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How do these two words, ecology and spirituality, go together? That’s a really valid question because Christianity hasn’t done a great job of incorporating ecology and spirituality. In fact, Christianity has been one of the worst offenders of Creation care. There are three main reasons for this.
The first is a misinterpretation of a verse in Genesis. Remember the first Creation story where God creates all the things. and at the end God says, let’s create human beings and give them dominion over the Earth?
Well a lot of folks have missed the point. The people of the ancient world lived in a very precarious time. They were deeply dependent upon the land and they needed to subdue it not just to eat, but to survive. So there was this ancient understanding reflected by the Bible that the earth was something that needed to be as controlled as possible.
Fast forward. This ancient dominion never meant we get to pollute the earth just because we can; it never meant we don’t need to care about reducing carbon emissions because we have dominion. That is bad theology, and it is destructive theology. And it’s destroying our planet.
A second reason Christian are Creation care offenders is because Christianity has tended to be pretty otherworldly. A whole lot of sects of Christianity are so concerned with what happens after this life, they’ve forgotten to let their actions be good in the here and now. Focusing on the otherworldly shows a misunderstanding of Jesus’ primary teaching, which was about the reign of God, the realm of God, the kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven—on earth. He was talking about a vision for the future that we create by living in harmony with each other and our natural world now.
And the third reason is imminent eschatology. That’s a mouthful that means some Christians have long held the belief that the world is going to end soon anyhow. It is true the earliest Christians thought the world was going to end within their own lifetime. You can look at Paul to see evidence of that. Some people believe Jesus was an apocalypticist who thought the world was going to end. So some sects of Christianity have said that in order for the End Times to come, and bring the second arrival of Christ, we actually need to make this world unlivable so Jesus has no choice but to show up again. Do we even have to say that’s bad theology?
These are three key reasons Christianity hasn’t been the environmental leader it can be. We have practiced bad theology, and we haven’t adequately called out why it’s bad theology and how it harms both the earth and people. We really need to move on to something more helpful. And we can.
We can look at the Bible and recognize the kinds of lives that people were actually living in ancient times. We can look at the Creation story and see that God didn’t stop, but God looked out at all of creation and called it good. Throughout the Hebrew Bible we see evidence of God being called the Creator of all things, the god of Heaven and Earth, of all Creation. We can see that humanity is entrusted with its care to keep it good and healthy.
And if we look at Jesus’ ministry, we see an itinerant preacher who spent most of his time outside, going from one place to the next, dependent upon the earth and the hospitality of others, preaching outside and using examples from nature to teach us about God. Think about his many parables—the mustard seed and the fig tree; the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. Jesus told us that God is best known through the natural world, through that which we see.
In the beautiful Psalm 146, the psalmist looks out at all creation and is inspired to burst into a spontaneous song of joy. The psalmist says something very interesting here. After declaring the God of all things, the maker of this incredible Earth, and the beautiful land and the sea and all that is within, the psalmist immediately moves into issues of justice. He declares: you are the God who cares for the oppressed, you are the God who ensures people are fed when they are hungry, you are the God who ensures there is release of captives, you are the God who cares about the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. The psalmist connects climate justice to all these other justice issues because climate justice is also a spiritual issue.
Being eco-spiritual integrates faith in climate justice. It calls us to care for the earth because it affects other human beings created in the image of God. Being eco-spiritual recognizes the environmental harm done to communities on the margins where food and water and homes are threatened and land is targeted for toxic waste dumping.
Eco-spirituality, like the psalmist said, is this integration of living things. Christians ought to be at work in the world proclaiming God’s justice by uplifting this wonderful creation God has made. That is why ecology and spirituality ought to be intimately intertwined. May we go forth from this place today ready to proclaim that ecology and spirituality, that faith and climate justice, are tied together.
We’ve heard the story of Genesis since our earliest childhoods. God created the land and seas and all the creatures that would swim, fly, and roam. Including us humans. “God saw that it was good” and blessed all, “Be fruitful and multiply.”
Indeed we have.
There is not much in this world that we might call a miracle, but the world itself definitely is. And we humans have only been a part of our 4.5-billion-year-old Earth for about 6 million years—a relative blink of an eye. Yet in our brief appearance here, we have managed to so deeply disturb the balance essential to all life on the planet that we’ve put Creation at great risk. We are destroying a miracle.
The impact is right before our eyes—if we choose to see. Increasingly frequent and destructive storms and forest fires destroy homes, wildlife, and take lives. Expanding deserts decrease land that can grow food; major cities are running out of water; reefs and sea life are devastated in warming oceans. The impact of climate change falls more squarely and devastatingly on the shoulders of those who already have little. People are being displaced as we watch God’s green Earth start to come apart at the seams.
It begs the question for those who consider ourselves Christian, “What is a Christian response to the reality of climate change?”
Let’s start “in the beginning…” The Creation Story is a sage tale about God, humanity, all of Creation, and our relationship to each other. In Genesis 2:5 we are told humanity’s role in Creation is to be caregivers of it, to “keep it.” The biblical Hebrew Šāmar [shaw-mar’] typically means “to keep” in a very particular way: specifically to look over it, to protect it, to preserve it. This biblical directive is a call to be in right and protective relationship of this miracle in which we live.
But some have interpreted “to keep” differently and dangerously. Christian Dominionists say humans have dominion over nature and the planet and have biblical “permission” (even a directive) to subdue it. They believe we can do with our Earth what we want, even at the expense of caring for it. They will say it shows a lack of complete faith or trust in God to not simply understand that God will take care of the Creation “that He created” no matter how much we harm it.
It’s time to stop relying on some mystical plan when the miracle of the Earth under our feet is facing catastrophic threat. God calls us to Wisdom, to rational thinking and logical pursuits, made so clear in the book of Proverbs (1:20) as Wisdom stands in the crossroads calling out to each of us. It’s time we take biblical Wisdom seriously, embrace the insights of contemporary science to protect our Earth, and ensure its integrity and sustainability.
Science is not a threat to faith, quite the opposite. Science compels us to reconsider and reengage with the wisdom of our sacred story. When we embrace the wisdom of science, we learn how to better live into our call to be caregivers of the Earth. Some in the church distort modern science by conjuring up useful untruths, like denying humans are responsible for climate change, to control vulnerable Christians. That motivation is religion wrapped in the politics of greed and profit. That is the threat to our faith. That is the opposite of Wisdom. Let us never forget, we are told Wisdom is that in which God daily delights, and when we practice it, God delights in us daily. (Proverbs 8:30)
Wisdom tells us we love God by loving our Earth. Failing this love is “causing the little children on the planet to stumble” and unable to thrive as God intends. [Matthew 18:6] Caring for Creation means embracing science. Caring for Creation also means our actions matter—from reducing red meat consumption, curbing our throw-away culture, driving less when we can, and voting for leaders who commit to curbing climate change.
Some may tell you there is no “Plan B.” They are wrong. We ARE Plan B. As Christians caring for Creation and each other, we can commit to live into this call more boldly, that we might stop our destruction and play a part in creating Heaven here on Earth.
People ask, “What can I do as an individual about our current climate crisis and ecological excess?” It’s a great question to ask, but this question can actually bypass some needed understandings and needed changes within us. In other words, the question, “how can I change the situation?” can unintentionally lead us to miss this better question: “how can I change so I bring a better version of myself to our current situation?”
For some reason, as much as this very question seems to be a perfect fit our Christian communities, it’s often people who are not engaged in the church who are the ones standing up for Creation.
A lot of Christians have tried to use the Bible to find reasons to justify heating up the planet; to justify the loss of 70% of animal species since 1970; to explain away the increase in wildfires, droughts, floods and other dangerous weather events. Humans have always looked to something bigger than themselves for explanations for our messes. But when it comes to climate change, we’re the problem. Climate change is now a human made climate crisis bringing upheaval and making a lot of bad problems worse—refugee crises, malnutrition, water scarcity, disease, poverty, biodiversity loss, deforestation, air pollution… It’s an irrefutable fact that climate change is one of the most systemic environmental threats humankind has ever faced. Denying it doesn’t change that fact.
What can change it is making the choice to follow our faith deeply into action, and not deeply into inaction. If we love what God loves, then we must lament biodiversity loss and the extinction of other species. Acknowledge we are the cause; accept the enormity of this problem; and understand we are running out of time. But we must not despair. We must move to action together.
We can look to some Christian experts who are helping lead the way. Like leading climate scientist, Katharine Hayhoe, who recommends first starting a conversation about why climate change matters. Bill McKibben, one of the earliest leaders of the climate change movement often says, “The most important thing an individual can do right now is not be such an individual.” Instead of thinking your individual actions can “fix” the problem, become part of what Christian author, Brian McLaren calls in his book, Life After Doom, “Team Earth.” Band together in groups of two or three or ten or twenty to learn and support one another as islands of constructive and accountable action. Then those little bands of two or three or ten or twenty can participate in national and global movements for change—like Bill McKibben’s Third Act or Blessed Tomorrow and its partners or the Sunrise Movement.
Behavior changes matter and they’re not as hard as you think. Some of us can shift to an electric vehicle. We can drive less, carpool, use public transportation, and yes even walk more! Some of us can use renewable energy like solar and most of us can increase our home’s energy efficiency. We can easily buy fewer cheap clothes and eat less beef (cattle is a major producer of the greenhouse gas, methane.) Consider moving investments to ethical funds and divesting from oil and coal.
Then when you see what works, don’t keep it to yourself. Make your behavior changes contagious. Spark ideas for changes at work, school, and church.
The world has the science, technology, and financial capacity to address climate change. The problem is that such a large and complex challenge will require transformational thinking and big movements to push political will. That’s why we’ve also got to vote for leaders who take our relationship with our planet seriously, because we are in a race against time. That’s why we must also refuse to support leaders who still cling to climate denialism. Environmentalism, while politicized, cannot be condemned to politics.
We’ve got to look at climate change as a Christian responsibility and hold our leaders accountable. All religions have an essential and unshakeable reverence for creation and nature. Christians, specifically, are called to care for creation as an act of discipleship. As stewards of the earth, we are summoned to “work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15). To start. Let’s go outside. Let’s behold the beauty of the created order and thank God for it. Then as a church community let’s thank God again by making the climate crisis a priority.
RESOURCES: EcoAmerica has resources to help you reduce your personal footprint, make them part of the community. See CreatureKind for ways communities can reduce their meat consumption. Bill McKibben’s Third Act, Blessed Tomorrow and its partners, the Sunrise Movement, and these Christian environmental organizations offer concrete actions.
“The climate crisis is by far the biggest thing that human beings have ever done, so how could it not have huge theological significance?”
That’s Bill McKibben, who isn’t a prophet, but sometimes his messages can feel prophetic. You may know his name because he’s one of the world’s leading climate change activists and for decades his witness has moved generations to embrace environmental justice. He says the Hebrew Bible gave us humans two jobs—just two—and while we’ve done well with the multiplying part, we’re failing at care of creation. Care of God’s creation…
The Psalm tells us: “For every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine” (Psalm 50:10-11). “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” (Psalm 24:1). God made provision for renewal of the land (Exodus 23:10-12) as well as for the poor (Leviticus 23:22) and for other creatures (Deuteronomy 25:4).
Nowhere is this call to care for God’s creation more immediate than the climate crisis. God isn’t melting the Arctic and raising the ocean levels and air temperatures. It’s we who are challenging God’s Creation and that’s a really bad place for humans to be. As McKibben says, we need to fit ourselves back inside creation.
Thankfully, most Christians are no longer willing to deny climate change, but we still face the crisis of time. We’re running out of it. No one’s got a plan for how to refreeze the Arctic once we’ve melted it. If not tackled now on a large scale, climate change won’t be turned back. McKibben makes the point that “winning slowly on climate change is just another way of losing.”
Given how catastrophic the climate crisis is, it would be easy to feel hopeless. The advantage for Christians, in particular, is our aversion to hopelessness. We need to translate our hope and the call to care for our planet into slaying some pretty big Goliaths. Those Goliaths are the industries that produce the largest amount of greenhouse gases that cause climate change.
Pope Francis pointed out, the biggest Goliath is the fossil fuel industry and the bankers who keep lending to them. Governments also keep the oil pumps and coal mines going. McKibben points out the fossil fuel industry is sticking to its business plan even though these next years may be the critical years that break the back of Earth’s climate system. The fossil fuel industry could do better; it’s choosing not to.
Christians have fought an empire before. It’s time to see environmental degradation for what it is: a grave moral issue that has a devastating impact on human well-being. In Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’, he articulates the inter-connectedness between a healthy environment and a healthy humanity. Caring for the planet is caring for people. The climate crisis is increasing malnutrition, disease, drought and floods. Cardio-respiratory problems increase due to pollution. Conflicts are on the rise over natural resources, including access to essential water. These are just some of the ways environmental injustice is human injustice that impacts the lives of real people.
Christians need to push environmentalism to the front of the line. Liberal Christians can no longer let climate change take a back seat to war and poverty, and conservative Christians can no longer deny the climate crisis or dismiss environmentalism as some pathway to paganism.
Too many Christians are still shrugging their shoulders and either doubting the severity of the issue or counting on the younger generation to fix it. The young folks are trying to do their part, but they don’t have the political and financial power to make the necessary changes while the clock is ticking. That’s why McKibben is calling for “Fossils against fossil fuels!”
Kidding aside, we are all consumers and we can shop our values to make a difference. Some choices are obvious. Reduce driving, carpool, squeeze in those 10,000 steps! For those who can, buy electric cars and install solar in your home and workplaces. The beef industry is also a leading contributor of greenhouses gases. Have you heard of “Meatless Mondays”? How about we shift to “Meat Mondays”…and the rest of the week rearrange our plates for healthier choices, especially for us fossils with cholesterol concerns! That’s easy to do, far better for our bodies, and far better for the planet.
McKibben says, “We are the creature that can take notice and bear witness to the beauty of the world we inhabit. It seems a sin not to take that notice when we can.” Let’s get outside every day to appreciate glorious creation. Take a deep breath, embrace the beauty of nature’s green, look up in the trees, listen for the bird’s call, and then commit to saving this one planet we’ve been gifted.
RESOURCES: This is a great time for the church to make a climate change commitment. See CreatureKind, or any number of these Christian environmental organizations for concrete actions.
Some Christians aren’t sure how to think about climate change and whether or not environmental concerns are blown out of proportion by “progressives,” or something to be denied by “conservatives”.
Perhaps, it’s neither right nor left but theological. Christian theology speaks clearly about creation care, something we learned as children that first time someone read to us from a Bible. Just as our physical bodies are worthy of our care and preservation, so is our planet. The health and harmony of the universe are a reflection of the wisdom and goodness of creation.
Its care and preservation are clearly compatible with the biblical doctrine of dominion. If human beings are God’s appointed means of caring for the earth as the Bible teaches, then what is needed is humanity’s redemption, not elimination. Right now, climate change is taking us down a path of elimination.
If humans are called to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28) then care of creation is also a mandate for the sake of future generations. Christian dominion means serving for the sake of others, and that includes caring for and preserving ecosystems for our children and grandchildren and generations to hopefully come.
In the face of an earth often ravaged by human carelessness and greed, Christian creation-care can be a call to the kind of ultimate accountability that makes sense in the Christian story of our universe. And what is often called environmental protection is, simply loving our neighbor.
When the Bible describes humans as uniquely created in God’s image, one aspect of our uniqueness is to be caretakers of the earth. This idea of humankind’s uniqueness does not separate us from nature, we are part of it. We depend on the environment, plant life, sea life, and animals for our survival. As Genesis 1 clearly states, we are part of God’s ongoing creation. We can think of ourselves as God’s companions in healing creation.
John 3:16 tells us God’s love for the world is not only for humans; the non-human world is also loved by God and valuable, even apart from human use. As Jesus taught, God cares for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air.
That’s why any theology that tells us we humans are the center of the universe and can do whatever we want with the world, that we can make it an object of human manipulation and consumption, is bad theology. This individualism over community, this profit over care of creation, disregards our relationship with nature and the world surrounding us.
Thinking we can do what we want without consequences to the environment or our future generations is a foolhardy game we’re going to lose. By emphasizing material values over spiritual values, we’re sealing the deal for our own demise. Loving and caring for God’s world is replaced with a kind of consumerism that will come back to harm us all.
Of course it doesn’t have to be this way. It is a choice.
On the forefront of harm to our natural world is climate change. Too many Christians still deny its existence and its increasing impact. Even though 97% of scientists say humans cause climate change, according to NASA, just 45% of Christians agree. And only 50% of Christians believe climate change is a serious problem. So when politicians say “drill, drill, drill,” Christian supporters clap and cheer and neglect to care for God’s good creation. The plan is lead by greed rather than planetary and human survival.
What we can’t deny are the many and growing effects of climate change—from severe weather changes, drought and famine, increased waves of climate refugees, to worsening hunger and the increasing threat of running out of safe water.
This kind of Christian theology clearly neglects our vocation as stewards of the earth. World-affirming Christians, in contrast, are caretakers and maximizers, not destroyers and diminishers. Our Christian faith is meant to challenge us, and one of those challenges is to love the only planet we have.
It’s an area known as the “100 Mile Zone,” a place inside the United States where parts of our Constitution simply do not matter. While the Fourth Amendment protects us from random and arbitrary stops and searches, these basic constitutional principles do not equally apply in the 100 Mile Zone. It’s by no means a deserted zone. Two out of every three people in the U.S. are in this zone, and on any given day, the Border Patrol can wave our rights for little more than suspicion. In this zone none of us have Fourth Amendment rights.
Legally, the 100 Mile Zone is known as the “extended border” because it extends 100 miles into the U.S. from every border. In this border zone, federal authorities do not need a warrant or even suspicion of wrongdoing to conduct a “routine search” of your luggage or your vehicle (including buses, trains, and planes you may be on.) Border Patrol has internal check points here, highly militarized places with huge amounts of surveillance equipment. They are daunting and it is designed to be so. Even if you’re white, it’s intimidating. Which says a lot, because being white, you just answer a quick question and go on through. If you are a person of color, on little more than suspicion—which here can be the color of your skin—you can be detained and searched.
These check points are designed to “trap” immigrants in these confined areas which become wall-less cages that limit their mobility, and frequently separate them from family and work opportunities. No doubt sensible immigration reforms are needed. But as a nation we have ebbed and flowed toward this lofty dream that all are created equal.
Now a growing number of folks seem insulted by the suggestion of equality for all, including and especially immigrants and refugees who are doing what any one of us would do: fleeing dangers and grave hardships. The harsh reality is, it’s not only that we’ve fallen short of living into the self-evident truth that “all people are created equal,” a large portion of our nation has fully abandoned it.
Miguel and his wife Andy are undocumented immigrants. Their hometown in Mexico is steeped in poverty. They came to America hoping to find freedom and new life among the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” To be welcomed by Lady Liberty. They found their way to Hatch, New Mexico, the chili capital of the world, where during the picking season they are paid 75 cents for each 5-gallon bucket they fill. From their meager earnings, their employers take out federal withholding taxes, and because they are undocumented, we will benefit from those funds but they will never see a dollar.
Miguel and Andy have no hope for citizenship. So they toil on. Their own daughter was deported after a year in the U.S. because another worker in the field became angry with her and called immigration on her. She was picked up the next day and they haven’t seen their daughter since. They live in fear and hiding, never able to leave the area where they have lived and worked for 14 years now. For 14 years they’ve been trapped by Border Patrol and Homeland Security and their own community, because they have learned they best not trust anyone too much. They exist in a cage with no walls where our government denies their basic human value.
