Hitler in Heaven, Gandhi in Hell?

I am seeing a lot of white, for profit Christian ministers, money changers at the temples of fundamentalist bullshit, who think they are somehow the gatekeepers of God and his evolutionarily perfect child/son/creation Jesus of Nazareth.  A lot of Prot preachers and “theologians” like Russell D. Moore are out there on the blogosphere doing mandatory articles condemning a hip preacher from Michigan over the mythical place called Hell.

Like the many good people and (some) perverts who taught me in the ROMAN FAITH, the one true faith, this air of absolutism about authority over what in their hands seems more and more like a mythology of God, make it up as you go along with their imagined market share of that product.

One sometimes wonders who in who or what is what in Christendom.  Has the Reformation returned?  The only thing missing in some of these fundy ministers closets and their so called difference with the RC church hierarchy are the black, purple and red dresses. 

As for theology, the gospels are far from a perfect and exact detailed life of the preacher man Jesus.  The Prots have done little since the invention of the printing press.  They obsess over the print type and the ink of the bible rather than the spirit of it all.  In some really mean stingy climates they even came up with predestination.  Which means only if you are in the club, you get into heaven.  All others go to hell, whatever that is.  How do you get into the club?  Have to be born into it?  Sounds like a pretense to royalty to me.

Oh I know there is a description of a fiery lake in the book of Revelations for non-believers.  But get a life.  Revelations draws a picture in black and white of a mean and nasty thug deity in some cheap pulp quality comic book.  In the gospels you have the hint of love and redemption from Jesus, the supposed equal of God.  In Revelation, it is pay your dues in cash or get out of the exclusive club of the saved. 

Revelations is the last book of Constantine’s authorized bible. A year after he forces the bishops to hammer out his Nicene Creed and orders the first copies of his newly authorized bibles, he murders his co-emperor and son and then his wife over rumors of a love affair.  Talk about the mean nasty old testament style God in Revelation and the mad murderer in charge of it all (the church) in its official beginnings.  Well let’s not judge Saint Constantine the Great; he must have had his reasons.  And anyway, he was saved by Jesus. Right? Full of the grace of God. Etc. You know. In the club. Wink. Nod.

While on the subject of sick perverted catholic dictators, Hitler is in heaven.  The Irish nuns who taught us reassured us that all Hitler had to do before he offed himself was say an act of contrition.  Hitler was saved by Jesus.  He was a baptized catholic.  Educated in some catholic schools and never publicly challenged the church.  Though there is a mix of sometimes contradictory statements public and private, he was most assuredly a catholic when he died and went to heaven.  Of that, I heard and was taught.  I won’t repeat the stuff the good Irish nuns used to say about the Jews.  The Irish in America are very anti-Semitic I think – or were so in my little Irish American ghetto.

Which brings us to brown skinned Mahatma Gandhi.  Mohandas, according to most fundamentalist Christians, was not saved by Jesus.  You have to be a card carrying member of the exclusive right to heaven for all Christians only. Heaven I think is visualized in modern terms as some sort of exclusive whites only country club by most American fundamentalist “Christians”.

Gandhi could not have possibly had the grace of God to be saved.  He was Hindu and did not pay his poll tax to heaven.  End of story.

Only good acts by Christians are good acts.  The other things like feeding the poor, raising human dignity out of economic and political slavery just don’t count unless they have the Christ seal of approval.  There is no point in some devils trying to be good.  It is a waste of time if they are not predestined by God to be saved.  And God does not consider anybody who does not recognize his son as God’s gift to humanity. Period.

So it is all right to hate Muslims according to Franklin Graham.  They are not white and they are not full of Christian grace, the poll tax thing to heaven.

When somebody comes along and challenges the absoluteness of a real estate deal down south called Hell, well count him out.  I don’t know who this Prot pope/godfather John Piper is.  But his tweet dissing an honest young preacher keeps getting mentioned over and over again by men kissing and licking his sacred ass in their recent writings directed against Rob Bell. 


Well F*ck em.  Excuse my Latin. They can go to hell too whatever that really is.  In fact I think they are already in hell on this earth if you consider their mullah like worldview.

Christianity is love.  Jesus died and redeemed all humanity or he did not.  The far right fundamentalist Neanderthal politics and voodoo religion of exclusivity for the white race is over in the new global reality.  Get a life.

Have a nice day.  

The 80% Christian

I had mentioned something in one of my previous posts about being of a same mind with some early nineteenth Unitarian beliefs. Not claiming to be any expert on that dogma, here is a quote from John Adams:

"The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination, and they ought to be separated.” -- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson (January 23, 1825).

I have read somewhere that Unitarians like Adams at that time did not think much of Concept of the Trinity with Jesus being less than a full third - or not being the sharpest point on that triangle. In other words, people then thought that Jesus was definitely more human than divine but that his words and teachings were worth examining and holding onto in a religion context.

