The Rant Will Not Be Televised

“Of all bad men, religious bad men are the worst.”—C. S. Lewis

Given the current state of affairs, The Rant has been thinking about C. S. Lewis and his view of the Reformation.¹  And really, who hasn’t?

Lewis noted that believing the Reformation was about permitting religious liberty and freedom of conscience is a fairy tale. John Calvin fled France to escape charges of heresy that would have lead to certain death and arrived in Geneva, helping to transform the city into a Protestant theocracy. He was only too happy to support the arrest of Michael Severtus, the wrong kind of heretic,² and have him condemned to death. People on Team Calvin argue he asked the city council to have Severtus killed by the sword instead of burned at the stake, trying to cast the cranky theologian as some sort of merciful angel.

Lewis pointed out the Reformation was about gaining the levers of secular power to enforce a particular vision of Christian doctrine. Period. The idea of creating a state that allowed a plurality of religious views and ensured the protection of all of them would come much, much later.

We currently live in an identical reality, where the state has replaced the church as the arbiter of truth, behavior, and social reality. All sides now contend to grab the reigns of governance to impose their version of the ideal state on everyone else. To think your party or institution or social affiliation currently seeks an honest conversation about extending even the most basic rights to all is a fairy tale of its own.

For the last decade these warring factions determined that if they spent more money, expressed more outrage, wept louder at their victimhood, and painted the darkest vision of what would happen if they did not prevail, victory would be theirs.

But that never materialized. So everyone switched gears and decided the only solution was to silence all dissent, that the true prize of power was retribution and coercion wrapped in the rhetoric of freedom and security. Jimmy Kimmel learned this the hard way this week. After zero consequences for the disgusting and gleeful reaction to the assassination of Minnesota lawmakers by the right, Kimmel found his show pulled from the air after making comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Simply because those with Kimmel’s point of view don’t currently control the FCC.

Everyone understands and embraces the hypocrisy, and the idea that new leadership will produce a new tolerance for difference is naive. If you remove the names of those being demonized, the language of all factions currently sounds identical. Because those that believe in the salvation of a coercive state have all become religious bad men; the battle now is about who gets to light the matches and burn their opposition. Historically, The Rant sees a future where no real conversation about a just America will happen until all sides have been equally reduced to ashes.

1. The Rant refers to the historical Lewis, not the cartoonish icon created by American Evangelicals to slap a patina of intellectual heft to their shoddy arguments. Let’s just begin with the fact Lewis abhorred the mixing of politics and religion. Evangelicals cherry pick their favorite Lewis quote and use it to justify every morally bankrupt conclusion they reach. You know, just like how they use the Bible.
2. Without making your head explode, Severtus thought it was nonsense to believe in one God that was three Gods, and rejected the idea of the Trinity, although he was a passionate and gracious Christian. He was also the first European to accurately describe pulmonary circulation, spoke several languages, and made maps. But by all means, tell The Rant more about how you spend every waking hour playing Baldur’s Gate.