The “Christian Right” are the modern day Gnostics. They seem to easily adapt their “spirituality” to an ethic and a concept of a Kingdom that is detached from the lives of people where they are, and cling instead to some romanticized, “knowledge/docgtrinal based” system of verbal confession. One must “pose things in the right wording’ in order to be among the elect. This is a “body/soul” separation that the New Testament considers heretical to the Kingdom Jesus preached.

This Kingdom WAS itself the “Good News” Jesus preached and lived. The gospels say it just like that. “Jesus came preaching the Good News OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. And when he told Pilate “My Kingdom is not of this world”, he wasn’t announcing a “spiritual, non-physical” Kingdom.

On the contrary, he was replying to Pilate’s query : “So you’re a king?” Jesus said “My Kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my disciples would have fought to defend me”. In other words, “not of this world” is NOT “of this earth”, but NOT OF this culture (Roman Empire) where might is right, and unending, unlimited expansion, which involves conquest and oppression for the vast majority of people. Jesus preached a “Kingdom” of stark contrast to that. Not your “escape” that the Christian Right wants to put forward.