both of my parents are ministers in the christian church

I like to say, “40 years. No Cadil­lacs. No scan­dals.”

I have seen every­thing that is right with that re­li­gion. I love my par­ents, they were ex­cel­lent role mod­els, and I would not be the per­son I am with­out them.

I am a prod­uct of prayer, be­lief, and com­mu­ni­ty. I spent years af­ter leav­ing the church try­ing to find the kind of sup­port and con­nec­tion that I grew up with, some­times putting my­self in ques­tion­able sit­u­a­tions for some­thing that re­sem­bled that love.

There are a lot of us with sim­i­lar sto­ries.

I left the church due to hypocrisy, judge­ment, cor­rup­tion, sys­temic racism, and sex­ism. The same rea­sons a lot of peo­ple have.

White Je­sus is a tool and sym­bol of col­o­niza­tion and op­pres­sion. Pops NEV­ER preached white Je­sus. Wouldn’t make any ge­o­graph­ic sense.

I do re­mem­ber peo­ple around me sug­gest­ing that Don­ald Trump should be the Pres­i­dent be­cause he was rich when I was a kid though. So … that was a long time com­ing. As is a lot of what we are see­ing now.

There is a long held be­lief among the Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives that this coun­try start­ed go­ing to hell when they took prayer out of schools.

I re­mem­ber wear­ing t‑shirts and hav­ing stick­ers that said, “As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in schools.”

It’s a weird kind of con­flict­ed to be­lieve that it would be a good thing for spir­i­tu­al ed­u­ca­tion to have its place while also re­al­iz­ing ex­act­ly what that means in Amer­i­ca in 2022, which is the same thing it meant in 1963 and 1845 and 1776. The guy who some king de­cid­ed to call Je­sus when re-writ­ing the sto­ry to fit his agen­da be­comes a star span­gled pa­tri­ot that rose from the dead to back America’s lat­est war cam­paign and fight any oth­er spir­i­tu­al teach­ers to the death.

Rather than ad­dress­ing greed and prob­lem­at­ic pas­tors and find­ing ways to be light in these dark times the “Chris­t­ian” church is lead­ing a cru­sade of hate and op­pres­sion based in things Je­sus nev­er ad­dressed from a book that has been re­word­ed count­less times by cor­rupt lead­ers (looks at King James).

Abor­tion is nev­er men­tioned in the Bible. Us­ing a 2,000 year old book as a med­ical guide is wild­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble, dan­ger­ous, and ne­glect­ful.

Ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty wasn’t men­tioned in the Bible un­til the 1940s when the word “pe­dophile” was switched to “ho­mo­sex­u­al” – some say by trans­la­tion er­ror, oth­ers pro­pose a dark­er, more sin­is­ter rea­son – to cov­er up the pe­dophil­ia that has al­ways run ram­pant in the Catholic church.

The first song we are taught as Chris­t­ian chil­dren goes:

Je­sus loves me this I know
For the Bible tells me so
lit­tle ones to him be­long
they are weak but he is strong
yes, Je­sus loves me
yes, Je­sus loves me
yes, Je­sus loves me
The Bible tells me so.

Note there is no feel­ing that in­di­cates or val­i­dates Je­sus’ love, it is sole­ly BE­CAUSE the Bible in­forms. This is what the ba­bies are taught. That line could eas­i­ly have been

For I feel it in my soul

(I want my roy­al­ties for the re-write) but this is part of an age old in­doc­tri­na­tion that I’m not sure how much of the church is even aware of car­ry­ing on.

Re­li­gious op­pres­sion is like white su­prema­cy in that it is a sys­tem that sur­vives by mak­ing it­self as in­vis­i­ble and ac­cept­ed as pos­si­ble in the fab­ric of every day life, of­ten with those help­ing per­pet­u­ate it un­aware of the ways they are do­ing so.

“In God we Trust” is print­ed on the mon­ey cir­cu­lat­ing while we are told church and state are sep­a­rate. Whether it is said silent­ly or out loud, Amer­i­ca is a Chris­t­ian na­tion – we killed and en­slaved a lot of peo­ple to be­come that. The hor­rif­ic irony be­ing that the first col­o­niz­ers them­selves were seek­ing free­dom from re­li­gious op­pres­sion.

The word “Chris­t­ian” trans­lates to “lit­tle Christ” but the fact is that my broth­er Yeshua wouldn’t rec­og­nize the Church as it cur­rent­ly stands. A doc­trine be­ing used to ma­nip­u­late and con­trol peo­ple and es­tab­lish pow­er over oth­ers.

The Phar­isees have al­ways had pow­er though, this is noth­ing new. I guess this is a let­ter to the church that raised me to re­mem­ber that above all else he preached love and that the king­dom of heav­en was with­in. For your neigh­bor as your self.

It’s also a let­ter to every­one feel­ing at­tacked right now … Christ wasn’t about hate and the real Chris­tians aren’t ei­ther. Don’t be fooled by the politichris­tian­i­ty tak­ing over.

Just try­ing to make sense of how we got here. It’s heart­break­ing to think about the peo­ple that are in the church for love, joy, peace, pa­tience, and kind­ness that are be­ing rail­road­ed by fear and big­otry. It’s heart­break­ing to think about all the peo­ple who are be­ing op­pressed and stripped of their free­doms via the ma­nip­u­la­tion of some­thing cre­at­ed to be holy.

I don’t know the an­swer. I don’t have a so­lu­tion. I’m a poet work­ing to find words. But I know that the an­tichrist isn’t a per­son it’s an en­er­gy and I know it’s al­ready in the church. And I know it has been for a while be­cause I stared it in the face as a child. It’s not that scary. All it takes to beat it is a lit­tle bit of love.

But it’s got to be pure. That real Je­sus kind. The kind that’s for all the lit­tle chil­dren of the world be­cause they are pre­cious in his sight. Re­mem­ber that song?

Je­sus loves the lit­tle chil­dren
ALL the chil­dren of the world.

 

—an­dru de­f­eye

Flom­mist An­dru De­f­eye is the Guer­ril­la Poet Lau­re­ate of Sacra­men­to. Copy­right © 2022 An­dru De­f­eye.

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