Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. – Matthew 23:27-28
The United States is not, and never has been, a “Christian nation”, despite the claims of many modern evangelical Christians who are apparently unable to read anything other than the Bible and religious tracts. Most of the founders were Deists, and the Constitution clearly delineated that the new country was to have no state religion, that everyone has the right to worship (or not) as they please, and that church and state were to be entirely separate from one another. Unfortunately, the majority of the population were both Christian and far too stupid and selfish to understand why a state religion is an astonishingly bad idea, even for those who embrace the favored creed. As a result, legislators slowly introduced Christian notions of morality into the laws, and by the late 19th century both federal and state legal codes were thoroughly infested with odious statutes drawn from whichever Old Testament precepts Protestant Christians had decided to keep (while ignoring, for example, bans on eating shellfish or menstruating women attending religious services). But while these dour authoritarians were only too happy to adopt whatever prohibitions on pleasure they could get past the courts, they showed little interest in the pronouncements of the guy for whom their religion was named, such as all that stuff about charity, mercy and forgiveness (and separation of church and state). Still, up until recently, most Christians at least paid lip service to Jesus’ teachings, even if they weren’t too interested in enshrining them in the law. But as US “authorities” have increased their outward shows and proclamations of Christianity, their actual actions have become increasingly un-Christian. A quick Google search will reveal plenty of incidents of people being fined or even arrested for feeding the hungry, and earlier this week there was this item:
Hours after a humanitarian group released videos showing border patrol agents kicking over water bottles left for migrants in the Arizona desert, a volunteer for the organization was arrested and charged with harboring undocumented immigrants. Scott Daniel Warren…faces a federal charge of harboring two people in the country illegally…William Walker, an attorney for Warren, said his client’s actions were not criminal. “This is a humanitarian aid worker trying to save lives,” Walker said. His arrest last week came after border patrol agents conducted surveillance on a building where two immigrants were given food, water, beds and clean clothes…No More Deaths last week gave news organizations videos taken between 2010 and 2017, mostly by cameras at its desert camp. In one clip, a border patrol agent kicked over five water jugs meant to supply immigrants. In another, an agent pours gallons of water on the ground…
But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
