(1:17 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Reader Contribution

The Puppet is the Perve

After reading an article in the Chicago Tribune on the "Christian Alliance for Progress" Dave Belcher reports that he had to stick his finger down his throat on behalf of a doubly poisoned political Christianity; Belcher hurled a scandalous proposal. Let me quote him exactly: "Maybe Christians need to stop thinking about how to 'reclaim' the faith, or how to be more 'public,' and think toward a sort of contemporary monasticism." In case anyone did not notice, Belcher's post received a prodigious amount of attention. But why?

My father holds the highest office in our great county so inaptly named "The Garden Spot of the World." Last night he suffered a "political defeat" of sorts sure to elevate his blood pressure to a heavenly locus because, in the end, the golden scales of justice are accessible to obstreperous thieves and men erudite in meticulous nescience. Exhausted, depressed, and disheartened by a displayed farrago of non-cooperation, pathetic insight, and - to borrow the Appalachian term - "boneheadedness" among the meritorious board, my father concluded that instead of running for re-election (which he would win) he will let the department return to the control of greedy, do-nothing, poltical crooks. I replied, "I think thats a good idea."

Across the kitchen, my mother, who was inconspicously observing, immediately retorted, "The Bible says when good men do nothing evil flourishes!" And I answered, "Well, where does it say that?" She has not found that exact verse yet, but she has convinced my father that even though the snakes bruised his heal, he will crush their heads. Is the purpose of Christianity to function as a filter of deadly venom, i.e evil?

I hate Michael Moore more than I hate Cialis commercials. But didn't the thesis of "Bowling for Columbine" contain at least some verity? Isn't American Political-Christianity a "Politics of Fear"? a form of existential "angst" growing not from the future possibility of living in a truly pagan milieu, but the expectations of the type of Christianity that that entails? because that Christianity is envisioned by the megachurch suburbanites as a precarious Christianity determined by a precarious world? I was introduced to Slavoj Zizek by Brad Johnson, and I am incredibly thankful for the introduction because I have learned something. You see, the thesis of The Puppet and the Dwarf is all wrong; it is exactly the opposite of what it should be: It is not that the Marxist needs to go through the Christian experience, but rather the Christian needs to go through the Marxist experience.

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