Maga-Evangelicalism's Unloving Doctrines of God and People

A Study on the Profundity of

Maga-Evangelicalism

by R.E. Slater

"Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often

shaped and adjusted by our social goals." - Jim Forest

A Study on the Profundity of Maga-Evangelicalism showing why it's style of Christianity naively handles the bible in its doctrines and interpretations. Consequently, it holds to an evil god rather than a Loving God because maga has no loving God theology. Only a god of war, wrath and judgment.

One can easily make the argument that the historic traditional church used societal outcome beliefs to shape civil laws as we are again seeing repeated by today's evangelical maga church under their applauded leader Donald Trump who is purposely destroying America.

The result? Maga civil law is showing itself to be religiously oppressive, brainwashing, harmful, and deadly. And all of this is based upon maga's misuse of biblical scriptures as seen in its Project 2025 contract produced by hyper-right maga counsel from a hyper-right bible which it purportly claims to understand - but doesn't when ignoring the bible's historical context and development.

More plainly, the bible maga preaches comes out in "cookie-cutter forms". Froms which removes a loving God theology for a wrathful and judging God found at the height of earlier syncretizing religious formations in ancient Israel's "prophetic" day.

R.E. Slater

March 7, 2025

The Evolution of God [from Polytheism to Monotheism]

* * * * * * *

Naiviety in Maga-Evangelical Bible Circles

by R.E. Slater

When taking the Bible at face value by interpreting it literally and without serious critical engagement, naive hermenuetical interpretive traditions will always lead to unhelpful and personally, or societally, harmful conclusions.

I had mentioned this in an earlier post regarding the prophet Ezekiel's idea of a God which did evil and now inspires today's maga-evangelical church to do the same kind of evil upon society as it's imagined evil God had done evil in Israel's day.

However, contrary to evangelical dogma, a process view of God rejects evangelical teaching that God does evil by countering that God is always loving all the time and can do no evil.

If this is so, then maga beliefs must immediately stop, repent, and repair the harm and evil that it is doing.

Why? Because fundamentally, maga is misreading the Scriptures wrong-headedly - and then justifying it's misreadings by creating apologetic defenses for its purposeful naivety applied to the bible's collective narratives. Biblical narratives which at once are telling us how ancient peoples once thought of God and were trying to understand God's seemingly judgmental presence in their daily lives.

Often, ancient religious recitations about who and what God is have shown themselves to commonly agree to theologies of oppression and judgment predicated upon divine behaviour. Many an ancient cosmology has recanted it's national experiences as "walking a fine line" between fate or fortune at the hands of a god or gods. Israel's God seems little different in this respect.

But ancient wisdom may not necessarily be true as Jesus later told Israel's religious establishment. Jesus taught of a loving God as opposed to the priests and scribes who taught of a judging God. The years of Jesus' ministry were years of exampling and teaching a God of love. His theology is a loving God theology which center and content is now captured in a theology known as process theology. Process theology is contrary to maga evangelical theology fallen back upon Israel's older, errant theology of a God of evil, wrath and judgment.

R.E. Slater

March 7, 2025

ChatGPT and I Discuss the Bible's Evolving Setting

Why feeding poor hungry children cannot be measured

by dollars but in healing societies of compassion.

* * * * * * *

A Personal Soliloquy

by R.E. Slater

Perhaps Christians should remember that their part in doing evil is not something which can be so easily un-broken. Israel in its more recent modern history has shown itself to be highly unjust towards the people of Gaza for decades. And consequently, each ethnic group have reaped their sins upon their own heads for not loving and cooperating with one another.

We too easily forget that peacemaking and building healthy societies is extremely difficult. More so, that when doing evil things to innocents is first and foremost the breaking of societal trust with one another which can then quickly deform into lawlessness, evil and anarchy.

Being called to be Peacemakers has shown humanity to repeatedly defy, deny, and ignore its responsibilities... until the time comes when you and your tribe are oppressed, persecuted, harmed, murdered, and ruined.

Never take the calm of a peaceable society for granted. It's calm has come over decades and centuries of trying to find civil ways of living peaceably with difference with one another.

Difference is good if one begins on the basis that difference can be healthy and loving in a multiethnic, multi-pluralistic societal form.

However, individual oneness can be the subtractor to Peaceable Plurality unless it is tempered - tempered! - in peace and love.

R.E. Slater

March 8, 2025

* * * * * * *

Maga-Christianity's Unloving

- and Unlovingly Applied -

Doctrines of God

by R.E. Slater

In the Book of Ezekiel, chapters 25-32 focus on God's judgment against the nations surrounding Israel. This would include Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Tyre, Sidon, and Egypt, for their actions against Israel and God's people. Pointedly, when maga-evangelical Christians read chapters and verses like these they believe themselves to be the persecuted instead of the persector oppressing and harming civil societies such as America's Constitutionally founded communities of unifying difference.  

