Pseudo-Jesus
By: Stephanie Mccown
Tags: 2016 Election, White Evangelicals, Religious Freedom, White Jesus

Cover by Douglass Digital Services

The following is an excerpt from my book, Razed Evangelical: Losing My Faith and Finding Myself, a memoir arranged by theme. In this excerpt, I discuss the Jesus white evangelicals have cobbled together out of their fears and bigotry, and how this Jesus impacts their political endeavors.

Since 2016, I have watched the white evangelical community I was once a part of adopt an ever more exclusionary gospel. I have watched as Trump has emboldened racists, xenophobes, homophobes, transphobes, misogynists, and just about any other vile substrata of American society, with white evangelicals applauding him all the while. They have chosen to believe in a Jesus who prizes white evangelical American Christians above all others, and they believe Donald Trump has been sent by God exclusively to protect their interests.

What I see playing out in the United States today is textbook white evangelicalism on a scale that is as grotesque as it is grand. The white evangelical community believes itself to be the victim of relentless persecution, and they need someone to protect them. Donald Trump serves as the strongman to stand between the mass of white evangelicals, cowering in fear as liberals “threaten their religious freedom” by suggesting that separation between church and state needs to be respected, and LGBTQ and POC people deserve the same rights white evangelical Christians have. Their strongman will see to it that their interests are protected, and will also tell them what to think and who to believe, which is classic white evangelicalism. White evangelicals have long relied on the likes of Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Franklin Graham, and others, to tell them what to think. The groupthink phenomenon is strong in this community, so nothing about this seems off or questionable to them.

I am more concerned about white evangelicals than I am about Donald Trump, because even after Donald Trump leaves office, the base that elected him will still be here. They will still be here, with their persecution complex, their insistence that equality is oppressive to their community, and their exclusionary gospel. They will still believe that their greatest power lies in political prowess, not in a gospel that builds longer tables instead of taller fences.

It is the last part that I have the biggest problem with.

It has been years since I set foot in church. I long ago stopped believing in substitutionary atonement, original sin, or that humans are inherently and inescapably corrupt from the time they are born. Yet, even at that, the teachings of Jesus have provided a measure of guidance for my life. I believe the teachings of Jesus are welcoming and affirming, and show remarkably little interest in being politicized, or used to ostracize people.

When I look at this community that I was once a part of, I look for Jesus, and have trouble finding him. I see a community that has shed itself of the cumbersome burdens placed on them by identifying with the way taught by an itinerant rabbi, and instead embracing a Jesus they have cobbled together out of political ambition and moral relativity. They have sacrificed the Jesus of the Bible on the cross of their ego, and made themselves the gatekeepers of heaven. They preach a bastardized gospel that excludes as many people as possible in the name of their newly formed Pseudo-Jesus, while the Jesus they claim to serve, the Jesus of the Bible, is nowhere to be found.

Their most beloved leaders have become obscenely rich doing this, and have no qualms about asking for more.

I do not wear the label of “Christian,” but when I see this, I am nonetheless grieved. It sickens me in a deep part of my soul that, honestly, has me somewhat confused, but pain demands to be recognized. Seeing the community I was once a part of behave in a way that is so harmful to so many, hurts me in the strangest and most exquisite way. I am glad for it. This pain has compelled me toward greater understanding of my own responsibility to do my part, small though it may be, to balance the relentless damage that is coming from the white evangelical community and being unleashed on a world that has done nothing to deserve the pain they are doling out in the name of their Pseudo-Jesus.

If we are to find Jesus, he will not be with Jerry Falwell Jr., or Franklin Graham, or Paula White, or any other member of evangelical royalty that are spewing their Pseudo-Jesus deception. He will be at the US concentration camps, the cages with the immigrants, the crying children, the dying children, the weary mothers who are missing their children and don’t know when they will see them again. He will be on the cold cement floors, covered in a foil blanket, a week’s worth of sweat and oil and the smell of his own body surrounding him like a cloud, because he hasn’t been allowed to shower. He will be with the marginalized, the forgotten, the abused, the people the evangelical community says should not exist, because their gender identity or sexuality is an abomination in their eyes. He will be with the strangers who seek to be welcomed, the sick, the imprisoned, the naked who need to be clothed, the hungry, the widow, the orphan… “the least of these.”

I don’t know who or what Jesus is, in terms of the historic Jesus or the eternal Jesus, but everything I know of him from the halcyon days before the guilt, shame, and terror of hell became so deeply entwined with his name, tells me that his name was never meant to be used as a reason for denying someone a seat at his table. I really believe with everything in me that the best policy is to love people, without qualifiers or conditions, and if there is a God who is involved with this sort of thing, let her sort them out.

As a single mother, a disabled person, a recovering addict, a nonbinary bisexual, a person who well qualifies as “the least of these,” I am concerned with how the white evangelical community is responding to the world around them, and how that response is affecting people from the most marginalized communities. I am not in the position of speaking to white evangelicals from within their domain, but I have a responsibility to share what I have learned from my own background in their community, and to use that knowledge to counteract their efforts. I may not be able to change the world for everyone, but if I can make the world a better place for even one person who has been affected by the toxicity of white evangelicalism, it is worth the effort to do so.

Razed Evangelical: Losing My Faith and Finding Myself is available in Kindle and paperback here.