Welcome to the new wild west—each man for himself.

Walking home last night, I was thinking about what I call the New American Christianity. Oh, you know the one. It’s the all-too-prevalent, becoming-more-visible-by-the-day, shockingly influential version of Christianity that is, like all things American, all about bigger, better, faster, more, more, MORE!!! The kind of Christianity that builds churches that one of my most brilliant friends un-affectionately refers to as Six Flags Over Jesus.

Not surprisingly, more than a few of the people that “worship” in these multi-million dollar palaces of evangelism are also larger-than-life... But that’s neither here nor there.

As I see it, the key aspects of the appeal of this form of Christianity are as follows:

It allows for a superior and holier-than-though attitude. For as long as we believe that our church is the biggest and the best (achieved and perpetuated not only through the size of its centers of worship and the reach of its media, but also through the sheer fanaticism of its members) how could we even entertain the notion that anyone else could possibly be remotely as good as (forget about better than—that’s not even within the realm of possibility) us?

It allows us to do whatever the fuck we want, without any regard to reason or contradiction. This is essential—the carte blanche given to all followers, as long as they have the ability to verbally (and loudly) defend their standpoint by either a) “quoting” (or pretending to quote) mystifying and sometimes irrelevant passages from a book that simply cannot be argued with (never mind the fact that a completely contradictory “quote” may be used in future discussions in support of or in opposition to something else), or b) plugging one’s ears and creating a sonic cocoon testifying to the undying love shared between Jesus and oneself.

And finally, for the same reasons and by use of the same techniques, it enables us to insist that others not do whatever the fuck we don’t want them to be doing for whatever nebulous, crap-ass reason. I’m not sure which is more satisfying, really: getting to do whatever the hell you want, or keeping someone from doing something that they want to do, just because you don’t want them to be doing it. Jesus, I’m getting a hard-on just imagining that kind of power...

Anyway, let’s never forget that this particular voice is an influential one NOT because it is a large one (it is in fact still a minority, regardless of what its proponents would have you believe), but because it is a rich and powerful one. We must demand that our legislators keep this horrifically un-democratic fact in mind.

Looking over the above, it just struck me that in most cases the words “church” and “Christianity” could also be replaced with the words “nation” or “United States.” Hmm.