Many of our leaders who devise these policies, who have helped bring us to this point, who equate some humans with animals, who label them criminals and rapists…claim to be Christians. How do we get them to see that despite the pictures of Jesus in their church hallways and children’s bibles, Jesus was a person of color? And a refugee? How do we get them to see Christians are an immigrant people?
Our spiritual ancestors were immigrants, too. Our spiritual DNA is rooted in stories of people on the move. Adam and Eve had to leave the Garden of Eden; Abraham and Sarah left their ancestral homeland; Moses journeyed as he set his people free from a ruthless ruler; King David was basically forced into immigration by his brothers. Jesus began his life on the run from a self-serving and over-reaching dictator.
When politicians claim to be Christians but spread hate and racism, we must call them out. Too many politicians who purport to be “naming and claiming the name of Jesus” have not only spread fear, they have normalized it. So much so that families are separated, children are locked in cages, and they’ve built up militarized borders—cages with no walls—to ensnare human beings as if they were animals. Our southern border looks like an oversized, dysfunctional jail. Immigrants escaping the prospects of death and unlivable conditions will find a way through, around, over, or under any wall. So let’s be clear, our border is a wall meant to tell some people they are not deserving of a better chance at life.
The symbol of our nation, that welcoming image of the Statue of Liberty, seems to be shifting into a wall that sows division as it denies the humanity of those suffering.
How do we get Christians to see that our scriptures remind us to love immigrants and treat them with respect and as equals? Compassion must be applied to our spiritual views of refugees and immigrants. That is the Christian response to immigration reform.
We must remind ourselves that the ideals upon which our nation was founded are worthy goals and worth striving for. We must remind ourselves that we’re called to set the captives free, welcome the stranger, and get to the work of dismantling dehumanizing cages on our border and in our hearts.
Stepping back for a moment. Consider this. As fear builds and we increasingly divide and isolate ourselves from each other, will this nation become a cage with no walls? Progressives avoid speaking to folks with red hats; conservatives have nothing but anger for folks flying gay pride flags; and extremists, white Christian nationalists, and politicians claiming to be Christian, create fear and anxiety in our families, communities, and nation. Have we started down that road? Though most of us still have a reasonably good life, a cage is still a cage.
This popular meme rings too true: Jesus and his family are fleeing for his life from King Herod, and they’re turned away…at the U.S. border.
Yes, immigration reform is needed, but we’ve really got to take a look in the mirror because what’s going on here is just not Christian. Migrant children held
in private detention facilities should not be sexually assaulted, but they are. Migrants held by ICE should not die, but they do. Our nation of immigrants should not separate families, or stuff people in internment camps, or deport people without due process, but we do. Refugees are fleeing suffering and are turned away at our borders in violation of international treaties meant to address their dire needs.
Not turning our collective backs on the stranger, widow and orphan has gone from a Christian principle to hateful rhetoric for many of our nation’s Christian leaders. Leaders will claim immigration is an economic issue, but that’s not true. And I’ll get to that in a moment because that kind of propaganda harms our economy.
And also steals lives. Consider that gunman who opened fire in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Witnesses to the massacre said the shooter literally allowed people who looked white to leave so he could get a better shot at brown-skinned people. He had posted online minutes before, vile language that mirrored how (then former) President Trump described immigrants and Mexicans. This license for aggression against people of color—in particular people of color from Mexico—is not some sort of partisan debate.
Anti-immigration is racism, and it should be especially painful to everyone who follows Jesus when our U.S leaders encourage it. This anti-immigrant racism is a threat to the values that made this country great. We are no longer that humanitarian ideal to the world. We are becoming a nation where the first approach to immigration isn’t empathy, it’s cruelty.
There should never be such thing as a silent Christian in the face of this racism against migrants. We need to be smarter than the lies we’re being fed. We need to stop the propaganda that’s driving unfounded fear and dividing this nation. As Jesus showed, unity is a real threat to power and greed. Leaders will continue to use migrants to their benefit, and they’re counting on it working because it’ll keep us divided and bickering.
As Dr. King once said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Which brings us to the economy. The concept called “immigration surplus” is an economic lesson worthy of the pulpit. When immigrants enter the labor force, they increase economic productivity. They don’t lower wages and they don’t take away jobs, because they flow to areas where workers are needed. And when it comes to crime—that other great big lie about migrants—they’re “60% less likely to be incarcerated than the U.S.-born” according to a comprehensive study by leading universities Stanford University and Northwestern University. In fact, “first-generation immigrants have not been more likely to be imprisoned than people born in the United States since 1880.”
As the former general secretary of the National Council of Churches, Rev R. H. Edwin Espy, said, “informed, concerned and thoughtful citizens can change the world.” We sometimes say, we don’t know what to do about all of this, but we do. Immigration can offer opportunities for Christian empathy and leadership. We can start with what may be the hardest part. We can start by listening. Listen to someone who has experienced systemic hate. And you’ll probably find you’ve got some personal work to do. And that’s OK. It’s a really important first step.
We need to be intentional about crossing the racial divides that society tries to force on us. We need to be a squeaky wheel of justice and not let racist words and actions go unchecked. We need to write/email/call our elected leaders here and in Washington. We need to let them know the way immigrants are being treated by the U.S. is inexcusable. And very un-Christian.
Miguel left a prized possession hung on the wall of his room: a necklace with a silver guitar pendant engraved with a cross and the Lord’s Prayer. He carried nothing with him but a phone and the clothes on his back. His mother had died three years earlier and he lived with a distant relative who knew something was wrong. In a place rife with violent gangs, he would only tell her he’d been stopped by some men and “‘If I stay, I’m going to die.'”
It is a familiar story with ancient roots.
“Flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” [Matthew 2:13-23] Joseph’s escape with his young family through streets that would soon be awash in blood is reenacted by millions of people around the world.
The way we have white-washed and sanitized the birth narrative of Jesus has practically robbed it of one of its fundamental meanings. If we are going to accept what the birth and life of Jesus was like, we must understand he was born in a place where there was no room for a mother in labor. Before he could focus his infant eyes, his family was on the run. Jesus’ parents left all they had and all they knew to choose safety for their baby. They were the people the world cast aside, the people who wait at the boarders of life, behind the walls society creates, praying someone will show mercy.
When his story picks back up, consider there is no biblical record of Jesus’ home. “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” [Matthew 8:20]. Jesus’ identification is with the displaced, the deprived, the disoriented, the disenfranchised. He was among the most marginalized and vulnerable/
The displacement that characterizes Jesus’ infancy and adult life should of course sensitize every Christian to all who are displaced. Herod is contemporary—alive and well today. Herod today tries to put an end to those who oppose him, to those he fears, beginning with the weakest. He drives families from their homes and communities with armed conflict, gross violations of human rights, severe economic repression, fear of persecution and prosecution. He pushes refugees to the margins of existence and then convinces his followers they are the enemy.
The prevailing Christian attitude toward refugees and immigrants shows how far we have fallen from the life and teachings of Jesus. If we hope to truly secure our borders and have humane immigration policies, it means opening our eyes, hearts, hands, and resources to those whose pain he shares. The Bible is clear: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.” [Matthew 25:35]
Jesus is at the border every day, fleeing for his life every day. Jesus
is stuck in a detention center every day, and there is a good chance he
will be sent back to the dangers in his homeland. Immigration is about the very fabric and nature of our nation and our faith. A week after finding
safety in the U.S., Miguel was deported back to Guatemala. We are left
to wonder if he was able to stay alive there. We will never know. We do know God identifies with all for whom the world has no clean room, no secure and welcoming place. When will we?
“I didn’t come here because I wanted a job… I came here because I wanted to live.”
These words from an undocumented immigrant here in the U.S. could have easily been the words of Mary, mother of Jesus, as she fled to Egypt to save her son from Herod.
We don’t often think of it, but Christians are a people with a long history of refugee and immigrant roots which reach all the way back to our spiritual ancestors. Our tradition, our faith, our roots, are all tied up in immigration that typically found us in places other than where we began.
As followers we are called to practice what Jesus preached when he said, . “’Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.’” [Matthew 19:14] The call to love our neighbors, the strangers, and the widow is about so much more than being welcoming, and offering drink and food. The kind of hospitality to which Christianity calls us is one of seeing someone we may identify as “other” and loving them.
Yet somehow many Christians are finding themselves on the wrong side of Jesus’s teachings these days. Christians are protesting against the people—and the children—who are trying to escape a living hell of poverty and violence. Christians are working tirelessly to turn them—and their children—into something less than human. Leaders have reduced the stranger and the widow to vermin and invaders, today’s “lepers” who should be separated and quarantined. And Christians are buying in.
If we continue to allow our leaders to lead Christians down down this path of dehumanizing people, if we continue to pay the moral cost of not helping them, we will find ourselves living in a society increasingly devoid of any ability to care about each other, let alone “the least of these.”
If Christians need reminded of who we are, we only need look to the
example of Jesus. We might even borrow from his words and say, “whatever we
do to the children, we are doing to our own children, and we are doing
to him.”
Christians need to speak louder than those on the religious and political extreme when they make claim to our faith, but then vilify the person who came here “because I wanted to live.”
God’s love, we’re told, transcends politics and it especially transcends the propaganda of division.
Christian extremists would have us believe otherwise. Unlike Jesus, we’re told we should differentiate between citizens and immigrants when it comes to our spiritual obligations. Unlike Jesus, immigrant individuals and families do not deserve our compassion and care. Tragically, they would have us believe the image of God is not found in immigrants and asylum seekers. And some Christians are buying it.
It’s good to be reminded that God’s love knows better.
The Law of Moses requires us to give hospitality to foreigners, and the Apostle Paul asserts that in Christ we are all one regardless of background. The Trinity speaks of a diversity in divinity and affirms our human range of ethnic, national, cultural, racial, and religious experience is essential to God’s world. God’s love transcends citizenship and nation of origin. No one is excluded.
Christians are well-versed in that famous flight from Bethlehem to escape political persecution, and that child of those immigrants who grew to embrace all people—in particular, outsiders. Jesus asserted that persons and nations are judged by the moral maxim, as you “did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.”
Yet many Christians are asserting the primacy of nation first and the maxim “you have to take care of your own.” That’s not Christian theology. It subverts the universality of God’s love. So much propaganda is being thrown our way that would have us go against the call to care for the stranger and love the world in all its diversity. Any idea that God loves and cares for people like us more, is not Christian. Any idea that people who differ from us or come from other lands do not deserve our ethical consideration is not Christian. Seeing the stranger as less than in God’s eyes and ours, violates our most fundamental moral and Christian obligations.
Given the way refugees and migrants are treated at and inside our borders, and the way we are told to fear them, it’s good to be reminded of our most basic Christian principles.
Separating the world into two camps—friends and enemies, the loved and hated, the saved and unsaved—defaces the gospel message. It’s a kind of divisive propaganda that renders the message of Christianity irrelevant to seekers, and it prevents people from experiencing the message of divine presence in their lives. it’s no wonder seekers, nones and dones are scandalized by the self-interest, incivility, and hate exhibited by the Christians they see today.
Faith is not a matter of individual salvation and assent to creeds. Faith must be accompanied by works of mercy, justice, and hospitality. Christians who are well-versed in the universal message of God’s love know this. Let us be among them as we meet Jesus again today. He is in the face of each immigrant and asylum seeker, and we are called to welcome them as Jesus in disguise.
Immigration is an issue for most of us. And by issue, I don’t mean political, I mean personal. Our parents, grandparents, or maybe great great grandparents came to this promised land seeking that American Dream. Our families landed here after crossing many lands and shores. Whether one generation ago or five or ten, they migrated here seeking asylum, safety, a way to make a living, better opportunities for us—their future generations, and for reasons most of us might never know.
Today, escaping danger has become a leading reason immigrants are coming to our shores. They are seeking refuge because they have what the U.S. government determines is a “credible fear” of persecution in their home countries due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinions, or membership in a “particular social group,” which might be a tribe, an ethnic group, maybe gender identity. People journey for days and
weeks across seas, jungles and deserts without adequate food, water, and
protection and with no reprieve. People wash up on shore as they try to escape to safety. Bodies are found in the desert of those who
died of dehydration. The U.S.-Mexico border is the most dangerous land
crossing in the world due in large part to these harsh conditions.
Now they are facing a credible fear when they get here.
Our country makes it deadly to cross borders. We build higher walls and thicker razor wire, at a cost
of $20 million per mile. We see clothing stuck in barbed wire from
people who tried to jump the border wall.
Our American
policies prefer people to die while trying to cross than to grant them
the dignity of crossing without fear of losing their life.
Then once inside, we see harsher and harsher tactics that separate families, imprison people in detention and deport them
without due process. These are not criminals. These are hard workers.
They are trying to take care of their families and keep them safe..
The world is facing a tremendous refugee crisis with a record 123 million people forcibly displace worldwide by the end of 2024. More than double the number only a decade ago. Yet rather than be called to do our part with empathy, we’re instead told to be afraid. This is not new. Virtually every immigrant community in our history has faced discrimination and false recriminations. What did they—our family and ancestors—do in response? They rolled up their sleeves and they worked hard, and they helped make this country what it is today.
That is what immigrants do. When we are told they’re stealing our jobs, the opposite is true. They don’t take our jobs,because they flow to industries and areas where they meet the need for
workers and help unlock gridlock and growth. Immigrants work in a wide range of
industries where workers are needed. They are key to growing the U.S. workforce as population
growth falls and people retire. Including they strengthening the growing care
sector. The Joint Economic Committee, which advises Congress, says not only were immigrants disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic’s recession, they were essential to the U.S. economic recovery. Immigrants make the economy more resilient. According to the George W. Bush institute, and this is a quote, “Immigration fuels the economy.” Immigrants increase the productive capacity of the economy and raise GDP. Their incomes rise, and so do ours. It’s a phenomenon called the “immigration surplus.” They also pay into benefits, like social
security, benefits they will never see.
When we are told they’re violent criminals, again the opposite is true. Immigrants are “60% less likely to be incarcerated than the U.S.-born,” according to a comprehensive study by leading universities, Stanford and Northwestern. In fact, “first-generation immigrants have not been more likely to be imprisoned than people born in the United States since 1880.”
One argument we often hear about immigration is that we already have so many problems here in the U.S., shouldn’t we care for our own first before caring for others that aren’t even from here? That’s a false choice. We can do both, and when we do, we are rewarded with a stronger economy. We are also rewarded spiritually. As followers of Jesus, we are called to do both and we must. The parable of the Good Samaritan makes that clear. There is no us or them. There are only God’s creations, and we need to stand up for the vulnerable and suffering because we claim to follow the path of Jesus.
It’s not us who live in fear. It’s immigrants. For decades, U.S. policy destabilized countries, especially in Latin America, leading to civil war, unrest, and corruption that continues decades later. People are trying to escape in part what U.S. policy helped to build. so instead of investing $15 billion dollars in a death trap called the border wall, why not invest those funds in strategies like worker programs? Why not invest in paths to citizenship accessible? Why not include in our policies a bit of humanity and dignity, a bit of hope for families?
Jesus didn’t minister so we’d fill our hearts with hymns and scriptures and feel good about how much “He gets us.” He didn’t minister to make us feel good. He ministered to make us take notice of biases and injustices and called us to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly.
It’s past time to start doing that; to move on from all this fearmongering and start speaking up against it.
We must demand our government policies and ethics recognize humanity, dignity, and worth, even if the solutions to immigration reform aren’t yet clear. Doing justice doesn’t always mean we will fix entire systems. Doing justice means learning about the immigrant experience, if not through personal encounters, then through movies and books, especially those by immigrants. Doing justice means speaking up when our neighbors, friends, and family belittle or speak ill of immigrants. Doing justice means voting for elected officials at all levels of government who do justice, too.
We are intended to live lovingly and in solidarity with empathy and in communion with one another. Not because we share the same passport or skin color, but because we are all created in God’s image. May our Christian community be a place where we live Micah 6 and Matthew 25; where we form deeper solidarity and deeper compassion for all people. May we mobilize one another to welcome the stranger. For he was hungry and we gave him food, she was thirsty and we gave her something to drink, those families were strangers and we welcomed them, they were naked and we gave them clothing, that elder was sick and we took care of her, and I was in detained and you walked alongside me.”
As a man, I recognize that eliminates me from being a fully authoritative voice on the question of abortion. However, when I look at restrictive abortion laws which now make it more difficult to access abortion care in the U.S. today, than in the year 1650, I think as ministers, even male ministers, we have to address the matter publicly.
To be clear: I do not recommend anyone getting health information or making health decisions based on a collection of books written some 2000 years ago or more. But too many Christian leaders have not read their Bible very closely and they are putting their own spin on it for their purposes particularly when it comes to the question of abortion. If we are going to look to the Bible, we at least need to be honest about what the books actually say.
It would be easy to assume the New Testament speaks strongly against abortion given the fervor around it. But the New Testament doesn’t directly deal with the issue of abortion, or even when life begins.
It’s a different story in the Old Testament. It’s got plenty to say and none of it is anti-abortion. In Genesis, the Bible tells us that life begins at first breath. In Exodus, a fetus is not given rights equal to or rights greater than those of the fully formed adult. Numbers says that in the case of adultery, fetuses should be aborted. In Kings, God threatens to rip open pregnant women. Hosea and Isaiah both speak of God’s willingness to destroy fetuses. We simply cannot use the Bible to justify an anti-abortion stance without ignoring a whole lot of verses that suggest otherwise.
But religion really isn’t the reason leaders hold an anti-abortion perspective. It’s politics. A particularly uncaring, unloving, patriarchal, and racist brand of politics, but politics none-the-less.
Racism is why abortion started to matter to white Evangelicals in the first place. Even the deeply conservative Southern Baptist Convention passed multiple resolutions both before and after Roe v Wade which endorsed access to abortion, and said government should play a limited role in this personal issue. Abortion just wasn’t that big of an issue for white Evangelicals. But racism and segregation were.
For that we go back just a bit further, to the groundbreaking 1969 court case, Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, which integrated public schools in Holmes County, Mississippi. The number of white students attending public schools after that court ruling, dropped from 700 to 28 the first year. In year two, there were zero white students. Zero.
So where did they all go? Private schools. Specifically tax-exempt so-called “segregation schools” operated by conservative white Evangelical Christians.
The schools weren’t just practicing segregation and they weren’t just in Mississippi. They were across the South, founded on segregation, and receiving tax exempt status in spite of it. So a group of parents sued because any organization that practices racial discrimination was not, by definition, a charitable organization. They were right and they won and the ruling hit conservative white Evangelical Christians where it hurt—in their pocketbooks.
With segregation officially dead, these conservative leaders needed another issue to galvanize their followers. They pivoted and made abortion their political issue to mobilize Evangelicals—their money and their votes.
The conservative fury over abortion is not Biblical. But it is a fury. One that today causes ministers and other leaders to experience fury when we suggest women’s voices should be the primary voices on abortions. Volunteer escorts at abortion health clinic experience fury. The women arriving for care experience fury in the deeply hateful and psychologically harmful things shouted at them. Volunteers are attacked. Clinics have been bombed and doctors have been murdered. When the U.S> Supreme Court removed the federal constitutional right to abortion care in 2022, states moved to ban abortion, closing clinics and criminalizing access to abortion care.
And guess what happened? Abortion rates have not gone down.
If we do want to utilize the Bible to inform our thoughts on abortion, there is one perspective we should use and it is the overarching message of our Christian faith. The biblical hermeneutic of love. So if the question is, “is it loving?”—and biblically that is the question that matters—then we have to ask, is it loving to deny people access to safe health care?