So too, I often wonder if the Greco-Roman concept of Jesus as the Son of God, how can he be equal to or just one third at the same time? Thirty three and one third percent does not add up to one hundred percent in my math book. A son is just a son and a father is just a father? Just shut up and label it mystery. Right?

I guess in the strictest sense of Christianity I might be labeled an 80% Christian. I am not going anywhere and have done more research on the subject than the average Joe. I am who I am. I am what I am. And God’s grace in me I do not believe fruitless.

An Episcopalian priest has just been defrocked for trying to believe in two major monotheistic faiths – Christianity and Islam.

This is not an April Fool's joke --- Episcopal Priest defrocked

The Seattle priest first became aware of the Islamic tradition in 2005 when St. Mark's Cathedral invited a Muslim leader as an interfaith guest. Redding was impressed with his prayer which sparked her interest in Islam and eventually lead to her making her Shahada -- Islamic profession of faith - in 2006. This eventually cost her the Episcopal priesthood and forced Bishop Wolf's decisive actions. Basically, the Shahada asks the Muslim to affirm: "There is no god but God and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God."

For almost two years, Bishop Wolf has patiently worked with Dr. Redding to help clarify her mixed religious beliefs and practices as well as her commitment to Jesus Christ through the Christian sacerdotal priesthood as an Episcopalian.

In July 2007, the bishop originally issued a Pastoral Direction to Dr. Redding inhibiting her from all priestly and diaconal duties. In a letter to her priests, the diocesan council and standing committee, the Rhode Island bishop explained why she disciplined the theologically straying Seattle priest...

April 1, 2009 ...Bishop Wolf believes that a priest of the Church cannot be both a Christian and a Muslim. Consequently, as a result of the abandonment of the Communion of the Episcopal Church, Bishop Wolf imposed a sentence of deposition in accordance with the Canons of the Church.

The priest is/was the Rev. Dr. Ann Redding. Her bishop in Rhode Island took the bold step to establish some discipline about something, anything and not focus on the other ugly, ignorant things within the decaying crumbling Episcopal church - like the still current and enthusiastic witch hunt against gays. Anybody got a match?

Perhaps Dr. Redding was at one point a 50% Christian and a 50% Muslim. Perhaps she is right. Perhaps she in wrong in accepting that there is no God but God and Mohammed is one of his prophets/messengers. Or –let me try this. There is no God but God and Jesus is one of his prophets/messengers. She can’t call Jesus a prophet? Can she? He got elevated to godhood in a Greco-Roman cultural context as in Hercules, son of Zeus cultural context. Right?

The more I study about Jesus the more I know he is real and his true message is hidden amidst the baggage and fears imposed on him by the God Emperor Constantine who adopted Jesus as his political arm and son and inducted him into his newly invented Pagan Catholicism.

Constantine was 50% Roman God and 50% Pagan Catholic. Other than that I think a better percentage to describe him was something like 5% Christian in that he may or may not have even bothered to join his own new religion - not even on his deathbed.

Reminds me of the grade school myth told us every year by the nuns about how George Washington went to heaven because he knew that as a Protestant he would go straight to hell. So on this deathbed and delirious as he was he sent for a Jesuit to save himself by conversion to the one truth faith. Believe that? Yeah. Hey I got shares in the Brooklyn Bridge – very valuable in that they are going to start charging tolls there soon.

There is a line in the movie Gandhi (1982) when the great soul (mahatma) talks of religious services when he was a young boy and the person conducting the religious service was quoting from both Hindu sacred texts (Vedas) and the Muslim’s Quran side by side.

From the movie:

Gandhi: “I am a Muslim and a Hindu and a Christian and a Jew and so are all of you.”

Just a movie script but powerful words not unlike the dynamic words of Jesus who if you seek him out – he cuts through all the religious bullshit and cuts the mustard in my book of life. The movie is secular but the message seems sacred. In this presently spinning overloaded technical world, where does the sacred stop and the secular begin? Or is the modern age a centrifuge pulling all similar ideas and things together into one item.

I don’t know where to stand on Dr. Redding’s embrace of another perhaps legitimate faith in the concept of God. I think she is ahead of the curve and the merging of the best aspects of Christianity and Islam and Buddhism is upon us in this 21st century of this magnificent dawning common era of humankind.

I don’t know what is in Dr. Redding’s heart. I do say good luck and good labor opening up a new pathway to heaven for those of us trailing far behind you.

Semantics may temporarily serve the old dying churches in Rome or Canterbury.

Others with true faith and love of God do not care what you call or label him/her/it – There is no God but God.

The thing about spirituality and faith and getting through life on crutches of belief/faith or is it floating on air with wings of prayer – these things are perhaps only perception awakenings (light) and not perception problems (blindness).