To make matters worse, when Brett Barker was confronted about his use of the pamphlets, from Capitol Ministries, to push religious ideology into state government, he found that he wasn’t able to respond to his colleagues’ complaints. That’s because Brett Barker didn’t bother to read the religious publication himself before he tried to shove it down everybody else’s throats.

It’s an all-too-common characteristic of toxic Christianity that those Christian believers who most fervently insist upon the need of all people to obey the Bible are the least likely to have actually read the Bible themselves.

Breaking through this bizarre dynamic is one of the goals of a new book from author F.G. Fitzer with the provocative title The Demonic Bible. Fitzer wrote The Demonic Bible because he wants more people to actually read the Christian Bible, rather than assuming that they know what’s in the ancient book.

“Writing The Demonic Bible was a great way for me to read the Christian Bible in a focused way, paying close attention to what it says, and what it doesn’t say,” Fitzer explains.

One of the misconceptions that The Demonic Bible exposes is the idea that the Christian Bible establishes a model of marriage that can only be between one man and one woman. In fact, throughout the Book of Genesis, followers of God routinely are married to more than one person. Abraham had an open marriage, for example, having two wives himself and repeatedly encouraging his first wife, Sarah to get married to local rulers whenever the couple traveled through foreign lands.

“There’s a lot of sex in the Christian Bible,” commented Fitzer. “It’s kind of weird to see so many Christian Nationalists pushing to have copies of the Bible in public elementary school classrooms, because the text is practically pornographic. Christian activists say that they are worried about grooming, but the Christian Bible itself is a groomers’ handbook.”

Would Representative Brett Barker agree with this assessment? He might, if he actually read the Bible, instead of just trying to use the Bible as a political weapon.

Would Barker consider handing out copies of The Demonic Bible to his colleagues in the Iowa State Legislature? It’s hard to say, but it’s clear that the publishers of the Political Leaders Weekly Bible Study newsletter wouldn’t be on board with such a plan.

The issue that Barker handed out warned that, “The schemes of the devil, we will see, are spiritual in nature but are manifest on earth through his pawns – non-believers.”

How soon will Brett Barker introduce anti-demon legislation to protect the vulnerable people of Iowa… perhaps a bill to censor The Demonic Bible?

In spite of the clear hints toward a homosexual lifestyle of Jesus, most American Christians today reject homosexuality, depicting it as a terrible sin. They use the Bible’s rare passages about sex to patch together a thin excuse of hatred toward anything other than a male-dominated heterosexuality.

At the same time, they want to seize the power of government to force their bigoted religion at children across the United States, compelling teachers to post the Ten Commandments and teach from the Bible in public schools.

What if, in response, teachers taught passages from the Bible in which there are signs of homosexual love affairs? What if public school teachers displayed the following poster, depicting Jesus and Judas as the “hottest gay lovers in the Bible”?

You know what would happen. Christian Nationalists don’t actually want the Christian Bible to be taught honestly. They aren’t willing to consider the true breadth of Christian ideology. Their toxic Christianity will only allow for speech and education about a narrow, right wing extremist version of Christian beliefs.

Why do Christians want to punish sorcerers by throwing them into a lake of fire, when its own prophet Jesus is described in the bible as practicing magic?

Why would anyone want to join a religion that seeks to burn people for having sex and independent minds?

The Christian bible is the world’s most influential source of violence, cruelty, and hatred of freedom.

I sincerely appreciate that progressive Christians are willing to take a step forward and recognize that there’s a lot going on in the name of Christianity that’s cruel and stupid. I thank them for trying to take a stand against cruelty and stupidity.

That said, I have to wonder where these people get their ideas about what Christianity is.

Have they not paid attention to history? Centuries of horrors have been inflicted on the world by Christians, both as individual and through Christian organizations.

Have these progressive Christians not read the Christian bible? Both the Old Testament and New Testament teach people to be brutal to each other.

Yes, there are nice bits of Christian history, and restfully kind passages in the Christian bible, but all around those parts are

Christians might ask themselves: How can we reconcile the loving, peaceful Jesus with the wrathful, narcissistic, violent, toxic Jesus? They’re presuming that there is one true, authentic Christianity, and somehow, all of the contradictory parts from Christian history can be put together into a coherent union that’s beautiful and sensible and just the best story ever told.

Realistic Christians are going to have to give that ambition up, if they’re going to be honest. It’s as clear as day that Christianity is not one single thing. It isn’t one great story, written by a god who knew what he was doing all along.

Christianity is a mish mash hodge podge train wreck of a narrative that was written by committee.

Actually, that’s not fair. Christianity is a mish mash hodge podge train wreck of a narrative that was written by many committees over thousands of years.

If ever there truly did exist a person named Jesus, anything that person actually said was rewritten and redacted by Christians over the centuries before it became “The Bible” to the point that nothing of the original material remains.

Christianity promotes both violence and non-violence. Christianity promotes both tolerance and intolerance. Christianity promotes both obedience and rebellion. That’s because Christianity is a collection of dogmas created over a long period of time by a whole bunch of different people who had very different agendas.

So, yes, Jesus is written in the Christian bible as saying to turn the other cheek. However, the same Christian bible also says that Jesus made death threats against his enemies.

But the same Christian bible also represents Jesus as saying “I have not come to bring peace, but the sword.”

Update that to present-day weaponry technology, and the Christian bible has Jesus saying: “I have not come to bring peace. I have come to bring guns.”

I’m not pointing this out because I love the idea of guns. Guns are nasty machines designed to kill. People who love guns have hateful hearts.

I’m saying this because I’m sick and tired of Christians pretending that Christian Nationalism is not Christian. I’m sick of seeing Christians using Jesus as a cudgel to batter non-Christians with, and then pretending that Jesus was the Prince of Peace, a perfect embodiment of non-violence.

The truth is that there is a great deal of ugliness, hate, and violence within Christianity. That’s why Christian Nationalists are so ugly, hateful, and violent. Christian Nationalists get inspiration for their cruelty and intolerance from Christianity, and often from the purported words of Jesus.

If progressive Christians really want to confront Christian Nationalism, that’s great. I suggest they begin by acknowledging that the problem begins with their religion.

Will they have the courage to reform their religion, or will they just keep pretending that the problem of Toxic Christianity does not exist?