Some facts about abortion to think about:
If we’re really serious about reducing abortion, then we need to support things like access to contraception, sex education rooted in biology, affordable child care. We need to stand against the racism, sexism, and classism centered in the anti-abortion movement. The issue of religion in abortion comes down to that.
Thanks to the many headlines that say otherwise, what most Americans don’t know is we hold similar beliefs on contentious issues where personal belief, religious teaching, and secular law play roles and often butt heads. That includes the complex issue of abortion.
Most Americans uphold the legal right to abortion care, whether or not they would choose that decision for themselves. If only more Christian leaders would do the same. Because no one wants to see its actual abortion numbers to increase, and yet that’s what happens when Christian rhetoric gets in the way of real-life solutions.
We don’t reduce abortion by denying communion, imposing guilt, or calling it a sin. Nor do we reduce it by making it immoral, illegal, or criminal. It’s notable that Catholic women comprise the single largest religious group in America who seek abortions, despite very clear Church teachings. And countries with the strictest anti-abortion laws do not have the lowest abortion rates. And here’s the kicker in the U.S.: when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade as the law of the land, states jumped at the change to outlaw abortions; and the number of abortions increased.
The countries with the lowest abortion rates are those that support policies for healthy families: Like good education including reliable sex education; employment opportunities that help take people out of poverty; and access to safe healthcare and reliable birth control.
Reproductive health is one of the many reasons access to healthcare is so critical. Yet we have Christians objecting to the Affordable Care Act, that thing we like to call Obamacare. Ironically, one of their key objections is government overreach.
Never should a person be denied healthcare whether its for diseases, opioid addiction, pre-existing conditions, or reproductive care. Proverbs 3:27 states, “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act.” Taking away healthcare is not pro-life, it’s plain wrong.
The ACA has drastically reduced the number of uninsured adults in our nation. We cannot know how many abortions it’s prevented thanks to access to reliable birth control.. But we do know politicians and their Christian counterparts need to put our well-being first. Don’t cut or repeal the ACA, improve it. Let doctors practice medicine, not the government. Preserve every person’s right to privacy and agency over their own body.
We must hold faith leaders of all political stripes to account. We are obligated to speak with greater accuracy and understanding about healthcare, especially about deeply personal issues that have been made so divisive by Christian leadership. We cannot allow any healthcare progress to be undone. It’s not some unnamed theoretical person we’re talking about. It’s all of us.
While we should not be relying on books written more than 2000 years ago to make our healthcare decisions, there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what the Bible actually says when it comes to reproductive rights.
In Genesis, we’re told life begins at first breath. In chapter 21 of Exodus a fetus is not given rights equal to or greater than the mother. Numbers says that in the case of adultery, fetuses should be aborted. In 2 Kings, God threatens to rip open pregnant women. Hosea and Isaiah both speak of God’s willingness to destroy unborn fetuses. There are more examples, but the point is, anyone hoping to use the Bible to take away access to abortion services, isn’t following the Bible. But again, the Bible isn’t a medical textbook.
A lot of what’s going on is the on-going effort to control women, using Christianity as cover. Here’s the thing though, misogyny is not a biblical value and women are frequently powerful biblical characters. And central in Jesus’ ministry. At a time that did not see women as equal to men, Jesus offered a powerful example. They helped finance his ministry [Luke 8:2–3] and the only time Jesus was taught by someone it was a woman [Matthew 15:22]. According to the biblical record, women were also the only followers who stayed with Jesus as he suffered on the cross. IA woman is the first to see the resurrected Jesus [John 20:11–18]. There is no longer “male or female” rather all are equal [Galatians 3:28].
Taking away rights from women is an effort to keep control over them, and it is not biblically guided. Men don’t face the same perils. They aren’t denied access to life-saving reproductive medical services. “Paternal mortality” isn’t a thing but “maternal mortality” certainly is. The lack of access to abortion services doesn’t deny men their bodily autonomy, economic stability, mental health, privacy, safety from domestic abuse, and they don’t risk their plans for their future every time they have sex.
We know at the core of Jesus’ teachings is loving our neighbor. It’s a particularly unloving and uncaring perspective that gives a fetus more rights than a fully formed, pregnant adult (or teen.) Being anti-reproductive rights is definitely not loving and despite attempts to twist biblical text, it is definitely not biblical.
How is it that we have arrived at a point where so many conservative Christians believe it’s a radical idea to think a pregnant person should be valued as a person? The “pro-life” movement abandons “pro-life ‘ism” when it’s willing to override the medical profession, when it’s willing to put a pregnant woman’s life at risk, when it puts a fetus above the rights of the person carrying it.
In 2018, an Alabama minister wrote a Facebook post about those who claim to be pro-life and it went viral. Maybe the reason so many people shared it is because it was superbly insightful and revealing about the pro-life movement. Here is what Rev. Barnhart wrote:
“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It’s almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.
“Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.”
If we want to be “pro-life” in a way that adheres to the teachings of Jesus, let’s provide universal healthcare.
If we want to be “pro-life” in a way that adheres to the teachings of Jesus, let’s mandate living wages so lives are not at risk due to the realities of living in poverty.
If we want to be “pro-life” in a way that adheres to the teachings of Jesus, let’s ensure employees have paid sick leave, maternity leave, family leave, and affordable childcare.
This pro-life list can go on and on of course: strong anti-poverty policies, publicly funded quality childcare, better sex ed programs, access to birth control, not to mention gun safety. To meet the biblical definition of “pro-life” we need to move past the patriarchy and put freedom and family first.
Christians have an obligation to talk about the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v Wade. Not because this decision was not based on best practice and law. Not because it was not based on scientific or medical consensus. But because it was based on Christian misinterpretations of biblical text. The Bible was used as a political weapon to galvanize people around a heated issue. The Bible was used as a weapon that controls women. And the Bible was also used as a biology textbook and as a biology textbook, it’s a really bad one.
The religious far-right counters access to reproductive rights with Bible verses about being in the womb. And that’s true, there are beautiful verses about being in the womb. But they are not about defining when life begins. For instance, Psalm 139 has the phrase, “you formed me and know me, you have knit me together in my mother’s womb.” It’s a beautiful metaphor about the experience of God. Continuing to read Psalm 139, the psalmist writes about how God has never abandoned him no matter where he goes, even as he’s gone to the edges of the Earth. (He’s continuing to speak metaphorically, of course, because the Earth has no edges.) The psalmist is speaking about the intimacy of knowing God, who has never abandoned him. That phrase, “you knit me together in my mother’s womb” has about as much to do with defining life as when people take that Dr. Seuss quote from Horton Hears a Who, “a person’s a person no matter how small,” and try to use that to define when life begins.
These “in the womb” narratives are throughout the Bible. God calls to Jeremiah in the womb [Jeremiah 1:5]. Jesus and John are together in utero [Luke 1:41-44]. Some of those narratives place God’s call on a person’s life before conception. They are saying God had a claim on a person’s life and that person was going to do great things.
The closest we get in the Bible to a definition of life is Genesis 2:7. This is one of two Creation stories. They explained to an ancient people why things were the way they were, so they could make sense of their mysterious world. They are etiologies, stories designed to offer the reason for something, often written with historical or mythical explanation. Neither is meant to tell us scientifically how the world developed.
So in this Genesis story we see God creating adam. Today that Hebrew word is a proper name, but in the Bible, adam means humanity. God takes adam and breathes life into it, and it is by taking a breath that adam becomes alive. Life is at first breath. The Bible offers more examples that define life.
In Exodus 21, two people are fighting and a woman who is pregnant tries to break up the fight. The text says if that woman miscarries because of what happened, the father of that potential life is entitled to monetary compensation. Why? Because the Bible defines that potential life as a property loss. But the Bible also says if that woman were to die, that’s a capital crime. The woman dying is a murder, the miscarriage is a property loss. That’s how the Bible understood life. For a more gruesome example, turn to Numbers 5. Here a woman is suspected to have become pregnant out of wedlock and God orders an abortion.
All this does not match with the modern conception of life, of course, which puts fetal viability at 24 weeks. But that’s how it was understood in the ancient world.
When it comes to Jesus, he didn’t say a word about abortion. Not one word. Had it been something significant to him, we can imagine he would have talked about it. Because that’s what Jesus did with his life. And what he talked about was how we always ought to be expanding our notions of love, empathy, and care.
The compassionate and christian response to abortion is to recognize that banning abortion is not the compassionate decision or the healthy decision, because it increases the number of illegal and unsafe abortions and puts a woman’s life at risk. The compassionate response is to recognize the way we decrease the number of abortions. That’s by investing in programs that help lift people from poverty, provide access to physical and mental healthcare, provide access to reliable contraception and invest in quality sex education classes. A Christian minister showing kids a bunch of pictures of STDs and telling them never to have sex is the kind of sex education that does not work. True story.
What we can also do is confront bad theology wherever we see it, and dismantle bad theology that leads to harmful action. As Christians, to practice our faith, we need to go out into the world and make this world a more compassionate place.
Christian Nationalists see the U.S. as a Christian nation and support their own interests to the exclusion or expense of others. They think immigrants are murderers and rapists and refuse to condemn Neo-Nazi and KKK violence. They believe Muslims should be banned from our country, we have no room for refugees, it’s okay to separate immigrant families, and intern and deport people to danger and without due process. Christian Nationalists played a substantive threat in priming insurrectionists to storm the Capitol with crosses, Christian flags, and banners that proclaimed, “Jesus Saves.”
If this sounds too political, don’t judge too quickly. Here are two core reasons Christian Nationalism doesn’t work for Christians.
Dignity and Love. Human beings are created in God’s image and to be treated with dignity and respect regardless of nationality, race, or religion. To love God is inextricably intertwined with love of neighbor. When asked to define neighbor, Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, a foreigner of a different faith who showed hospitality. The neighbor is one who refuses to pass a foreigner by. Christianity advances a powerful ethic to care for the widow, the orphan, the refugee, the poor, and the foreigner. Christian Nationalism says take care of your own. It leads Christians in the wrong direction, separating us from God’s vision of a world where all are treated fairly, with dignity, and love of neighbor. In the face of Christian nationalism’ clear and consistent warping of Christian values, it’s no wonder many are tempted to throw out faith altogether.
Christian nationalism is a heretical violation of the two greatest commandments in the Christian faith: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” [Matthew 22:37-39]
As Christians, we must see Christian nationalism as much as an attack on our Christian faith as it is an attack on our country. When extremists co-opt the language of faith, it’s easy to believe that our democracy and society would be healthier and freer if religion was completely removed from public life. The answer is not to disengage from faith, but to engage deeper into our spiritual practices and guiding values.
So Christian nationalism presents us with a challenge and also an opportunity. We have an opportunity to reclaim faith from those who twist it to cause harm. At this contentious time in our country’s politics, let each of us embrace a patriotism based on love of neighbor, not a nationalist fear of our neighbors. Our scripture, our liberating God, our Christian vision—these are bigger than the interests of one class, religion, national or ethnic group. For the sake of Christianity and democracy, we must denounce Christian nationalism and reclaim a faith that values and affirms the human dignity of all people. Including our own.
“God loves us all, but I’m His favorite.” It may make for a cute bumper sticker, but it points to a far more serious problem that impacts much of what we read and interpret in the Bible.
One of the strengths of the Christian faith is the confirmation that God loves you—that you are special. It is also one of the biggest problems with what has been the dominant voice of Christianity.
We’ve gone from Jesus who tells us about the God who loves us all unconditionally, to this place where so many folks who claim to be Christian and believe in a god of unconditional love have created a world in which some people are more loved, more privileged, more special.
Let’s call it the “I’m Special Confirmation Bias.” Confirmation bias is the human tendency to search for and affirm information that supports our opinions and beliefs. The impact of confirmation bias is even stronger when it comes to deeply held and emotional beliefs—like religion.
Enter the Bible. It’s the manual of “I’m Special Confirmation Bias.” With more than forty authors over a period of a few thousand years, written in three different languages, and all the translation problems that come with putting those words into English—it’s really not surprising that the Bible is, at times, ambiguous. The problem is what confirmation bias does when it meets with ambiguity. It substitutes the questions offered by ambiguity and with “answers” that affirm what already exists in the reader’s mind. Which is: “I’m more special.”
The idea Christian exceptionalism so heavy-handedly practiced in the U.S. is rooted in this “I’m Special Confirmation Bias.” It’s a bias so strong it overpowers the unambiguous teachings of Jesus when he tells us, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another”; “Love your enemy”; “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone”; “Why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own eye?”
When we read the biblical text anchored in the teachings of Jesus, it should lead us to building people up not tearing them down; it should lead us to helping those who are marginalized, extending love to all, and approaching life’s questions with humility and compassion. But it hasn’t. Instead, the “I’m Special Confirmation Bias” has led Christians to justify a whole lot of grave harm to humanity: slavery, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, segregation, subjugation of women, apartheid, racism, domestic violence, white Christian Nationalism, and the list could go on and on.
We’ve justified loveless actions in the name of a loving God because we believed ourselves to be confirmed in our specialness, a specialness that naturally comes with the right to hand-out and extract a “justice.” We have confirmed ourselves as the keepers of all that is righteous and pious, and we play God with our judgement and punishment, in the name of a vengeful god that wishes to see other people suffer—a god that “knows” WE are the special ones.
Those of us who consider ourselves somewhat enlightened Christians, we have a responsibility to respond. If our god causes us to hurt others; to turn an indifferent eye to the hungry and the homeless; to belittle, berate, and bully others—if our god causes us to feel superior to others; to discount, dismiss, and disavowal science—if our god encourages us to damn those who are not like us to a fiery pit and still allows us to claim our god is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, THAT’S NOT GOD. That’s the worst parts of humanity wrapped up in visions of grandeur. And it’s not Christianity, it’s Christian Nationalism.
As followers of Jesus, we are morally called to stay vigilant and promote equality, justice, and love in our every action. We must speak out loudly against systems that place one group of people above other. When those to whom society already provides special privileges—men, white people, the wealthy, people who identify as straight, and, yes, Christians themselves—when we turn a blind eye to the needs of those who are marginalized, we set humanity on a course of ruin.
We must remember that the horrors of events like the Holocaust didn’t start with gas chambers. They started with politicians dividing people. They started with building up the idea that some people were more special than others. They moved toward intolerance, then scapegoating so that we falsely lay blame on others for our problems. Then comes the hate speech and by then people become desensitized to it all and turn a blind eye because they are safely wrapped inside the dominate parts of society.
If that feels uncomfortably familiar right now, it should.
We must speak out long before things get that far. The Powers that Be fear the masses so much that they divide us and promote some people as more special. To put it bluntly, white folk and Black folk have far more in common than the poor and the powerful; than the average citizen and the power-hungry leader. Which is why the Powers that Be fear unity. Our resistance becomes a necessary spiritual practice. One that we must not allow anyone to divide and silence.
At this pivotal moment in our history we must also exercise another spiritual practice. We must vote. Vote for those who hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That not just some people are special, we are all special.
The leader of a nation, desperate to hold onto his power, sends a group of folks to the source of his concern. His intent is to put an end to those who might challenge him. And ultimately, he’s willing to spill blood in order to hold on to his unsavory authority.
It happened 2000 year ago. It has repeated itself time and again in human history. And it happened again on January 6, 2021. January 6th is also Epiphany, the day we remember the story of “The Wise Men,” the Magi.
The Biblical story of the Magi is ageless and has some pretty powerful themes that are echoed in the teachings of Jesus. This story is about peace-building ideas like religious pluralism—the Magi are identified as Zoroastrians. It’s a story of sharing, especially the rich sharing with the poor. A story of resisting injustice—the Wise Men ignored King Herod’s unjust bidding.
These lessons make the political events that occurred at the U.S. Capitol Building on Epiphany all the more ironic, and one we as Christians must not overlook as we approach this election year and another chance at the peaceful transfer of power. We must not forget that an oversized wooden cross was carried about the Capitol. Many insurgents tried to pass off their violent actions as the will of God. Folks flew flags that declared devotion to both Jesus and a former president, conflating the two. And if their point wasn’t clear enough, when these “Christian warriors” breached the walls of the Capitol Building, they carried a Christian flag in with them and stopped for a moment of prayer.
Some have said that humanity was not created in the image of God, but rather God was created in the image of humanity. Some on the extreme far-right have indeed created a new god to deify, formed in their self-image and their desires for a more vengeful, vindictive, and intolerant god. Their near deification of a leader is not a new story and it’s not all that different from those who worshipped King Herod in his day. But it is blasphemy. The insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol building were participating in blasphemy. The fact that they did it on Epiphany just underscores exactly how un-Christian their actions were.
The insurrectionists broke through the barriers meant to secure the proceedings of the peaceful transfer of power. The insurrectionists created injustice, they didn’t resist it. Positioning their actions as the “will of God,” they also broke through the protective wall meant to separate Church and State.
The meaning of Epiphany was totally lost on Christians that day. Epiphany is meant to be a reflection of the teachings of Jesus—a story about religious pluralism, a story of sharing with one another, a story of resisting injustice. Instead, the role of “The Wise Men” was played by Christian Nationalists and the choices they made were not “wise.” Their motivating ideals were firmly rooted in the ungodly mixture that is Christian Nationalism and White Supremacy, and they wrapped a desecrated cross in a desecrated American flag.
January 6th remains a Christian disgrace and a full-on condemnation of the destruction Christian Nationalism will cause. At least, it should be. Given the core teachings of Jesus, it’s difficult to understand how any earnest Christian can sit idly by as white supremacists, seditionists, and insurrectionists continue to voice hate, violence, and moral decay all in the name of Jesus.
The question we must ask ourselves as followers of the teachings of Jesus, what role have we cast ourselves in and what role are we called to play in this most consequential election year? Do we sit idly by as blasphemy and sedition continue to play out in 2024? Or do we use our voice and our vote to pick up the mantle of the Magi and put into practice the peaceful but firm resistance Jesus taught?
In many ways, the United States was founded on a “virtue” that is propping up Christian Nationalism: rugged individualism. One of the 19th century’s leading political scientists and historians—particularly when it comes to democracy in America—was a man named Alexis de Tocqueville. One of his keen observations of America was the dominance of rugged individualism within our culture. He believed this individualism was the U.S.’s greatest strength. He also believed it’s one of our greatest weaknesses. He predicted this rugged American individualism would ultimately be the undoing of our culture and society, as well as our experiment in democratic governance.
Reading headlines, it’s hard not to wonder if he might be right.
From domestic extremism to hate crimes to anti-immigrant movements, the rugged individualism being expressed through Christian Nationalism is harming humans and stealing lives. In the Christian understanding of spirituality, there are few things if any more sacred than life itself.
For most of humanity’s long history, we have been people of communities who form a bond around a central idea, and we’ve tended to thrive in healthy communities. Which is why in light of America’s malady of rugged individualism, it seems this ideal of rugged individualism has come head-to-head with the long-time reality that humans are drawn to and need community.
Today, an unhealthy percentage of Christians in the U.S. wants to believe we can solve our own problems without any assistance. And we increasingly balk at helping others in need. Many of us expect others to be able to solve their own problems even when they are clearly struggling, and even when the system is stacked against them and designed to keep them down. They’re even called “un-American.”
That kind of rugged individualism lays a fertile foundation for the expansion of white Christian Nationalism. It’s feeding anger and a sense of disenfranchisement and the feeling of “us against them” which could not be further away from our Christian call to “love one another.”
