abstract: Hedges’ claim that “the Christian Right” has contaminated “the Christian religion“ with “aspects” of “American” society—“imperialism, capitalism, chauvinism, violence and bigotry”— that are alien to Christianity is historically false. These evils have characterized the most dominant strands of Christianity throughout its history. Hedges’ denunciation of the Christian right as heretical implicitly enacts an orthodoxy that has authorized and even required Christian “imperialism, … chauvinism, violence and bigotry.” When Hedges denounces the Christian right as heretical, he implicitly uses the orthodox logic that equates imperial might with sacred rightness, precisely the logic that the historical Jesus, according to a great deal of historical evidence, subverted.
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