Book details

  • Genre:religion
  • Sub-genre:Religion, Politics & State
  • Language:English
  • Pages:100
  • eBook ISBN:9798317835927

By Their Fruits

Southern Christians: Betraying Jesus for 180 Years

Overview

"By Their Fruits" begins with a simple question: Is the Christianity you see in American politics the Christianity of the Gospels? Most Americans sense something is wrong. They sit in the pew and feel the disconnect. They watch the news and see politicians wrapped in the language of Christ while voting for legislation that leaves the hungry hungrier, the sick sicker, and the stranger unwelcomed. They wonder how it got this way. They wonder who is responsible. They wonder whether the church they grew up in has been quietly replaced by something that looks the same from the outside but operates on entirely different principles. This book answers those questions. Where did American Christianity lose its way—and when? Who built the machine that turned faith into a political weapon? What does real Christianity actually look like when someone takes the teachings of Jesus seriously enough to act on them? And what happens when you measure the Christianity claiming the loudest voice in American politics against the only standard that has ever mattered—the words of Jesus himself? Written by an agnostic with a deep and abiding respect for the teachings of Jesus Christ, "By Their Fruits" is for the people who came looking for Jesus in American Christianity and aren't sure they found him. The answers have been sitting in the same book the hijackers carry to the pulpit every Sunday.
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Description

"By Their Fruits" begins with a simple question: Is the Christianity you see in American politics the Christianity of the Gospels? Most Americans sense something is wrong. They sit in the pew and feel the disconnect. They watch the news and see politicians wrapped in the language of Christ while voting for legislation that leaves the hungry hungrier, the sick sicker, and the stranger unwelcomed. They wonder whether the church they grew up in has been quietly replaced by something that looks the same from the outside but operates on entirely different principles. But there are deeper questions beneath that one. Questions most people haven't thought to ask—because nobody has ever laid out the evidence clearly enough to make them unavoidable. When did Christianity become a political identity rather than a calling? Who built that machine, and why? How did the party that cuts food programs for children become the party of Jesus? How did the party that spent one hundred and fifty billion dollars to deport the stranger become the defender of Christian values? How did a religion whose founder said it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God become the theological home of the prosperity gospel? What does real Christianity look like when someone actually practices it? Who is doing the work Jesus commanded—feeding, clothing, healing, and welcoming—and what does that work look like at scale? And why are some of the most faithful practitioners of Jesus's commandments people who have never claimed to follow him? What happens when you place the six commandments of Matthew 25 next to the legislation celebrated in Jesus' name? What does that comparison tell us about the people who blessed it from the pulpit? And what does it demand of the people who voted for it from the pew? "By Their Fruits" answers all of it. Written by an agnostic with a deep and abiding respect for the teachings of Jesus Christ, this book meticulously dissects how American Christianity lost its way—tracing an unbroken line from 1845 to the present day, naming the people responsible, and showing the receipts. It does not look away. It does not offer anyone an exit ramp. But it also shows what happens when religion goes right. When ordinary people and organizations take Jesus at his word and do what he said. The contrast between those two pictures is the argument. By the last page, Parker will make two things crystal clear: who is to blame and what it actually means to be a Christian. The answer to the second question has been sitting in plain sight for two thousand years. There are six commandments. No asterisks. No exceptions. No credential required. Just show up and do the work.
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About The Author

Jim Parker is not a theologian. He is not a minister. He is not a political scientist. He is an agnostic—but with a twist. He has a deep, abiding respect for the teachings of Jesus Christ. Not a matter of faith, but a matter of having read them carefully and found them to be among the most radical, demanding, and uncomfortable specific moral instructions ever set down in any language. He is also an Army veteran and a direct descendant of Reverend John Williams—the "Redeemed Captive of Deerfield"—whose 1704 captivity narrative became one of the founding documents of American resilience and plain speaking. Parker has lived in nine states, served ten years in the United States Army, and spent a lifetime watching American Christianity drift from the teachings of the man it claims to follow. He is not angry about religion; he is angry about the gap—the widening, documented, legislatively measurable gap between what Jesus commanded and what people claiming his name have done with the power when they had it. In "By Their Fruits," Parker meticulously dissects how American Christianity lost its way—who is responsible, how it happened, and when. He doesn't flinch from naming names and doesn't offer anyone an exit ramp. But Parker is equally deliberate about showing what happens when religion goes right—when ordinary people and organizations take the teachings of Jesus seriously and do the work, quietly, without fanfare, and without a camera crew. The contrast is the argument. Parker's solution is not complicated, and it was never hidden. It is sitting in the same book the hijackers carry to the pulpit every Sunday. He is not asking anyone to find Jesus. He is asking the people who claim they already have to act like it.
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