A vital ingredient for a community to be healthy, durable, and thriving is compassion. Compassion can be hard work. A community and its leaders need to be able to place the needs and concerns of others ahead of our own. To some degree it does require sacrifice of an individual’s wants and desires. Yet compassion is being painted as weakness and the opposite of rugged American individualism. We see folks with no regard for the cost to others. This growing narcissism of white Christian Nationalism is ripping our society apart. That is a formula for anarchy.
There is an alternative. In modern times we can recognize that it is actually quite ridiculous to be so rooted in the illusion that some people (or group of people) are more valuable than others. And more than ridiculous, it is downright dangerous. And very un-Christian. A well-developed and healthy spirituality should be able to resist any form of Christian Nationalism. With the appropriate awareness and tools, we are all more than capable of eliminating negative identities from our lives and moving to what is a healthier modern outlook and identity.
In his sermon entitled “Loving Your Enemies” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “When you rise to love on this level, you begin to love humanity, not because they are likable, but because God loves them. You look at every man, and you love him because you know God loves him.”
One of our Christian tools is the hermeneutic of love. A hermeneutic of love offers us the blessing of seeing what we experience in life through the constant filter of a bigger kind of love. This may seem like an overly simplistic idea, but there is nothing simple about it. It takes work, and dedication, and constant vigilance. And considering the increasing threat of rugged individualism overtaking our democracy, it’s important we try.
Two anthropologists attended the Jan. 6, 2021 rally and the attack that followed on the Capitol Building. Then they wrote a compelling article, noting just how present a conservative version of Christianity was throughout the events that day. Immediately after the violent breach of the Capitol Building, insurrectionists took a moment to bow their heads to “consecrate the building and their cause to Jesus.”
It’s something Christians cannot overlook as we watch power be consolidated in ways our nation has never seen. Our religion continues to play a significant role in this road to authoritarianism. But like the Christian violence on January 6th, this role continues to be overlooked.
The two anthropologists propose the reason the violence and the growing Christian nationalism doesn’t get a bigger spotlight is because news outlets primarily focus on things that are seen as “extreme.” And, the authors suggest, the tie between the insurrection, the brand of Christianity present at January 6th, and its growing presence in politics, is no longer seen as extreme. Wow. That is frightening to anyone who follows the teachings of Jesus, to anyone who believes in the essential separation of church and state, and to anyone hoping for a peaceful transfer of power in any upcoming election, and especially Midterms in 2026 and the Presidency in 2028.
This Christian nationalism is a modern variation of Christian Reconstructionism. Both are a variation of Dominionism which seeks government based on their interpretation of biblical law. While they may vary some in what a “Christian” government might look like, they are three heads of the same dragon. Christian nationalism today is far more powerful than many Americans are aware. Stacking the Supreme Court, overturning Roe, taking away voting rights, undercutting fundamental laws like the Clean Water Act, dismantling government expertise, banning books. Christian nationalism is has become a tremendous ally.
There’s a quote that provides helpful insight into Christian nationalism and its source will definitely surprise you. Here’s that quote: “Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism,” it says. “Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people…Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige…Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception.” While that could have been written about Christian nationalism today, it was not. It was actually written by George Orwell in 1945 and it’s about Nazism. Orwell continues, “Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also—since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself—unshakably certain of being in the right.”
Nationalism frequently wraps itself in religion and stomps out spirituality in the process. We do ourselves a great disservice if we think it is not extreme enough to demand our consistent attention.
The heavy-handed and narrow way Christian nationalism practices Christianity invites followers to blindly follow their leaders down a dark and unchristian path. Christian nationalism closes people off with fear. It segregates us, separates us, and elevates those who look the most like us. Here in the U.S. that’s typically straight, white, conservative men and the women who follow them.
Then for Christian nationalism to work there must always be a “they.” “They” aren’t like us. “They” are jealous of how great we are. “They” are taking our stuff. “They” want to harm us and our ways. We are surrounded and under constant threat. We must increase our vigilance.
As Christian Nationalism defines who is in and who is out, it comes with harsh judgement, including against us Christians. Christian nationalists like to shame us by implying we are not Patriots if we don’t join their cause. Christian nationalism is nothing like the teachings of the man whose words tell us to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Where Jesus celebrated diversity and inclusion, Christian Nationalism promotes uniformity and exclusion, and it uses the fear it generates to motivate Christians to feel good about themselves.
Healthy Christian identity is very different. It’s about beliefs and practices that open us up to possibilities, connect us with others, and give us a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves. We must never let Christian nationalism be anything but extreme. We must reiterate over and over its extremism and push against the systemic divisions Christian nationalism wants to create. This task is difficult. But we’ve got something more powerful on our side. American theologian and founder of Sojourners, Jim Wallis, says the “very basic tenet of Christianity and other faiths—love your neighbor as yourself—is still the most transformational ethic in history.”
For some people, claims of nationalism might not seem all that alarming. For them, it’s just a riff on putting “America First.” But as Christians, if we give this some honest and prayerful thought, we are going to find such terms and slogans are spiritually dangerous.
A standard dictionary would define nationalism as a sense of national identity that places one’s own national culture and interests above all others. Patriotism, in contrast, means a love for one’s country. And there is an important difference.
The difference between the two is parallel to the difference between self-respect and selfishness. Patriotism and self-respect intend no ill-will or harm to others. But selfishness, like nationalism, is a win-lose proposition. “I want us to win and others to lose” is very different from saying, “I want us both to win.”
Or we can make an analogy to neighborly and inhospitable, boldness and bullying, confidence and arrogance. The former can be spiritually healthy—neighborly, boldness, confidence. The latter—inhospitable, bullying, arrogance—is always spiritually corrupting.
The use of nationalist terms evokes two strong and disturbing associations.
We know Nazi ideology was proudly nationalist, and it demanded all neighboring Europeans to submit to Aryan superiority and surrender to German rule. Today’s contemporary racists and American neo-Nazis wear this term with pride.
As we see high percentages of far-right conservative white Christians happily gather behind ideas of nationalism, Christian nationalism, and white Christian nationalism, they have entered some sort of group-think or cultic spirit where their leaders can do no wrong—and neither can they. It recalls George Orwell’s description of nationalism: “Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also—since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself—unshakably certain of being in the right.”
Orwell’s words remind us why biblical communities were always so passionately against idolatry. Something bigger than oneself can be God; or it can a golden calf, a gold coin, or any number of fuhrers and fascists and their absolutist nationalist ideologies.
As humans, we are confronted with the temptation to take short-cuts. Short-cuts often turn out to be dead ends, or worse, they take us to places we never would have gone. Christian nationalism is a short-cut to an unshakable sense of certainty and group identity.
It is not easy to break through to people held in that grip. Confrontation just pushes people to dig in further. People rarely shift deeply held beliefs quickly, so our Christian task is to open space for reflection, critical thinking, and healthier frameworks by helping them feel safe and respected while exposing them to more life-giving alternatives.
One of the most impactful approaches is to build trust and connection. People often hold onto nationalist beliefs because these feel tied to their identity, community, security, and purpose. By listening with respect, finding common ground in shared values, we can create the kind of trust that makes dialogue possible.
Exposure to Christian voices from outside nationalist circles can broaden perspective and critical thinking. Many who embrace Christian nationalism believe it is fully aligned with Christianity. Inviting them to explore alternative Christian teachings can spark internal questioning.
Nationalist ideologies thrive in echo chambers. Encouraging collaborations with people of different backgrounds undermines stereotypes and fosters connection. Involvement in inclusive faith spaces offers a healthier sense of belonging and can help reorient focus toward our shared humanity.
So let’s challenge ourselves to loosen the grip of Christian nationalism by building trust and offering faith-based reflection, in our families and communities, and when they are ready, helping them engage with diverse communities.
All voters are values voters. Some are influenced by friends and family, some are influenced by education or media, others find their greatest influence in faith. It’s probably a combination of all of those when you think about your own life. Until recently, all voters were clustered around these four sets of values and priorities, including Christians: Conservative, Traditionalist, Liberal, and Progressive. Many of the values overlap but they are prioritized in different ways. You will probably see yourself most in one of these four categories:
Conservative voters prioritize values like protecting individual freedoms, property and privacy, promoting entrepreneurship, self-sufficiency, free and fair markets; addressing debt and respecting time-tested institutions.
Traditionalist voters prioritize values like physical labor and personal moral responsibility; honesty, and neighborliness; strengthening and supporting family life with a special concern for children, mothers, and the elderly, and standing strong for moral qualities like marital fidelity; they celebrate the value of sincere faith and faith communities that seek the common good.
Liberal voters prioritize values like building up the middle class; addressing corporate monopoly and worker exploitation; respecting human rights, international alliances and institutions; promoting democracy globally through aid and education; valuing good government that’s big enough to do what is needed.
Progressive voters prioritize values like protecting against climate change and a sustainable and regenerative economy; replacing prejudice and oppression with racial and gender equality; reversing the concentration of wealth and power so the poor and vulnerable have a chance to thrive; and telling the whole truth about our past and present history.
But in recent years, there’s been the rise of a fifth kind of voter. And that is the “authoritarian voter.” They value centralizing power in one individual, party, or network, and they divide society based on loyalty to this one and only authoritarian regime. They will do whatever it takes for that regime to win, including distorting or suppressing truth and dissent. Most of them are Christian.
Authoritarian voters are not strangers, we see them every day. They are our neighbors. They are the people we see in the grocery store, and at the gas station. And because the majority identify as Christian, they are also throughout our pews.
How did this swath of voters come to be?
They became vulnerable. Many have been manipulated to be afraid, and resentful, and those feelings converted them into authoritarian followers. They were manipulated by almost hypnotic propaganda and conspiracy theories conjured up by politicians with strong support from Christian leaders. Media has been instrumental in pushing out those voices. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the authoritarian values voters is that many don’t realize what has happened to them; and they don’t understand that their support for authoritarians has made them unintentional tools of a very un-Christian agenda.
Authoritarian elected and faith leaders are empowered by this voter support. They hold elected offices across the country and their Christian supporters preach in pulpits far and wide. These leaders threaten our freedoms and our Christian faith.
They are not going to give up their power. They will lie, cheat, suppress the vote, gerrymander districts, violate law, employ violence, and refuse to verify election results. They are a grave threat to American Democracy.
So here’s why it’s so important to protect the right of everyone to vote and vote in every election, not just every four years. Christians make up the majority of voters in the U.S. We don’t—and won’t—agree on everything. That’s the way it should be in a democracy. But it’s on us to integrate our best values, and vote for a better future. Surely there are enough places of overlap where Progressive and Liberal and Conservative and Traditionalist voters can find common ground for the Common Good, especially at this critical time. It’s up to all of us to look deep inside and then show up and vote with our values because those are our values that are at stake.
There’s a traveling revival touring across America that every Christian needs to know about. This is no typical Christian revival. It’s called the ReAwaken America Tour and all it’s doing is reawakening Christian Nationalism. This so-called spiritual renewal weaponizes Christianity and we Christians do need to be awakened to it. Because it’s abusing Christianity for personal and political gain. The cross means something entirely different to them than it does to us.
At this roadshow that is drawing in thousands at every stop, symbols and speeches are rife with extremist hate language, and apocalyptic and polarizing predictions of God’s vengeance against a wide range of opponents. They promote antisemitic, racist, sexist, and homophobic beliefs in Jesus’ name.
ReAwaken “revivals” are among the increasing attempts to mainstream what is not a religion, but a radical political ideology built on the myth—and it is a myth—that our American republic was founded as a Christian nation and must return to that founding. The U.S. Constitution, of course, says something very different and specific about freedom of not one religion, but all religions.
Even so, the Christian nationalist message is taking hold. Huckster politicians and pastors under the ReAwaken America tent are preying on the fear and anger of people left behind by predatory economic policies that harm local economies and helped create the opioid crisis. As we increasingly hear this phrase, Christian Nationalism, it’s important to understand what this threat is, and is not.
Christian Nationalism says America’s greatness can only be restored when our nation’s laws are based on an idiosyncratic and radically exclusionary reading of scripture. Christian Nationalism is not new. It has been present since our nation’s founding. Its resurgence in recent years is buoyed by politicians and political allies who seek to consolidate power by manipulating large swaths of mostly white Christians, sowing division and discontent. Even violence.
Christian Nationalism recycles conspiracy theories, and tragically this propaganda has motivated deadly domestic terrorist attacks that include targeting Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue and a suburban Chicago July 4th parade; targeting African Americans at a bible study in Charleston and a grocery store in Buffalo; targeting Latinos in a shopping mall in El Paso; Sikhs at worship in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. And we saw Christian Nationalism attack our nation’s capital and threaten to kill politicians on January 6th.
Before we get too despondent, let’s also remember that Jesus did some pretty powerful touring of his own. He traveled the areas most ravaged by the Roman Empire’s economic policies, not espousing hate but healing. He fed those displaced by regressive taxation that built an ever-expanding empire and left the masses indebted and displaced. Hence the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts”—one among many parts of the Bible Christian Nationalist politicians would do well to consider.
As the Christian Nationalist movement continues to expand, it is critical we speak out against this misrepresentation of our faith. Communities are being manipulated and divided along lines of race, religion and inequality in Christ’s name. Jesus would weep. What Christian Nationalism is not, to be clear, is Christian.
Faith begins with a profound truth: every person is created in the image of God [Genesis 1:27]. Scripture teaches us that humanity carries divine dignity and worth, and our call is to protect and honor that sacred worth in one
another. Jesus summed it up in the Great Commandment: Love God, love your neighbor. That’s the heart of Christian faith.
Yet look around. That Good News is misreported news. A movement that calls itself “Christian” is gaining ground in our politics, our pulpits, our media. It’s Christian Nationalism and it’s telling us that America is defined by Christianity and should be ruled accordingly. We know forcing one religion onto our entire nation violates the First Amendment. And to be clear, it also betrays the heart of the Gospel.
When Christians claim America must be a “Christian nation,” we deny the sacred worth of Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, the non-religious, and of course Christians, too, who believe differently than Christian nationalists do. That is not discipleship. That is domination.
White Christian nationalism is showing up in some very troubling places: In school boards trying to erase Black history and evolution from classrooms. In laws denying people equal access to the ballot box. Labeling immigrants a threat to our nation, then detaining and deporting them without cause. When religion is used to separate families, and deny reproductive and LGBTQ+ safety and rights. We saw it on January 6th, when crosses and “Jesus Saves” banners were carried alongside Confederate flags and nooses. That is not orthodoxy—it
is idolatry. White Christian Nationalism raises up whiteness to idol worship.
Jesus did not call us to take up violence to protect empire. He called us to take up the cross in service, humility, and love.
And here is the Gospel truth: there is no room for arrogance and exclusion and neither do we.
Our work is clear. We must call out this idol worship cloaked in our name. That means engaging in more than prayer and scripture. It means putting prayer and scripture to action by showing up for voting rights, for our immigrant neighbors, for the rights of LGBTQ+ people, for women’s health, for quality education for our children. It means being vigilant against tropes that infuse discipleship with nationalism.
The Gospel is still good news. Let us not be timid about learning it. Let us not be silent in living it. Let us be emboldened by it so we stand strong against every force that would deny the universal dignity of God’s children.
America is a can-do nation. The nation that literally invented the “moonshot.” One of the wonderful things that makes us who we are as Americans is that in our vast diversity we innovate together. We’ve literally landed on the moon, cured cancers, and invented the Internet because of it.
That’s true of our religious communities as well. Across denominations and religious traditions, our voices are different, but when tuned to the Common Good, faith leaders and followers of all religions across the U.S. have often been a motivation and protective presence at the forefront of justice. The Apostle Paul taught this spiritual principle of diversity-in-unity and unity-in-diversity when he spoke of us being one body with many diverse members, each valued and honored, no exceptions [1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12].
Our national commitment to religious diversity is an asset enshrined in our nation’s founding document. The U.S. Constitution protects the freedom of each religious community from political oppression. And the reverse is also true. It protects our government from being controlled by any one religion. This principle means no single religious community has a monopoly on politics. And no political party has a monopoly on religion.
That ground shifting. We wring our hands about the events of January 6, 2021, but as Christians, we don’t focus enough on what that violent mob carried with them. In their warrior wear and rage, many carried Bibles and images of Jesus. They exist because an extremist segment of Christian leaders has formed a dangerous alliance with political leaders.
It’s not always easy to tell when these politicians are using these religious leaders, and when these religious leaders are using these politicians. But together they’ve gerrymandered the Bible and the Constitution. Together they’re trying to destroy faith in our elections and roll back voting rights to hold onto power. The result is a political theology, one that promises rewards for submission to an emerging new American authoritarianism, and one that weakens our American democracy and Christianity.
Now we find, for the first time in U.S. history, unaccountable kings seeking crowns, with agendas that aren’t about political party; they’re not about a conservative versus progressive agenda. The agenda is to horde power and Christian nationalism is one of the tools help it reign.
Christians have a calling, and it’s not to agree on everything. But it is to stay true to our shared values and shared vision of a future of as-yet-unrealized possibilities. This vision requires each of us to take back the keys to our own minds. It’s a call to get political with truth-telling if we are to live into in Jesus’ teachings.
America is a can-do nation; Christians have a can-do spirit; and we can-do this! We can embody hope over fear. We can embody joy over apathy. And we can embody conviction over doubt. We must speak against attempts to sabotage our elections and deny voting rights. With conviction, we can help everyone cast their vote, no matter their faith or political party. Every vote is how we will hold accountable anyone who continues efforts to divide our nation so deeply that we erupt into violence carrying bibles and images of Jesus.
Even though the terms patriotism and nationalism arose as synonyms, they mean very different things today. What does this mean for us as Christians as we relate to the country in which we live?
Patriotism is a genuine love for one’s country, being proud of the place where we are from.
Most of us desire to be patriotic, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Especially when we are holding onto the ideals of our nation—because we have wonderful ideals: that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That we seek liberty and justice for all. That we get to have some say in our destiny and who we want to be. These are wonderful ideals as we strive to be a people who govern ourselves to make life better for ourselves and for our neighbors. These things are good and patriotic.
Nationalism has to do with love of country, too. However nationalist love is unquestioning love of country no matter what it does. It’s being so loyal to a country, or to a political party, or to a leader, that we’re willing to follow no matter what. Even if it hurts other people. And that’s dangerous.
One philosopher put it like this: “patriotism is loving your country for what it has done; nationalism is loving your country no matter what it’s done.” So while it is true that patriotism and nationalism are both about love of country, you see the very important distinction here and it plays out in some really concrete ways.
Patriotism is not blind. So as we hold on to those ideals, we also acknowledge as true patriots, the places where we have fallen short because we surely have, as individuals and a country. Patriots acknowledge the truth of what happened here—that we said we wanted life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all and yet we denied it to whole classes of people. The American government and private citizens stole lands and lives and livelihoods. Native American lands; African people’s lives and liberty; Chinese who built the railroads under brutal conditions; Japanese we wrongly interned in concentration camps. As patriots and Christians, we acknowledge the truth of what happens in our country, and then we work to make things better for people in the here and now and into the future.
A nationalist might say something like, “well, it’s unfortunate that native lands were taken and people were killed and slaves were bought and sold and Chinese and Japanese suffered…but it was necessary for us Americans to have this life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that we enjoy today.”
Being a Christian means being able to speak the truth of love of country to those in power, no matter who’s in the White House, no matter which political party controls Congress. We can be both proud to be Americans because there are lots of things to be proud of —and we must also acknowledge the places where we fall short because that’s what being a patriot means.
