Dinesh D’Souza’s Anti-Christian Worldview

THE END OF HYPOCRISY: Conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza built a career as a person of color who was willing to champion traditionally white conservative views. But a scandal lost him his job as a Christian college president. (Photo: Mark Taylor/Wikipedia)

Here is yet another example of how GOP conservatives pimp evangelical Christians.

Outspoken conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, who is highly sought after on the Christian speaking circuit, recently resigned from his post as president of The King’s College, a private Christian institution in Manhattan. Why? Because while delivering the keynote address on “defending the faith and applying a Christian worldview” at First Baptist North in Spartanburg, S.C., D’Souza, who is married (though allegedly separated from his spouse), was outed for sharing a hotel room with a female who is not his wife. He referred to his “traveling companion” as his fiancé.

So let’s get this straight: A Christian leader, who promotes conservative Christian values in his books and speeches, who heads a Christian college, is speaking at a Christian event on defending the faith, but is sharing his hotel room — and likely its bed — with a woman, Denise Joseph, who is not his wife.

Huh?

Christian publication World Magazine broke the story which led to D’Souza’s eventual resignation from King’s College claiming he didn’t want to be a “distraction.” Of course prior to that D’Souza ran to the conservative Fox News and passionately denied wrongdoing because he and his wife of 20 years have been separated for two. He claimed World Magazine misreported the story and even wrote that “This is pure libel.”

“I had no idea that it is considered wrong in Christian circles to be engaged prior to being divorced, even though in a state of separation and in divorce proceedings,” D’Souza wrote. “Obviously I would not have introduced Denise as my fiancé at a Christian apologetics conference if I had thought or known I was doing something wrong. But as a result of all this, and to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, Denise and I have decided to suspend our engagement.”

C’mon playa. Are all of us Christians that naïve, or just stupid? Certainly the world is not buying your pure lie.

Look, men (and women) behaving badly is not foreign to us Christians. I know it’s not foreign to me. Many of us were doing it out in the world before we came to know Jesus. Many of us have found ourselves falling into sexual sins while in the church, whether the sin be homosexuality, fornication, or adultery. In the Bible, David fell into adultery and brought Bathsheba down with him (2 Samuel 11 ). There are other examples. Sin is sin. There’s no hierarchy. We’ve ALL fallen short of God’s glory, which is why we need Jesus Christ to cover and redeem us daily. The deeper sickness is how too many so-called conservatives promote themselves as the keepers of the nation’s moral conscience, proclaiming how others must behave, yet masking their own sins. Unlike what Jesus warned us in Matthew 7, these hypocrites look pass their “beams” and point out other people’s “twigs” on their way to personal fame, fortune and political power.

But as certain Christians attach themselves to these conservative hypocrites, what does it say about OUR collective witness to the world when the truth comes to light? For example, how can we in good conscience fight against state and federal laws that would allow other taxpaying Americans their right to same-sex marriages, when we don’t honor the church’s marriage covenant? Meanwhile, we allow divorce, which is equally sinful, as if it’s no big deal.

Another big deal problem with D’Souza is that he not only pimps Christianity but also the sin of racism. D’Souza is behind 2016: Obama’s America, a scathing documentary about President Obama based on D’Souza’s best-selling book The Roots of Obama’s Rage. At $26 million so far, it’s the second-highest grossing political documentary. D’Souza is an Indian American who was born in Bombay, Maharashtra, India. Yet, he makes his fortune and fame by attacking not just a member of another minority group, but the nation’s first black president — the symbol of the dreams that helped black Americans endure the deep pain, blood, sweat and tears since the first child of African descent was born in North America in Virginia in January 1624.

Many Asian Indians began immigrating in large numbers to the United States soon after the passage of the 1946 Luce-Celler Act, which allowed 100 of them to enter per year and become naturalized citizens. Dalip Singh Saund, who would in 1957 become the first Indian American congressman as a Democrat from California, was instrumental in the act’s passage. He also supported the civil rights movement. Unlike black Americans whose ancestors were brought unwillingly crammed in hulls by the hundreds per ship as slaves whose backs would build America’s economy, many Asian Indians came by airplane on education and work visas from Canada, South African and of course India. Many of them today, in the spirit of Saund and Mahatma Gandhi, whose nonviolent leading of India’s independence from Great Britain inspired the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., understand and appreciate the plight of being marginalized and oppressed in your own country. But then there are those like D’Souza, and governors Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, and Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who discovered they could slither along the back of the civil right movement, and move on up in the Republican “Dixicrat” Party. With their darkened skin tones, they prostitute themselves as some newer more acceptable minority that won’t rock the boat. Theirs is a new shuck and jive at the expense of blacks, whites and others who fought and died trying to equalize opportunities for all Americans.

