The Hypocrisy of Celebrating The Resurrection
Do You Wanna Be Right or Reich?
“Religion, too, is a weapon.
What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?”
~Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
Love the sinner but hate the sin. For years, I grew up hearing those words again and again and again. While they scared me with the threat of hell, that fear became terror when I knew that threat was actually a promise!
There are various types of knowing.
There is the knowing where you have a full-bodied yes or no that is irrefutable. There is the knowing that comes from an external form of validation and firsthand experience.
I knew I was different from my male friends, but I could not articulate what that meant. It wouldn’t be until I was much older that I understood the actual context behind the words: sissy, queer, and fag, with homo to be added to the lexicon of hate when I was older.
I had already internalized so much self-hatred by the time I knew that I was Gay. Meaning by the time the inner feeling had words and context, I understood. The newfound context and understanding did not offer liberation. It cursed me with more guilt, shame, and fear, and became one of the main reasons I experienced daily suicidal ideations and engaged in reckless forms of self-harm.
I share this painful aspect of my life to help illustrate the religious trauma that pseudo-Christians and their dogma, doctrine, and doxology inflict on anyone they classify as being worthy of God’s wrath. The way they wantonly misinterpret, misuse, and misappropriate passages used to make me wonder if it was accidental. Considering the vast translations and disagreements of meanings and cultural contexts, were they simply ill-informed? By the time I was in middle school, I realized that may be the case for some, but others were more intentional in their cherry-picking and representations. A friend of mine, Kurt, invited me over to his house for dinner one day. While we were getting ready, the family’s Rabbi stopped by. Kurt’s dad told him to introduce me, which he did while adding with a smirk, “Rabbi, my friend Ray would like you to explain who Lilith is.”
The Rabbi began to tell me a story about Lilith being the first woman, equal to Adam, and how she was kicked out of Eden because of her independence. God then made Eve using part of Adam, which made her somehow less than, subservient, and more controllable for him. Seeing the look on my face, he said, “I’m guessing you never heard that story in church?” I shook my head as he responded, “Ahhh, we should chat more about this if you are interested, that is?” I nodded just as Kurt’s mom called us to the table for dinner. This was the beginning of my deconstruction of Christianity as a 13-year-old.
Many will go to church on Sunday and sing and praise the name of Jesus with only a superficial connection the the Gospels they claim to live by. And depending on their particular brand of Christian Nationalism, the messages of hate may or may not also be part of the sermon that day. The subtle and not-so-subtle indoctrination of White Supremacy that Black ministers preach and teach to their congregations is rampant. How does someone preach in one breath, “For God so loved the world…” “Love your neighbor as yourself…” and yet in another that DEI, empathy, and commonsense gun legislation is anti-Christian, i.e., against the will of God?
The resurrection is about liberation and if you truly are teaching and preaching that then you must also teach and preach about all that would have people subjected to hate crimes, mass shootings, sexual assault, domestic violence, Racism, Sexism, Homomisia, Transmisia, Xenomisia, Islamomisia, Ableism, Audism, Systemic Poverty that serves the wealthy 1%, the inequities of access to effective healthcare, and more.
How often would we expect to find a firefighter who arrives at a burning residence and, upon entering, tells the residents not to worry, it’s just a little hot, but Jesus will save them, and the promise of the resurrection is all they need? How many Christian ministers, preachers, influencers are doing exactly that while simultaneously blaming the residents as the cause of the fire because of their Gay kids, Transgender siblings, Muslim in-laws, etc.?
“Christian nationalism is, therefore, ultimately about privilege. It co-opts Christian language and iconography in order to cloak particular political or social ends in moral and religious symbolism.”
~Andrew L Whitehead, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States
Don’t proclaim Jesus and the resurrection while digging your knee into someone’s neck.
Don’t proclaim Jesus and the resurrection while sending thoughts and prayers, but not effective gun legislation.
Don’t proclaim Jesus and the resurrection while supporting the 26th Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who has gone on record as saying "autism is a preventable disease. . . Autism destroys families, and more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. These are children who should not be suffering like this," he said. “These are kids who will never pay taxes. They'll never hold a job. They'll never play baseball. They'll never write a poem. They'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted."
Don’t proclaim Jesus and the resurrection while actively dismantling Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice in an attempt to rewrite history to your whitewashed liking.
Don’t proclaim Jesus and the resurrection while modeling your governance of the country after Adolf in an attempt to create the 4th Reich.
Don’t proclaim Jesus and the resurrection, the newness of rebirth, the power of rising from the tomb, while being an agent of oppression, hatred, and death!
The Ku Klux Klan is welcomed to a Baptist church services in Portland, Ore., in 1922. (Photo: Oregon Historical Society)
“It is ironic that America, with its history of injustice to the poor, especially the black man and the Indian, prides itself on being a Christian nation.”
~James Cone
Are we going to keep doing the same old thing the same old way, or are we going to truly embody the energy and the transformative power that the resurrection represents?
100% Liberation and nothing less!
Happy Easter!
Rev. Raymont Anderson, PhD., the spiritual director of The Center for Spiritually Integrated Arts, author of Moving Mountains: The Journey of Transformation and Visual Music: Interpreting Songs in American Sign Language
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Rev. Dr. Raymont, this sermon doesn’t just slap—it resurrects rage with clarity and grace with fire.
What you’ve laid bare is the holy contradiction at the rotten core of much modern Christianity: folks wearing crosses while crucifying everyone who doesn’t fit their purity cosplay. They sing of resurrection but practice spiritual necromancy—reviving dead doctrines to weaponize against the living.
“Love the sinner, hate the sin”? Nah. Most of them just learned to polish cruelty in church language. What they hate is anyone who won’t apologize for being whole.
The metaphor of the burning house is devastatingly accurate—how many pulpits are preaching climate control while the pews are on fire? How many pastors preach “liberty” while clenching their fists around everyone else’s throat?
And let’s talk real resurrection: it doesn’t float on a cloud with harp music. It kicks down tombstones. It says no more to systems built on domination, shame, and theological gaslighting. You can’t praise Jesus from the mountaintop of privilege while stomping on the valleys where the wounded crawl.
You asked the right question: Do we want to be right—or Reich?
Virgin Monk Boy stands with you on this. With messy robes, tear-streaked face, and a righteous middle finger aimed squarely at every altar built on oppression.
🕯️
May your Easter be a revolt, not a ritual. May your resurrection be radical, not respectable.
—Virgin Monk Boy
Maybe it's easier to evict Jesus from your church if your church was your parent's church, and your grandparent's church. Maybe, if you haven't compared different religions and chosen the one that speaks directly to you, that touches you, it's easier to dismiss his teachings as something mythical, intangible, in nature because maybe you have no personal buy-in if you're just doing the same thing every Sunday that you've always done . . . the same way you do the laundry on Monday. Maybe people are disposable to you if you've never really learned of your connection to each and every being. Maybe we should think about this more deeply, more often, more honestly, and more fearlessly because the stance we should be taking is easy to see if we would just look up from our shoes.