Nationalism is very un-Christian. White nationalism is when white people want to use the government to pass legislation that keeps white people in privilege and power. Christian nationalism is when Christians want to use legislation to control people, like banning what we can read, telling women what they can do with their bodies, and saying who we are allowed to love.
Christians are called to recognize we are citizens of the Kingdom of God’s—that ideal we talk about so often when we’re here in church. The Kingdom of God is a vision beyond national boundaries and loyalties, a grander vision where all people are children of God. A vision where we work for peace and justice for all, not only within our churches, or communities, or even our national boundaries—but all over the world. Our goal as Christians is to transform the world through acts of peace and justice so it is more like the Kingdom of God on earth. That’s what we see in so many of our scripture lessons. That is what Jesus calls us to do.
A lot of times we look at The Book of Revelation and we read it like it’s really weird—it’s got all this wild imagery and some use it to try to predict the End Times. But that’s not what Revelation is about—and it’s far more intriguing.
The Book of Revelation was authored by John who fled to the island of Patmos because the emperor had killed Jesus and then started to kill his followers. So John fled to avoid persecution and murder, and on Patmos he starts to write this book. And in this book he’s using coded language because he can’t speak openly about the Roman Empire or he’ll be killed. So he instead calls Rome, Babylon, because that’s another foreign power that had conquered his people. He uses language like the Mark of the Beast, 666, to talk about Emperor Nero, the Roman Emperor, because it’s too dangerous to name him. He talks about the dangers of what the state has done to his people. And…also among the passages is a beautiful vision of a whole multitude of nations, tribes, and tongues gathered together before God; where people are not confined to a political boundary, a single language or a single culture. John dreams of that day—when everyone is together before God, seen and recognized. Where all have enough and there’s no hunger, there’s no thirst, and the sun will not strike you by day, and where God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.
That is the Christian vision we are always working towards: a world where we are able to see each other as children of God. Where we are not always asking what is best for ourselves or for the place where we live, but we are asking what is best for the least of these. We are asking, what does God desire our world to be like today?
We as Christians are always called to cast a greater vision for a better brighter future. So if you wear red, white, and blue; if you tear up when you hear the national anthem; and when (not if!) you cast your vote as a patriot, you’ll do so working toward something even greater in this nation. That is what being a citizen of the Kingdom of God means. That is what God has called us to do.
Consider the disciples on Resurrection Day. They were filled with guilt, with conflict, with fear, and despair. Filled with these these emotions and they didn’t know what to do; and it feels kind of like where we are right now. We don’t know what to do in this election season.
In the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:9, Jesus says blessed are the peacemakers. He didn’t say blessed are the peace lovers. Keeping the lid on things isn’t always what Jesus wants us to do. Peacemakers are conflict resolvers. Jesus says blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called a special designation, the children of God.
We say we believe, but boy we need to refresh and reframe and renew those scriptures! There’s a lot of Bad Religion out there right now. It’s called white Christian nationalism and the name spells the problem. You take the most inviting, most welcoming, most inclusive message in the history of the world and some make to out to be white and Christian and not about service, sacrifice, and love; but about domination, division, and control.
We’re leading up to a momentous time that will be a test of democracy, the biggest test since the Civil War, and it’s also a test of faith. The Bible talks about two kinds of time: There’s the tick tock tick tock of time, and kairos time (in ancient Greek, “the right or critical moment,” a time that changes time, that changes everything). We are now in a kairos time.
We are faced with the question: who will the children of God be in our nation now so polarized, so divided, so much afraid of one another? Today’s disciples are confused, conflicted, stuck; we feel captive by the politics of now.
Who will the children of God be that will stand up and speak out and tell the truth? Our younger generation is watching us to see what we faith communities will do and say in a troubled time like this. Jesus says you’ll know the truth and the truth will set you free. What he means is the opposite of truth is not only lies—it’s captivity—being held captive to the lie and right now many of the people we love and care about are captive. Truth and freedom are indivisible in a time like this.
All across the country people are saying they feel helpless and hopeless and they don’t know what to do.
So perhaps we say: don’t go left, don’t go right, go deeper. Every nation has its better angels— we do too—and every nation has its worst demons. Our demons on race run so deep in America and we’re seeing a political trajectory of fear, then hate, then violence. Right now we’re faced with their marketing, not just of grievance but the racial grievance.
The great Archbishop Desmond Tutu found himself preaching in a Cathedral in South Africa, surrounded by hundreds of military—the South African Security Police. As he began, they broke down the doors and came in and lined the walls. They carried tape recorders and notepads to take down whatever Desmond Tutu said. They were saying in effect, go ahead be prophetic, speak the words of truth. You just came out of prison and we’ll put you right back there. The South African security was saying we own this country, we own this place, and we own this church, we own you, and we own your God, too.
So Bishop Tutu stopped speaking, bowed his head as if in prayer, and finally he looked up and he smiled his signature smile. He looked at the security forces and he said, “You are powerful, you are very powerful, but I serve a God who will not be mocked. Since you have already lost, we invite you today to come and join the winning side.”
We can learn from Desmond Tutu a Theology of Hope. This Faith prompts Hope, which causes Action and makes Change. Faith Hope Action Change. There’s a difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is a feeling, a mood, a personality type—a cup half empty or a cup half full. Hope is not a feeling, it’s a choice; a decision we make about this thing we call Faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hope means believing in spite of the evidence and then watching the evidence change.
We’re going to be surrounded in these next weeks by ugliness, hate, cynicism, skepticism, despair. We’re going to be surrounded by a false white gospel. We can muddle in feelings of helplessness and hopelessness and not knowing what to do. Or we can be the blessed truth-tellers and peacemakers. So let’s choose to be the children of God and call out the false white gospel that divides in this time that tests faith and country, this kairos time.
Christian theology and scripture tell us that God’s love embraces the whole world and all its peoples. In God’s realm, there is no alien; we are all kin. His vision for each community aims at justice, peace, and care for the common good of the whole planet, as well as its own national interests. God’s vision is unifying. God’s vision of Shalom heals divisions among humans and looks for a time in which the nation’s “study war no more.”
Christian theology sees God’s image in all people and every race and nation. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, or male or female. God’s love embraces all peoples in their wondrous diversity and welcomes the gifts of all nations.
In the biblical witness, God moved through the lives of the children of Israel and the Hebraic peoples and chose them to be a light to the nations; serving the world, not dividing the world into friend and foe. Today we are each chosen for service, not domination or division. Accordingly, while we may love our nation and recognize that patriotism is good, we must recognize that God’s love includes every nation and every people of the world. God’s love is universal love, and it challenges us to treat strangers and immigrants with hospitality.
But extremist claims say God’s love particularly embraces the United States of America and its national interests, especially its Christian interests and its white interests. That is not patriotism. That is not a reflection of God’s love. That is Christian nationalism.
Christian nationalists will say God’s plan for the USA is that it be a Christian nation, a theocracy in which the values of other cultures and religions are marginalized. They will make the claim that God is on our side, and God’s love focuses on our land, to the exclusion of other lands and peoples. In this world of Christian nationalism, diversity is a fall from grace and should be eliminated or sublimated. That’s not Christianity, that’s identity politics that manipulates Christians into believe we are superior as it negates the equality of others.
To become this Christian nation means we must turn back the clock on human rights and diversity, in stark contrast to God’s vision of a future that embraces everyone. This dangerous and divisive vision of God’s way is locked in a harmful past rather than a hopeful future.
Far better to seek hope. But hope can’t happen, not when our Christian theology and our values are abused in this way, because they limit the scope of God’s love and the gospel message. They drown out the voice of Jesus, who sought to take us beyond nationalism, with their cries of nation first. White Christian nationalism restricts God’s care and Christianity becomes a narrow-minded rather than a global vision; a violent rather than a loving faith; and exclusive rather than an inclusive faith. Nation idolatry becomes the center of our lives; and God’s vision of Shalom, the realm of God, is sidelined.
This kind of extremist Christian propaganda and its domineering spirit is de-evangelizing. On a personal level, it stands in the way of seekers’ quests for a healthy spirituality. On a national level, it foments division, promotes incivility and puts our democracy at risk. On a global level it imperils the planet with its odd cocktail of isolationism and militarism. And an a universal level, we are each denied the message of Jesus, the message of Love, the message of the Prince of Peace.
“My Bible has been hijacked.” More and more Christians are saying that these days. So much of Christianity’s language is being used to obscure truth; to erase rather than remember; to edit memory to serve a wrongful purpose.
The Bible isn’t some rule book on how to forget our past and ignore our present, it’s a handbook for the spiritual practice for moral remembering. Deuteronomy puts it this way: “Always remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore do I enjoin you to observe this commandment.” Exodus instructs us to remember “The God who brought you out of Egypt.” Remembering is resistance to tyranny and a link to liberation.
Back in 1807, slaveholders knew just how powerful the Bible’s moral remembering could be. So they published what’s known as the “Slave Bible.” Its editors removed 90 percent of the Hebrew Bible to create a way to “safely teach” “Christian lessons” to slaves in the British West Indies. They removed stories like Moses leading the Israelites to freedom, but they kept stories like Joseph’s enslavement in Egypt. They sought to control the future by rewriting memory of the past. They manipulated memory because moral memory is powerful.
Something similar is happening with the history of race in America today. Christians are being sucked into a false idea that moral memory is harmful.
The far-right is trying to redefine and even outlaw teaching our nation’s history of racism. For example, Critical Race Theory, CRT, was a well-established, 40-year-old academic and legal framework that says race is defined and shaped in cultural and historical contexts. Nothing radical or even new about that. But boy did it become evil when it was convenient for the far-right, including conservative Christians, come election time. What is radical is trying to rewrite, gloss over, and even erase history.
There is only one reason to make ideas like CRT seem like something dangerous, and that is to divide Black people and white people. It’s about power. Keeping people divided is a tried and true path to take and hold onto power. Something Jesus knew well.
Today museums are being scrubbed, websites are being scrubbed, memory is being scrubbed, school books are being scrubbed. Our kids are being used as pawns. Learning history matters to their present and their future. Our students deserve better. As the great Winston Churchill said, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” That’s why Holocaust museums across Europe (and the U.S.) preserve history when so many have tried to deny it. That’s why the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, known as the National Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, uncovered unknown names of those lost to lynching—so now we can remember. That’s why removing exhibits and art from great institutions like the Smithsonian and the Kennedy Center is very un-Christian.
We must remember slavery, poll taxes, red-lining, Jim Crow, drug laws, and the voter suppression tactics in the past and happening across states today. To remember our nation’s long history of race-based policies, legal
structures, and crimes is nothing short of an urgent moral calling. To remember how far we’ve come and how far we have to go is a calling. Or we are doomed to repeat it.
Faith communities and faith leaders are called to be faithful memory bearers. We can shine light in the darkness, offer truth over ignorance, and reclaim the spiritual practice of remembering as an anecdote to tyranny.
Let us be the ones to lead with the humility our tradition calls on us to carry. Let our church offer a home that remembers history, unvarnished, in order to heal our brokenness.
Ten percent of Americans believe business owners should be able to refuse to serve Black people if they see serving Black people as a violation of their religious beliefs. (Source: Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) survey.) Is that a big number? Well, ten percent of the U.S. is 32 million people. So yes. It’s a really big number. Racism and the concept of segregation are alive and well in America.
What is all the more astounding, consider that race, biologically, doesn’t actually exist. Sure people look different and for hundreds of years scientists assumed race was a biological reality. “There must be different races!” they declared. But literally hundreds of scientific studies in the last 40-some years have demonstrated there is no significant genetic difference between human beings regardless of differences in skin color, hair, and facial structure.
Yet, still we live in a nation and a world where we use slight cosmetic differences to marginalize and harm people. This backwards way of thinking and behaving should have long ago been thwarted by scientific fact.
One of the answers is a tragic relationship between religiosity and racial bias. In an analysis of 55-studies of mostly white Protestants, it found religion offers fertile soil racism. A strong religious in-group identity was associated with prejudice against racial out-groups, especially those religious groups that emphasize conformity and tradition. They may encourage members to view outsiders as less worthy. But even in religious groups that are more humanitarian-focused, the analysis found no evidence that these values translated into racial tolerance. Similarly, the researchers suggested religious humanitarianism is often limited to the in-group. Agnostics fared best, likely because the absence of group-oriented religious belief removed a major driver of in-group/out-group prejudice. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20018983/]
Ouch.
Or as author, Anne Lamott, put it, “You can safely say that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do.”
Warping information to suit personal prejudices comes far too easy. Add
to it the dogmatic environment of many churches, and it’s a perfect
petri dish for growing cultures of racism. Some segments of Christianity
have become a cover for racism and today many racists feel all too
comfortable publicly expressing their views. No hoods needed.
Christians who put racism into the hands of God make racism even easier still, because blame is the retribution or will of an angry God, or some inherent deficiency by design. Taking responsibility for racism or trying to change it would be foolish as that would go against God. And God has already judged and juried.
We all like to think segregated lunch counters, racially divided water fountains, and signs that read “whites only” are ideas that died decades ago. Except they are not. Racial discrimination is now being touted as “religious freedom.” Call it religious freedom, freedom of speech, wrap the law around it any way you want. There is no space in a healthy spiritual community for any ‘ism that pits one group of people over another. That kind of thinking plays to the lowest forms of human pettiness and uses religion as a weapon rather than a balm. We need to call it out when we see it, including in the name of God. Because racism is devoid of any god.
If our Christianity
doesn’t challenge us to care for people we might otherwise be dismissive
of, and it instead reinforces negative feelings about them, we don’t
have a religion. What we’ve got is a formal structure for
institutionalizing our biases.
But it’s important that we do not stop seeking to care for those who practice racism and help them find a wiser way. We must persist in standing up to hate at every turn, and in extending grace and love. For the sake of our nation, the sake of those who are the target, and for the health of our spiritual life, it is time we bring racism’s religious cover to end.
Some folks think everyone should be just like them. What that looks like, how it plays out in our day-to-day lives is what we might call the “’isms”. If we’re really honest with ourselves, we all hold some ‘ism’s. Like classism, racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, antisemitism, islamophobia (also an ‘ism), heterosexism, elitism, weight-ism, able-ism, age-ism, anti-intellectualism, faith-ism and so on…. And hopefully our better angels see inside us and work to dismantle our ‘isms.
The bigger problem comes when we think, if they aren’t like us, then something is wrong with them. We see them as less than us, not as important as us, beneath us. Then the ‘isms become a disease that spreads.
The “woman at the well” is a poignant story most Christians think they know and understand well. But let’s revisit the woman at the well because it is a commentary on ‘isms. She suffered many of them. She was a Samaritan, part of a people considered less than and unclean. Samaritans were victims of racism, ethnocentrism, faith-ism and a sort of internalized antisemitism. She was poor and had a questionable past. She was a woman.
There she was in all her ‘isms at the well. None of that mattered to Jesus. He reached out to this woman, a person marginalized by so many ‘isms, and he recognized her value. In spite of the barriers and rules and traditions and ‘isms and divisions of his day, Jesus offered the woman at the well spiritual sustenance. As Jesus deals with her thirst, and she helps him with his, he teaches us how we can begin to quench the thirst for things to be different, to be treated with justice and treat others with justice in return. Jesus is also warning us of turning a deaf ear to the disenfranchised. He warns us of making Christianity a smug, exclusionary, and self-serving faith. He warns us of the dangers of flinging “ism’s” at others.
But we are still held back by our “ism’s.” We have ‘isms that separate us from each other; and ‘isms that hold us back from those the society misjudges, or has abandoned. And we are all the Samaritan woman, too. She thirsted for someone to see past her ‘isms and see her worth and value. Like the Samaritan woman, somewhere deep inside, each of us thirsts to end the “ism schism”—the biases that hold us back by separating us from each other.
But each day, we hear elected, lay, and Christian leaders in this country practice “ism schisms.” They plant weeds of bias and water with mistrust, misunderstanding, and misgiving. They voice biases that divide us. Sell fear and hate over love and grace.
It is dividing our nation.
We thirst for a church whose energy is directed toward genuinely drowning out the ‘isms. Where we drink from other cultures, faiths, and experiences that broaden us and give us a fuller experience.
As in so many Gospel stories, the woman at the well radically reverses conventional assumptions. Jesus not only engaged an “unclean,” ostracized, foreign woman; she becomes the first evangelist in the New Testament. Jesus cast this outsider, this victim of ‘isms, as the hero of his Gospel story.
No doubt we don’t look forward to paying our taxes, but taxes are nothing new. In fact, every known civilization has taxed its people. The Sumerians, the first known civilization, recorded their tax history in clay.
Early in the Gospel, Mary and Joseph submitted to the Roman emperor’s decree to register their household for a census, with taxes normally to follow (Luke 2:1-5). Fast-forward some 30 years and Jesus, too, agreed with the need to pay taxes to the civil government, separate from tithes to God.
The Pharisees tried to get Jesus and the disciples in trouble with the authorities by asking him, “‘Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?’” (Matthew 22:15-17). Jesus not only knew what they were up to, his response was a call to pay government taxes. “…they brought Him a denarius. And He said to them, ‘Whose image and inscription is this?’ They said to Him, ‘Caesar’s.’” To which Jesus famously replied, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:18-21).
After Jesus’ death and the beginning of the Christian Church, the apostle Paul continued to urged Christians to submit to the laws and authority of the civil government to maintain law and order. “This is also the reason that you pay taxes,” Paul explained, “Because the authorities are working for God when they fulfill their duties. Pay, then, what you owe them…” (Romans 13:1-7)
Fast-forward again, now to today. There is great wisdom in an economy with a tax base. Each of us benefits from the innumerable services provided by our civil government—from the roads we drive on, to the safe water we drink, to the electricity that lights our way. It is only right that we help pay for these valuable services. Rather than seeing our taxes as a burden, let us instead recognize how many people would gladly trade places with us—and let us be thankful we have enough income that requires us to pay our fair share.
Consider for a moment the places that don’t have a reliable tax base. Tens of millions of people today live on less than $2 a day. They face grinding poverty and governments that cannot meet basic needs we take for granted. Compared to so many nations around the world, we are tremendously blessed and quite wealthy.
Yet, a part of our tax system today doesn’t seem to align with our long-held Christian values. When the wealthiest among us are granted massive tax breaks, and the average family pays their fair share, it’s OK to question whether that’s good policy and fair policy in our city, our state, and our nation.
Congress holds the national purse strings so it’s especially important to pay attention to what our elected officials say about taxes. The Gospel is clear. “Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor” (Romans 13:7). Are the people we elect as clear? Who we elect really matters to our families and to our Christian values. Even when it comes to tax policy.
A huge crowd gathers around Jesus, hungry and weary. The disciples look at the need and throw up their hands: “How can we feed so many with so little?” From their perspective, the situation was impossible.
But then, that little boy steps forward. He doesn’t have much—just those five loaves and two fish. Hardly worth mentioning in the face of thousands. Hard to know what the disciples must have thought about the boy’s seemingly comical offering. But as we know, Jesus took the small boy’s offering seriously and that simple act of sharing becomes abundance. Everyone eats. No one is left out. And there are baskets of food leftover.
This story is not about food. It’s a story about what happens when we trust in abundance instead of clinging to scarcity. It’s a
story about refusing to hoard and offering what we have for the common good. Because when we do that, we have enough. Feeding of the five thousand was not a miracle of private stockpiles. A small boy’s act set the table for abundance to overflow. He showed us that open hands rather than closed fists are a better way.
