CARLTON FLETCHER: The irony of the ‘fake Christian’ fad

Why’d you sing hallelujah? If it means nothing to you?

— Damien Rice

I used to laugh at the absurdity, this sniping back and forth among groups referring to each other as “fake Christians.”

For the life of me, I could not figure how these people — many of them making their value judgments with undisguised venom — did not see the irony of calling out others by using the name of a man whose teachings are diametrically opposed to the intent for which his name was being used.

Truth be known, what these self-determined paragons of virtue are doing when they use the name of Jesus to belittle others who have differing viewpoints is they’re engaging in that ludicrous partisan political idiocy of denigrating anyone who might be “conservative” or “liberal” or any other buzzword that’s supposed to put them into “anti” mode. Trust me, Christianity has nothing to do with it.

The nation — or at least people who buy into the us vs. them ethos that has all but rendered our country’s government useless — has so gotten caught up in this meanness, many now eschew the more traditional titles of belittlement for the day’s politically inspired blasphemy.

As if putting the word “fake” in front of a term now renders it null … fake news, fake facts, fake spies, fake FBI agents, fake Russians, fake Christians …

I certainly claim no moral high ground in this modern-day Crusade of … well … fake righteousness. I just can’t help but wonder how using the name of the being on whose principles your religion is based to disparage another fellow being is supposed to somehow grant an individual superiority.

Perhaps calling into question someone else’s Christianity makes one Christianer?

The primary problem here is that the people who are derisively invoking the name of their purported deity as a way to put down others are about as far from Christ-like as the self-serving actions of their chosen political leaders are to ideals of this country’s founding fathers.

Have we really become so callous we’d cast derision on others’ good acts — acts that heretofore have drawn praise for their selflessness — just because the perpetrators of those acts dare to align themselves with the “wrong” party?

Do we truly feel a sense of righteousness when we demonize the actions of good people over something as petty as political affiliation?

Again, I’m nobody’s Bible scholar, but I cannot remember a single Sunday school lesson or sermon at Pinetta Baptist Church in which the teacher or pastor invoked the phrase “Thou shalt not Republican … thous shalt not Democrat … thou shalt not Independent …”

When politicians started courting voters by playing up to their religious beliefs — Catholics, Protestants, Jews, evangelicals and the like — our government took a hard turn away from one of this country’s primary founding principles: the separation of church and state.

Now, on issues like abortion, health care, military might, taxation, individual rights, politicians are taking “stances” — no matter that the way they’ve lived their lives is the very antithesis of the stance they claim to embrace — in an effort to win the support of blocks of voters from a specific sect, based, of course, on which sect has the most political muscle, aka deliverable voters.

The “fake Christian” nonsense started when people who condemn sin aligned themselves — for political or megalomaniacal purposes — with politicians whose words and actions don’t resemble anything even remotely close to their supposed belief set. Rather than speak out against the sinner — who just might be a governor, a senator, a president — these people make excuses for the sin. Or, even better, they answer criticism of their chosen champion with the brilliant, “Well, (fill in the blank with the name of an opposing politician) did worse things.”

I will give those calling out all the “fake Christians” a lot of credit, though. You have to at least acknowledge that it takes an uncommon courage to risk eternal damnation just to show you are solidly behind your political party or politician of choice.

One of this paper’s Squawkers put it well recently, pointing out the blasphemy and contradictory claims of some professed Christian who showed indifference toward separating parents from their children by asking the time-worn but effective question: “What would Jesus do?”

I’m pretty sure of one thing … it sure ain’t this.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ABH_Fletcher.