Calling the Sermon on the Mount weak or too liberal is ‘blasphemy and heresy’ | Opinion

Have you heard the latest from some folks of the “Jesus-is-my savior/Trump-is-my-president” persuasion?

They’re claiming the Sermon on the Mount was lily-livered liberalism.

You can’t make this stuff up.

“Russell Moore, the editor of Christianity Today, has authored an editorial in which he worries out loud about evangelicals who are openly rejecting the teachings of Jesus as being ‘too liberal.’” wrote author Thom Hartmann in The Hartman Report, his progressive online column. He also hosts the Thom Hartmann Program, which, according to his website, is the country’s “#1 Progressive Talk Show.”

Historically, it’s been an article of faith among conservative Christian evangelicals that the Good Book is inerrant. Thus, scripture-especially passages attributed to Jesus Christ-are not subject to interpretation. “God Said It. I Believe It. That Settles It,” proclaimed a bumper sticker I saw on a car in my native western Kentucky.

Moore left the Southern Baptist Church when it swerved hard right. Hartman quoted what Moore said to a National Public Radio interviewer after “multiple pastors” had told him “about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — ‘turn the other cheek’ — to have someone come up after to say, ‘Where did you get those liberal talking points?’ And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,’ the response would not be, ‘I apologize.’ The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.’ And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.”

Murray State University historian Brian Clardy bristled at the Christian conservative/Christian nationalist take on the Sermon on the Mount.

“To slam the Sermon on the Mount as ‘liberal talking points’ is blasphemy and heresy,” said Clardy, an Episcopalian.

Jesus a weakling? Hardly, according to Clardy. “Conservative Christians want a Jesus that depicts their version of Christianity. So they take Jesus and mold him into this figure of toxic masculinity.”

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus expressed the essence of Christian humanism. Here are the salient passages from the Book of Matthew, King James Version:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

Macho Christianity is nothing new. Billy Sunday, the country’s best-known evangelist in the early 20th century, preached a tough-guy Jesus gospel.

A fundamentalist conservative, Sunday prayed for Divine deliverance from “off-handed, flabby-cheeked, brittle-boned, weak-kneed, thin-skinned, pliable, plastic, spineless, effeminate, sissified, three-carat Christianity.”

Christ was anything but the gentle Lamb of God, according to Sunday, who had been a big league baseball player. The Prince of Peace was “the greatest scrapper who ever lived.”

Turn the other cheek, as Jesus admonished? “I’d like to put my fist on the nose of the man who hasn’t got enough grits to be a Christian,” said Sunday.

Clardy said Sunday was “charismatic” and “a showman who lacked theological depth--but he knew how to draw a crowd.”

He compared Sunday to some modern right-wing evangelists. They, too, Clardy said, are light on theology but “know how to draw a crowd, know what buttons to push, know how to connect with politicians and know how to make money.”

This Presbyterian is with Clardy. The claims that the Sermon on the Mount is just a bunch of “liberal talking points” and that Jesus—who bravely endured what would have been a horribly slow and excruciatingly painful death on the cross —was a wuss are as farcical as Sunday’s sweaty sermonizing. But as the Book of Ecclesiastes (KJV) reminds us, “there is no thing new under the sun.”

Berry Craig of Arlington is a professor emeritus of history at West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah and a retiree member of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, and the Kentucky Education Association.