That’s what a moral economy looks like. A moral economy cannot be built on hoarding, greed, or “every person for themselves.” Jesus said we cannot serve both God and money. The prophets warned time and again to not exploit workers or cheat the poor. A moral economy is built on love of neighbor, fairness, sharing resources, and the conviction that when we plan for the common good and not just our own good, there is enough.
A moral economy today looks like ethical hiring, a living wage pay, and respectful working conditions so workers don’t have to check
their dignity at the door and families don’t have to choose between groceries and rent. It looks like guaranteed healthcare for all, not just those who can afford it. It looks like a social safety net that’s not a political football. It looks like protecting God’s creation so our children and grandchildren inherit a livable planet.
And here’s the truth: when we do those things, when we strive for a moral economy, everyone is better off. When wages are fair, economies prosper. When we all pay our fair share of taxes, our communities prosper. When we care for creation, generations prosper. When we share resources wisely, peace prospers.
As Christians, we can advocate for an economy in our homes, churches, and nation that reflects the love of neighbor instead of the love of money. If we do, we will see the miracle that turns scarcity into abundance and we will glimpse the Gospel breaking into our world.
When the shooting at Columbine happened, the nation and the world stood united in shock. A mass murder on high school grounds felt like such a violation of a sacred place. The commitment from everyone was that this could not happen again. How could we ever let this happen again?! We went to church and we prayed and in our thoughts and prayers we resolved collectively to change the situations that allowed the shooting to happen. Teens were murdered and we thought surely, surely if something will galvanize us into action it is a shooting at a school.
When the shooting at Sandy Hook happened, the nation and the world stood united in shock. A mass murder on grade school grounds felt like such a violation of a sacred place. The commitment from everyone was that this could not happen again. How could we ever let this happen again?! We went to church and we prayed and in our thoughts and prayers we resolved collectively to change the situations that allowed the shooting to happen. Kindergartners were murdered and we thought surely, surely if something will galvanize us into action it is a shooting at a school.
When the shooting at Robb Elementary happened, the nation barely blinked an eye. So we went back to church and lifted up the lost lives and we prayed for the families and our politicians offered even more “thoughts and prayers.” And as ministers, we wondered what to say in the midst of it all.
It has been over 25 years of mass shootings in grade schools, high schools, and universities; and houses of worship, supermarkets, movies, concerts, nightclubs, even a 4th of July parade. There have been a lot of thoughts and prayers.
In First Kings, Elijah has been on the constant run from Queen Jezebel. And he finally decides to just stop. Just stop. He’s exhausted. He goes up to a mountain where he can be alone in a cave. And there he hears this voice. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” the voice asks, and Elijah starts saying, “You know what? I have done everything right. I’ve done everything I think God wants me to do. I have done everything, and life is tough.”
The voice says, “go out and wait for God.” And so Elijah does as instructed and leaves the cave. And there is this wind, a wind so fierce and so strong that it breaks rocks. But God is not in that wind. Then there is this powerful earthquake, so powerful, but God is not in that earthquake. And then there is terrible fire, but God is not in that fire.
In the ancient world, people believed gods were in control of all of those elements. They thought there was a god of wind, a god of earthquakes, a god of fire. But God was not in the midst of any of those things. And that was surprising.
And then came sheer silence. Picture snow coming down, a foot of snow on the ground, and walking out into it—perhaps at nighttime—and you can hear the snow kind of crunching under your feet. And then if no one’s around, you stop for a moment and the snow absorbs all sound. And you hear nothing. Nothing but sheer silence. In fact, you hear such nothingness that it is almost loud. That is the sheer silence Elijah hears. And then God’s voice comes forth from that sheer silence and says, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” God then sends Elijah down from the mountain to get to work.
This story is so powerful. God is not in the midst of the violence and chaos. God does not cause the wind and the earthquake and the fire. God comes forth afterwards, and then asks, “What are you doing here?”
You see, we need moments when we stop where we are, and we look around and we say, “What are we doing here?” God’s presence is found in the way we respond to that question.
People always try to deflect blame from the gun problem. We will always hear people saying, well, the problem is hatred—there’s just too much hatred in our world. No argument, there is plenty of hatred in our world but that doesn’t lead to a mass shooting in a grade school. We’ll hear people say we need to strengthen mental health resources and that’s true. We certainly need to make sure people have access to medical care and to mental health care. But there are all kinds of people who have a mental illness who don’t shoot up a synagogue.
The problem is guns. Ease of access; the lack safety measures; and those military grade weapons. The only point of a gun that can shoot 600 rounds a minute—that’s 10 bullets ever second—is to kill people. Guns are more lethal than cars and far less regulated. Guns are now the leading cause of death for children and young adults, surpassing car crashes since 2017. But it’s still easier to get a gun then a drivers license. It’s true we can’t pass any legislation to keep people from hating or becoming mentally ill. We can pass common sense gun safety laws.
Christians own more guns than any other group. We have work to do. Like Elijah, it’s time we get to work. We must call out the gun lobby and hold politicians who are more loyal to the gun lobby than gun safety to account. We need to vote for leaders who are going to pass sensible gun safety reforms. “What are we doing here?” God’s presence will be found in the way we respond to that question.
We can’t deny it. The gun massacres we see—on a weekly if not daily basis—are a uniquely American event. Now so common they barely make the news let alone headlines. And we barely shrug when we hear of more dead at the hands of guns. Let’s face it, as Christians we’ve become numb to gun violence. Which is doubly tragic because Christians as a group own more guns than anyone.
So here’s a plea that doesn’t attack or insult, quote Bible verses, or shame gun owners. This isn’t about changing opinions or politics. And it certainly doesn’t tread on any Second Amendment rights. This is simply an ask. An ask on behalf of parents and grandparent who have children and grandchildren.
We understand some people feel the children they love would be safer a world with more guns. But as we have more and more assault weapons on the streets, many of us do not feel our children and grandchildren are safer in a world with guns of such destructive capacity. There is nothing any number of armed teachers or police officers can do to prevent carnage in a classroom, movie theater, nightclub, music festival, sporting event, grocery store, synagogue, or even inside a church. By the time the “good guys with guns” intervene, the bad guys will already have mowed down dozens of souls.
That’s why if you are one of the “good guys with a gun,” please speak up to your fellow gun owners, because “more guns” is not always better. You might explain to them the idea of “diminishing returns”—that if everyone owns a handgun, then the only people who have an advantage are the ones who own a more dangerous gun, and then if everyone owns a more dangerous gun, the only people who have an advantage own an assault weapon, and if everyone owns an assault weapon, nobody is safe, anywhere. There comes a point when the capacity for destruction at 600 bullets a minute results in less safety and intolerable destruction.
Please remind them that all kinds of rights—like the right to drive— come with necessary public safety and personal responsibilities. You might mention that even the undeniably conservative Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, did not believe the right to own guns was unlimited. He described assault weapons as ‘dangerous and unusual’ and their civilian use was subject to regulation or ban under the Second Amendment. That’s right. Uber-conservative Justice Scalia said that.
The Constitution protects everyone’s right to own guns. But the Constitution also affirms the God-given right for our kids and our grandkids to life, liberty, and the pursuit of not dying at the hand of a gun. Hundreds of kids and grandkids across all 50 states have forever lost that right because of “a bad guy with a gun,” and because too many good people didn’t do enough to stop him from owning and shooting that gun.
This is a request every freedom-loving Christian can certainly give some consideration. Because while owning a gun may feel like an essential element of freedom, this weaponization of America doesn’t feel like freedom. And many Christians who own guns feel this same way. It feels like a cene from a lawless gangland movie, or a dystopian novel. It doesn’t feel like the sanctity of life is winning, and it doesn’t feel like Christian love is winning.
So that good guys with guns can safely own guns, let’s do some basics. Let’s strengthen background checks and close gun sale loopholes, especially for people who have already demonstrated violence, including domestic violence. Let’s stop the sale of the kinds of assault weapons, bump stocks, and ammunition whose only functional purpose is to kill as many people as possible. Let’s all do what’s best for all our kids. That’s what good people do. That’s what good Christian people do.
How many children’s rooms are decorated with animals, arks, and rainbows all painted in vibrant pastels? The Noah’s Ark story is a favorite and how can it not be? A giant boat filled with every kind of animal imaginable! (Even if it was confusing how Noah actually got all those animals onto one boat and behaving.) There is something comforting and beautiful in the promise of a future captured in an acrylic rainbow, an exaggerated arch over a toddler’s bed.
But we all must leave childhood and as we revisit the reality of Noah’s Ark, it is not a pretty tale at all. Place this story in modern times. What would the newspaper headlines be? “God Destroys the World – One Family Survives Violent Flood.” “Chaos Comes Crashing.” Doesn’t sound like the perfect chair-rail border for the little toddler’s room now, does it? Looking at the Flood Event from this perspective gives us insight into just how horrifying this story really is. But in the end, there are lessons that probably make us a bit uncomfortable, but they’re helpful as is any time-tested Bible story.
We can reasonably make the argument, and some scholars have, that vengeful global destruction seems very unlike God. God doesn’t like the way people are acting, even though they had never been giving anything by which to measure what was expected of them. Remember, except for Adam and Eve and the apple tree, up until this point in the Bible, God has only given humanity one other commandment: “go forth and multiply.” Read the first five chapters of Genesis and that’s it—“go forth and multiply.” There are no Ten Commandments, no “thou shalt not’s.” So, even when humanity has basically done what they were told to do—go forth and multiply—God condemns them all by reaching into the sky and opening the drain that held back the deluge without warning. Except for telling his best pal…you might want to build a boat.
Now, if that isn’t uncomfortable enough…after countless humans and animals spin and whirl and crash in the chaotic waves, and their bloated bodies finally come to a rest in what must have become some horribly unspeakable place, God seems to feel regret and promises, “I will never, ever do it again… and look—I made a rainbow for you.”
Then consider Noah’s situation. He’s no better off in this catastrophic story. Noah, the one person on the entire face of the planet who was found to be “righteous,” has a difficult conversation with God. God tells him, “You should build a boat. I’m gonna send some rain…ok, a whole, whole lot of rain. Enough to wipe out everything except you and your family and a couple of every animal.”
By God’s own judgment Noah was the only “righteous” person on the planet. So presumably Noah would have argued fiercely to save the innocent, like Abraham argued with God for the lives of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Like Jonah, who was sent by God and successfully warned the people of Nineveh of impending judgment.
But if Noah warned people about the flood, the Bible doesn’t say it. Instead, Noah builds the ark as God commands, crams millions of species into it, and follows his family onto the ship and shuts the door, leaving the rest of the world to deal with what was to follow. The floodgates open and the reality must have been horrifying as the rest of the world came to grips with what was happening. Crazy old Noah wasn’t looking so crazy anymore.
But can you imagine sitting on the inside of that boat and doing nothing? Hearing the horrific screams of friends and neighbors trying desperately to claw their way into the one and only place of refuge amidst the sudden roar of violence and chaos?
That paints one terrifying baby room. On the wall just over the crib is a monstrosity of a boat. Along the edges of its massive door are the fingernail scratches of those who never made it in; their weapons strewn about. On the other side of the baby’s room, as the swells subside, carcasses rest in the trees. You begin to think how good it is that you cannot smell what you are looking at beyond the diaper pail. Then in the farthest corner of that room, a freshly painted rainbow still drips blood red. Under it is written, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
Noah’s actions are like so many of the choices we humans have made in our history, and floods prevail. Every one of these floods is a choice humans have made. A flood of greed and entitlement cut off the native Americans; a flood of unjustified superiority cut off millions of Africans forced into the slave trade; a flood of hatred cut off the Jewish people in the Holocaust; a flood of violence murdered millions of Rwandans and Cambodians; a flood of terrorism killed nearly 3000 people on 9/11. There are floods of economic oppression, of racism, of violence against women, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ people; even literal floods that devastate entire coastlines and cities and consume lives and livelihoods due to the effects of climate change.
But there is one flood that is entirely unique to the Unites States of America.
It’s our flood of guns. Weapons of mass destruction mow down dozens of lives in a matter of minutes. In the hands of boys and men, guns have replaced cars as the single leading cause of death for young people under the age of 19 in the U.S. Guns are the most common and most lethal form of suicide and again, specific to the U.S.
American politicians and Christians send their thoughts and prayers, cry out about the sanctity of life, and fight tooth and nail against the most basic gun safety reforms. They’re sitting on the inside, hearing the horrific screams of friends and neighbors on the outside who’ve lost loved ones to guns, and they are doing nothing amidst the mass violence.
This flood is manmade and made in America, and we know the chaos to come. And we Christians, who own more guns than any other group, find ourselves playing the role of old Noah. We gather on our boats, imagining that in our righteousness God has entitled us to close the door behind us in a sort of “divine seal of approval” for our lack of action.
The rainbow hung in the place of the rains is a declaration that in all the world’s anger, disappointment, response, regret, and promise, destruction and violence are not the way. Living a life as a reflection of God is about stopping the floods in the first place. Can we look into the swirling chaos of today and honestly say the Christian church has become an ark of unity, or have we chosen to huddle in our big boat, well-armed, and wait for God to close the door?
We Christians are good at a lot of things. Potluck dinners. Taking care of church members. Dressing up on Sundays. Weddings. Funerals. Worship. Quoting scripture. And we’re persistently exceptional at misinterpreting that scripture, then running amuck in the world because of it.
We have used the Bible to support, promote and act upon some pretty un-Christian things: slavery, the Holocaust, Apartheid, the Spanish Inquisition, segregation, subjugation of women, domestic violence, all sorts of exploitation and the list goes on.
Oddly, if you ask theologians to pick one core biblical theme, most of them would say love, grace, and forgiveness. They probably would not name the oppression, belittlement, hatred, and marginalization represented by the numerous atrocities committed by the Christian Church.
These atrocities are usually the result of trying to play God, one group of people pretending they have complete knowledge of God’s will and are the uber-blessed. Of course, time and time again, Jesus made it clear we should not put ourselves in the place of playing God, and unlike far too many humans, God welcomes and loves us all equally. Period.
But we keep doing it. We keep doing it then afterwards, we argue, name-call, suppress others, and fight for centuries, falsely playing the role of heavenly judge and jury, as we slowly realize we got it wrong. We realize that, in fact, Paul was not promoting slavery and we’ve learned to contextualize his statements and letters. We become more skilled at interpreting the original Greek and, over time, we decide to stop quoting the Bible to support slavery (or the subjugation of women, or racism… you get the point.) Because we finally come around to realizing that biblically, love wins. Always.
Yet here we are again. The roots of the anti-LGBT mindset in the U.S. are, sadly, in Christianity.
We misinterpret the Bible and ruin their lives with it. We ignore the biblical bias for those who are marginalized, abused, belittled, and unfairly judged. Ignore the biblical directive to show everyone love. Period.
Oh sure, we’ve “softened” our approach to the LGBT community, saying things like “hate the sin, love the sinner.” But we fail to recognize that what we are calling the “sin” and the person we are calling the “sinner” are one and the same. An LGBT person can no more separate themselves from their sexuality than a heterosexual person can. We aren’t loving the person if we don’t love the whole person.
I suspect the “softening” of the language we use has everything to do with making us feel better, and very little with making the LGBT community feel better. Because it certainly does not make them feel any better. In fact, the love/hate—emphasis on hate—relationship the Church continues to push onto this group of people only serves to push them out of our pews, into closets, and into even darker places which sometimes lead to suicide. The Church’s approach is at the heart of most of the hurt, anguish, self-doubt, abuse, and death associated with being LGBT. Not very loving. Not very grace filled. And it certainly leaves us in need of forgiveness.
Many Christians have lost their way and would much rather reinforce the things we want to believe, than believe the sometimes-difficult things Jesus taught. Who, by the way, never said a word about homosexuality. Yet many Christians still try to use the Bible as if it is a sex manual, telling us what is and isn’t acceptable to God; who to judge; and where to direct all kinds of nastiness and holier-than-thou ‘isms.
The reality is that the Bible is not a sex manual. And that’s a good thing. Because unlike homosexuality, there are a whole lot of verses on heterosexually. The Bible insists marriage be between a man and a woman of the same faith (Genesis 27:46-28:2). Not only should a wife be subordinate (Ephesians 5:22), she should also prove her virginity lest she be stoned (Deuteronomy 22:20-21). And the whole thing would be much better if it were arranged (Genesis 24:37-38). And that’s just the warmup act.
According to the Bible, if a woman’s husband dies and she hasn’t had a son, she must marry his brother and have intercourse with him until she has a son (Mark 12:18-27). Sometimes, biblically wives are good, but concubines are better. Many of the “men of God” were not only married, at least three of them had more than one concubine (Abraham, Caleb, Solomon). And since there’s no such thing as too much of a good thing, why not have many wives? God frequently blessed polygamists (Esau, Jacob, Gideon, David, Solomon, Belshazzar).
As far as sexuality and the Bible’s perspective on woman and slaves as property…as you can imagine, it does not get better.
Most of us have matured enough theologically to recognize we need to contextualize the writings of the Bible. We’ve moved past using these examples as the end-all-be-all of acceptable practices of sexuality. Yet we’ve somehow not managed to apply this very same understanding to the 6 or 7 Bible verses—of more than 31,000 Bible verses mind you—that have become known as the “clobber verses.” “Clobber” because they are used to clobber people who are gay or who support gay rights.
Something more to consider: polygamy, concubines, marrying your brother’s widow, are all choices. And we have decided to “get over” the biblical directives for them. Sexual orientation is not a choice. But so many Christians just aren’t able to get past that one.
Equally interesting to consider: it is also a choice to judge and marginalize LGBT people even though it is not a choice for them to be LBGT. We judge them. But not ourselves.
[CONTINUE TO PART 2 TO EXPLORE THE CLOBBER VERSES]
The anti-LGBT mindset in the U.S. is, unfortunately, rooted in Christianity. It’s also not the easiest topic to dig into. The scholarship can make for thick—albeit important—reading.
Context is key. When the Bible was written, the sun orbited the earth, the sky was a solid dome containing windows, and it would have been impossible for any biblical text to address “homosexuality.” Why? Because homosexuality is about sexual orientation, and understanding sexual orientation wasn’t a thing back then. The idea of “sexual orientation” is a modern construct, first introduced in the 1800s, thousands of years after the Bible was written. So we must accept the reality that the writers of the half dozen so-called “clobber verses” used to harm LGBT people today were not capable of acknowledging, understanding, let alone condemning lesbian, gay, bi- or trans- sexual orientation.
Of course, the writers did discuss sex. Lots of it. What might they have been trying to say?
Let’s start with Genesis 19:1-11, because this is the verse most familiar when it comes to what Christians think of as a verse about homosexuality.
The story here is of two travelers, two messengers from God who are given shelter by Lot and his family. Hospitality was a big deal in those days and in this story, when these men approach Lot’s home they make less-than-hospitable demands on Lot and Lot’s guest. To get a sense of just how important hospitality was, when these men say they want to force themselves (most likely sexually) on Lot’s guest, Lot offers up his daughters instead. Despicable and deplorable to say the least, but a sure sign that hospitality was a very big deal (and girls were not.)
These men wanted to exert their dominance and humiliate, just as warriors did after conquering a foe in those days (and often today.) They saw it as putting another male into the position of a woman (thought of as property, weak and soft, and less than men.) The men did not get what they wanted; they never exerted their power over Lot’s guests.
But Christians still insist this text is proof that homosexuality is an “abomination.” The handy thing about defending the Bible against people who want to use Genesis 19:1-5 to gay bash is that you really don’t have to do any work. The Bible does it for you.
