C Street

False Religion, True Religion series

One of the spoilers of religion is that people often find what they want to find and ignore the rest. Religion tends to be culturally and politically situated so that it is interpreted by those views. It is influenced by your work, peers, family, locale, groups, mission, etc. For example in Haiti, Vodou is accepted by many Christians as an acceptable part of their culture.

This article (blog post) and the next are about two distinct groups who followed their inclinations and went off the deep end. The first is C Street.

Jesus was wrong! Two thousand years of serving the poor has been a failure. That’s the message of C Street, a secretive “Christian” organization based in Washington, DC. It’s for politicians and other leaders around the world, including several US Senators and military leaders. It has cells in many countries, with many followers.

The information about it presented here is from the book, C Street by Jeff Sharlet. C Street’s major premise is that Jesus got it wrong going to the poor and weak. To them religion is about power and wealth. You help the world by making leaders strong.

Beliefs

The organization thinks it’s the body of Christ. Their members are chosen by God (his chosen people) so that any personal failings are irrelevant to the person’s work, just like King David had many moral failures. They believe helping the strong as the way to help the weak.

They cite strong, merciless leaders as examples to emulate such as Hitler, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Osama bin Laden – history’s worst villains. Each day to them is spiritual warfare in which they must defeat their enemies, including other religions. Anyone not emulating their beliefs is considered lost. They insist on absolute loyalty.

Echoes of these beliefs are sometimes heard by other leaders who cite the imperfect Kings of Israel who were chosen by God before 560 BCE. Some politicians sometime say publicly that they admire Russia’s Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jung Un, and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein (deceased). Politicians are not accountable for their actions since they are God’s chosen.

Business and beliefs are inseparable – they are one and the same. Democracy and capitalism is their religion, and preservation of the current order is their goal.

Actions

This group sponsored the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

They cover up misconduct by politicians such as extramarital affairs and illegal or secret payments.

Democracy and capitalism, whatever those mean in their mind, are seen as the perfect religion.

They bash Jews and other religions.

In the military, some leaders and their men commit atrocities against those of other religions (beatings, urinating on the Koran). There are many military leaders who are followers of C Street.

Some talk about the Rapture and return of Christ as current influences.

C Street errors

Where do I begin?

Jesus was not about the things C Street promotes. Jesus was a transformational leader in Jewish beliefs, separating traditions from necessary actions that God approves. He knew that religion gets corrupted by traditions that well meaning people start.

For example, Jesus knew the Temple was going away and that people would be scattered by the Romans. So he said it was no longer necessary to receive forgiveness through priests and sacrifice at the Temple. Just ask God for forgiveness and it’s done.

Like the prophets before him Jesus told and showed us how God wants us to treat others. Love is the essence of religion, and I’ll cite two works. According to my research into the development of Christianity and other religions, this is my conclusion in Ontology of God: The voices of the ancients speak: Love.

According to Charles Kimball, author of When Religion Becomes Evil, “… the core principles of the major religious traditions … include faith, hope, and love.”

As Buddha told his son, “Practice love.” The Apostle Paul said of faith, hope, and love, the greatest of these is love (First Corinthians 13:13).

Does making leaders and the wealthy strong help the needy? An example of helping the poor is helping people find jobs so they can support themselves. While some of the wealthy do wonderful things for this world, many of them simply reinvest earnings in the stock market or hide it in shell companies so that it helps absolutely no one. The idea of making others strong to help others is patently ridiculous and self-serving.

Was Jesus political? No. He refused to become a military leader or a king when people were hoping he would. Whatever the government was, either Greek or Roman Empires, people needed to focus on helping others. He spoke of the divide between government and religion, saying give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.

He was not a proponent of democracy or capitalism. Those were later inventions of people and not really known in Jesus’ time. Democracy and capitalism aren’t some pure thing found in nature. They are what defined by people, not something to fit the desires of religious or political leaders.

Did Jesus ask people to focus on the end of the world? The idea of the end of the world is a popular idea among some derived from variant interpretations of Biblical prophecy and generally lacking context and historical knowledge. While Jesus did mention a possible end to the world, even he didn’t know when it might occur. Prophecy is almost always about events that are to occur within a few years, and he said his prophecies would occur within their lifetimes. And they did.

Jesus was all about how to treat others and he considered the religious-political leaders, that is the Sadducees and Pharisees to be corrupt snakes who neglected the provisions of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. From Matthew 23:23 (NSB).

The body of Christ is notably the members of the greater church, not a bunch of political leaders.

We are all the same in God’s eyes. God cares mostly about how we love others, what we actually do. The Apostle Paul said, “For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)” – Romans 2: 13-15 (NIV)

Jesus was very inclusive. He marveled at the faith of the non-Jews. We should be like Jesus and stop hating others and declaring them lost.

Take Home points

The distortions of Christianity present in C Street are the wishful thinking of those who want to use religion for self-serving purposes, and don’t want to follow the ways that Jesus showed us. They are the epitome of false religion.

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Our answer is God. God’s answer is us. Together we make the world better.

– Dorian

I will use some book references for this series, which I recommended reading:

Tabernacle of Hate by Kerry Nobles – true story of a group that isolated for peaceful living but ended up in cults that advocated violence.
C Street by Jeff Sharlet – a true cult that thought Jesus was wrong, and influences politicians around the world
When Religion Becomes Evil by Charles Kimball (5 warning signs)