The POLITICS of Church Christianity
What did Yeshua really teach about politics? The answer may surprise you if you are a church christian!
It doesn’t matter which church institution you attend, there is always a political agenda. Name the politics and you’ll find it in a church. I’ve never attended a church where there isn’t something political. Whether it’s evangelicals hassling gay people or fueling MAGA sentiments, churches taking government money to fund their charity programs, churches as polling stations during election time, churches installing flags with political or national symbolism, the pastors preaching a long sermon on politics, or clergy who have to get their two cents in turning a supposedly spiritual sermon into one that shames you for not toeing their political line or voting the way you “should” vote. Pastors involving their churches in political activism, they think is “the political truths that Jesus would approve of.” I mean….. the list goes on and on. And it’s nothing new.
Same old church christianity, different century. All dopamine driven hot button virtue signaling. And that makes it addictive both for the clergy preaching it and the congregation filling their brains with whatever political message is being preached.
“BUT BUT BUT JESUS TAUGHT THE POLITICS I PREACH!”
No sir and no ma’am. Yeshua taught strict separation of government and religion, strict separation of the the spiritual world and the state.
Don’t believe me? Consider each time in the canonical gospels that church christians accept as legitimate scripture that Yeshua dealt with the mixing of religion and state:
The coin that bears the face of Caesar. Yeshua is asked if taxes are to be paid. He asks for the means of payment that all would be paying their taxes with it. The coin that bears the face of Caesar is presented to him and he then asks, what is on the face of this coin. The answer being Caesar, this settles the matter immediately, no further questions or debate needed. The coin belongs to Caesar and therefore the taxes belong to Caesar. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to G-d what is G-d’s.
The things that belong to the spiritual realm can’t be offered to Caesar because Caesar’s realm is the material realm. And vice versa, the things that belong to the material realm of Caesar cannot be offered to the spiritual realms.
The one and only violent act of Yeshua recorded in the gospels: Driving merchants out of the temple with whips and vandalizing all of their wares. Apparently his teaching about the separation of the spiritual and the state is something he took seriously enough, to the point of violent anger, when he happened upon the mixing of state and religion, which would have been merchandise being exchanged for the coinage of the state inside of the holy place of the temple.
I mean, I’ve always thought that violence is never the answer for anything, but apparently Yeshua felt so strongly about mixing state and spiritual things that it was enough to drive him to violence. Maybe he should have just had some wine and called it day instead. Gave up. The religious establishment wasn’t listening to him back then and they sure as hell aren’t listening to this simple teaching about the strict separation of state and spirituality today.
Yeshua’s only political message was the message of secular government, with nothing spiritual mixed with it, and the spiritual world with nothing of the state mixed with it.
Regardless of how these various church institutions and their clerical authorities try to twist it, there is no political message in the gospel other than this message.
“BUT BUT BUT WHAT ABOUT FEEDING THE POOR AND HELPING THE STRANGER AND LOVING YOUR NEIGHBOR???”
That was a teaching for YOU, how best to conduct YOUR life. YOU are to love your neighbor. YOU are to treat your neighbor as you would treat yourself. YOU are to help the poor. Etc.
This was a message of anti-narcissism. Not a message for you to take 2000 years later and go around bashing people over the head and telling them they aren’t “true christians” if they do not attend to their neighbor in the loving fashion that you demand. Or that they aren’t “true christians” if they do not cast a vote in the manner in which you proscribe.
Yeshua was not a politician or a political figure.
Yeshua was a Jew that had a problem with human religious authority. He didn’t start controversies with Rome, Romans, or with Caesar who were the politics and the government of his time. When he took swipes at people it was always, ALWAYS a swipe at human religious authority. Jewish religious authority figures could appeal to Romans for something they wanted, but they didn’t make the law or participate in the politics of Rome who ruled over them. So Yeshua was never involved in politics, or made any political statements other than statements about separation of state and religion.
The “social or political” gospel is not the gospel taught by Yeshua. It’s a made up gospel of the church establishment and it’s clerical authorities. And it’s a church gospel as old as the church itself. Nothing new and nothing to see here!
The institution of church christianity was codified with political muscle centuries ago—and those with differing opinions or different scriptures declared “heretics”. Not so different from today, really, is it?
very succinct and spot-on article. thanks.