(Update: I started this post as a response to one idea I didn’t like at the outset of the interview with Franklin Graham on ABC’s This Week and their “Easter edtion” today.  I continued onto other topics as I watched/listened on via the Web here )

Since it’s Easter,  I’ll begin with Graham’s expression of what “Easter” is for him:

Why is it that we have this idea that a “sacrifice” is REQUIRED?  I don’t think our culture gives us any real instilled need or response to that.  So now,  when so many evangelicals talk about “Christ died for my sins”,  why does someone have to die to “atone”?  That seems a bit ancient to me,  and I would propose,  to nearly all Westerners.  We have it in  the Bible because that was in the culture.  Paul wrote to largely Jewish audiences,  and when he did not,  he did not preach Jesus as a “sacrifice for sins”. He “died for  me”.  That just doesn’t have much effect anymore.  Sorry. 

For me,  it makes so much more sense that Jesus’ death was God incarnate demonstrating how the world will deal with any who would challenge the values and aims of that culture,  and how God will take  on that furious response of the world and put death aside in the process.  In that sense,  it’s for “me” and “for us”.  Even the Bible doesn’t talk about “Jesus died for YOU”,  but for US.   We have individualized that,  assuming  that ,  in our individualist thinking,  that WE is just plural for ME. Nope.  It is an entirely different thing.  That’s why we have Acts 2.  It’s the “gathering”.  It is the creation of an alternative mode of  living,  that stands in stark contrast to that which the world puts forth as emblematic of  “community”.

I’m driven to write this as I listen to Franklin Graham on ABC “This Week” from earlier this  morning.  He’s explaining  what Easter  means to him.  And I look at him and listen to that typical “Jesus died for me,  and he died for you Christine” (speaking to Christine Amanpour),  and as familiar as I ma with those phrases,  I hear it as a foreign language which ,  when it comes down to it,  has long become THE WRONG paradigm for understanding Easter in a Western culture.  We don’t Sacarifice goats or sheep or lambs anymore.  That is NOT something we grew up with.  That is not a useful religious analogy.   We need a different relevant story for what the death and Resurrection of Jesus represents as God’s story for our Western culture. 

For me,  the story needs to find a relevant “world force” against which to pit the idea of God’s people congregating and existing in an alternative culture,  and how the Jesus story of resurrection  infuses that building and living of a community of God’s people. 

Graham says that the “secularism” is “Anti-Christ”. He’s wrong right off the bat.  The “Anti-Christ” is not “secular”.  The Anti-Christ is fully “religious”.  The Anti-Christ is blasphemy incarnate.  The infusion of “world” values into “religious” values,  and the using of faith to further “world” values is much more attune to the methods of “Anti-Christ” than the “political” targets chosen by right wing Christians these days,  as evidenced and represented by Graham.  “We can’t talk about Jesus in our schools”.  (Rolling eyes)  My gosh, Graham,  how do you get  to a point where you so fully identify YOUR BRAND of piety with what God is requiring of us that you see people who are uncomfortable with your expressions of “faith” with “secular” and “Anti-Christ”,  and yet fail to see the full-throttled support of economic policy and intent which aims to dismantle the structures which have been built  to accommodate and aid the most vulnerable  in our  society?

And you’re more concerned with being able to have “prayer in schools” than to actually be involved in the things we are supposedly to be in prayer about (like asking ,  over and over,  “What do you, Lord,  require of me?”  Is it not, as Micah tells us,  “To act justly,  to love mercy,  and to walk humbly with your God" ? (Micah 6, verse 8)  For me,  people such as Graham,  and Richard Land,  who was  also on this “Easter” edition of ABC’s This Week,  are proclaiming  their support for just the opposite of this,  so contaminated has their theology become such that they end up with a pietistic treatise of cultural values rather than the Biblical concept of a just and compassionate and “in touch with God and shalom”  people.   To be a “good citizen”  (translated as “good patriotic, conservative lapdogs of the privileged)  is to spew forth a “religion” which renders our people useless to the Kingdom of God  and fully compliant with the forces in this  culture which direct us with economic privilege and the power this enables  them to wield (which is  hoarded to themselves,  and they want MORE yet).

