Jesus was a liberal
To the Editor:
Just down-valley from Davos in Schierss, Swiss ELA (Evangelische Lehranstallt) Headmaster
Pfarrer (Parson) Witzig taught of a benevolent Jesus, dedicated to feeding the poor and healing the sick. The Last Supper was a Jewish Seder. In Guatemala, we were friends with priests from Oklahoma serving in Santiago Atitlan. The first American canonized by the church was our frequent house guest in Guatemala City. With many other priests and nuns, Father Stan Rother was murdered, under a self-described “born again” Evangelical president. Rios Montt massacred at least twenty entire villages of “leftist insurgency sympathizers,” men, women and children, and 200,000 Guatemalans.
Father Stan and Parson Witzig represent a Christianity that humanists, and most people, religious or not, would consider beacons of civilization’s moral progress. But what happened to American Christianity today? Clergy in our area promote Trump. White Christian nationalism poisons the American political environment. No wonder young people flee the churches in droves. Much of Christianity seems reverting to an era of fascists Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and Pinochet, the opposite of anything Jesus would have wanted.
From my perspective, most of Christianity’s history was characterized by Crusades, Inquisitions, Pogroms, Father Coughlin’s prohitler antisemitism in the 1940s. But obviously, most Christians are decent people, and in reality rather liberal. Pols show majority support for Medicare-for-all, Social Security and a return to a fairer tax code. Christian clerics should clean up their act, or face European-style empty churches.
Most humanists see Jesus as a devout liberal Jew, along with Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. King as milestone ethical heroes. But Trump’s GOP will do more damage to churches than any atheist, agnostic, liberal, or “woke.” Trump-ism is already the death knell of the Grand Old Party.
This election, maybe it’s time to choose. Christians should remember that Jewish liberal, Jesus, was the first “woke.”