Didache 1.1-6 (circa. 50-80 A.D.) perhaps the earliest post-biblical Christian teaching - indisputably the oldest extant written catechism - and part of my church's Apostolic Fathers collection (i.e. the Sacred Tradition I always bang on about!):
The Lord’s Teaching to the Gentiles by the Twelve Apostles:
What these maxims [of Jesus] teach is this: You must love those who hate you and then you will have no enemies
I am in concurrence with @Armoured and @Sunstone regarding the better comparison that can be drawn between the Evangelical leadership and the Pharisees or Sadducees, as opposed to Judas.
They are less "betrayers" of Christ than they are de facto opponents of his ethical system (as we can reconstruct it from the gospels and other early extra-canon literature), and proclaimers of a faux religiosity, which has become ever more distant from the high standard of charity and humanity demanded by the 'law of liberty' in the New Testament.
When I read Jesus's denunciation of the Pharisees' proselytizing behaviour,
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. Woe to you, blind guides." (Matt 23:15-16)....it reminds me a little of....ahem.
As for the followers, many are obviously well-meaning and pious believers in Christianity, who are striving to lead morally upstanding lives and make the world a better place. It's just a pity that a lot of them seem to listen to their pastors and vote for politicians who are anything but animated by the spirit of Jesus.
And what is that spirit? The Epistula Apostolorum (140 - 150 A.D.), described by the scholar Ron Cameron as "a fine piece of Catholic Christian polemics", references an alleged agraphon (extra-biblical teaching) of Jesus:
The Epistula Apostolorum: Epistle of the Apostles
And Jesus said unto us: Verily I say unto you, that I have obtained the whole power of my Father, that I may bring back into light them that dwell in darkness...and that I may loose them that are in fetters.
[For] I am the hope for them that are in despair, the helper of them that are helpless, the treasure of the poor, the doctor of the sick, and the resurrection of the dead.
To be the liberator of those in chains - whether meant physicallly, spiritually or in terms of those imprisoned by social exclusion, discrimination or prejudice - the hope of the desperate, the helper of the helpless, the patron of the needy and the carer of the ill....anything which deviates from this is not the spirit of Christ.
I guess I can only label it "Anti-Christ".
there are only two factions along the spectrum of service. service to self or service to all as self. labels mean nothing. it is the action of the spirit that enlivens, catalyzes a thing. the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
a servant is sent to serve others and not to serve the ego. the action is either to empower or enslave, by their fruit we know them.
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