For example there’s Sodom, referenced multiple times in the Bible as an example of great sinning. But what is that sin? It depends where you look. In Isaiah 1:10-17 the sin is injustice, not rescuing the oppressed, defending the orphan, or pleading for the widow. In Jeremiah 23:14 the sin is adultery. In Ezekiel 16:48-49 it is the sin of not aiding the “poor and needy.” In Zephaniah 2:8-11 the sin is bullying, boasting, and pride. In the Wisdom of Solomon it is “the bitter hatred of strangers.” But nowhere is the sin of Sodom about being gay.
The sin of Sodom was lacking hospitality, not being just, bullying, hating strangers, not caring for those marginalized. All the kinds of things churches and individuals sorely need to keep in mind when it comes to how we still marginalize, bully, and treat LGBT folks like a “stranger.”
Another scripture is Leviticus 18:22 & Leviticus 20:13. Among the jewels found in this section of the holiness codes are: a mandate to kill disobedient children, a law that would prevent bowl-cuts (or “rounding off the side-growth of your heads” kind of like the Beatles), dietary restrictions to not eat shellfish or touch or eat the flesh of a pig, and a prohibition on the rhythm method of birth control. And presumably gay sex: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” [Lev 18:22]
These holiness codes, and the clobber verses found here are often called the “Purity Codes.” They primarily served two main purposes. In a time of superstition based on observation, a big part of the Purity Codes was a way to understand the world in a time before science, and keep consistency by following particular rules. The second thing these codes did was define the monotheistic Israelites over and against the idol-worshipping Canaanites, a way of differentiating themselves and saying “we are not them.”
So what do we, now enlightened Christians of a scientific age, do with this code?
(We break for a bit of Ben Franklin: To borrow from an old Benjamin Franklin quote, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” In truth, while Ben most probably enjoyed a mug of beer from time to time, the real quote is, “Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine, a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.” In a happy coincidence, the same rains nourish the barley and hops that are changed into beer. In an even happier coincidence, wine and beer both pair exceptionally well with shrimp. God is good. When it comes to things like shellfish, pigs, cutting our sideburns, and stoning children who mouth off to their parents, we understand these are flat out silly laws today. Not all edible fish have fins as the holiness codes mandate. Some come in the shape of pink commas and are delicious with a nice Riesling. And bacon makes breakfast that much better. For that matter, wrap them around a shrimp, throw them on the grill, and I promise God will not smite you.)
What we do is recognize Leviticus for what it was. These were a people who rejected idol worship. They adopted this new monotheistic God to navigate a more justice-centered world. But without idols, they needed a new way to explain and understand the world around them and that is what these codes provided.
Of course Leviticus does clearly describe and condemn a male-male sex act as taboo. Scholars have pointed to several reasons for this. It may be the same reason the rhythm method was thought to be wrong in the eyes of God, because they thought sperm contained the whole of life (women were just the incubation chamber.) Male-male sexual relationships may have mixed up their understanding of gender roles where men were dominant and women were property. In the Greco-Roman era male-male sex was also a show of dominance. These biblical passages may have also been about protecting socially “inferior” men, like slaves, from exploitation by men of higher social rank. So while Leviticus condemns male-male sex as a power dynamic, it does not condemn gay relationships or LGBT identity.
One of the most prevalent forms of same-sex relations in the Greco-Roman world was male prostitution which frequently involved boys. In that context, the texts in Romans 1:26-28 involving male sex become a condemnation of pederasty and prostitution. Paul also points to same sex intercourse as idolatrous which may refer to the practices of priests and priestesses of Mediterranean fertility gods, who regularly practiced that type of prostitution and elevated it within a religious context, to the state of idolatry.
So far the clobber verses have only addressed male-male sex. Romans is the most extensive discussion of same-sex intercourse in the Bible—a whole two verses—and is the one place the Bible speaks specifically about a female-female sex act.
The analysis I find most convincing is the mistranslation of the Greek word Paul uses, physikos. Physikoso was translated into English to mean “natural.” This word has led many to speak of LGBT behavior as “unnatural.” They then define what is and isn’t “normal” based on their personal biases rather than science.
Translated into English, physikos loses some of its original meaning. It doesn’t mean “natural” or “nature” so much as it means “produced by nature.” Physikos has more to do with how things naturally occur in Creation. (An aside, it is worth noting that same-sex behavior occurs throughout nature, including primates, our closest relatives.) Paul appears concerned with staying true to how God created someone to be. The sin here is acting against the nature of who God created you to be. Consider that immediately following this verse, Paul provides a long list of sins so extensive we all fall into at least one or more of these categories. We’ve all felt that guilt or shame and said, “I shouldn’t have done that. That’s not who I am.” He’s making the point that we all go against who we know we were created to be.
By Paul addressing the idea of a same-sex sex act in which at least one of the people is not attracted to someone of the same sex, it would be equally against nature for someone who is attracted to someone of the same sex to have sex with someone of the opposite sex. There are plenty of approaches to understanding what Paul is trying to teach us in these texts but any good exegesis ultimately points to the reality that Paul is not talking about adults in consenting relationships. So here’s an irony. Telling LGBT people that these verses mean they have to stop being LGBT people is actually telling them to commit the very sin against which these verses warn.
The final two verses, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 & 1 Timothy 1:9-10, can be lumped together because a particular Greek word, arsenokoitēs, is only found in these two verses and nowhere else. It’s entirely possible Greek-speaking Jews made it up to port a Hebrew word to Greek. Then over time its clear meaning was lost. Arsenokoitēs is difficult to precisely translate. It’s frequently translated as “homosexual” which is incorrect. A more precise meaning is “male prostitute” with additional interpretations that include “the customer of a male prostitute,” or “boy molester” or “someone who abuses themselves with a man” or “using sexual manipulation to acquire money.” Biblical Greek scholars can’t agree on a single best translation but they do agree it is not a statement on homosexuality.
We have one more lesson in Greek mistranslation, another word in 1 Corinthians 6:9, malakos, is found in lots of literature so here we can better understand its intended meaning. Malakos literally means “soft.” Some scholars interpret that as effeminate and others say it could also mean sexual perverts, sodomites, weaklings, the self-indulgent. Still others convincingly say it singles out a particular type of male prostitution involving young boys. Malakos was a word that could be used to refer to things as diverse as men who were weak in battle to men who lived extravagant and pampered lives. If Paul was actually trying to describe something about a sexually submissive male (which is still not the same as being gay,) it’s very likely he would have used the common Greek word for it, kinaedos. But he didn’t.
In summary, if some Christians want to call homosexuality a sin, just don’t say it’s biblical. Those same Christians will also have to admit they are a sinner for using God’s name under false pretenses, “in vain.” The Church and its ministers have a clear responsibility to address the harm perpetuated against LGBT people in the name of Christianity. Because Paul has something clear to tell them in Romans 2:1: “…you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.”
The Bible is not a sex manual. And boy is that a good thing! Because the Bible doesn’t just promote marriage between a man and a woman (Genesis 27:46-28:2), it insists marriage be within the same faith and best if it is arranged (Genesis 24:37-38). Not only should a wife be subordinate (Ephesians 5:22), she should also prove her virginity lest she be stoned (Deuteronomy 22:20-21). According to the Bible, if a woman’s husband dies and she hasn’t had a son, she must marry his brother and have intercourse with him until she has a son (Mark 12:18-27). Sometimes wives were good, and sometimes many wives were better. God frequently blessed polygamists (Esau, Jacob, Gideon, David, Solomon, Belshazzar). Sometimes wives were good, and sometimes concubines were better. Many “men of God” were not only married, they had multiple concubines (Abraham, Caleb, Solomon). Yes, the Bible has so much to say about sex and relationships.
Yet if we are trying to follow the teachings of Jesus, we can’t believe the Bible says being gay is a sin. Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. Time and again he made it clear that we must not put ourselves in the place of playing God, that God loves us all equally, and all are to be made welcome, accepted, and loved. 1 John 4:20 says,” If you say you love God but hate someone, you are a liar. For you cannot love God, whom you have not seen, if you hate your neighbor, whom you have seen.” For those who place value on the teachings of Jesus, it’s vital we include all people rather than exclude some.
But one thing you can bet on is the minute Christians talk about the need for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, someone will interrupt with a loud outburst of “but religious freedom!” This small but vocal contingent of Christians would rather reinforce the things they want to believe, than believe the sometimes-difficult teachings of Jesus. So they have tried to equate freedom to worship with the freedom to discriminate, by practicing a faith that is contradictory to the teachings of Jesus.
Far too many people claiming to be Christian are behind or supportive of hundreds of anti-trans bills introduced by legislators. When anti-LGBT hate crimes proliferate in the U.S. and around the world, Christians are not practicing a faith Jesus would recognize. When our LGBT friends, family, and neighbors are vulnerable to discrimination in so many spheres of their lives, that is not a just society. If Christians wish to be known as a people who follow teachings of love, we must do the work of educating ourselves and showing up in support. Christians cannot allow anyone to assume our silence is consent.
We’ve made progress, but not enough. As Christians, we must speak up when we see or hear anything abusive toward LGBT people. We must tell our government representatives that all people are created equal and it is time to ensure that no one in our nation faces discrimination because of who they are or who they love. They must put and keep LGBT nondiscrimination laws into place.
When Christianity isn’t practiced with intelligence and compassion, it can easily be used as an authoritative confirmation of biases. Without critical thinking and the innate valuing of individuals, perverting religious outlooks to suit personal prejudices is far too easy. Churches can be the perfect petri dish for growing cultures of hate and homophobia.
The message of Jesus was really all about love and equality and justice. Love is only fully love when it is put into action. Let us lift up the LGBT communities when others attempt to put them down. Let us show up when others try to shut them out. Let us speak up when others speak against. Let us lead the way with our presence, with our persistence, and with our passion. Let us lead the way with love.
Imago Dei. The image of God. Some will use biblical interpretation to undergird prejudices against LGBT people. But we can say with confidence that the biblical witness is this: Each human being is created in the image of God—Imago Dei. Each deserves justice and dignity, love and care. No matter our gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, ability, religion, or station in life, God loves us all.
That might not be clear to all, but it’s clear in the Creation stories. Both of them. The first story in Genesis 1 is most familiar—the six-day story of creation. God said, “Let there be…” and the world came into existence. On the sixth day, God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…”
The Hebrew word for humankind is ha’adam. Many Hebrew scholars argue this is a non-gendered word. Just like we might use the word man for “humanity,” this word means all of us. The text goes on to say, “…male and female God created them…” There is no gender hierarchy in this text; all of humanity is created in the image of God—Imago Dei.
In the second story in Genesis 2, when the ha’adam—the human—can’t find a partner in creation, God puts the ha’adam to sleep, and takes what can be translated as “a rib” or “the side” of the human one and creates an “appropriate helper” —ēzer kenegdô. We can’t be sure of the gender of that first human, not really. For all we know, the first human could have been a two-sided being, female on one side and male on the other. But when this biblical “operation” is over, there are two beings: an ish, a man, and a woman, ishah.
These Hebrew Bible scriptures teach us that humans are created in God’s image, and we are co-creating our world with God. They also teach us that when we look at each other, we see a bit of what God is like. When we see diversity, we see God’s artistic giftedness. If we look with eyes wide open, we see a little bit of God in each of us.
Psalm 139 reminds us that each human being is awesomely and wonderfully made. God knows us, just as we are; God loves us, just as we are.
Who are we to decide that some of God’s beautiful creations are are worthy of dignity, respect, and human rights, but others are not? When God loves all the bodies, and sees them as “very good”? How can we disrespect the image of God in our neighbor? Each of us deserves dignity. Each of us deserves the right to live a full life in this nation, where we can work and be safe, earn a living wage, raise our children and have them grow up to be even better than we are. Black, brown, and white bodies, male and female bodies, immigrant bodies, poor bodies—and gay and straight bodies.
This agenda is a Christian agenda, and it calls for American Christian support. We who believe in freedom cannot rest until we make our nation a just one in which all of God’s people enjoy liberty, freedom, and abundant life. Raise your voice. Say a prayer. Love your neighbor, no matter who they love.
Jesus affirmed each and every person as a child of God, with inherent worth and dignity. More and more churches are starting to follow Jesus’ example by going through the open and affirming process. What does that mean? Well, for starters, it doesn’t stop with raising a rainbow flag. It is a commitment to living the way of Jesus every day.
By July in this election year, that affirmation was under threat by 527 bills introduced in legislatures designed to strip away or further limit the rights of LGBT people in this country. People who follow Jesus are trying to take away the rights of fellow citizens. They’ve taken a handful of scripture and used them as a weapon to beat people over the head with the Bible.
We shouldn’t need to go through and dismantle those verses. Because every person is a child of God and Jesus was clear-eyed in his commitment to that idea, and that humanity. But biblical editors, much later, combed through the Bible and toned down that radical inclusivity of Jesus’s message.
Long before there was the New Testament, long before there was Jesus, there was Genesis. In Genesis, God created humanity, male and female. This wasn’t a biological statement. It was an explanation, long before science, designed to help an ancient people understand why they were walking this earth. Sadly, this is the first of a handful of verses since used to clobber LGBT people with the Bible.
It’s true, the Bible lists lots and lots of sins…
So yes, we can go through and debunk weaponized Biblical verses like these. We can learn all about the literary, rhetorical, and historical critical method of scholarly biblical interpretation upon which all this scholarship is based. But here’s the thing. We don’t need to and you know why? Because Jesus gave us the criterion we need to know. Jesus said that if with theology we do actions that are not loving, it’s invalid theology. It’s wrong and it’s anti-Christian because it goes against Jesus’s message. Because Jesus’s message was all about love.
Now, there are Christians who say their message is about love, too. But they’ll frame their love by saying, because we really love you, we want to save you from an eternity of damnation and suffering in hell. Of course, hell and damnation also aren’t biblical. And according to Jesus, not good theology because it’s used to create fear in people and to justify one’s own hatred.
You don’t have to look any further than the way Jesus lived his life to see that the Gospel is a gospel about love and inclusion. Every single day of his life, Jesus preached love. Every single day of his life, Jesus sat people around tables and broke down barriers, and said, “You are welcome here. There is a seat for you right here, go ahead and sit on down. God’s table does not exclude.” His message of inclusion is a message of loyalty to God. It’s an invitation to sit down with people you think aren’t like you.
First John is a letter that compels John’s community to love and care for one another. In it, its author says: you have to love to know God. And if you have not experienced love, you have not experienced God because God is love.
You know, the Bible, religion, Christianity—they’re not good or bad. They’re tools. And whether they’re used for building up society, or tearing it down, depends on who’s wielding the tool and what they are using it for. For too long, there have been Christians wielding the tool of the Bible, and Christianity, and even Jesus and Jesus’s message, to oppress and exploit others. They proclaim a false love while practicing a true hate. And sadly, they are living in darkness. They are not living in God, they are not living in the light, because it is only through love that we know God’s light. And God’s love.
It is time to use the tools of religion for the upbuilding of our society. It is time to preach the fierce love that Jesus called us to: the inclusion; the welcome; the recognition that we are each and every one of us, a child of God with inherent worth and dignity, and that we are called to proclaim that to all the world.
And that means living that beautiful message beyond the church walls, living it in our lives, even living it in the way we vote. Why the way we vote? Because we cannot love someone while voting for leaders who oppress them. As followers of Jesus, our call is to get to work because this world desperately needs love. Our call today is to be filled with the fierce love of God and to practice who God has created you…and you…and you…to be.
Perhaps it’s time our nation add to our patriotic parades and public fireworks a moment to envision a freedom that extends beyond the nation. To envision what God’s realm looks like.
Zechariah 9 invites us to reflect on a different kind of parade from the ones we normally experience. We rarely turn to Zechariah, which is the second to last book in our Old Testament. While the first eight chapters encourage the returning exiles to rebuild their Temple in Jerusalem, the rest of the book has a different tone and message. We hear a call to embrace the realm of God on earth.
As Christians, we see this realm revealed in the person and teachings of Jesus, who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey to shouts of joy. The people of Jerusalem rejoiced and shouted aloud because their king was coming, triumphant and victorious. Jesus embodied this vision in his “Triumphal Entry” on Palm Sunday, of course, but perhaps we can take a broader look at Zechariah’s message. Zechariah invites us to use our imaginations to visualize a different kind of world from the one we inhabit; to ponder what the restoration of peace might look like as God’s dominion extends from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.
What might that look like? Zechariah speaks of a dominion of peace that will extend to the nations. Instead of chariots, war horses, and battle bows, this king whom Zechariah envisions, rides into town on a humble animal, a work animal, not a war animal. Put in our terms, the prophet envisions a world without tanks and aircraft carriers.
In Zechariah, this king is focused on peace not conquest. A reference to the river would have reminded the original listeners of the furthest extent of Solomon’s kingdom as it’s recorded in Scripture. In our vision, however, the realm of peace is larger than even Solomon’s, because it extends to the ends of the earth. This world from Zechariah 9 reminds us that we are citizens of a realm much larger than a nation.
While patriotism has its place, we need to keep it in perspective. Consider that when we pray the prayer Jesus taught, we pledge allegiance to God’s realm “on earth as it is in heaven.”
We proclaim him Prince of Peace, but do we believe in peace? And if we do, how do we bring it into being? When we read Zechariah in light of Jesus’ ministry, it helps us re-envision his calling. And ours.
On days when I doubt whether or not democracy can prevail over authoritarianism, I remember two midwives.
In the first verses of the Exodus story, the cornerstone of the Bible, we learn that a new King feels threatened by the growing numbers of Hebrew immigrants in his country. He implements an austerity plan to keep them in their place, but it doesn’t work and so he orders these two midwives who serve the Hebrews, Shiphrah and Puah, to kill baby Hebrew boys at birth.
Rather than choosing to flee, hide or follow orders, these two midwives cleverly disobey the call of the tyrant and let the boys live. “Oh King, sir, you have to understand,” they tell the tyrant, “These Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.” The King storms off in a panic leaving the midwives free to fight another day. These every day workers stopped a genocide by being faithful to what they knew was right and we all know what happened next. Their strength inspired an exodus from the bonds of slavery and would bring the very notion of human rights into the world.
What the Exodus story tells us is that it is the tyrant who is small and afraid of our solidarity across race and class.
Yes, there are tyrannical leaders who will try to paralyze us by saying their vision of greed and exploitation are the only things that will keep us safe. They’ll try to divide us across race and class with fear and rumor and hatred. They’ll try to overwhelm us with their systems of fear-mongering, whitewashing reality, overloading us with information and distracting us with consumerism. They will numb us with the belief this is just the way things are and they cannot be brought down.
Don’t listen to that voice. We who can imagine that the world can be governed differently are people who will not be controlled by tyrants. We are aided by our moral and theological resources, which play a critical role in preserving our democracy.
Before the gentle birth of the world in Genesis, the people of the ancient near east believed the world was born of violence. A terrifying and monstrous god defeated his rival then used her shredded body to make the heavens and the earth. Human beings were fashioned from drops of her blood to serve the gods as slave labor.
Then…into a world born of this god-sanctioned violence and slavery, a world where only the ruthless and luckiest survived, into that world burst the God of Genesis who creates and calls it GOOD. Who fashions humans not from the blood of monsters but in God’s own image.
Let us hear that story for the first time again, in a world where emperors claim they are divine and unassailable.
We follow a God who inspires us across deserts. We follow a book that doesn’t just tell us who we are and who God is, our book offers us spiritual practices and outright strategies to dismantle systems of oppression.