Meanwhile, America grows more and more divided by race as recent polls show this election may be the most polarized since 1988 and that anti-black racial attitudes have increased during Obama’s presidency.

In light of this national crisis, how would our Prince of Peace, unity and justice have us defend the faith and apply a Christian worldview?

All of us, including D’Souza, ought to read Matthew 7.

Don’t Blame Religion

Wanna learn how to start a fire in religious circles? Pay attention to Jefferson Bethke, the spoken-word rapper/poet responsible for the viral video “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus.” When it comes to starting fires, Bethke is an Eagle Scout.

(Click THIS link to read his lyrics and watch the video.)

In “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus,” which at current count has registered some 17 million views, Bethke opines over the lack of authenticity in religious leadership, calls into account the dangerous compound of faith and politics, and berates the self-righteous. (Amen!)

However, in making a few good points, Bethke may have thrown the baby out with the bath water.

If you’ve ever played the Blame Game before (who hasn’t?), then you know how this works. Something goes wrong, someone gets blamed. This literally takes on “biblical” proportions when you think about the scapegoat and its origins. As long as humankind has existed together in community, it’s been someone else’s fault. Why do we always need something to execute?

Wars have indeed been fought in the name of God. Priests, vicars, monks, nuns, and pastors have lied, cheated, stolen from and exploited the innocent. Politics and religion do make strange bedfellows, and the Religious Right does have a “special” (almost impressive) way of loving Jesus while ignoring the ethics of the gospel.

Bethke is right. There are huge churches that condemn single mothers and fail to feed the poor — a huge mess. But “spraying perfume on a casket”? One day he’s gonna want those words back.

Besides the conflation of terms (“RELIGION” is not a monolith); or the tautology of using the Scriptures (a religious text) to argue against religion; or quoting scripture in irresponsible ways (God does NOT call all religious people “whores” in Jeremiah 3), there’s the grandiose, re-tweetable statements like “Religion is man searching for God/Christianity is God searching for man.” Whether Bethke knows it or not, his statement was likely influenced by Rabbi Abraham Heschel, a very religious man whose classic books God in Search of Man and Man Is Not Alone build an argument for the philosophy of Judaism and the practice of religion. Bethke’s statement almost sounds like Rabbi Heschel; instead, it comes off as pretentious nonsense.

There’s no need to maliciously pick everything apart; it is quite clear that Bethke has good intent. He wants people of faith to have more integrity; for their ethics to match up with their jibber-jabber; for our theology and praxis to align. Is this not also what God wants?

BREAKING IT DOWN: A screen shot from Jefferson Bethke's video, which is edging toward 18 million views.

Bethke’s honorable goal of encouraging authentic faith has been the aim of religious practice since we started ritualizing our history by burying the dead (which is arguably the beginning of “religion”). *Vast Generalization Alert* One arc of the Hebrew Bible rails against folks who have become too loyal to law and ritual to connect with YHWH. This is what Jesus comes to do: reorient humanity to the Law, not abolish religion. After all, did he not then come back and use Peter to start a CHURCH!?!

And here is the whole point. Jesus came back and created community. He didn’t start a new religion; he simply said, “Here’s a better Way to live. Now go out and create communities of people who can live better together. Create disciples of this Way.”

Religion is ALL ABOUT COMMUNITY. If you’ve ever stood in a circle and shared prayer requests together, you know this. If you’ve ever been to a funeral, you know this. If you’ve ever sat around and shared old stories with your family, or if you’ve ever felt the warmth and comfort of being around other people … These are religious impulses, and they are so ingrained in our daily experience that we cannot avoid them.

It’s a messy world, and religion finds a way to still create community. Better than any other institution or worldview. And I believe that nothing has more potential for fostering genuine, loving, ethical, Beloved Community than religion. That’s why I am a pastor.

Jefferson Bethke’s poem seems focused on the problems; our vision should be consumed by the potential. He sees the dirty water and calls for a cleansing; we should see the baby in the tub. For all the woes of this world, and the many ways our faith has caused them, there yet remains hope in the gathering of a few who believe in something greater than humanity. For all we’ve done, for all we’ve ignored, for all we’ve hurt — God still calls us together. God still loves us.

Jefferson Bethke apparently does hate religion: his video inspires no community and breathes no hope. But I’m not sure that’s loving Jesus.