A year ago, Christians howled in outrage when they discovered that transgender Americans dared to affirm their value as human beings on Easter Sunday. Christian activists promised that, in response, they would elect Donald Trump as President, and that President Trump would do away with all public recognition of trans identity. They said that Election Day would be Christian Visibility Day.
They got what they wanted. Donald Trump won a narrow victory in the 2024 presidential election, with 49 percent of the vote.
Christian Nationalists now control all three branches of the federal government of the United States.
So now, every day in America is Christian Visibility Day. Every day, we see the cruelty and incompetence that comes when religion is allowed to take control of the government.
With Christians in control of the government, education is under attack.
With Christians in control of the government, food for the hungry and medicine for the sick is being canceled.
With Christians in control of the government, veterans are being turned away from the VA, national parks are closing down, and innocent people are being sent off to concentration camps without a trial, or even the chance to call a lawyer.
With Christians in control of the government, the pillars of democracy are being pulled down, allowing Donald Trump to take absolute power.
How could Christians go along with this descent into American totalitarianism?
To find an answer to that question, author F.G. Fitzer is going back to the source. In his new book series, The Demonic Bible, Fitzer is searching for the roots of Christian cruelty in America.
The Christian Bible is easy to find, of course, but one of the dirty secrets of Christianity is that most Christians haven’t actually read the Bible. They’ve just listened to preachers quoting specific passages that suit their agendas.
It’s hard to blame Christians for staying away from the Bible. Christians like to call the Bible the Greatest Story Ever Told, but the fact is that it’s culturally archaic, and linguistically dense.
Yet, present day Christian antagonism to democracy has its origin in the ideology that was articulated in the Christian Bible centuries and centuries ago. If we are going to address the problem of religious ruin in American public life, we need to confront that legacy.
Christians in power are persecuting people who live in the margins of society. That’s why F.G. Fitzer began the project of exploring the Bible from the perspective of the most marginalized characters in Christian ideology: The demons.
Fitzer explains: “Demons are like those men that Donald Trump shipped down to that infamous prison camp in El Salvador. They’re the ultimate foreigners, and so they’re made the scapegoats that demagogues can use to whip up fear and violence. Demons are those who dare to disobey the authoritarian power of the world’s ultimate tyrant: The Christian god”.
The Demonic Bible includes the original text of the Christian Bible, but under Fitzer’s pen, a demon named Rogatio interrupts the biblical narrative with questions about what it means. The demon appears as a simple cartoon character, and receives answers, of a sort, from cartoon angel named Fides Certum – faithful certainty. The angel and the demon begin a conversation that exposes the intellectual superficiality of the Bible, along with its sadistic moral code.
“Writing the Demonic Bible helped me to pay closer attention to what the Bible is really saying,” explains Fitzer. “What struck me is how closely the arrogant cruelty of Donald Trump resembles the cold sadism of the god of the Bible.”
This week, the first book of The Demonic Bible has been released for sale, but there are many more to come. The Bible, after all, is a big document, and a skeptical demonic commentary on the Bible only makes it longer. So, the first book in The Demonic Bible covers just the Book of Genesis. Don’t worry. There are more installments to come.
The next book in the Demonic Bible series is the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Christian New Testament. “I think it’s important for people reading the Bible to understand both where the narrative starts, and where it arrives at the end,” Fitzer says. “Too many people drop off after reading a few of their favorite parts of the Bible. They never make to the Book of Revelation, which is the book that most specifically connects Christian ideology to the realms of government and political action in which we see Christianity having its most substantial impact on the world. People who just read the Sermon On The Mount don’t understand how Christian Nationalism can be so cruel. The Book of Revelation explains that Christian cruelty.”
To allow a demon to have a voice in the Bible itself is blasphemy. So, it’s no surprise that Christian preachers across America are already protesting the publication of The Demonic Bible.
It’s worth remembering, however, that many of the same preachers are outraged at criticism of Donald Trump. They believe that Trump is an anointed prophet of God. Their devotion to the growing totalitarian cult of personality around Donald Trump is not a departure from their Christian faith. It is an expression of it.
“If you read the Bible with the skeptical mind of a demon,” F.G. Fitzer says, “you will soon realize that Christianity is at its core a cult of raw power. The best way to stand against the corruption of power is to adopt the perspective of the demons, the dissidents standing against Christianity’s divine autocracy.”