"Much of cosmopolitan America holds to a progressive framework of bodily autonomy, boundless tolerance and group rights — a largely post-religious morality applied with near-religious intensity. But as a religious person (on my better days), what concerns me are the perverse and dangerous liberties many believers have taken with their own faith. Much of what considers itself Christian America has assumed the symbols and identity of white authoritarian populism — an alliance that is a serious, unfolding threat to liberal democracy." Michael Gerson, WAPO, 9-1-22
"Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;
to understand, than to be understood; to love, than to be loved.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life." Francis of Assisi
Michael Gerson's lengthy but readable column on the abyss that Evangelical Christianity now straddles that Christians should read and consider while those of us struggling to understand how they got into this position should read with sadness, hope and charity. The systemic and Existentialist theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich wrote in his most approachable text, "The Dynamics of Faith" that "faith is about ultimate concerns."
The union between MAGA and "What would Jesus do?" is troubling for many reasons. Gerson's approach is to help all of us to understand how it came about as well as why it is a mistake yet perhaps as much an opportunity.
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