Here's a more detailed outline of Ezekiel 25-32:

I. Judgment on the Nations (Ezekiel 25-32):

A. Prophecies Against Individual Nations:

1. Ammon (Ezekiel 25:1-7): Condemned for rejoicing over the destruction of Jerusalem and mocking the Israelites.

2. Moab (Ezekiel 25:8-11): Condemned for gloating over the destruction of Jerusalem.

3. Edom (Ezekiel 25:12-14): Condemned for rejoicing at Israel's misfortune and for their hatred of Israel.

4. Philistia (Ezekiel 25:15-17): Condemned for their actions against Israel.

5. Tyre (Ezekiel 26-28): Condemned for their pride, arrogance, and trade practices.

• a. The Fall of Tyre (Ezekiel 26): God announces the destruction of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar.

• b. The Pride of Tyre (Ezekiel 27): Tyre's wealth and power are described, followed by God's judgment.

• c. The Ruler of Tyre (Ezekiel 28:1-10): The king of Tyre is accused of arrogance and is compared to a fallen angel.

6. Sidon (Ezekiel 28:20-23): Sidon is condemned for its sins.

7. Egypt (Ezekiel 29-32): Condemned for its pride and idolatry, and its king is compared to a dragon.

• a. The Fall of Egypt (Ezekiel 29): God announces the destruction of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar.

• b. The Death of the Pharaoh (Ezekiel 30): Egypt's king is described as a fallen leader.

• c. The Destruction of Egypt (Ezekiel 31-32): Egypt's pride and downfall are described.

B. Themes of Judgment by God upon Israel's Enemies:

1. God's Sovereignty: God is the ultimate judge of all nations, not just Israel.

2. Justice: God will hold all nations accountable for their sins and actions.

3. Pride and Arrogance: God condemns the pride and arrogance of the nations, especially their rulers.

4. Rejoicing at Israel's Misfortune: God condemns those who rejoice at the destruction of Jerusalem and the suffering of God's people.

5. False Trust: God condemns those who place their trust in other nations rather than in Him.

---

Expounding Ezekiel Properly

by R.E. Slater

Why Evangelical Maga Christianity is Naive - and Naively Misuses

the Bible  Regularly for It's Own Social Purposes and Faith-Causes

A processual view of God's judgment greatly alters what God is and does as ancient Israel believed about its God and how today's maga church similarly believes.

It also places the evangelical maga church, like that of the nation Israel, into the role of an evil doer when harming it's congregations and outsiders to itself by ungenerous, unjust and inequitable dogmatic beliefs and actions.

Why?

Because the controlling God of yesteryear's ancient beliefs - as ascribed in the bible - is statedly untrue of a loving God IF God is loving: "Murder, mayhem, and harm can never come from a loving God."

But by preaching a controlling God who purposely does evil - as seen in Israel's experience of God in Ezekiel - and as preached and believed in today's evangelical churches - tells us that a controlling church, just like it's controlling God, can and will do evil.

Ezekiel's message of divine vengeance doing evil simply tells us what Israel's beliefs were about God... BUT NOT WHAT OR WHO GOD ACTUALLY IS.

Why?

IF religious beliefs are evolving over time then the bible is a collection of those evolving beliefs about God... whether right or wrong.

Thusly, Israel's errant theology of God is statedly written in the bible for all to read... which doesn't mean that it is interpretively true of God but it does mean that it is experirntially true of ancient Israel's beliefs about God. Its the old story of one person experiencing evil misfortune while another experiences beneficial fate. How then might God be viewed between the two experiences?

Today, those beliefs about an evil God in the bible are insupportable under a loving God theology.

Examining Evil as Evil and Not of, or coming from, a loving God

If you do evil to others it can turn around and find you as well. In Processual Context this seems to be Ezekiel's belief. Thusly it can be said that evil cannot come by a loving God's redeeming hand but by humanity's own evil hand as processual human beings who are reaping the processual results for in-humane, unloving, behaviors, words and deeds.

Israel's God, like the evangelical church's God, can-and-will do evil because one suspects that evil was by Israel, or the church's, own hand. But a processual view of God using the same bible sees the error of that evangelical maga God theology.

We might more properly say, "Evil is its own reward." Similarly, love is IT's own reward.

Love does not do evil. Evil does not do love.

Which then is God?

And what kind of evil, controlling Sovereign inhabits this controlling God's Being?

If God is true by maga-evangelical standards of theology then the evil we see being done by the maga church to today's Constitutional societies of America - which also includes how the maga church treats the stranger, alien, and migrants of our lands - is also true of its own evil theology claiming to be loving but actually doing evil both to it's own congregations as well as its community neighbors around each maga-evangelical church campus.

Jesus told the Jews they got it backwards. Non-evangelical believers are telling maga'ites to cease their evil actions and to restore their evil actions back to love. 

