Abort the Church
American Christianity needs its Martin Luther moment
I know. The title is rough. It’s clickbait-y and a little triggering. But it’s honest. When I say “abort the Church”, I don’t mean get rid of churches, Christians, or any mechanisms of religion in the US. What I mean is this: the American Church (capital C) is an institution so compromised, so deceptive, so corrupt and so interwoven with conmen, sociopathic politicians and oligarchs, that it threatens the very existence not only of The United States, but of Christianity as a belief system.
If The United States of America is to survive as a nation, and if American Christianity is ever to find its way out of politics and into religion, then American Christianity needs its Martin Luther moment.
“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
Sisters, brothers and others, The United States of America is speeding towards the final exit on the highway to single-party Theocracy (emphasis on the ‘ocracy…the theo’ is just a device). After hearing this week’s SCOTUS opinion stating that no president can ever be held criminally liable for anything ever, and after watching last week’s slow motion trainwreck of a Presidential debate between a Putinite carney cosplaying Republican Jesus and the only Democrat potentially church-approved for election, I have only three takeaways:
- The United States is now primed for totalitarianism. That has been the plan for some time.
- Most of us will go willingly.
- The American Church (defined here as a loose congregation of fringe Catholic and Evangelical oligarchs, united in the desire to rule) got us into this mess.
63% of Americans identify as Christian. Of that 63%, a majority are single-issue voters who believe in voting with the Church at all costs, and believe that certain authoritarian organizations and politicians are working in the interest of The Church. In fact, however, the inverse is true. As we’ve seen in the most abusive iterations of The Church throughout history, The American Church has nothing to do with religion, or God, or radical love. The American Church is simply the convenient device that puts the “Theo” in “Theocracy”. It is the catchphrase that unites voters, donors, foot soldiers and suicide bombers under a flag that overrules all other flags: the unquestionable flag of desperate emotional belief.
Desparate. Emotional. Belief. Need of all needs. It really does trump all other affiliations, desires and necessities.
“Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
Listen.
I know plenty of decent, loving, charitable, welcoming Christians in the United States who believe in the separation of Church and State. In my own weird way, I count myself among them. Sure, I could do a lot of things better and with more compassion…and I will likely never set foot in another church in this country (weddings, family visits, funerals, and cool historical tours excepted), but I believe I’m okay, and I believe a lot of other Christians are OK too.
On the other hand, I also believe that a far greater number of Christians pray to the courts, worship the billionaires, and seek solace in the constant, dependable rage of social media talking heads. They’re just here for the bloodshed. And I’m relatively certain that they are about to get what they came for.
“Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?”
You know how some people say “I’m not religious but I’m spiritual?” Well, I’m not spiritual, but I’m religious. I don’t care about the smells and bells. IDGAF what happens when we die, or what some politician decides that consenting adults can legally do in their bedrooms. I don’t care to hear what a Russian spy says about the “soul of America”. I don’t think that Christianity has jack to do with America, and I don’t think countries have souls.
Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you
Frankly, I lean towards the school of thought says Christianity was never intended to run global governments. Hell, I don’t even believe that Christianity was ever intended for gentiles. I think Christianity was a proposition made to a certain generation of Jews, living in the diaspora, struggling to keep archaic laws and looking for the fundamental, applicable core of their beliefs. Now, regardless of whether Christianity was ever meant to be adopted by folks like me, it is an absolutely phenomenal set of teachings that I believe are broadly worth adhering to today. Moreover, I don’t think that any religious person, in any faith, under any regime, should trust any voice other than that still, small one in the night that tells him what is right and wrong. If you aren’t regularly listening to and wrestling with that voice…you have no actual religion. You might be a partisan. You might be a sadist. You might be bitter and sad, and wondering why you are never the main character. You might be someone who wants to belong, or someone who is searching for meaning in a void of boredom. You might just be angry at the world and looking to bust some goddam heads. And you might be a well-intentioned parishioner who was raised to believe that those special hand-picked Church and regime authorities are the only hotline to God. Yes, you might be a follower, but you are not a follower of Christ. What fruits are you eating? What fruits are you bearing? How many people did you love today? How many did you serve? And how many did you hate, scorn, discount and diminish?
“And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more. The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones…and slaves, and souls of men.”
