Quote for Day: In Wake of Duggar Scandal and Conservative Christian Reaction to Caitlyn Jenner, It's Become Clear That Abuse Is a Feature, Not a Bug, of Christian Fundamentalism

Christopher Stroop at Religion Dispatches:

In the wake of the Josh Duggar scandal and conservative Christian reactions to Caitlyn Jenner’s transition, it’s become clear that abuse is very much a feature, not a bug, of Christian fundamentalism.

And then he goes on to say,

A god who would insist that people like Caitlyn Jenner and other members of the LGBTQ community suppress fundamental aspects of their identity or else is not loving. Nor is a belief in such a god compatible with proceeding from the premise of the fundamental dignity of each human individual, despite Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians insisting that their belief in individual dignity is grounded in religious faith, in the belief that each person is created in the image and likeness of God. 

And Christopher Stroop makes these judgments, as if to prove his point,

• Reverend Pat Robertson opines that God kills some babies to prevent new Hitlers; 

• Reverend Steven Anderson calls on God to rip Caitlyn Jenner's heart out; 

• Reverend Franklin Graham urges Christians to punish businesses that depict LGBT people as human beings; 

• Joseph Farah instructs Christians to put into place an "Exodus strategy" and make a mass exodus as Southern slaveholders did when they left for Brazil after they lost the Civil War; 

• Rod Dreher wants Christians to take the "Benedict option" and turn their backs on a world headed to hell in a handcart;  

• Glenn Beck predicts massive civil disobedience of Christians and martyrdom of an army of Christian pastors; 

•  Another paragon of Christian virtue, Tom DeLay, promises civil disobedience by Christians;  

• Representing the best of the American Catholic academy and of American Catholic journalism, the Commonweal old boys' club, which can never do enough to carry water for the hard political and religious right, remembers with fondness William F. Buckley — yes, the same William F. Buckley who threatened to smash in Gore Vidal's face on national television in 1968, as he prefaced that threat with the words, "Listen, you queer."

Ah, yes, the good old days, when God was really God, ripping hearts out, killing babies, sending His chosen people on exodus so that they could continue their practice of slavery, staging the mass martyrdom of people resisting human rights for others, and smashing in the faces of queers in the name of good Catholic heterosexist values. 

Some God. No wonder Christianity has a branding problem at this point in history. No wonder young people can't flee from the bloody, patriarchal, male-entitled, violence-infatuated and eminently homophobic disgrace that heterosexual white old boys who imagine God is one of them have made of this institution at this point in its history.

Some gospel. Some good news of Jesus Christ. Some pastoral outreach to people on the margins.

All this fire, brimstone, faux martyrdom, throat-ripping and pretend come-ye-outing because a few more hapless, downtrodden members of the human community might enjoy a few more rights all these stellar spokesmen for the gospel have long since taken for granted as their right.

The video: the magnificent Paul Robeson, singing in his voice like a rich deep river the old Negro spiritual, "Scandalize My Name"; the video is from YouTube, and the recording is from Robeson's "Ballads for Americans."