Christian Politics Doesn’t Have to Be This Way

John Fugelsang, Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds

Let us pray.

Lord, we come before you today in a state of grief. Not only grief for our broken world, the poverty we allow to fester, the disease we fail to heal, the human lives we let slip through the cracks. But also grief for the religious language that others use to justify this rampant injustice. So many people actively making things worse claim to work in your name, Lord. We have seen your mercy perverted into violence and empire.

But in our grief, Lord, you’ve also motivated many among us to recommit ourselves to what your message really means. Actor, comedian, and talk show panelist John Fugelsang is merely one among that number, though this world’s systems have surely provided him a larger platform than others have enjoyed. In these hours of religiously motivated bigotry, he’s chosen to dedicate his platform to challenging the hatred he’s seen perpetrated in Christianity’s name.

Fugelsang isn’t a Biblical scholar himself. His parents were both professional Catholic religious before they left their vocations to get married. But they never relinquished their dedication to the Beatitudes, the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, and the Catholic social teachings in support of “the least of these.” They taught him from infancy that Christianity is a responsibility to serve the dispossessed, not a shield against consequence or justification to self-righteousness.

He pitches Biblical literacy, including context and history, against those who see Christianity as “a clique rather than a calling.” Religion has the power to bring people together, but the same nominal religion can give people a sense of holy mission, or an in-group they feel compelled to defend. Which choice they make defines how public-facing Christians relate to the poor, disfranchised, and foreigners among them.

This book is structured not only to debunk widely held Christian falsehoods, but also to help readers challenge those falsehoods in others. Fugelsang anticipates readers debating their racist, nationalist, or otherwise intransigent relatives in casual settings where we’ll have to answer pat talking points quickly. His counterarguments are detailed and sourced, but brief, easy to memorize and quick to deploy against the most common thought-terminating cliches.

Fugelsang dedicates chapters to why the Bible isn’t anti-gay (notwithstanding certain Levitical passages), anti-feminist, or pro-gun. Against popular prooftexts and “clobber verses,” he presents a package of thorough Biblical literacy, grounded in history. He also insists on context, and reads popular orphan verses in their full text, demonstrating how, to the audience who first received the Bible, passages often mean the opposite of what modern nationalists claim.

John Fugelsang

Again, Fugelsang isn’t a religious scholar. He grounds his arguments in his spiritual autobiography, and makes many claims based on practical lived experience. But he never relies on mere anecdote. He consults many scholars to ensure he has the full historical and religious background for every claim he makes. This includes consulting Jewish scholars to ensure he doesn’t read the Tanakh through Christian-tinted glasses, a common fallacy.

Many quoted scholars are, like Fugelsang himself, media figures with high public profiles. He repeatedly cites Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, Pastor John Pavlovitz, and Professor Kristen Kobes du Mez. Were I to cite one law with Fugelsang’s reasoning, it would be this reliance on high-profile media figures, whose theology sometimes reflects their demi-celebrity status. It’s possible to be factually right, but still disconnected from the worm’s-eye view.

But his sources’ media-savvy responses also make their arguments concise enough for informal argument. When there isn’t time for lengthy perorations and exhaustive detail, speed and brevity are sometimes necessary. Fugelsang organizes his claims well enough that, when somebody says something factually incorrect or spiritually ignorant, readers can say: “That’s wrong, and here’s why.” It’s good to be correct, but better to be correct and comprehensible.

As a comedian, Fugelsang does use earthy humor in his book. (“Earthy” being a euphemism for occasional cusswords.) But he reserves most of his humor for his autobiographical passages and personal ruminations. He takes his spiritual positions seriously, and never lets his stage performance come between him and his message. His writing is useful, informative, and fast-moving enough to never bog down in unnecessary scholarly language.

Writers like Fugelsang give me confidence, Lord, that Christianity doesn’t have to belong to the bigots and nationalists. Your message of mercy and generosity remains persuasive to many Christians today, Lord, specifically because it’s missing from our political and media leadership. The worst Americans have hijacked your message, Lord, but Fugelsang reassures me that this hijacking is neither inevitable nor permanent.

Amen.