The brokenness you've committed is very great and will be very difficult to now fix. Stop. Repent. Start loving. Cease the cycle of evil and become peacemakers.

God is love. God is not evil. Evil is evil. And doing evil is, well, evil.

R.E. Slater

March 8, 2025

The Christian Right of the 1980s

The Christian Right

article link

[format and outline revisions mine. - re slater]

by Grant Wacker

October 2000

Duke University Divinity School

©National Humanities Center

Links to online resources

I

Defining the Christian Right is the first task of this essay. At the end of the 1980s, it was commonly assumed that the Christian Right consisted entirely of evangelical Protestants. Polls from that period suggested that evangelical Protestants comprised the majority of adherents, but many members of the Christian Right were not evangelical Protestants, and many evangelical Protestants were not members of the Christian Right. More precisely,

the Christian Right drew support from politically conservative Catholics, Jews, Mormons, and occasionally secularists. At the same time, many evangelical Protestants showed little interest in the Christian Right's political goals.

Those believers, who might be called evangelical outsiders, included:

• Confessional Protestants (especially of Dutch and German extraction),

• Protestants from the generally apolitical peace churches like the Amish and Old Order Mennonites,

• Fervently fundamentalist Protestants who were so conservative that they held no hope for America or any civil society, and

• Black and Latino Protestants who tended to be politically liberal though theologically and culturally evangelical.

Evangelical outsiders also included millions of born-again Protestants who were generally sympathetic to the political aims of the Christian Right but, as a practical matter, remained more interested in the devotional aims or charitable work of the church than in winning elections.

It may be helpful, then, to think of the Christian Right as the large shaded area in the middle of two overlapping circles. The shaded area consists of (1) evangelicals who cared enough about the political goals of the Christian Right to leave their pews and get out the vote and (2) non-evangelicals who cared enough about the political goals of the Christian Right to work with evangelicals.

II

How large was the Christian Right in recent elections?

• Hard figures are hard to come by, but polls and other indicators such as book sales indicate that the inner core—the shaded area—claimed no more than 200,000 adult Americans.

• On the other hand, fellow travelers, people who explicitly identify themselves as partisans of the religious right (a slightly broader category than Christian Right), ranged from ten to fifteen million.

• Sympathizers who might be mobilized over a specific issue such as abortion or gun control may have enlisted thirty-five million.

• Though the Christian Right's numerical strength leveled off in the early 1990s, its influence at the grass roots, in state and local elections, in setting school board policies, etc., has remained conspicuous.

• The rest of this discussion pertains primarily to the inner core of committed partisans, secondarily to the millions of sympathizers who became involved as the situation warranted.

The Christian Right emerged from both long-range and short-range developments in American life.

Long Range

• The long-range origins lay in the growth of biblical higher criticism in the seminaries,

• the teaching of human evolution in public schools, and

• after World War II, the real or perceived threat of Communism.

(See the essay "See the essay, The Rise of Fundamentalism" in Divining America: Twentieth Century.)

Short Range

The more immediate beginnings of the Christian Right lay in the vast cultural changes of the 1960s

• civil rights conflicts,
• Vietnam protests,
• the alternative youth culture,
• the women's liberation movement,
• the sexual revolution, and
• the rise of new religions
• which were mostly ancient religions emerging from obscurity

These transformations seemed to find a frightening echo in Supreme Court decisions that banned:

• official (but not private) prayer and Bible readings in the schools (Engel v. Vitale, 1962),

• legalized first trimester abortion (Roe v. Wade, 1973), and

• regulated government involvement in private Christian academies (Lemon v. Kurtzman, 1971).

III

A conservative Christian response quickly emerged to counter these developments. Led by charismatic, energetic figures like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Phyllis Schlafly, activists sought to defend:

• traditional Christian values such as the authority of the Bible in all areas of life,
• the necessity of faith in Jesus Christ, and
• the relevance of biblical values in sexual relations and marital arrangements.

What differentiated Falwell, Robertson, and Schlafly from other Christian spokesmen was their linking of traditional Christian values with images of a simpler small-town America of the past.

Indeed, the Christian Right proved so successful in translating its concerns to a wider audience that national pollster George Gallup pronounced 1976 "the year of the evangelical."

The mass media agreed. Both Time and Newsweek ran cover articles on the insurgence of evangelical Protestant Christianity. (It should be stressed that many who called themselves evangelicals, including the new president in 1976, Jimmy Carter, did not share many of the aims of the emerging Christian Right, but outsiders often failed to note such distinctions.)

IV

In the face of this conservative Christian insurgence, the mainline Protestant establishment and the secular media looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights—utterly stunned. Where did these folk come from? What did they want? How could the Christian Right flourish in the sunlit progressivism of the Age of Aquarius?

To find answers to these questions, we need to examine the world-view of the Christian Right, which rests upon four cornerstones.

