I’ll believe in a blue-eyed Jesus if I want to

He is correct that our constitution protects his religious beliefs — and those of all other believers in SA — from discrimination or hate. But the constitution also protects freedom of speech

In short, she is pointing out, entirely accurately, how debased and defiled the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesus is compared with the heretic and champion of the poor who started a revolution in Judea 2,000 years ago

Critics of the ACDP often accuse it of being anti-science, but this week the party stunned the scientific world by perfecting time-travel as it accused a poem of blasphemy and gave us a thrilling taste of what it was like to live in SA in the 1960s or the Middle East 3,000 years ago.

According to Ferlon Christians, the party’s leader in the Western Cape, the poem, which was read to children at Fish Hoek High during a controversial diversity workshop two weeks ago, is “disgustingly blasphemous” and is “offensive ... to Christians across the length and breadth of our country”.

Christians explained that the poem “is directly attacking my belief system, which is enshrined in the constitution”.

He is correct that our constitution protects his religious beliefs — and those of all other believers in SA — from discrimination or hate.

But the constitution also protects freedom of speech, which is why the ACDP can insist that God is real and that true believers will enjoy an afterlife, and I can insist that God is simply the latest draft of a coping device we invented hundreds of thousands of years ago.

So which was it? An “attack” on a politician’s beliefs, or simply an expression of a different view? Keen to read this “disgustingly blasphemous” poem that had so triggered him, I looked it up online.

What I found was absolutely shocking. I don’t know if it was disgusting, but it was certainly depressing.

Because what I found was that the ACDP’S provincial leader, who sits on the province’s standing committee for education, cannot read for meaning.

Water, the poem by Koleka Putama, would have been challenging and even upsetting to some of the more conservative children who heard it.

It seethes with anger and refuses to let the reader turn away from uncomfortable truths.

Nowhere, however, does it come close to anything resembling blasphemy. Instead, it describes the poet’s experience of growing up in the shadow of a co-opted Christ, a god weaponised as a tool of subjugation by colonists and subsequently rendered “blue-eyed and blonde-haired” by white supremacy.

This perverted version of a loving and all-embracing god makes the poet wonder about the absurdity of trying to prescribe such a small and limited identity to a gigantic, unknowable cosmic force, and she points out, quite logically, that “for all we know the disciples could have been queer, the holy trinity some weird twisted love triangle, and the Holy Ghost transgender”.

It’s provocative, but it’s not blasphemy. On the contrary, by pillorying a colonial Christ and the same god used by Hendrick Verwoerd to justify Bantu education and apartheid, the poet is implying the existence of a true, unblemished god (or gods), owned by nobody, excluding nobody, making nobody feel inferior, ugly or other. In short, she is pointing out, entirely accurately, how debased and defiled the blondehaired, blue-eyed Jesus is compared with the heretic and champion of the poor who started a revolution in Judea 2,000 years ago.

All of which brings us back to the ACDP’S accusations of blasphemy, and the fact that there are only two explanations: either the party worships the Christ of Hendrick Verwoerd, or its leader in the Western Cape didn’t understand what he was reading.

Finally, I’m sure that the poet hasn’t given this kerfuffle a second thought, but on the slight chance that she has, and has found it upsetting, this heathen would remind her that she’s in good company.

Someone else I’ve heard of was also accused of blasphemy — three times, no less — and his name was Jesus of Nazareth.