Be true to your cult, ctd

I pointed a few days ago toward Albert Mohler’s unseemly introduction of C.J. Mahaney at the Together For The Gospel conference. Though Mohler has not acknowledged a word of it — Southern Baptists blithely refuse to acknowledge unpleasantness, ever — the reaction from non-cult members has been fierce.

You might be thinking to yourself, “D-a-a-a-m-n, I bet those guys are home hiding in bed under the covers.” If so, you’d be mistaken. In fact, C.J. Mahaney went back to his church on Sunday and — this is absolutely true — exhorted the Pious that they have a moral duty to protect their pastors from criticism.

“Any slanderous comment about the pastoral team should be challenged, and if necessary resolved,” Mahaney said. “Why? Because the pastors are just sensitive souls, because pastors are so sensitive? No. That protection is needed in order to preserve the trust, in order to protect the unity of this church. That’s why that’s needed ultimately, for the advance of the gospel from this church.”

Well.

It is rarely put so explicitly, but this is, in fact, a Biblical teaching. Upon the failure of the Jewish Rebellion in 70 A.D., the Jews did exactly what every other group in the history of the world has done: They went looking for somebody to blame. The conservatives believed God had allowed them to lose in order to chasten the Jews for tolerating those who believed that Jesus was the long-promised Messiah, and they won the argument; the Christians were thrown out.

They were the despised of the despised, and first- and second-century Christianity was no more than another subterranean cult; the New Testament is the literary production of a cult. And, like any cult, it survived only by demanding loyalty to itself above every other institution and relationship. This is why preachers howl and bellow that good, decent, godly people must always put the pleasure of Our Invisible Friend — meaning, the well-being of the pastor — ahead of even wedding vows; that’s what the Bible says. That’s what Scientology says, too.

Christianity is merely a cult that managed to survive, and it is returning to its cult origins as it shrinks.