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What I Have Learned About American Christianity

What I Have Learned About American Christianity

Last updated on: April 5, 2023 at 3:41 pm by Mary Pezzulo

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What I Have Learned About American Christianity 2023-04-05T15:41:54-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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It’s Wednesday of Holy Week. Holy Thursday is tomorrow. This is the most important week of the Church calendar.

I should be talking about the Gospel.

I could talk about the Gospel for yesterday, when Jesus tells His apostles that one would betray Him. I was just thinking the other day that He may not have just been talking about Judas. Which of the apostles didn’t betray Him? Peter, John and James fell asleep. Peter denied even knowing Him and doubled down when pressed. The others all ran off. Nobody did anything an apostle should do. I am pondering that, and wondering what it means for the Church. And I should be talking about the Gospel for today, the beautiful story of the anointing at Bethany: the importance of lavishly loving the people here in front of you instead of being practical in a more grown-up way.

If I have to talk about politics, I should be talking Finland joining NATO and how that changes the game for Europe and the world as a whole. That’s a truly historic event. If I have to talk about American politics, I might talk about the election in Wisconsin and how gerrymandering has taken away the people’s vote, and how things might be better going forward. Those are not my area of expertise, but they’re serious topics.

Instead, here in the middle of Holy Week, the day before Holy Thursday, I find myself thinking about Donald Trump again.

I admit I had fun yesterday, during and after the arraignment. We got to see the door slamming on his shoulder. There were a lot of good pictures. So many of us who were treated like garbage by our fellow Christians for not buying his grift feel vindicated, as well we might. It’s been a very long seven years. We lost so much. Our faith in humanity and faith in general took a severe beating. Now we see what was apparent all along: Trump is a mobster, and he’s not even very good at it. He has no respect for authority but he lacks the deftness to not get caught. I look forward to raising a glass again at the Justice Department indictment and the one in Georgia, because everyone who spoke against him was right.

At one point I was accused of “tribalism” for celebrating, which seems odd to me. I don’t think about my Christianity as being part of a sect or an in-group. That’s what got me into trouble in the first place. I was told we were supposed to be “pro-life from conception until natural death,” pro-family values, in the world but not of it. I tried to put that into action. I pointed out the obvious, that Trump was the opposite of everything Christianity stood for, and I got slammed for speaking out against the in-group I didn’t realize existed.

This is how I found out that what is referred to as “Christianity” in America has a very different meaning than I thought.

Everyone knows words change meanings in different places. Some places, “pants” means “trousers” and some places it means “underwear.” In one part of America, “Coke” means “any variety of carbonated drink” and in another “Coke” means a specific brand of cola. I once heard a story of a man who was offended that his wife, who was German, said “What’s wrong?” every time he came home from work, until he found out that “what’s wrong” is just an idiom for “how was your day?” where she comes from. And everyone by now knows that there’s a significant number of Americans who say “communism” and don’t mean “communism,” they mean “the government doing things that are good for people like running schools, fixing roads and paying for healthcare.”

In the United States, at least a great deal of the time, “Christian” doesn’t mean “following the teachings of Christ as recorded in the Gospels,” it means something else. I shouldn’t be surprised at this. I grew up in the Charismatic Renewal, which is a cult, and which had some very strange notions about Christianity. But when I got out of the cult I naively expected to find that Christianity outside the cult was different. Some of it is very different. I know a lot of wonderful Christians who do try to live the Gospel. But in America, culturally speaking, when a person says “Christian” they mean “someone who follows the right scripts and reveres the right figurehead.”

I’d been going around thinking “Christian” means “follower of Christ,” in a culture where it means something else.

I thought “Christianity” meant “whoever has two cloaks should share with the one who has none,” but in actuality it means “be suspicious of the poor and pooh-pooh every effort to assist them.”

I thought it meant “if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn him the other also.” But it means “we’re in danger of persecution and we need an angry authoritarian leader to hurt others so we can feel safe.”

I thought it meant “Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.” But here in America it means “rich people must’ve worked hard to get that way and you should revere them.”

I thought “Christianity” meant “you cannot serve both God and mammon” but around these parts it means “mammon is God.”

I thought it meant “worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only,” but it turns out it meant “defend the Republican presidential candidate at all costs, no matter who he is, pay homage to him, say nothing bad about him, act like only he can save you from the coming persecution. Pretend he’s a wholesome and pro-family guy despite any evidence to the contrary until the rest of the world thinks you’re delusional.”

And here we are.

The Christian Right, Protestants and Catholics both, fawned on a thrice-married philanderer, a violent and angry narcissist, a preening self-indulgent oaf who reveled in his sin. He hated the poor and the marginalized. He abused children with breathtaking cruelty. He had no respect for God or man. And now he’s been caught in crime after crime after crime. And Christians lauded him as a messiah at every step of the way.

Christ looks like a liar because of American Christianity.

As for me, I’m just trying to find an authentic Christianity, one that means what I thought it meant.

I guess that’s an appropriate thing to think about during Holy Week after all.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

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