Recently I had a book published on the life of the historic Jesus, which I titled "The Radical Rabbi of Nazareth." The best of biblical research in the past 25 years confirms that he was, indeed, radical in his effort to create an egalitarian community that sought deliberately to challenge the oppressive occupation of Palestine by the Roman empire by creating a countercultural movement based on a nonviolent-resistance approach that was caught and used in our time by Gandhi in India and by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
The irony of our time, however, is that the group in American religious life that would most likely respond to this interpretation of Jesus' involvements, white evangelical Christians, is, in fact, the group most clearly rejecting Jesus' teachings. The evangelicals claim to have a personal relationship with Christ, claim the Bible to be infallible, and are the most faithful churchgoers. Yet, it becomes obvious when you see their involvement in politics that they reject the teachings of Jesus. His message is too radical for them.
Jesus' message was one of compassion, justice and forgiveness. But evangelicals claiming to be "pro-life" are supporters of the death penalty, the use of torture, and gun ownership without regulation. They support corporate greed, oppose help for the poor in the form of food stamps, subsidies for schools and job training. In other words, they are pro-pre-emptive militarism, pro-gun and pro-tax write-offs for big corporations.
---THE REV. ROBERT E. WILLOUGHBY
The irony of our time, however, is that the group in American religious life that would most likely respond to this interpretation of Jesus' involvements, white evangelical Christians, is, in fact, the group most clearly rejecting Jesus' teachings. The evangelicals claim to have a personal relationship with Christ, claim the Bible to be infallible, and are the most faithful churchgoers. Yet, it becomes obvious when you see their involvement in politics that they reject the teachings of Jesus. His message is too radical for them.
Jesus' message was one of compassion, justice and forgiveness. But evangelicals claiming to be "pro-life" are supporters of the death penalty, the use of torture, and gun ownership without regulation. They support corporate greed, oppose help for the poor in the form of food stamps, subsidies for schools and job training. In other words, they are pro-pre-emptive militarism, pro-gun and pro-tax write-offs for big corporations.
---THE REV. ROBERT E. WILLOUGHBY
