Wayward Christian Soldiers, by Charles Marsh

I read this book in less than two (week) days -- breakneck speed for me, since I still work 8+ hours/day (not counting commuting, etc). It gives voice to my own feelings, which border on constant outrage (sometimes I'm merely mad).

The middle of the book gives a sobering prescription for what the true evangelical church should be about in the post-Bush era, and I intend to reread that part in particular. However, the first chapters and the last give voice to what is for me something maddeningly painful. It has been so painful in fact that of late I'm finding that I am withdrawing from discussions of the situation. Nevertheless, in reading this book I found myself wanting to buy a copy for every "evangelical Christian" Bush supporter I know, and sit them down and yell at them and say "read this! See what you have done!" But that's not right, I know.

Years, decades ago, I ceased going to "Christian" bookstores because I was grossed out by the trinkets and tchotchkie, the volume of which dwarfed that of the (mostly intellectually pamblumesque) books. I don't enter them because I consider my time more valuable than to spend it deciding I don't need such things as The Prayer of Jabez or the collected works of Joel Osteen. Even so, Marsh tells of a recent visit to such a "Christian" bookstore after the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom (sic).

I had gone to one fo my local Christian bookstores to find a Bible for my goddaughter. On a whim, I also decided to look for a Holy Spirit lapel pin, the kind that had always been easy to find in the display case in the front. Many people in my church and in the plaxes where I traveled had been wearing the American flag in their lapel for months now. It seemed like a pretty good time for Christians to put the Spirit back on. But the doves were nowhere in site. ... I was greeted instead by a full assortment of patriotic accessories -- red-white-and-blue ties, bandanas, ... "I support our troops" ribbons, ... and an extraordinary cross and flag bangle with the two images welded together and interlocked. ... I asked the clerk behind the counter where the doves had gone. ... The man's response was jarring ... an apt theological summation of the current religious age. "They're in the back with the other discounted items."

It would be well if the sermon in every pulpit this next Sunday was merely a reading of the first chapter, "On Being a Christian After Bush."

Franklin Graham boasted that the American invasion of Iraq opened up exciting new opportunities for missions to non-Christian Arabs. But this is not what the Hebrew prophets or the Christian teachers mean by righteousness and discipleship. In fact, this grotesque notion -- that preemptive war and the destruction of innocent life pave the way for the preaching of the good news -- strikes me as a mockery of the cross and a betrayal of the Christian's baptism into the body of Christ. ...

If Franklin Graham speaks truthfully of the Christian faith and its mission in the world -- as many evangelicals seem to believe -- the we should have none of it. [Amen!] We should rather join the ranks of the righteous unbelievers and bighearted humanists who rage against cruelty and oppression with the intensity of people who live fully in this world. I am certain that it would be better for Christians to stand in solidarity with compassionate atheists and agnostics, firmly resolved against injustice and cruelty, that to sing "Amazing Grace" with the heroic masses who cannot tell the difference between the cross and the flag. ...

And while we are on the subject, may I please as a favor of the decent men and women who edit the magazine Christianity Today? The next time Franklin Graham utters a remark so completely contrary to the spirit of Christ, please denounce it with the same clarity that your columnists have brought to their criticisms of Bishop Spong's heterodox views, Bill Clinton's lechery, or Mark Felt's deathbed revelation that he was Watergate's Deep Throat.

Perhaps the last quoted paragraph is the reason Books and Culture, a CT spinoff, gave this book a sniff-sniff, harrumph-harrumph review. I dropped my CT subscription some decades back, figuring I could get enough "God's Own Party" rhetoric from the MSM; nothing yet to regret in that department.