They take the Lord’s name in vain. They use his name to condemn the world whereas Jesus came not to condemn life but to save it. So why is the church a place where we hear a call for condemnation and destruction to all outside of the majority culture? The church does not exist to save life, but to preserve a culture. This culture the church seeks to preserve is dangerous and oppressive. They speak of the oppression of women in Islam and turn a blind eye to it in their own churches. They tell their women to submit to their men and be silent. The patriarchy will be preserved through religion.

This is a group who still clings to religiosity and devotion to the patriarchy their savior rejected and was slaughtered by. What was the actual sin that slaughtered Jesus Christ? Did a gay married couple kill Jesus? Did the young girl who chose to abort her unborn baby after being sexually assaulted by her father kill him? The actual act that took his life was an act of state violence. They throw the symbol of his execution up at every church and wear it on t-shirts or print it to be a sign of love. The church worships the violent act of executing an innocent man instead of the life and defiance of violence the man preached and lived. They practice a rejection of others over his example of radical acceptance. The brutal execution of Jesus should be mourned, not celebrated; Jesus’ murder calls us to mourn the violence perpetuated in the powers of the world, to observe the way it has affected each of us and to turn away from it towards love. I’m sorry but the church has it all wrong.

Our culture has a disease. This disease is not airborne but often churchborne. It is an infection of the patriarchy past infused into current society. We use these churches to maintain what is and what was. They pick and choose what they wish to see. They choose which messages remain in their holy scripture. In recent centuries we see that many protestants claim their holy scripture is untouchable and to be unquestioned, but this is only after they have weeded out books like The Book of Susanna which begins to address issues such as the patriarchal and hierarchical abuse of women. They choose to cling to what is as if it has always been the “right way.” The church is a device to preserve what the man they claim as their savior rejected. The church in its many forms from Catholicism to the diverse Protestant denominations is often found to be “The Whore Church” they have warned against. They protect child molesters and create environments of hierarchy and submission that lend to a situation ripe for abuse.