What would Jesus do about religion's evolution?

Listening to a glorious Christmas concert, my thoughts turned to how religion has come to dominate the news of the 21st century in ways I would never have dreamed as a youngster growing up in the clapboard Baptist church of my North Dakota family.

That news is not uniformly good. Some of it is bizarre, or merely tragic.

One cannot help but wonder what Jesus would think of today's religion that bears his name, let alone the other two monotheistic religions that emerged from his homeland.

Certainly there is no peace on the troubled earth that we call the Holy Land. Nearly a quarter century ago, I produced a television documentary I called "Holy Land, Bloody Ground," for which I journeyed to the Middle East. If the ground was bloody in 1982, it is saturated in blood today, and all three monotheistic religions have a hand in the carnage.

We kill, they kill, we all kill in the name of God. Christians are squeezed from the birthplace of Jesus by militant Zionist Israelis on one side and Islamic militants on the other. Ironically, Christian fundamentalists are egging this on in hopes that it will trigger the Rapture, when the chosen will have box seats as unbelievers are barbequed by a righteous God.

Not to be outdone, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad favors an Islamic version of the End Times in which he nukes Israel and prompts the return of the Mahdi, a prophet of particular importance to Shiites.

In Iraq, devastated by a war prosecuted by right-wing Christian politicians in league with neoconservative Zionists, an Islamic theocracy is likely to result, widening divisions within the region and putting women back in their proper place behind veils and walls.

Even in this country, sometimes cited as the most religious in the Western world, the body of Christ is torn and tossed from one extreme to another.

Episcopalians, a denomination that in my youth was associated with an upper class viewed only from afar, are splitting on the question of homosexuality. To accommodate their homophobia, some American parishes are turning to a Nigerian bishop, the fruit of 19th-century Anglican evangelism in Africa.

In a peculiar religious soap opera, the family of America's Protestant icon, Billy Graham, is caught up in a bizarre debate over where the esteemed evangelist is to be buried — although he has not had the good grace to die, bless his heart.

Graham's son, Franklin, who claims the mantle of evangelist leader but shows none of the compassion or humanity of his father, wants to bury Graham and his wife (also undead) in a strange memorial in Charlotte, N.C., that novelist and Graham friend Patricia Cornwell calls "a mockery."

It is, indeed, somewhat bizarre, a Disneylike barn and silo where visitors are greeted by a talking cow. Graham's younger son sides with Graham's wife, who wants their burial places to be simple graves near their rural home.

This drama is symbolic of what has come upon the Christian faith in this country. Summed up, many modern churches are modeled more closely on Adam Smith than Saint Peter. Franklin Graham is an entrepreneur, in the manner of Jerry Falwell, Billy James Hargis and a host of market-driven preachers. His dad did well financially, but it is extraordinarily hard to imagine him wanting to be remembered by a talking cow. As Cornwell told him, the whole affair is a travesty.

How much of today's commercialized religion is just that?

How many of Christianity's battles are fought to build market share? It would seem the moneychangers have returned to the temple along with disgraced evangelists, pedophile priests and intolerance.

When the next Congress convenes in January, a Muslim congressman-elect from Minneapolis will swear his oath on the Quran. From the reaction of the Christian right and its talk-radio acolytes, one would think he was planning to swear on a portrait of Satan — or at least Saddam. "One nation under God" has come in recent years to mean "One nation under my God."

Having achieved political power here and abroad, Christians, Muslims and Jews squander it by reaching for more. Christ, were he here today, might identify with penitents of all three religions, people of good will and good works of charity and brotherhood.

But I suspect he would shun many of their self-righteous leaders who have sold their birthright for a pittance of political or financial power and who kill in God's name.

They are giving religion a bad name.

Floyd J. McKay, a journalism professor emeritus at Western Washington University, is a regular contributor to Times editorial pages. E-mail him at floydmckay@yahoo.com