The assumption that moral absolutes exist as surely as mathematical or geological absolutes constitutes the first. These moral absolutes include many of the oldest and deepest assumptions of Western culture, including the fixity of sexual identities and gender roles, the preferability of capitalism, the importance of hard work, and the sanctity of unborn life. More importantly, not only do moral absolutes exist, they are clearly discernible to any who wish honestly to see them.

V

The assumption that metaphysics, morals, politics, and mundane customs stand on a continuum constitutes the second cornerstone of the Christian Right's world-view. Specifically, ideas about big things like the nature of the universe inevitably affect little things, such as how individuals choose to act in the details of daily life. And the reverse. What one thinks about the nature of God, for example, inevitably influences one's decision to feed—or not to feed—the parking meter after the cops have gone home.

Contrary to the facile assumption of mainline Protestants, influenced by the Enlightenment, it is not possible for the Christian Right to draw easy lines between the public and the private spheres of life. (There is evidence that the Christian Right abandoned Jimmy Carter at precisely this point—when he announced that abortion should be legally protected in the public sphere, although he would not countenance it in the private sphere of his own family.)

The Christian Right further assumes—this is the third cornerstone—that government's proper role is to cultivate virtue, not to interfere with the natural operations of the marketplace or the workplace.

The Christian Right remained baffled i) by the secular culture's apparent unwillingness, on one hand, to offer school children firm moral guidance in matters of sexuality, truthfulness, honesty, and patriotism while, on the other hand, ii) proving ever-so-eager to engineer the smallest details of the economy. Why should conscientious, hardworking law-abiding citizens be penalized by mazes of government regulations? Why should the irresponsible, the lazy, and the unpatriotic be rewarded by those same public institutions?

VI

Finally, the assumption that all successful societies need to operate within a framework of common assumptions constitutes the fourth cornerstone.

Since the Western Jewish-Christian tradition has provided an eminently workable premise for the United States for the better part of four centuries, it makes no sense to undermine these premises by legitimating alien ones.

The key issue is not so much what would be permitted as what would be legitimated. Many, perhaps most members of the Christian Right feel that it is one thing to permit dissidents to live in peace, quite another to say that any set of values is just as good, or just as functional, as any other set.

Conclusion

To outline the world-view of the Christian Right in terms of these four cornerstones is not enough, however. We must also take note of the Christian Right's sense that traditional Christians find themselves under siege. Simply stated, Christian civilization has to be defended against outside attack. Many perils loom, but those posed by the secular media, the public schools, and the enemies of the traditional family seem especially sinister.

The Christian Right bitterly complains about the way that traditional Christians are overlooked, if not caricatured, in network newscasts, situation comedies, and mass circulation periodicals. They note, for example, that nearly half of the American families routinely bow their heads to offer thanks before eating, yet such simple rituals of traditional piety almost never show up on TV, except in contexts of ridicule.

Moreover, the Christian Right objects to the way that their children are manipulated in the public schools. Some of the Christian Right's objections center upon the watering-down of old-fashioned academic standards, but the heart of its concern lies in the "values clarification movement." To the Christian Right, the movement does not simply "clarify values," it leads children and teenagers to believe that their parents' ideals are ephemeral constructions of time and place, and thus replaceable at will.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, the traditional family finds itself besieged on all fronts. The media and the schools do their part, but the most pernicious assault stems from government policies that encourage abortion, divorce, and fatherless families. If millions saw the Equal Rights Amendment as a threat, not a boon, to the security of ordinary women, it was because the ERA promised to corrode the only tethers that kept men firmly bound to the responsibilities of home and hearth.

Guiding Student Discussion

Most issues that high school history teachers deal with lend themselves to some measure of debate, but few engender such heated opinions as the cultural significance of the Christian Right. One might begin by noting that the study of the Christian Right offers an almost laboratory-perfect case study of how to deal with a controversial religious movement in a manner that is both critical in a scholarly sense yet fair to its adherents. Part of the problem for historians is the chronological and geographical proximity of the Christian Right. How should historians treat a movement that literally swirls all around them? Beyond that, however, the explosiveness of the Christian Right as a topic of study stems from the fact that it trades upon intensely felt concerns—preeminently issues of family, sexuality, freedom of speech, and social cohesion. The goal is not to defuse students' passions about these matters but to redirect them toward productive understanding.

The best way to achieve this understanding, I suggest, is to trace the fundamental concerns of the Christian Right back to the late nineteenth century and the political configurations of that era. Though the following model requires numerous refinements, it is still useful to think of the Republican Party as an agent of morality, and the Democratic Party as an agent of justice. The Republican Party perennially sought to implement in the legal and cultural institutions of the age a vision of a hardworking, churchgoing citizenry—men and women who lived by universal standards of personal uprightness. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, sought to implement a vision of equitable sharing of the nation's resources and an acceptance of social and cultural diversity as a positive good. It would be risky, of course, to argue for direct lines of continuity for these parties from the Gilded Age to the 1990s. Even so, it does help to see the Christian Right not as an aberration but as a vigorous (or virulent, depending on one's point of view) reaffirmation of a strongly normative vision of America that has been vocalized at all levels of the culture for at least a century.

