Several Days Late and Dollars Short

Today I received an email from ‘Faithful America’ lamenting the fact that Ted Cruz has claimed that Christians gave him the victory in Iowa. ‘Michael,’ of Faithful America, begs me to ‘chip in’ some small contribution to reclaim the faith for the real followers of Jesus.

Did it ever occur to ‘Michael’ that ‘Faithful America’ is very much several days late and several dollars short? The South and ‘Bible Belt Christianity’ was lost to ‘Faithful America’ in the late 19th Century. I’d say it was about the time of the election of an Ohioan, James Garfield, to the Presidency. Only States above the Mason-Dixon line elected him. The South was left to the Jim Crow suppression, humiliation and subjugation of the newly freed slaves. With Nixon’s southern strategy, the Republican Party became equal to and coincident with the Jim Crow South, thus finally, in the 20th Century, abandoning the proud heritage of the Party of Lincoln.

My own denomination, Methodists, split over the issue of slavery in 1844 (a bishop was a slaveholder!), into the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church South. The reunion of that denomination did not happen until 1939 when the two ‘Methodist’ (Wesley turned over several time in his grave) denominations formed ‘The Methodist Church.’ That glorious reunion was accomplished by the apartheid separation of ALL black congregations into a ‘separate but equal’ ‘jurisdiction.’ This moral blasphemy was not amended until 1964 when the ‘Central Jurisdiction’ (the apartheid jurisdiction) was eliminated (on paper).

The fault, dear ‘Michael’ (the name identified as representing Faithful America) lies not in our stars but in ourselves (to coin a phrase). It is the fault solely of Christianity at-large. Christianity at-large has abandoned the poor, the LBGT among us, Blacks, Latinos and the working class in favor of helping the Christian Institution survive. Too bad, but too late with any appeal to save the Church. The Church is gone. Good riddance!