Richard Land sat there,  sourpuss face the whole time, on that panel and sounded completely secular,  calling  upon all the GOP talking points.  It was like he felt he “represented the church” by channeling Eric Cantor.  As a former  Southern Baptist,  I was completely embarrassed for the reputation of all the sincere Southern Baptists I know.  Land completely failed his faith community, but came out as an obedient lapdog of the people at the top who want him to be “a good little soldier”.  That he was,  for them and their values,  not for the church.  Richard Land, you “sucked at it”. 

And Graham.  His father has to be uncomfortable with this.  His father was hardly the purveyor of cultural values like this sell-out of a son is proudly proclaiming right here.  He is blindly ”leading” the misplaced anger of millions of the malleable souls who have been led by this blind rage against “the enemy” of what they so ignorantly label “socialism”.  If he’s preaching this  kind of stuff,  then we have  a good indication  right there of why so many seem so oblivious to how  fully they have adopted GOP rage themes into their identity as evangelical Christians.  It is scary how many times I have run across people who in meeting them,  and their discovering I am “Christian”,  immediately start ranting  about “Obamacare” and “Socialism” and “lowering taxes on the rich creates jobs”,  as if this is something all Christians believe.  Having Land and Graham on as the representative “evangelicals” does nothing to dispel that notion.

Graham says that the church has stopped doing “safety net” things because the government has”taken” that. He said “you would have to teach pastors HOW to do that” now ,  since generations now “have stopped doing that”. 

Graham is now talking about “the things the Bible predicts”.  “Predicts”.  No concept of apocalyptic.  “Left Behind” BS.  Biblical theology is jettisoned for an adventure story comic book rendering  of the Scriptures.  They talked to this guy for 10 minutes!  Can’t we at  leadt have Jim Wallis in a one on one if we’re going to give this guy a painful 10 full  minutes? (10minutes doesn’t seem like a lot,  but you have to see  it)

and then he launches into “I believe the Bible, fromcover to cover,  word for word”. THE most irritating , chalk board scraping phrase ever invented by the Christian right.  I react that way because it is indicative of the dangers of the inability(or more positively,  unwillingness)  of the fundamentalist mind to distinguish between writings themselves,  and THEIR OWN INTERPRETATION of those writings.  That’s why they are so eager and quick to proclaim their “absolute  belief in the  Bible, word for word”.  It is nonsensical that they consider this sufficient to articulate their theology.

I had  paused the video to write the above paragraph at “word  for word”, and then when I hit  play, he gets this sickly grin on his  face and states ,  for emphasis,  “I believe the Bible”.  Yeah,  Franky,  we got that.  Now stop talking before you hurt yourself. 

Christine Amanpour asks him “what the second coming will look like”.  (Shaking head, fast  forwarding.  Useless to listen to his recitation of the Left Behind comic book version)

Graham says  his father doesn’t recognize the political climate today.  It used to be civil (and here,  I pause,  and wonder how he does that with a  straight face,  as he  injects such strong currents of political hatred.

Graham also said of Trump:  “The more you listen to him,  the more I think maybe the guy’s right”  and Amanpour asks: “So he might be your candidate?”  and Graham says “Sure”. Really?  OK. 

Birth certificate again.  Graham thinks we should be able to see it.  Oblivious to how  ridiculous this whole thing is.  He’s a solid fixture amongst this fixated crowd. 

Graham says of Obama:  “For him,  going to church means he’s a Christian”.  Really?  Obama has never said “I accepted Jesus Christ as my saviour”?  I believe he has,  numerous times.  If you believe there’s something else, Graham,  let’s hear  it.