"War-cheerleading, crypto-racist, judgemental, hateful Christians"

Mitch Benn, a superb satirist and musician who is one of the team on the BBC comedy The Now Show (listen to the latest one if you haven't heard of it) posted an excellent blog on his My Space site last year about Christians. It is so good I thought I ought to reproduce it in full. I hope he doesn't sue me!

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CRC (Campaign For Real Christians)

One of the fun things about the internet is getting to "meet" - electronically anyway - people you would otherwise never encounter.In particular just recently I've had some humdingers of arguments with American Right-Wing "Christians". This is particularly fun because, living in Europe, the kind of Americans you actually meet face to face are almost always the OTHER kind of American. The kind with passports.

I've also met the other kind of Christian American. The kind who are as alarmed and appalled as I am by the particular brand of American "Christianity" which gets all the attention in the world media. The war-cheerleading, crypto-racist, judgemental, hateful kind. One in particular observed to me that he was sure that there were more American Christians who espoused HIS kind of Christianity - the tolerant, loving, inclusive kind - but that it was always the OTHER sort of Christian who got all the headlines.

What follows is my reply to him, and it goes out to all those who don't recognise the louder variety of "Christianity" as anything of the kind...

"So go GET some f**kin' headlines."

Seriously, dude... I'm no Christian myself but I was raised in what I guess you would call the Christian Tradition and you know, my RE teachers were nobody's idea of be-jumpered happy clappers (one of them in particular was a scary-eyed End-Timeser) but looking back, I seem to recall that the Jesus I read about WASN'T a hate-slinging gun-owning judgemental warmonger, but, well, frankly, a bit of a hippy. Maybe even a (whisper it) Liberal (gasps of horror, hands clapped over children's ears...). You know, preached tolerance, forbearance, love for one's fellow man, spoke out against violence and avarice, general tree-hugging sh1t like that.

Now if the Christian Right (who are neither) have managed to acquire a virtual monopoly over which voices of faith are heard in the media, it strikes me that this must be at least PARTIALLY due to Real Christians taking their collective eye off the ball with regards to getting their message heard.

Of course, it's always harder for moderates and reasonable people to grab headlines than it is for ranting nutters because moderates and reasonable people are so, well, moderate and reasonable. Nutters and hatemongers can get their voices heard because they ALWAYS have something to scream about.Well right now, you Real Christians REALLY have something to scream about, namely the hijacking of your faith and your spiritual identity! If you can't get indignant about the vile perversion of Jesus's teaching currently masquerading as "Christian values", what CAN you get indignant about?

The one time I seem to recall Jesus losing his rag was the casting out of the money-lenders from the Temple... Correct me if I'm wrong here but I remember the quotation as "My Father's house is a house of prayer, and you have turned it into a den of thieves!" Right now Christ's father's house - The Church - has been turned into a den of thieves, warmongers, bigots, liars, hypocrites and swindlers. So all you Real Christians out there - those of you who still recall all that hippy crap about peace and forgiveness - channel some of Jesus's righteous anger and cast those b@stards out. Heathens like me can't do it for ya."