Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, and Guns, Guns, Guns: American Religious Right and the Betrayal of Christ

The very same people who tell us there's a "war" on Christmas, the very same people who scream and shout about keeping Christ in Christmas: these are the people now up in arms about guns.  About their right to have guns, to multiply guns, to use guns with abandon.

Guns, guns, guns.  And Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.  And a "war" on Christmas.

It's all sickening in the extreme, the American infatuation with shooting and violence and making enemies and war, wrapped in pseudo-piety remembering a Christ who exists nowhere except in the imagination of the American religious and political right: a Christ bedecked by bullets and intent on whipping his (and our) enemies into bloody submission.

When the Christian gospels have angels singing about the birth of the Christ child as the coming of the Prince of Peace, and when they apply to Jesus passages from Jewish scripture that prophesy the coming of the Messiah as the breaking into history of an era in which swords will be beaten into plowshares, and the lion and lamb will sit down in peace together . . . . 

And when Jesus himself makes peacemaking one of the premier obligations of his followers, and tells Peter that those who take the sword will die by the sword . . . .

We American Christians not only dishonor the memory of the Christ we claim so ardently to defend in our crusades to keep Christ in Christmas: we actively betray and distort his memory through our insane infatuation with guns, and our warped gospel drenched in violence and the blood of those we've decided to hate.