Secondly, I urge you to remind students that the broader evangelical tradition, from which the Christian Right emerged, proved politically self-conscious and socially reformist from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century. (See the article "Evangelicalism, Revivalism, and the Second Great Awakening" in Divining America: Nineteenth Century.) Though evangelicals were as ideologically diverse then as they are now, there can be little doubt that many joined (if not led) the fight against slavery and the abuse of alcohol. Although the specific issues that the Christian Right has focused upon in the 1990s have changed—abortion, homosexuality, gun control, prayer in the schools—the important point to note is that a determination to reach out and construct or reconstruct society in terms of a larger image of human good has remained constant. One does not need to agree with all or even any of the Christian Right's prescriptions in order to see how profoundly American its missionary-like activism really is.

Historians Debate

Sometimes it seems that the only thing growing faster than the Christian Right is the torrent of books and articles about it. Theologians, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists have probed the movement from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. One common approach sees the movement in terms of right-wing radicalism, subversive at best, militant and dangerous at worst. Others depict the Christian Right more benignly as an effort to preserve real or perceived traditional values in the face of modernity in general and modern secularism in particular. Still others have sought to set the Christian Right in the context of global economic and cultural changes, focusing especially upon the secular state as the nemesis of God-fearing people everywhere.

Three volumes merit special notice:

• Political scientist Michael Lienesch, in Redeeming Politics (1993), offers a subtle and empathetic account of the Christian Right's beliefs and values. In crisp and accessible prose, Lienesch walks the reader through the Christian Right's notions of self, family (including sexuality and gender), politics, economics, political views of the American nation, America's relation to the world, and the end of time.

• William Martin, in With God On Our Side (1996), affords a particularly rich narrative of the emergence of the Christian Right in post–World War II evangelicalism, its vigorous mobilization in the 1970s, and its ability—and inability—to implement its vision in the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush White Houses. Martin combines a sociologist's awareness of the larger picture with a historian's feel for the nuances and contradictions embedded in the story.

• Finally, Piety and Politics, edited by Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Cromartie (1987), marshals a collection of scholarly articles and book chapters on the long-range background of the Christian Right, pieces by Christian Right spokesmen and evangelical critics of the Christian Right, and critical perspective essays by outsider theologians, sociologists, and historians.

- GW

Grant Wacker holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and is currently Professor of the History of Religion in America at the Duke University Divinity School. He is the author of Augustus H. Strong and the Dilemma of Historical Consciousness (1985) and is coeditor, with Edith Blumhofer and Russell P. Spittler, of Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism (1999). He is working on two books: a monograph to be titled Heaven Below: Pentecostals and American Culture, 1900-1925, and a survey textbook of American religious history with Harry S. Stout and Randall Balmer.

The Evolution of God: From Polytheism to Monotheism

The above diagram is an attempt to illustrate Wright’s account of

the evolution of the Judaeo-Christian God from ancient

Canaanite polytheism. |  click to enlarge

The EVOLUTION OF GOD:

from Polytheism to Monotheism

article link

by Nathan Fifield

May 2, 2022

[editorial additions or reformatting are mine - re slater]

The Bible is usually read as a grand narrative from creation to apocalypse. This straight-forward reading presents some paradoxes. For example, the Biblical God commands wrathful genocides alongside loving forgiveness. At times He demands uncompromising nationalism and at other times He promotes generous universalism.

For centuries, armies of apologists have been busy justifying these paradoxes, anxious to clear up doubts that could arise about the divine origins of Bible. Robert Wright’s monumental book The Evolution of God gives a much simpler explanation for God’s schizophrenic nature: the God of the Bible is actually an amalgamation of different Canaanite gods. According to Wright the Bible is a selectively edited compilation of sacred middle eastern texts and traditions forged together into a cohesive narrative

i) by Jewish scholars during the Babylonian captivity (697 BC) and then

ii) added to by Christian fathers in the 3rd century AD. It was only during the Babylonian captivity that true monotheism emerged.

amazon link

Book Blurb (June 2009)

In this sweeping narrative that takes us from the Stone Age to the Information Age, Robert Wright unveils an astonishing discovery: there is a hidden pattern that the great monotheistic faiths have followed as they have evolved. Through the prisms of archaeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and are sure to cause controversy. He explains why spirituality has a role today, and why science, contrary to conventional wisdom, affirms the validity of the religious quest. And this previously unrecognized evolutionary logic points not toward continued religious extremism, but future harmony. Nearly a decade in the making, The Evolution of God is a breathtaking re-examination of the past, and a visionary look forward.

