Jesus - Live in Concert

I was all set to get past the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year of the new millennium with a minimum of eschatological tomfoolery, by which I mean that I spent the day, as usual, considering that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, but not that hell, and certainly not His hand-basket.

Then I got a call from the Progressive Christians.

By which I mean that I got a call from a Progressive Christian attached to a Progressive Christian organization of some kind looking to put together a Progressive Christian confab of some sort. In Pittsburgh. Could I help them find a venue? Could I give them some guidance?

Sure, I say. Happy to. What sort of programming is planned?

Don’t know.

Okay. Well, how many people are you expecting?

Don’t know.

Well, how many would you like?

Not sure.

Well what do you know? Not much.

To be fair, this isn’t all that unusual. Plenty of would-be concert promoters call theaters to ask, “How much does it cost to have a show there,” as if putting up a live production is the equivalent of buying a bag of chips or renting a DVD. And that’s fine. 90% are scared off when the expense estimates—formatted intentionally to be a little obscure, a little overcomplicated—arrive in the fax or the inbox. The rest of the novices dive in, and maybe they make a few bucks.

But this guy isn’t looking to make money; he’s looking to make progress. Christian Progress. (And let’s hope that these Christian Progressives aren’t looking to do to Progress what the Christian Scientists did to Science.)

So I give him the basic rundown on available venues, rate structures, labor costs, leasing and contracting procedures.

Then he asks me if it’s a problem that the show’s political.

I tell him that political content isn’t a problem, but explicit endorsement of parties and candidates are. He says, Well, we’re a Progressive Christian organization.

Well, what does that mean?

Silence.

Then he says, Well, it means that we’re Christians and we have . . . progressive ideas. Like, gay people. We support them. Jesus didn’t say anything about gay people, you know. And other stuff. Progressive stuff. Christianity, he tells me, has been “defined” by other parties as something that it’s not.

So you’re going to teach people about the true kind of Christianity, I say.

Yeah, he tells me, But not, like, exclusive. That’s what they do. They try to say there’s only one way to believe, and if you don’t follow that, then you’re damned.

You don’t believe in hell? I ask.

No, I do. We do.

But you don’t believe that people go for believing wrong, I say.

Right, he says, People go for stuff like murder, you know.

Sure, I say.

Of all the ridiculous quackery possessing the minds of well-meaning but tenderhearted American liberals, this notion of ancient monotheism as a fountainhead of inclusiveness may be the most quacked of all. It’s now an article of faith, you’ll pardon the expression, among a significant portion of Democrats (and various and sundry liberals) that “religion” needs to be “reclaimed” from its right-wing interlocutors, who speak of a God who hovers over us all, making a list like Santa, ready to clap the blackboard erasers of judgment in our faces like a disapproving nun should we step out of line. The argument goes something like this: Jesus said some real liberal shit in the Beatitudes, so let’s fuck all that Paulite crap and get back to alms for the poor.

Aside from my general disdain for magical explanations, I find the affection of righteous piety more than a little annoying. What these so-called Progressive Christians seek is a religious exemption for a political ideology. In other words, they seek the same thing that the right-wing Christians whose perversions they claim to despise seek: to place their social policy beyond the realm of criticism by invoking their made-up deity. Jesus said it, ergo it must be right.

At least no one’s calling it a Religion of Peace just yet. It seems to me that that’s the point at which a faith has truly jumped the fucking shark.