Music of the season

Today’s Advent piece, “The Rebel Jesus”, is a perfect reminder of what things are done these days in the name of saviors, prophets and gods of one stripe or another. Written by Jackson Browne for and performed here with The Chieftains on their 1991 Christmas CD, the lyrics pretty well cover the shift in Christianity in the past few decades.

It’s considerably worse now than it was when he wrote it.

In the case of a baby born in a stable in the backwater of empire, the idea of churches spending millions to cover up long-term crimes against the most vulnerable of their parishes, of televangelists in $3000 suits barely visible behind the pay-by-credit-card logos and of Bible-spewing maniacs spraying innocent people with death on full-auto is just surreal.

Moreover, it’s not clear to me when, exactly”, “spread the word of the good news” morphed into “convert or die.” I mean, Jesus told his disciples to go forth and preach, but if they came to a town where the people weren’t receptive, they should move on and “shake the dust from their heels”. He didn’t tell them to grind the disbelievers into dust.

Maybe it was Constantine the Great’s Edict of Milan in 313 CE, which ended Rome’s persecution of Christians. Or Theodosius’s 380 CE Edict of Thessalonica, which made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. But somewhere between Bethlehem and now, when they became the dominant religion in Western Europe and North America, we got to a woman carrying a non-viable fetus that endangers her life not being able to receive healthcare because Texas Republicans and “Christianity”.

And those Republicans on the national stage have the unmitigated fucking temerity to whine that there’s a war on (white) Christians, and they need government protection from persecution.

So here’s Jackson Browne and The Chieftains, with “The Rebel Jesus”.