In Wright’s narrative, the Jews were actually much less genocidal than the Biblical narrative suggests they were. In the Old Testament, God is a wrathful champion of an ISIS-like nation cruising from victory to victory as long as they were loyal to Him. However Wright suggests that Israel was actually a loose coalition of polytheistic tribes fighting off gigantic empires surrounding them. Within this pressure cooker Israelites faced impossible decisions: whether to accept humiliating vassalage at the hands of oppressive empires or to stand bravely against them. Not everyone can relate to the genocidal Jews in the literal Biblical account. But everyone can relate to Wright’s narrative of a nation afflicted and beset by unresolvable dilemmas. Under these circumstances it’s easy to see how some of the more troubling views about God emerged. Israelis were always the “little guys,” but they were inspired by stories that made them and their God out to be just as great or greater than the ruthless empires they were forced to take on.

The above diagram is an attempt to illustrate Wright’s account of the evolution of the Judaeo-Christian God from ancient Canaanite polytheism. It is meant to be a kind of family tree with the ancestral gods depicted at the bottom and evolving over time to form the Holy Trinity at the top. Wright is quick to point out that this narrative is not universally accepted, especially among the religiously devout. Nevertheless it utilizes some of the more mainstream theories about the development of Judaeo-Christianity from the historical and archaeological perspective. And nothing in this account precludes belief in the divine origins of the Bible. In fact the emergence of monotheism from polytheism represents a kind of miracle in and of itself. The Jews were uniquely important in the history of the world and not because of dramatic miracles like the crossing of the Red Sea. They were, in a much more important sense, divinely inspired.

Canaan as a Syncretic Pressure Cooker

Wright argues that Judaeo-Christian monotheism evolved from Canaanite polytheism through a process called syncretism (wherein two or more gods combine to form a new god). Much of Wright’s book analyzes how and why this happened. My illustration attempts to show how the empires surrounding Canaan acted as a kind of imperial pressure cooker leading to new deity combinations not unlike the pressures inside a nuclear reactor which force individual particles to combine to form new ones.

The Ancient Canaanite Trinity:
Ywh (the flame), Baal (the husband), El (the father)

There were many deities in ancient Canaan, but three of them are central to the evolution of monotheism: Ywh, Baal, and El:

Ywh (also Yhwh or Yahweh) was originally a warrior god with transcendent attributes. He enters the archeological record as a deity of the Shasu people, a religious minority persecuted in Egypt who later settled in Southern Canaan (the possible origin of the Exodus story). I’ve illustrated Ywh as an upside down triangle in an attempt to show that he represents the transcendence of heaven coming down into the human heart as a “still small voice” or a “fire in the bones.” Elsewhere in the Bible Ywh takes the form of a burning bush or fire from heaven. I’ve therefore given Ywh the subtitle “the flame.”

Baal was a popular storm god who brought rain to farmers and fertility to families. Like Ywh, I’ve illustrated Baal as an upside down triangle because he is also a sky god who comes down from heaven. Baal is also the Hebrew name for “husband,” and in a sense the god Baal was the archetypal husband: protector, provider, and inseminator of the land. (See analysis of Psalm 29)

El was

• i) the head god in a large pantheon of sons, daughters and wives, and
• ii) a popular god in Northern Canaan, He was
• iii) a nomadic deity who dwelt in a tent or tabernacle, and
• iv) displayed the kind of patriarchal leadership that was emulated by kings and chieftains.

I’ve illustrated him as a right-side-up triangle to emphasize the fact that he acts within a hierarchy. (El is also the generic term for “god” in Hebrew, so it is sometimes confusing distinguishing between El Shaddai, the proper name for this god, Eloheim, the name for El’s pantheon, and el, the name used for god generically.)

The Archetypes Father, Husband, and Flame

Although Wright doesn’t go into this, I want to highlight the archetypal connotations of this ancient Canaanite trinity. The archetypes Father, Husband, and Flame are remarkably similar to the Catholic trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost:

El, the Father, and God the Father, [are] both the crown [ of] the hierarchies of their respective theologies. The “Son” in Catholic theology is often described as a husband or bridegroom, an archetype similar to the “husband” Baal. The Holy Ghost also has remarkable similarities to the Biblical depictions of Ywh as a flame of fire or a still small voice. While there may not be a direct link between these ancient deities and the development of the Catholic trinity, monotheistic conceptions of God seem to reflect many of the ancient polytheistic archetypes.

[re slater - the ancient biblical text had incorporated these imageries into itself which the later developing early church placed drafted into it's Nicean Creed in 325 AD and formally adopted in 381 AD at the Council of Constantinople irrespective of resulting "philosophic" arguments for and against the Trinity.]

Origins

• The belief in the Trinity emerged around 33-34 AD, shortly after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
• The term "Trinity" was first used by Tertullian, a church father who lived from around 160–225 AD.
• The New Testament passages that associate the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit include Matthew 28:19, which states "in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit".

