Resurrect Jesus the Teacher this Easter

By Robert S. McElvaine
professor, author

Nearly four weeks ago I caused something of a brouhaha with my call in this space for the impeachment of Pope Benedict XVI. The proximate cause of my call was the pontiff's widely quoted statement just before his arrival in Africa that the act of distributing condoms risks "worsening the problem" of the spread of AIDS. In full context, his position was better than the headlines made it sound. His emphasis on monogamy as the best way to prevent the spread of the disease is, obviously, correct. He should have realized, however, that what he said about condoms "worsening the problem" was likely to be taken by many people to mean that when they fail to be monogamous that the use of a condom increases the risk of spreading the disease, which is not merely nonsense, but very dangerous nonsense.

The sensible approach to limiting the spread of AIDS is that outlined in 1986 by President Reagan's Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop, himself an evangelical Christian: "one, abstinence; two, monogamy; three condoms." That should be the Pope's position.

Surely one of the main reasons why the pope would make a statement like the controversial one he made is the Church's opposition to any form of "artificial" birth control, even by married couples. It is that underlying position that I condemned as immoral. What sensible basis can there be for such a teaching? The supposed instruction from God (I say "supposed" because the creation stories in Genesis are, plainly, myths and the Catholic Church does not hold that they should be taken literally) in Genesis 1:28 to "be fruitful and multiply"? Well, the very next words in the same sentence are "and fill the earth." If we look around us, I think we can put up the "Mission Accomplished" banner on that one.

Instructing even married couples--even in grossly overpopulated areas where poverty and malnutrition are widespread--not to use artificial birth control is, as I see it, immoral and, quite simply, sinful.

An overwhelming majority of American Catholics have long agreed that our Church's position against birth control is wrong. Only two years after the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae reaffirmed the Church's opposition to artificial birth control, "two-thirds of all Catholic women and three-quarters of those under 30 were using the Pill and other birth control methods banned by the Church."

Of course my call to impeach the pope was intentional hyperbole. Even if it were possible, such an action would not come close to what is needed to renew Christianity. What I propose is something far more radical than impeaching a pope.

Christianity doesn't need a new Reformation; it needs a revolution--a literal revolution, a coming full circle back to the teachings of Jesus.

During this season of Easter, let's resolve to resurrect what Jesus taught and jettison all the perversions of those teachings that have been promulgated by a host of misrepresenters who have been committing identity theft against Jesus for nearly two thousand years. While many Catholic figures over the centuries have been among the leading perpetrators of this crime--what I call "Grand Theft Jesus" in the title of my latest book--the most egregious of the Jesus Thieves today are in other branches of what improperly calls itself "Christianity."

The Jesus whom we should resurrect is the one who has been crucified and interred by many of the most prominent people who call themselves "Christians," such wolves in sheep's clothing as James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and Tim LaHaye.

Following the Last Supper, which Christians will commemorate on this Thursday, Jesus told his disciples that they would all fall away from him and scatter that night. When Peter insisted that he would remain loyal, Jesus said to him, "this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times." The modern Jesus Thieves who have kidnapped the one they profess to worship have fallen so far away from Jesus that they deny him three times three thousand as they crow like strutting cocks in front of television cameras and congregations the size of rock concert audiences.

The Right Reverends who stand Jesus on his head are, in effect, shouting: "Crucify him! Crucify him!"

♦ ♦ ♦

Many of those who commented on my previous piece wondered why I would stay in the Catholic Church. There are two reasons. The first is that I believe the Church to be on the right side--Jesus' side--on some important issues. The second is that I think it is worthwhile to try to revolutionize the church from within. The areas on which the Church has, as I see it, strayed the farthest from Jesus are those having to do with women and sex.

Just before he was selected as pope, Cardinal Ratzinger denounced the "dictatorship of relativism."

In fact, the current teachings of the Church on a host of interrelated issues--women priests, clerical celibacy, birth control, abortion, homosexuality, and, most basic of all, the sex of God--are themselves the result of the Church at various times in the past having been, in Cardinal Ratzinger's words the day before he became pope, "tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching" to conform to the practices and prejudices of societies now long gone.

The Church's positions on these issues related to women and sex are not based on the teachings of Jesus.

The Church established from the time of St. Paul onward was set up as a No-Woman's Land. The general views on the inferiority of women come from Paul's interpretation of the literally incredible story of the creation of Eve from Adam, a story that men had made up to overcome their feelings of inferiority because of women's capacity to give birth. The ban on women priests also emanates from Paul's reliance on Genesis and from the Early Church Fathers' rejection of the role of women around Jesus and particularly the centrality of Mary Magdalene as one equal to St. Peter.

Priestly celibacy was not established as a requirement until the Middle Ages and was based on the belief that women are unclean because they menstruate. When Thomas Aquinas declared in the thirteenth century that "woman is defective and misbegotten," he was echoing Paul, Genesis, and Aristotle--certainly not Jesus.

The Church's opposition to birth control and to abortion even early in pregnancy is largely an outgrowth of its all-male composition and those males' attempts to degrade women's physical powers by asserting that women and the intercourse into which they putatively tempt men are necessary evils. The condemnation of homosexuals is based entirely on Old Testament rules established by men who feared anything that placed in question their insistence on the polarity of the sexes. (If abortion and homosexuality were the most important concerns of Jesus, one would think He would have mentioned them. He didn't.)

The idea that God is solely male is the work of the Church Fathers who chose which gospel accounts to include in the official New Testament and excluded all the Gnostic Gospels that contain references to an androgynous God, and of the bishops who met at Constantinople in 381 and modified the Creed to say that the Holy Spirit is male. The idea that a Creator could be of only one sex is absurd on its face. Yet this nonsensical belief, which actually diminishes God, has been one of the main bases for the subordination of women and values associated with them--precisely the values taught by Jesus--throughout the history of the Church.

The bottom line is that none of the Church's positions on women and sex come from the teachings of Jesus. All of them are the products of the very relativism that the current pope decries. The relativism of an earlier day has become the dogma of today.

Say you want a revolution? Better free our minds from the grip of the Jesus Thieves who operate in churches of many denominations and in nondenominational churches.

Say you want a revolution? I think Jesus does. Let's turn back to what he taught and cut out all the middlemen who set up churches and doctrines to suit themselves.

Robert S. McElvaine's latest book, "Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America" (Crown/Three Rivers), is being published in a new paperback edition with an Afterword on religion and politics in the age of Obama.

By Robert S. McElvaine |  April 14, 2009; 2:59 PM ET Save & Share:                 
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