the strangest, most dumb-founding
ironies in contemporary American culture. Evangelical Christians, who
most fiercely proclaim to have a personal relationship with Christ,
who most confidently declare their belief that the Bible is the
inerrant word of God, who go to church on a regular basis, pray daily,
listen to Christian music, and place God and His Only Begotten Son at
the center of their lives, are simultaneously the very people most
likely to reject his teachings and despise his radical message.
Jesus unambiguously preached mercy and forgiveness. These are supposed
to be cardinal virtues of the Christian faith. And yet Evangelicals
are the most supportive of the death penalty, draconian sentencing,
punitive punishment over rehabilitation, and the governmental use of
torture. Jesus exhorted humans to be loving, peaceful, and non-
violent. And yet Evangelicals are the group of Americans most
supportive of easy-access weaponry, little-to-no regulation of handgun
and semi-automatic gun ownership, not to mention the violent military
invasion of various countries around the world. Jesus was very clear
that the pursuit of wealth was inimical to the Kingdom of God, that
the rich are to be condemned, and that to be a follower of Him means
to give one’s money to the poor. And yet Evangelicals are the most
supportive of corporate greed and capitalistic excess, and they are
the most opposed to institutional help for the nation’s poor —
especially poor children. They hate anything that smacks of
"socialism," even though that is essentially what their Savior
preached. They despise food stamp programs, subsidies for schools,
hospitals, job training — anything that might dare to help out those
in need. Even though helping out those in need was exactly what Jesus
urged humans to do. In short, Evangelicals are that segment of America
which is the most pro-militaristic, pro-gun, and pro-corporate, while
simultaneously claiming to be most ardent lovers of the Prince of
Peace.
What’s the deal?
Before attempting an answer, allow a quick clarification. Evangelicals
don’t exactly hate Jesus — as we’ve provocatively asserted in the
title of this piece. They do love him dearly. But not because of what
he tried to teach humanity. Rather, Evangelicals love Jesus for what
he does for them. Through his magical grace, and by shedding his
precious blood, Jesus saves Evangelicals from everlasting torture in
hell, and guarantees them a premium, luxury villa in heaven. For this,
and this only, they love him. They can’t stop thanking him. And yet,
as for Jesus himself — his core values of peace, his core teachings
of social justice, his core commandments of goodwill — most
Evangelicals seem to have nothing but disdain.
And this is nothing new. At the end of World War I, the more rabid,
and often less educated Evangelicals decried the influence of the
Social Gospel amongst liberal churches. According to these self-
proclaimed torch-bearers of a religion born in the Middle East,
progressive church-goers had been infected by foreign ideas such as
German Rationalism, Soviet-style Communism, and, of course, atheistic
Darwinism. In the 1950s, the anti-Social Gospel message piggybacked
the rhetoric of anti-communism, which slashed and burned its way
through the Old South and onward through the Sunbelt, turning liberal
churches into vacant lots along the way. It was here that the spirit
and the body collided, leaving us with a prototypical Christian
nationalist, hell-bent on prosperity. Charity was thus rebranded as
collectivism and self-denial gave way to the gospel of accumulation.
Church-to-church, sermon-to-sermon, evangelical preachers grew less
comfortable with the fish and loaves Jesus who lived on earth, and
more committed to the angry Jesus of the future. By the 1990s, this
divine Terminator gained "most-favored Jesus status" among America’s
mega churches; and with that, even the mention of the former "social
justice" Messiah drove the socially conscious from their larger,
meaner flock.
In addition to such historical developments, there may very well
simply be an underlying, all-too-human social-psychological process at
root, one that probably plays itself out among all religious
individuals: they see in their religion what they want to see, and
deny or despise the rest. That is, religion is one big Rorschach test.
People look at the content of their religious tradition — its
teachings, its creeds, its prophet’s proclamations — and they
basically pick and choose what suits their own secular outlook. They
see in their faith what they want to see as they live their daily
lives, and simultaneously ignore the rest. And as is the case for most
White Evangelical Christians, what they are ignoring is actually the
very heart and soul of Jesus’s message — a message that emphasizes
sharing, not greed. Peace-making, not war-mongering. Love, not
violence.
Of course, conservative Americans have every right to support
corporate greed, militarism, gun possession, and the death penalty,
and to oppose welfare, food stamps, health care for those in need,
etc. — it is just strange and contradictory when they claim these
positions as somehow "Christian." They aren’t.
