Who is Jesus, really? There have always been disagreements on this question, both within and beyond Christianity. But it feels like the argument is particularly fraught these days—especially in the United States, and especially in relation to political affiliation.
A few years ago, the Century reviewed Tony Keddie’s Republican Jesus: How the Right Has Rewritten the Gospels (see June 3, 2021, issue). Keddie calls Republicans out for mistranslations, omissions, and sewing cut-up texts together into “the framework of a carefully designed quilt that’s backed by ignorance, stuffed with hatred, and sewn with self-interest.” The reviewer, Aaron Klink, adds that Keddie “calls this garble-omit-patch approach to hermeneutics ‘the GOP method.’ Although he is politically progressive, Keddie says he has no interest in creating a Democratic Jesus. He simply wants people to stop misreading the Bible for political purposes.”
Writing at TruthScript, pastor Seth Brickley makes this very different claim: “No political party in American history is more at odds with biblical Christianity than modern-day Democrats.” He says, “The party has enshrined the ritualistic child sacrifice of abortion.” He attributes “the breakdown of American society” to Democrats’ disbelief in “the exclusivity of God’s design for marriage as being between one man and one woman” and warns that “the rising prevalence of ‘alternatives’” will bring “more disarray.” He decries “gender-affirming-care” as “a whitewashed term used to mask the shockingly grotesque and brutal reality of self-mutilation.” In contrast, while “the Republican Party is anything but perfect . . . a simple glance at the party platform shows how much more in line with biblical Christianity it is.”
