Guest post: It’s always been just us

Originally a comment by Freemage on In our religion-deferential country.

This is the kind of thing that first started me questioning my faith. Not the existence of these assholes–I was world-wise enough to know full well that people are people, no matter what granfaloon they belong to. But it was the awful, deadening silence of the mainstream churches when confronted by the undeniable evil of, say, Westboro Baptist Church. Sure, if you mentioned WBC to a practicing Catholic or Methodist, they’d insist that the former didn’t speak for them, and were out of bounds.

But they are never willing to actively do anything about it. Imagine a world where one of those anodyne interfaith councils came out with specific condemnation for Christian Nationalists and their churches for perverting Christian teachings (sure, it’d require cherry picking the text, but that’s nothing new in and of itself). Where all the ‘mainstream’ Christian churches worked together to make sure that any planned rally or march was surrounded and outnumbered by people rebutting their claims to Biblical inspiration. Where they organize a massive boycott of FOX and other outlets pushing the Nat-C narrative. Where they all use those Sunday sermons to make a joint statement to a captive audience of why these scum make Baby Jesus cry.

Meanwhile, in the real world, it took a bunch of motorcycle-riding veterans to call out and undercut the WBC’s hate campaign. I’m sure most of the Patriot Riders identify as Christians, but they were speaking as vets. It forced me to confront the fact that faith doesn’t move mountains–people do, and they do it without help from a divine source. From there, it wasn’t much of a leap to realize that “God” wasn’t running anything, it’s always been just us.

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