The GOP is the Antichrist

I went to church basically every week growing up, I went to youth bible study, I took communion, I went on mission trips all over the US, I got baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal Church, I went to a Lutheran college, I’ve read the bible three times all the way through as well as countless readings of specific sections that speak to me. Nevertheless, I’m no longer much of a religious person. Every so often though, I do feel echoes of religious belief reverberate in my head, and despite seeing the horrific things certain members and sects of Christianity still do, I have a great deal of appreciation for the Good News as I understand it. With my bona fides on the table, let’s get to brass tacks… the modern Republican Party is the antichrist.

In the past I have described how I do not necessarily believe in visions of heaven, but that I am convinced that hell exists and we allow it to exist on earth. Today, I want to explore how despite my ambivalence on the accounts of Christ, the GOP stands in direct opposition to everything that makes Christ a noble figure, and stands for a perversion of his message so profound that they are indeed “anti” Christ. The reasons for why this is the case would take a good deal longer to explore, and indeed others have tried to explain why conservatism and Christianity look the way they do in America, e.g. “What’s the Matter with Kansas” and “One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America.” But I would like to just briefly look at the disgusting golden cow that is the modern Republican Party.

Let’s start with what I consider to be the most basic and essential issue that we refuse to face as a nation because of the immoral positions of the GOP, i.e. health care. Setting aside for a moment responsible debates that need to be had about how best to meet society’s needs, live within budgets, etc; the modern Republican position on health care seems to be that sickness is a moral failing. Congressman Mo Brooks’s comments about what contributions people with pre-existing conditions ought to make in the healthcare system is just the most recent salvo in the immoral position that the larger conservative movement has taken on the whole debate. A position that can best be summed up with the often repeated question “Why should I have to pay for sick people’s health insurance?”

On the face of it, this position always galls me for not simply being coldhearted, but utterly ignorant about what health insurance is and how it works. Health insurance is not a health savings account, nor should it be. The strange love affair the Right has with HSAs is perplexing, until you realize it’s simply an attempt to muddy the waters. When you purchase health insurance, you’re paying as an ostensibly “healthy” person on the expectation that if something bad happens, you will be backed up by the collective resources of everyone participating in the health insurance program. If it were simply good enough to expect people to out of pocket pay for potentially huge expenses, then we wouldn’t require auto insurance; however, in the real world we understand that people don’t necessarily have thousands of dollars at hand at all times to cover an accidental collision, so it is required that people make systemic small investments to prepare for situations we hope won’t happen to us but which we know happen every single day to someone.

But this is just the inanity of the position, it’s not the fundamentally wicked part of it. Christ tended to the lepers (Mark 1:40-42) and the blind (John 9:1-6) and the lame (John 5:1-9). He did not see their sickness as justification to blow them off. He did not fill his ministry with only the “healthy” people making “good decisions” because he viewed all of humanity as fundamentally and equally unwell, requiring outside assistance for the bad decisions we constantly make by our basic human nature. (Romans 3:23) This position that sick people don’t merit assistance, that the “healthy” are put under undue burden because of it is completely at odds with the figure who commanded that “he who is without sin cast the first stone.” (John 8:7) I mean for the love of all things good and holy, the Sheep and the Goats explicitly tells Christians that if they do not tend to the sick that they will go away to eternal punishment. (Matthew 25:37-46)

But what more can be expected from the latter day pharisees who love to be seen praying? (Matthew 6:5) These blasphemers who can’t help but take the Lord’s name in vain, who even carve the name of God on currency, their true lord. (Luke 16:13) and (Mark 12:17) These are the people who insist on dividing the phrase “One nation indivisible” in the Pledge of Allegiance by using their feigned piety. They have made a terrible idol for themselves and called it devotion, they made the Gospel of the poor carpenter into a justification to seek riches, and their high priest of Mammon now sits in the White House, although admittedly only part time.

“Again I tell you it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 19:24) In the attempt to justify the prosperity gospel people have lied that this is a reference to a gate that never existed, in the hopes of avoiding the reality of their choice as Christians they sought lies to make it easier to sin. Jesus was painfully clear on this point, even those who keep all the commandments of the Torah, even those who refuse to eat meals with women who are not their wives, lack one thing “Sell everything you own and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.” (Luke 18:22) It may not be money itself, but the love of money that is the root of all evil, and the modern GOP prizes money above all else: above the environment, above the poor, above the sick, above the imprisoned, above God. (1 Timothy 6:10)

The modern GOP sold its soul years ago when they put Ayn Rand on the same pedestal as the Gospels, but they proved it beyond a doubt with the head of their Party. Having read the Bible is not necessarily a shibboleth for faith, though it should be a tip off that someone hasn’t actually done much Bible study when they make up quotes like “Never bend to envy,” highlight Old Testament verses that Christ explicitly rejected like “an eye for an eye” (Matthew 5:38-42), mispronounce 2 Corinthians, and claim that they are both Christian and have never asked for forgiveness. This man who claims that he alone can fix everything stands in opposition to everything that redeems the scriptures, and this opposer is not an outlier, nor an aberration, but the exact culmination of everything the Republicans have strived toward ever since they abandoned actual Christian faith.

And here is the irony, I as an atheist find myself needing to defend the Good News from the very people who claim to believe it. I am not a Christian, but I’m far more Christian than these people who stand in direct opposition to Christ’s compassion and mercy, who lie that they believe in a God that commands them to do the exact opposite of what they do. We all fall short of what we aspire to be, but the GOP doesn’t even aspire to live up to the message of the Bible. They aspire to riches and make us all poorer as a result, they aspire to power and weaken the very soul of the nation. They claim to defend liberty, but they attack the freedom of the press. They claim to defend religion and refuse to defend the rights of liberal Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, etc. They claim to be the party of Lincoln, but now they defend White supremacist monuments of the CSA and claim that Andrew Jackson could have fixed everything.

So can we dispense with the charade that the GOP represents Judeo-Christian values? Can we stop deluding ourselves that conservative values exist in a moral framework or that the positions are based in evidence from this universe? Can we finally begin to recognize that on top of being anti-science, anti-choice, anti-diversity, anti-immigration, anti-working class, anti-LGBT, anti-environmental, anti-intellectual, and anti-woman that the Republican Party is beyond a doubt anti-Christ?