A grim example of using Christian fundamentalism to justify gruesome cruelty

In my recent sampling of conservative Christian podcasts, one I found is notably disturbing. It's on the podcast of one-time Christian contemporary music star Alisa Childers, an interview with a religious sort-of-scholar and entrepreneur Clay Jones on the topic, Why Did God Command the Canaanite Conquest? 03/14/2021. I'm linking to it because I'm posting about it but not embedding it. Because it's creepy. The teaser for it on Childers' YouTube channel uses this image:

For the "heathens" and "unchurched" out there, the conquest of Canaan refers to the Israelite (Hebrew) tribes taking control of the area that would become the Davidic kingdom of Israel. "As told by the [Biblical] Deuteronomist, the conquest of Canaan by Joshua and the Israelite tribes was swift and decisive." (Biblical literature: The conquest of Canaan Britannica Online)

Because of the very influential "Christian Zionist" trend among American Christian fundamentalists that more-or-less unconditionally supports and admires the hardcore rightwing in Israeli politics, how the fundis approach the concept of God's granting the Promised Land to the Hebrews in the Old Testament has a more specific contemporary political meaning.

For the most part, even the most devout believers don't have a lot of trouble understanding that traditional stories handed down from the dawn of the Iron Age, which occurred in the Mediterranean region roughly circa 1200-550 BCE, bear some strange and unpleasant signs of the times in which they lived.

So while most Christians and Jews would find some of the actions taken or ordered by God as reported in the Scriptures to be appalling by modern religious and humanitarian standards, many of them either don't dwell on it much or read the stories as symbols and analogies of some kind. Walter Benjamin in his famous Critique of Violence essay, for instance, took the dramatic story of Korah, who rebelled against the leadership of Moses during the long trek to Canaan described in the Scriptures, as a representation of an important aspect of the nature of law. Gustave Doré created a dramatic picture of how Korah ended up:

And, hey, who doesn't occasionally think it would be convenient if the earth would just swallow up people who annoy you?

But Christian fundamentalists face the particular problem of claiming that the Christian Bible is not only divinely inspired but literally the direct words of God infallibly preserved in the version of the Bible they are using. (The Prophet Mohammed had to settle for direct transmission of the Qur'an from the Archangel Gabriel [Jibril].)

Which gets to why Jones' account more-or-less endorsed by Childers in this video is so disturbing. They focus on whether it was just for God to command the Hebrews, as recounted in the Bible, to "not let a soul remain alive" (!) among specified Canaanite tribes. (Deuteronomy 20: 16-18) Jones describes at some length the sins, particularly sexual sins, of which the Canaanites were guilty. And is pretty emphatic in justifying the slaughter of children. It's just gross. He even uses the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is in Genesis and describes events long before the post-Exodus conquest of Canaan, in order to share his opinion of what disgusting sluts Lot's daughters were. And the heavy ethnonationalist element he wraps into that explanation along with crude psychological assumptions is hard to overlook.

For anyone taking this discussion seriously as anything but fringe fundamentalism, their commentary on what counts as genocide today is strikingly uniformed, at best. (Rafael Lemkin is credited with coining the term "genocide" in 1944.)

I'm discussing that podcast because it's a good example of how some of the uglier characters in the conservative Christian orbit work with some grim, seriously inhumane sentiments and model grotesque attitudes in the form of religious interpretation.

I would argue that this is an inherent problem for a literalist, fundamentalist version of Christianity. Which is a big part of why authoritarians are so often attracted to fundamentalism. This kind of story is a favorite talking point for village atheists as well as the more highbrow New Atheist variety. But even very conservative versions of Christianity can avoid or mitigate this kinds of conclusion. Very importantly, the Bible is heavily filtered in almost all churches through ministers and teachers, who would generally rather not try to talk through theological/philosophical questions of "theodicy," the origin of evil.

For another, the Christian religion generally embraces the notion that Jesus inaugurated a New Covenant with humanity, to replace (or at least hugely supplement) the original divine covenant with Israel as the Chosen People. So even in the broadest concept, Christians already accept that God officially made a reset of how he would relate to humanity. So, unpleasant Old Testament models of conduct can be fairly easily dismissed by arguing that they were officially updated with the New Testament.

In reality, mainstream Catholic and Protestant Biblical scholars have little problem with incorporating the findings of historians, archaeologists, and textual critics who recognize that in terms of actual history, there is limited material evidence for the conquest of Canaan as described in the Old Testament. Or for the Exodus out of Egypt, for that matter.

None of that makes it any less sickening how Clay Jones uses a crude fundamentalist to justify deliberate killing of civilians, very specifically including children. He even makes the argument that the Hebrews were doing the Canaanite children a favor to put them to death because it meant they (probably) all went to Heaven. And at least some in his audience will have no problem in applying that alibi to contemporary situations. This is sick stuff. With sadistic smiles included during the telling.