Influences

• The Trinity doctrine has Pagan Egyptian-Semitic (Canaanite) roots, dating back to at least two centuries BC.
• The Neoplatonist Plotinus' triad of the One, Intellect, and Soul may have also influenced the Trinity.

Development

• The Trinity doctrine was brought into Christianity by the incipient, as-yet-unformed, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church Councils before the Great Schism of 1054 AD between Roman and Orthodox Faiths.
• The Trinity doctrine was central to many early Christian baptisms.

THE FIRST SYNCRETIC EVENT

Northern Ywh Worshippers + Southern El Worshippers

as Anit-Egypt Syncretic and Synchronising Alliances

There were two major syncretic events in ancient Canaan that were central to the formation of monotheism. One was a 9th century BC anti-Egyptian alliance between Ywh worshipers in the south and El worshipers in the north. This alliance may have been the origin of the covenant rites of Israelite worship wherein various tribes of Canaanites gathered together around important shrines to swear allegiance to El and appeal for his protection from their aggressive imperial neighbors. An anti-Egyptian alliance would make sense from the perspective of the Shasu, who had been persecuted by the Egyptians before. In this alliance El retains his position as the top god and Ywh becomes one of his sons (see Mark S. Smith analysis of Psalm 82 in Origins of Biblical Monotheism). El’s importance in Canaan was reduced after the Northern Kingdoms were carried away captive by the Assyrians in 722 BCE, the so called “lost ten tribes.”

The Shasu were Semitic-speaking, pastoral nomads from the Southern Levant, known to the ancient Egyptians as "nomads" or "Bedouin" who lived in the region to the east of Egypt, from the late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age.

re slater - Here's a more detailed explanation from AI....

Who they were:

The Shasu were a group of semi-nomadic people, possibly Bedouin, who lived by raising livestock and were known from Egyptian texts, wall reliefs, and monuments dating from the 18th Dynasty (circa 1550–1295 B.C.E.) through the Third Intermediate Period (circa 1069–747 B.C.E.).

Where they lived:

They inhabited the Southern Levant, an area to the east of Egypt, including regions like the Jezreel Valley, Ashkelon, Transjordan, and the Sinai.

How they were viewed by Egyptians:

The Egyptians viewed the Shasu as "nomads" or "Bedouin", and they were often portrayed as brigands or mercenaries.

Possible meaning of the term "Shasu":

The term "Shasu" is thought to be related to the Egyptian verb "to wander" or the Semitic word "to plunder," but the exact origin is uncertain.

"Shasu of Yahweh":

There are references in Egyptian texts to "the land of the Shasu of Yahweh," which are the oldest references found in any ancient texts to the God Yahweh outside of the Old Testament.

THE SECOND SYNCRETIC EVENT

The Israelite nations and the Phoenician Empire, 7th Century

The second major syncretic event occurred during a 7th century BC alliance between the Israelite nations and the Phoenician Empire. According to Wright this event influenced the merger of Baal and Ywh which happened not through cooperation but through competition. The Bible gives a dramatic account of this competition in 1 Kings which tells the story of a conflict between the Israelite King Ahab, his Queen Jezebel and the Prophet Elijah. Jezebel was a Phoenician princess loyal to Baal, and her marriage to the Israelite Ahab represented an important alliance with Phoenicia that would help fend off threats from the aggressive Assyrian Empire. This gave political clout to worshipers of Baal and marginalized those loyal to Ywh. The worshipers of Ywh refused to go down without a fight. Their prophets decried the alliance and attempted to demonstrate that not only was Ywh a better god than Baal, he could also best Baal at his own game: bring rain in times of drought and stave off an Assyrian onslaught without the help of the Phoenicians. This conflict is depicted in the famous contest between the priests of Baal and Elijah. While this story was written long after it had supposedly occurred, it is nevertheless a remarkable illustration of the political situation at the time. Ywh upped his game, taking on the attributes of Baal in addition to his own so that he could be touted as a legitimate substitute for those who were partial to Baal and his generative powers.

Josiah

If there is any figure that comes closest to embodying the ugly Biblical violence celebrated in the Book of Joshua and elsewhere it is the Jewish king Josiah (641–610 BCE), who slaughtered the priests of other gods and enforced the complete domination of the cult of Ywh. While his reforms didn’t survive his reign, his accomplishments were celebrated by later Jewish scholars during the Babylonian captivity who recast him as a reformer reinstating an ancient monotheism laid down by the legendary prophets Moses and Abraham.

THE THIRD SYNCRETIC EVENT

The Babylonian Captivity and a New Monotheism

The Babylonian captivity is the most important event in the creation of Jewish monotheism:

During the captivity Jewish scholars compiled and edited what would become today’s Old Testament. Traditions associated with each of the three gods (Ywh, Baal, and El) were combined into a cohesive narrative and the three gods became one: a new, all powerful deity who wasn’t just better than the gods of other nations but was in fact the only God in existence.