How easy it is for a Sunday message about social justice to start to sound political. Yet there is no need to name names or political parties. A nation’s leaders shape the day-to-day life of its citizens. If those lives are ones of suffering, we must address the moral failings of the leaders.
And we can directly point out the woeful realities of far too many people in the U.S. and a political system that continues to suffer from inexcusable moral failings.
If we are interested in more than our bottom line for our families—and we should be—then budgets are moral documents, a map of what we value. Show me how the money is spent, and I will tell you which of your citizens matter. That is also true of a church, too.
If we want to know what we value as a nation just consider the massive piece of our budget spent on the military—it’s nearly half the budget. Health and education each get less that 10%. Housing and Community: 5%. Foreign assistance for the most vulnerable around the world? Less 1%. That’s the moral reality of our nation.
As Dr. King once said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
In a nation as wealthy as ours, one that professes deep faith, there is no excuse for children to starve, for schools to fail our children, for the conditions in which 140 million of our impoverished and low wage workers must live in, for the level of homelessness we are seeing on our streets. There is no excuse, because in our nation of unspeakable wealth, there is no scarcity of resources.
There is, however, a scarcity of moral leadership.
So many of our leaders loudly profess their Christianity. But where is their fortitude and boldness? We have to ask, where is their compassion? Poverty is a root problem in our system, but poverty is not inevitable. Poverty is a moral decision, a political decision, a policy decision. And poverty creates circumstances every Christian should find morally reprehensible. Yet conditions stay this way because the rich and powerful keep us divided and focused on bickering over our perceived differences rather than our clear commonalities. That’s by design.
As Dr. King noted, the thing they fear the most is that poor and concerned white folk and black and brown folks get together on this topic of poverty in the United States. Because united we are a forced to be reckoned with. Jesus certainly understood that.
I am afraid at times that Dr. King was right when he said privileged whites are more interested in order than in justice. When order stagnates the marginalized and stepped on, order provides fertile ground in which to keep systematic injustice alive. Order becomes a stranglehold on justice. This kind of “order” creates and reinforces the chaos that far too many of our neighbors live in. We need unity, not order that creates divisions.
We must be willing to come together and rattle some cages, break down walls of division, and the laws and regulations that make them. Unless the division we see is the powerful versus the rest of us, we are being blind to the division that matters. Let’s not forget Jesus healed a blind man. We, too, can open our eyes and see.
The word “Savior” was not just used for Jesus. It was also used for Caesar, nearly a decade before Jesus was born. These are the words inscribed on the imperial walls in biblical Asia Minor (today that’s the Asian part of Turkey):
“The most divine Caesar we should consider equal to the Beginning of all things… for when everything was falling into disorder and tending toward dissolution, he restored it once more… All the cities unanimously adopt the birthday of the divine Caesar as the new beginning of the year… whereas Providence has brought our life to the climax of perfection in giving to us the emperor Augustus… who being sent to us and our descendants as Savior, has put an end to war and has set all things in order, having become god manifest… the birthday of the god Augustus has been for the whole world the beginning of the good news…”
Literally the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels—Lord, Savior, Incarnation—were already attributed to Caesar. There was already a Savior in the land and his name was Caesar. The imperial calendar revolved around the birthday of Caesar, not Christ. You start to see why the politics of Jesus are so radical, so revolutionary, and so controversial.
Every time the early Christians declared, “Jesus is Lord,” they were also declaring, “Caesar is not.” That confession was deeply and subversively political. It was just as strange to say “Jesus is my Lord” 2000 years ago as it would be to declare him Commander-in-Chief today. It was an invitation to a new political imagination centered around the person, teaching, and peculiar justice politics of Christ.
Joining the politics of Jesus is about joining God’s redemptive plan to save the world. It is about allegiance, hope, and a new Kingdom. So we can indeed hopeful in 2024. Not because we have found a candidate that fulfills our deepest hopes, but because we have learned how to hope differently. We can have hope in Christ.
But let me be clear. We need to vote on November 5th. We need to vote for the politicians who we believe will do the least amount of damage to the world, and who will alleviate the most suffering for the most people. Though that may sound cynical, that’s an appropriate theological posture to have.
There are those who will opt out of voting, but opting out has consequences. It’s opting out of decisions that have life and death consequences for people and our planet. This election is a referendum, and we have power we can steward on November 5. We want to look back and say we did everything we could to stand against fear, and racism, and violence… and that means voting because we need to use every tool in our toolbox.
If you have a hard time voting for a particular candidate this year, perhaps consider what it means to vote for the people Jesus blessed— the poor, families separated at our border, people without health care, those whose vote is denied, victims of violence.
Vote for love over fear. Then we can rest confidently that we voted our faith and put flesh on our prayers.
So, let’s vote on November 5th. Let’s vote against hatred, and fear, and misogyny. Let’s vote out those who enable hurtful policies and hateful rhetoric. And let’s do it because we have pledged our ultimate allegiance to Christ.
Election Day is not the only day we make a difference. We can also vote every day before November 5 and every day after November 5. Change is not confined to one day every four years. Change happens every day. We vote with how we live.
According to Jesus, the Kingdom of God is not just something we hope for when we die. The Kingdom of God is not just about going up to Heaven when we die. It’s an invitation to join a revolution that is about transforming the world from what it is, into what God wants it to be. It is something we are to bring on earth while we are alive, “on earth as it is in Heaven.”
Jesus did not simply offer fire-insurance from Hell, and a ticket into Heaven. He talked about the real stuff of the world he lived in—unjust judges, day laborers, widows and orphans…political stuff. It is impossible to uphold the Golden Rule of loving our neighbors as ourselves, while ignoring the policies and powers that are crushing the lives of our neighbors. After all, the word “politics” literally derives itself from the word for “the citizens.” Jesus was political. And any version of Christianity that is not political enough to be good news to the poor, or welcoming news to the stranger, should not be called Christianity.
But as much as his teaching and vocation was political, his entire life is a parody of power, political satire on a whole new level from his birth to his death. His life was a political photobomb—taking attention off the centers of power and putting the spotlight on the margins. So threatening to those in power was Jesus’s birth, that Herod began to slaughter baby boys throughout the empire hoping to get rid of this alleged new wannabe “king.”
Jesus entered the world as a brown-skinned refugee. He came from a town people said, “Nothing good could come.” Straight outta Nazareth. When confronted by tax collectors about whether he paid his taxes, he pulled money out of the mouth of a fish, begging the question of what really is Caesar’s and what is God’s? He called Herod a fox, and he flipped tables in the Temple. He included the excluded and challenged the chosen. Instead of the iron fist of tyrants, Jesus ruled with a towel and washed his disciples’ feet. As he entered Jerusalem, he did not ride a warhorse with a military entourage like Caesar, he rode a donkey, and a borrowed donkey at that. Political satire. Street theater of the holiest kind. He was arrested, beaten, tortured by the State, and finally executed. Even his execution was the climax of his political commentary. He put state killing on display, hatred on display, violence on display.
His entire execution, from start to finish, mirrored the coronation of the emperors—political parody of the highest order. His throne was not gold. It was an old rugged cross. His crown was not made from olive branches like Caesar’s, it was made of thorns. Nailed to the cross read a sign: King of the Jews.
Jesus absorbed all the evil of the world and he subverted it with love, forgiveness, and an empty tomb. And then in the greatest act of protest in history—he rose from the dead.
Being a Christian means that our lives are reoriented by Jesus, the Savior of the world. Our allegiance has been pledged. Our vote has been cast. It’s why no matter who gets elected in November, our work is not done. We will need to be in the streets in January, holding them accountable.
All voters are values voters. Some are influenced by friends and family, some are influenced by education and media, others find their greatest influence in faith. It’s probably a combination of all of those when you think about your own life. Until recently, all of us voters were clustered around four sets of values and priorities, including Christians. And while many of the values do overlap, you will likely see yourself most in one of these four categories: Conservative, Traditionalist, Liberal, and Progressive.
Conservative voters prioritize values like protecting individual freedoms, property and privacy, promoting entrepreneurship, self-sufficiency, free and fair markets; addressing debt and respecting time-tested institutions. Traditionalist voters prioritize values like physical labor and personal moral responsibility; honesty, and neighborliness; strengthening and supporting family life with a special concern for children, mothers, and the elderly, and standing strong for moral qualities like marital fidelity; they celebrate the value of sincere faith and faith communities that seek the common good.
Liberal voters prioritize values like building up the middle class; addressing corporate monopoly and worker exploitation; respecting human rights, international alliances and institutions; promoting democracy globally through aid and education; valuing good government that’s big enough to do what is needed. Progressive voters prioritize values like protecting against climate change and a sustainable and regenerative economy; replacing prejudice and oppression with racial and gender equality; reversing the concentration of wealth and power so the poor and vulnerable have a chance to thrive; and telling the whole truth about our past and present history.
But in recent years, there’s been the rise of a fifth kind of voter. They’re “authoritarian voters” and they value centralizing power in one individual, party, or network, and they divide society based on loyalty to this one and only authoritarian regime. They will do whatever it takes for that regime to win, including distorting or suppressing truth and dissent.
These authoritarian voters aren’t some alien creature we can’t see. We see them every day. They are our neighbors. They are the people we meet in the grocery store, at the gas station, and in our pews. The majority define themselves as Christian. Good Christians and good values voters, even though they are driven by the authoritarian singlemindedness to win at all costs.
How did this swath of voters come to be? They became vulnerable to the almost hypnotic propaganda and conspiracy theories of politicians with strong support from Christian leaders. Media has been instrumental in pushing out their voices. The result is that many of our neighbors have been manipulated to be so afraid, and so resentful, that they’ve fully-converted into authoritarian followers. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the authoritarian values voters is that many don’t realize what has happened to them. And they who don’t understand that their support for authoritarians has made them unintentional tools and accomplices of a very un-Christian agenda. True Conservative and Traditionalist values are being pushed aside, leaving them in search of a new political and Christian identity.
Authoritarian leaders are now fully activated by this authoritarian voter support. They’ve found they are empowered to lie, cheat, suppress votes, violate the law, employ violence, and refuse verified election results. They hold elected offices across the country and their Christian supporters preach in pulpits far and wide. These leaders are a grave threat to American Democracy. They are a grave threat to our freedoms. And they are a grave threat to our Christian faith.
They’re not going to give up their power.
So it’s on the rest to integrate our best values, and vote for a better future. Christians make up the majority of voters in the U.S. We don’t—and won’t—agree on everything. That’s the way it should be in a democracy. But surely there are enough places of overlap where Progressive and Liberal and Conservative and Traditionalist voters can find common ground for the Common Good, especially at this critical time. It’s up to all of us to look deep inside and then show up and vote. Our values are at stake.
It was way back in 2004 — George Bush was President and the war in Iraq was going full steam. Folks who had a healthy suspicion of the power of the State. Politically homeless, post-evangelical Christians were trying to figure out how to engage the political circus that happens every four years in America.
That’s when evangelical leader, Shane Claiborne, first started talking about Jesus for President.
Naturally, it started as a little Bible study, looking at the political implications of Jesus’s teaching and the social dimensions of the Gospel. Four years later, in 2008, Jesus for President became a book and a national tour across nearly every state, hosting packed rallies in different cities each night. Shane and his team made a conscious decision not to have a fancy tour bus but to sport an old diesel school bus converted to run off used veggie oil. Because the medium is also the message, he says he wanted to practice what they preached. He also says their freedom ride smelled like french fries. But Jesus for President made the news—from Fox to Al Jazeera, to CNN.
Of course so much has changed since “Jesus ran for President” in 2008. A lot has changed since 2016. A lot has changed since yesterday! One thing that has not changed is that Christians still have a hard time knowing how to engage with politics, especially during an election year.
Some Christians ignore politics preferring to focus on “weightier matters” like saving souls and getting people into Heaven, rather than bothering themselves with “worldly affairs.” They will often quote Scripture about how our “citizenship is in heaven” and insist this world is not our home. Politics doesn’t belong in the pulpit, they say (unless it’s abortion or marriage equality.) Jesus didn’t come to overthrow Caesar and take over Rome, but to establish an altogether new Kingdom not of this world.
Another group of Christians have totally bought into partisan politics and married themselves to their favorite political party. As Rev. Tony Campolo is fond of saying, “Mixing our faith with a political party is sort of like mixing ice cream with cow manure. It doesn’t mess up the manure, but it sure messes up the ice cream.”
We are desperately in need of a better political imagination—one that is not confined by the parties or candidates or culture wars. Nearly every time Jesus opened his mouth, he talked about the “Kingdom of God.” The word he used for “kingdom” was the same word as “empire.” But the empire we see in the Gospels is upside-down. The first are last, and the last are first. The mighty are cast from their thrones, and the rich are sent away empty. The poor are blessed, and the peacemakers are “the children of God.” Literally, Jesus blesses the people this world has cursed, and rebukes the people this world has idolized.
As a Christian, issues like immigration and health care, and the growing disparity between the rich and the poor—these things matter to God. Abortion also matters, but for too many of us it is the only issue we vote on. To be pro-life is not just to care about abortion but to also concern ourselves with other issues of life—ending the death penalty, standing against racism, welcoming immigrants, providing access to healthcare, ending gun violence, , responding to the climate change. We can’t forget that there are over 2000 verses in Scripture that talk about how we care for the poor and marginalized.
One of the greatest temptations during election year is to misplace our hope. There are a lot of big promises. We are tempted to put all our hope in a party or a candidate who we think will save us from the chaos we are in. Our hope is not in the donkey or the elephant. The holy work of “seeking first the Kingdom of God” is not confined to a ballot box.
Make no mistake, it is our Christian responsibility to vote. But we are not looking for a political savior. We are looking to do damage control and counter the principalities and powers of darkness that are hurting so many children of God. Our hope is in the Lamb of God. He showed us social change doesn’t come from the top down… it comes from the bottom up.
One of the biggest frustrations with the Bible is rooted in the culture in which it was cultivated. Women, who were mostly second-class citizens at best and property at worst, frequently go unnamed. That includes the parable of “the Canaanite Woman” [Matthew 15:21-28] Extracanonical tradition however, offered her a name: Justa, meaning just or justice.
Justa was among an outcast people, the Canaanites, who were considered unclean and off limits to the ancient Jews. Justa lived on the outskirts of town on the border between Jewish and Gentile lands, but she was on the border in so many other ways.
In short, Justa was an outsider. She was a woman, so she was property. She was Canaanite, so she was a non-believer. She was from a rural area, so she was unclean. She may even have been thought of as demonic because her daughter was believed to be possessed. In almost every way, she was seen as “less than,” undeserving, a person living on the borders of life itself.
Enter Jesus and the Disciples. In an effort to escape a recent run-in with the Pharisees, they head out to a border land. But when they get there they find neither peace nor quiet. This Canaanite woman keeps following them and shouting. And she just won’t stop. She believes Jesus can heal her demon-possessed daughter. At first Jesus just tries to ignore her. I suspect most of us have tried that move—basically, “Maybe if I just ignore them, they’ll go away.” She doesn’t. She persists.
She begins to get on the last nerve of the Disciples, and they plead with Jesus to just give her what she wants so she’ll leave them be. Jesus’ reply seems curious. He says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” He tells he wasn’t sent to help her kind.
Jesus’ words may seem cruel to us, and with good reason. With her standing there pleading for her daughter’s life, he’s sticking to his messianic identity—his “call” to help ancient Israel now, so he can help the world later.
Any one of us would have felt defeated in this situation and Justa should have just thrown in the towel. Nevertheless, she persisted. Now she responds to Jesus’ cruel words by kneeling before him and asking for his mercy. In the face of such a powerful example, certainly Jesus would have responded kindly, but no, it gets worse. He actually says, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Throw it to the dogs? Justa, while on her hands and knees in the dirt, has just been called a dog. She should pick up herself and any pride and go home.
Instead, she does something remarkable. The one and only example we have of Jesus learning from someone else comes from a woman. A woman who is seen as an outsider no less. Justa uses Jesus’ own words to remind him of his messianic identity. She says, “Even the dogs eat crumbs from their master’s table.” In those brief words, Justa gives a sermon. She reminds Jesus that yes, he is here for the children of Israel, but after they eat so will the rest of the world. Her persistence is a mark of her faith and teaches us a lot about the strength, wisdom, and courageous leadership of women.
Well, now what was Jesus to do? He says, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And, as the story is told, her daughter was healed instantly.
There are two more clear directives about courageous leadership that we can take away from this profound story. One for those of us on the borders, and one for those of us who may sometimes marginalize from our places of privilege.
What do those lessons look like lived out in this life?
It looks like Greensboro, North Carolina on February 1, 1960. Four Black college freshmen defied the segregationist policy so prevalent in the South by boldly asking to be served at the “whites only” lunch counter at the Woolworth’s department store. Some said they should just go home. Nevertheless, they persisted. They had been marginalized and pushed out to the borders of society and they demanded to be recognized as equal. Their brave act launched the sit-in movement that became a major component of the civil rights movement.
Dr. King described what we might call “The Justa Syndrome” this way: “The ultimate measure of a man (I’ll add—or woman) is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Dr. King’s words bring us to our second leadership lesson from the story of Justa. We learn the importance for those who live in privileged places to reach out to those marginalized; to listen to them; and walk with them as they proclaim their rights, value, and equality.
Dorthea Dix was a talented young girl who at the age of 15 started her own private school. It’s fair to say she was a good person with a good heart, and Dorothea came from a place of privilege. Later in life, a ministerial student sought her advice about teaching a women’s Sunday school class. The catch was this class was at a prison in 1841, and it just wasn’t proper for a lady of privilege and place to be seen in a prison. Dorthea listened to the woman’s concerns and despite the social rules of the day, she volunteered to teach the class.
But when she saw the conditions of the mentally ill inmates, she was horrified. She took on the state of Massachusetts, then other states, then the U.S. Congress. She then traveled to England, Scotland, France, Austria, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and Germany, leading the way in changing how the world saw and treated the mentally ill. She was challenged at every turn and she should have given up. Nevertheless, she persisted. Because in her own words, “In a world where there is so much to be done, I felt strongly impressed that there must be something for me to do.”
Jesus’ response to “that Canaanite woman” with no name shows us that reaching out to those we have marginalized is an essential part of living a spiritually honest life. While The Justa Syndrome tells us that oppressed groups must be persistent in seeking liberation from subjugation, it also tells us that when we can step out into the margins and claim love, value, grace, and equality for all, then and only then can we say that we, like Jesus in this story, have learned the power of our own leadership.
This election season, women are certainly taking centerstage. What a woman can do with her body is on the ballot; key issues that affect the family, like education and healthcare, are on the ballot; and as you may have heard, there’s a woman running for president. (And plenty of women running for other offices, too.)
What does Christianity make of women in leadership roles? It’s true in ancient times, woman were often seen as not much more than possessions. And certainly the Bible is filled with patriarchy. But does that mean women were not recognized for their strength and wisdom? Were they really meant to just be subservient? The answer is found in the women themselves, powerful biblical characters in both the Old Testament and New.
In the Hebrew texts, God spoke directly to women and women even reached prophet status. There’s Miriam (Exod. 15:20), Deborah (Judg. 4:4), Huldah (2 Kings 22:14; 2 Chron. 34:22), and Noadiah (Neh. 6:14). Miriam helped Moses led a nation to freedom [Exodus 15:20] and was the source of water as the Israelites wandered in the desert. Deborah was a prophet and judge who led men into battle [Judges 4-5]. Only one other person achieved Biblical prophet and judge status, and that was Samuel.
Jesus deeply valued women and they played a central role in his ministry. At a time when women were viewed more as property than partners, