Kristen Kobes du Mez’s new book, ‘Jesus and John Wayne,’ is lazy broadside against Christians who vote the wrong way.
Source: How To Smear Christianity Without Really Trying
Opinion:
J&JW’s point is that white evangelicals (should we just call them whitevangelicals?) are not very good Christians. They prefer America to other countries, a horrifying inclination akin to liking your own dad better than other people’s dads.
Haha. That made me laugh, which is why I chose to write about the above-linked article this morning.
As a Canadian who grew up proud of my country, I have to admit that while skimming over this review I reflected that I too have felt that American Christianity has given Christianity a bad name. But as I grew older, I realized that wasn’t fair. And when I began to really study religion, I also realized it is a gross simplification. Inexcusably gross.
First off, the group I initially disdained were those ‘redneck’ fundamentalists who cherry-pick from the Bible as if it were, well, the gospel truth. However, I later realized that Canada also has its fair share of fundamentalists: People who seem to find comfort in believing, word for word, a composite of often fragmentary sources and stories that were lumped together and ‘adjusted’ by countless authors, copyists, and ideologues over many, many centuries.
Actually, no, that’s not right. They don’t believe The Book word for word. In keeping with the idea of cherry-picking, they believe those verses that work for them and ignore those that do not.
Then we have Catholicism. Oh, Catholicism… how I love and am disappointed in you. For me, the graces of Catholicism are second to none but Covid makes attending church personally untenable these days. Even before Covid, the worldliness and seedy practices of some Catholics always soured my experience a little bit. If things were cleaner in Catholicism, I might be a Catholic priest right now.
But they are not.
Add to that Orthodox Christians around the world who pervert the Christian message, and it’s clearly not fair to blame America for the bad image Christianity now projects. It’s human folly and sin that gives this otherwise glorious faith a tarnished image.
But that’s nothing new. For believers, Jesus came to Earth for that very reason.
So I hold fast to my Christian faith, without which I would be like a lost piece of driftwood, floating in a dark ocean of nothingness.
Earthpages.org 
Edit – Just improved this passage:
“a composite of often fragmentary sources and stories that were lumped together and ‘adjusted’ by countless authors, copyists, and ideologues over many, many centuries.”
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