I know a lot of devout Christians will scoff at the prospect that they have unwittingly abandoned the teachings of Jesus and become bound in unquestioning servitude to the Holy American Empire, above God and all else. But they have. The majority of American Christians got suckered into rejecting the separation of Church and state, by being deceived into beliving that they had any influence in he governance of either. By being convinced to insert God into secular politics, they unwittingly did the opposite. They inserted secular politics into the concept of God. In the United States in 2024, God works for the oligarchs. The Federalist Society didn’t stack SCOTUS for Opus Dei, Opus Dei stacked SCOTUS for The Federalist Society. Say hello to your new god.
But HOW did they do it? How did a few, objectively abusive and collectively sociopathic wealthy and powerful men (LBH, they’re mostly men) manage to leverage the gospel of the little children, of the poor and infirm, to spin up a hugely successful campaign for their own reign over a country of 375,000,000 relatively capable people? How did they sucker and subjugate 375,000,000 people with the blood of Native warriors, unfathomably resilient kidnapped Africans and terrifyingly brave immigrants from around the globe flowing in their veins? How did they do it?
They did it the same way they always have, since the beginning of time. They convoluted their personal message with the Gospel. They elevated themselves above rebuke. They framed their personal goals and desires as a holy crusade, eclipsing and transcending all other human and political authority (but not national borders, oddly) and demonized and dehumanized any and all who might question them. It’s the oldest and easiest fucking trick the devil ever played.
Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors…Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
If you want to demonize and dehumanize political opponents, or people who are simply inconvenient to your finances and political power, you simply accuse them of inhuman, usually unproven and unprovable acts. You pick the most horrible thing you can think of (something like “damning the souls of babies”) and you set the wedge. And when the wedge gets a niche, you expand the wedge, you further dehumanize anyone in your way by accusing them of objective, black-and-white, cut-and-dry evil:. “They are baby killers. They are pedophiles. They are baby eaters. They buy and sell babies. They cook babies souls and they eat babies’ souls.”
It’s like splitting wood. Put that wedge in a weak spot that follows the grain…take a whack…take another. That wedge will drive deeper and deeper until the two sides of a log fly apart. Until they don’t even recognize each other. Until you have made irreconcilable villains of neighbors and countrymen.
Quick explanation: I’m not using the “souls of babies” example arbitrarily. I’m using it because abortion is the current single-voter wedge issue that is keeping Christians from moving the US in a more ethical direction regarding 1,000,000 more clear and pertinent issues.
And, as it has been since the 1970s, “abortion” is more often than not a code word for more nefarious motivators (QAnon, racism and the Great Replacement Theory, tradwife misogyny, etc).
In short: They didn’t have the voter numbers to legalize State and Federal funding for segregated private schools, but they knew that if they formed a bigger tent with Northern Catholics, they could get all sorts of racist shit accomplished (see our current “slavery didn’t happen” Education crisis). Pivoting on abortion was diabolical. It created a federal, single issue wedge voter (from Boston to Miami, to Minneapolis and all points west) who could be explicitly controlled and relied on overlook all other issues. I don’t think even the “Religious Right” (nee Dixiecrats) of the time knew how much power they grabbed with that one move.
It had to be abortion. Things like food, shelter, medicine, education, civil rights, etc. would never mobilize enough people with enough passion. Theses things are too tangible, too vulnerable to data, and, in a capitalist country, too controversial. People don’t care nearly as much about these tangible issues as they care about vague, imaginitive, supernatural terrors. Terrors made much worse by the fact that they can’t be seen or proved, only felt. Fear is an emotion, not a substance.
Worried about paying your bills?
“The souls of babies!!”
Think universal education is important to a society?
“The souls of babies!!”
Would healthcare make your life better?
“The souls of babies!!”
Is racism America’s chief generational curse?
“The souls of babies!! (Also, yay racism, in most cases).”
We have to figure out immigration reform.
“The souls of babies!!”
Should corporate personhood, crony Kleptocracy and the Electoral College erase your voice in American politics?
“The souls of babies!!”
Jeffrey Epstein’s death sure was suspicious…
“The souls of babies!!”
See, you just can’t argue that. Souls of babies, bruh.
So we know why abortion is THE wedge issue in the US, but why was it ever a wedge issue anywhere? Why is “life at conception” a Catholic doctrine anyway? It’s not because first (or fourth…depends who you ask) century Catholic scholars believed in a God who is too dumb to foresee technology, is too weak to impact the free will of a pregnant woman, or is too small to decide when life begins and ends regardless of human action. It’s because they owned slaves. They owned slaves and they wanted more slaves. That’s it. That’s the answer. That’s always the answer.