Exactly how this happened is the subject of much controversy but the most well known theory is called the documentary hypothesis. While many of the details of the documentary hypothesis are disputed, historians generally agree that there were various factions among the exiled Jews, each loyal to different traditions and conceptions of God. Their contributions resulted in a Biblical God who is quite diverse, at times nationalistic and at times internationalist, both pro-ritual and anti-ritual, both interventionist and non-interventionist, etc.

WIKIPEDIA DIAGRAMS

re slater - JPED is an older theory which has been displaced by similar contemporary theories more in line with this article here:

Wikipedia diagrams of 20th century documentary hypothesis:

J - Yahwist (10th–9th century BCE)[1][2]

E - Elohist (9th century BCE)[1]

Dtr1 - Early (7th century BCE) Deuteronomist historian

Dtr2 - Later (6th century BCE) Deuteronomist historian

P* - Priestly (6th–5th century BCE)[3][2]

D† - Deuteronomist

R - Redactor

DH - Deuteronomistic history (books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings)

Complicating the picture is the fact that Babylon was overtaken by the Persian Empire during the period of the captivity. The Persians allowed the Jews return to their homeland, but not without pressing the Jews to adopt a more globalist outlook. The Persians granted their people local control throughout the empire but wouldn’t tolerate belligerence. The so called “priestly source” of the documentary hypothesis was likely a pro-Persian faction among the Jews, one that emphasized the international, universal aspects of God as opposed to the nationalist Ywh. The priestly source uses El, not Ywh as God’s name and narrates stories from Elohist tradition like the story of Abraham.

In my chart I attempt to illustrate the Elohist emphasis during the captivity by enlarging the right-side-up triangle of El and merging it with Ywh’s upside-down triangle to create a new “star of David.”

THE FOURTH SYNCRETIC EVENT

The Evolution of Christianity

Jesus was a messianic Jew crucified by the Romans. However it wasn’t obvious to his followers what his death and resurrection was supposed to mean. There were many early versions of Christianity and they had widely divergent views. Robert Wright examines three main branches: Ebionite Christianity, Marcionism, and Pauline Christianity.

The Ebionites denied that Jesus was divine in any way. He was a messiah for the Jewish people and Christians were to continue to obey the Jewish laws of the Old Testament. Thus for Ebionite Christians, Jewish conceptions of God stayed intact.

Marcionism on the other hand held that Jesus had been sent by the true God and that he had defeated the evil god of the Old Testament. Therefore, the entire Jewish conception of God was to be done away with.

Somewhere in between the extremes of Marcionism and Ebionite Christianity is Pauline Christianity. A Jew himself, Paul believed that:

Jesus was the fulfillment of old Jewish law but that he did not overthrow the Jewish God.

Rather, Jesus was in some sense the God of both the Old and New Testament. This was a conception that would later evolve into the [pre-] Catholic Trinity.

Wright gives an extensive analysis as to why Pauline Christianity succeeded where other versions failed. Here is a brief summary:

"Christian missionaries relied initially on converts from the Jewish diaspora (which had occurred due to the collapse of the Alexandrian empire.) Jews scattered around the Hellenistic world were well regarded by the Greeks (who had also been scattered around the Mediterranean by the collapse of the Alexandrian empire). In fact many Greeks wanted to become Jews themselves although they balked at all the formal rules involved, particularly circumcision.Christianity was an attractive alternative. However Ebionite Christianity was too harsh and demanding, too much like existing Judaism. And Marcionism treated the Jews with contempt. In the end, Pauline Christianity represented a more ideal balance between Greek and Jewish culture.The newly baptized Greeks proclaimed that Jesus was “Socrates for the masses” and celebrated the God of both Old and New Testament as a single, universal Logos (stoicism) or One (neo-platonism)."

Wright’s thesis is informed by game theory and its notions of zero-sum and non-zero sum thinking. Both Marcionism and Ebionite Christianity were zero-sum religions. They either excluded the Jews or excluded the Gentiles. Pauline Christianity on the other hand was a non-zero sum phenomenon that allowed Greeks and Jews to come together in a way that enhanced the cultures and prospects of both groups.

Wright’s book goes on to discuss the development of Islam and skips over the development of the Catholic Trinity. At the top of my illustration however I’ve added a ven diagram with stocism and neo-platonism intersecting with Pauline Christianity. In my view, the Holy Trinity emerges from the combination of these three philosophical and religious traditions. This emergence was formalized by the great 4th and 5th century theologian St. Augustine. It’s a complicated topic I intend to cover more deeply in future posts. For this analysis I’ll only note that the Catholic conception of God was perhaps the greatest non-zero sum accomplishment of the human race up to that point. As Philosopher John Vervaeke points out, St. Augustine took the best philosophy (neoplatonic), the best theology (Christian), and the best psychology (stoic) of his day and melded it into a cohesive worldview so powerful that it would endure for over a thousand years, eventually giving birth to the modern world.