Jesus, the Truth, and the Fourth of July

 

 Jesus answered, “My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”  Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”  Pilate asked him, “What is truth?”

John 18: 36-38 NRSVue

gaslit:  to cause (a person) to doubt his or her sanity through the use of psychological manipulation:

We watched the series, Gaslit, which is about the Watergate hotel break-in of the early 1970s which resulted in the downfall of President Nixon and sent a bunch of his minions to prison. The drama is told through the lens of Attorney General John Mitchell and his wife Martha, a brash woman whose attempts to expose the wrongdoings of the president were undermined. John is played by an unrecognizable Sean Penn and Julia Roberts is Martha. Both are excellent in their roles but the entire cast (remember John Dean, and Chuck Colson and...) contributes. 

Gaslit is part docudrama, part thriller, part farce, because the ineptitude of the team around Nixon would be comical if it weren't for the way the dirty tricks undermined trust in democracy and the perception of the presidency. Sadly, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who exposed the depth of corruption and skullduggery of  Watergate have commented that it doesn't compare to the insurrection conspiracy leading to the invasion of the Capitol building on January 6th, 2021 (could it really only be last year this occurred?)

We've watched Gaslit as a commission investigates what happened that fateful day last year. What strikes me is that there is no intimattion that what happened 50 years ago had any connections to religion in America. What we have seen as the January 6th horror story unfolds is that White Supremacy is firmly rooted in a bizarre distortion of Christianity which has gained a major foothold in evangelicalism in the United States and has seeped across the border into Canada. We saw it here in the occupation of Parliament Hill earlier this year and a few days ago on Canada Day. 

I'm thinking of my American cousins in Maryland on this fourth of July, good people who are appalled at what has happened to democracy in the United States. The irony is that none of them is particularly religious and likely never will be because of the poisonous image of Christianity the extremists have portrayed. I doubt that they'll be doing much celebrating today. 

Isn't it bizarre that so many supposedly devout people are blinded to the idolatry of politcal power for a chosen few when the nation was founded on the separation of church and state? Little wonder that Americans are abandoning organized religion in droves.

 I hope that these folk would open their bibles and see that during his trial before Pilate Jesus did not seek power and told the cynical Roman procurator that his reign is not of this world. There are so many other New Testament passages which challenge empire, violence, and false religion. 

And perhaps we can say a prayer for the formidable Liz Cheney and her investigative committee as they relentlessly expose wrongdoing and seek the truth. While every effort is being made to discredit them I'm confident that they won't be "gaslit."