Unlike Evangelicals, whose policy is to force birth and then neglect and/or oppress children, the Catholic Church has always had a policy of adopting (or kidnapping) children and putting them in Church-owned schools and orphanges.
The Church was THE driving throughline in European (and US) imperialism, going back to the entirely political conversion of Constantine, extending through the Crusades and Colonialism, through the short-lived 19th Century American Confederacy, and right into Project 2025. Wherever the Catholic Church (shoutout to the Anglicans/Episcopals too) went in the world, they needed more native bodies for the meat grinder; To work, to fight, and frankly, to do that third thing the Church keeps getting in trouble for. In the Holy Roman Empire, in Medieval Europe and the Crusades, in the Age of Colonialism and mass enslavement, the Church and its associated nobility were motivator, financier, and chief benefactor. So forced birth, nefarious adoption, and plain old kidnapping are nothing new.
Make the orphans to fill the orphanages.
It’s why even Atheist American billionaires like Elon Musk flirt with the religious right and insist that America increase its population (and its need for products). They simply need a larger TAM.
Enslave a people’s bodies, and you own them until they escape, enslave a people’s minds and you own them for generations.
And that is the entire long-and-short of The Church of America today. The Holy American Empire needs bodies. They need voters, they need foot soldiers, they need laborers, and most importantly, they need money. They need all of these things in unattainable, insatiable, bottomless quantities. And they need all of these things solely to accomplish personal financial and political goals. Not for God, not for Jesus, not for goodness, nor decency. For money, for power, and for personal glory. There is nothing else. Enough is never enough. Their goal is to enslave and traffic both bodies and minds…and if you believe in souls, those too.
All of this may seem far fetched to an otherwise decent person who sits in church every Sunday, tithes, says grace, and follows doctrine with an unquestioning trust and loyalty in his leaders. I admit, Hebrews 13:17 is pretty clear cut. But is it that far fetched in modern America?
What do church leaders in America really believe in? Do they frequently mention Jesus or his direct teachings in context of personal improvement? Or do they tend to stick to vote-able subject matter? Do they tend to only focus on modern civic issues that are not prominently addressed in the Torah or gospels (and therefore very vague, translatable and interpretable)? Do they spend an inordinate amount of time dehumanizing opponents and attacking, rather than welcoming strangers? Do they delight in violence and conflict? Do they seem overly occupied with political or cultural opponents and with issues that could impact their power, money, vote-count or personal social esteem? Do they advise you as to how you can better yourself, or do they demand money so they can “fight evil” for you? Are they in the world? Or are they of the world?
Take an honest look at the leaders of the Church of America. Do you think Michael Flynn or Clarence Thomas give two boiling turds about the teachings of Jesus? Do you think Donald Trump is concerned with the salvation of his soul…much less yours? Do you think Erik Prince, who has handpicked, mobilized and led ACTUAL child rape squads around the world for decades is interested in the wellbeing of children? Do you think that QAnon, which is an extension of the PizzaGate conspiracy theory, which was a bit of Russian disinformation cobbled together from David Icke’s decidedly anti-Christian and anti-Semitic “Lizard People” theories should be part of the American Church’s core beliefs? Do you think Alex Jones loves his neighbor? Or does he stalk, torment, slander and assault berieved Sandy Hook parents for money?
What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?
I guess I wrote a lot here. My bad. But this is important stuff. And it is sad. When the fringe right in America killed God, they killed something I really loved.
The fact is, I think the racistist/neofascist wing of the far right is not, and should not be salvageable. And I think it is, by far, the biggest wing. But I don’t think all is lost for America or for Christianity, because I don’t belive that the ven diagram of America’s neo-Nazi right and America;s Christian right is a perfect circle.
If there are any pockets of actual, sincere Christians in the United States (and I believe there are many), it’s due time they topple the Holy American Church and exposed its leaders for what they truly are. We, as a country, need someone on the inside to break the far-right’s chokehold on American Christianity, kick out the partisans, hucksters, and powerbrokers, and lead whatever otherwise decent people are left after that out of politics and ethical rot and into to some sort of a meaningful belief system.
If no one here can do that, I hope the next country that inhabits this land is up to the task.
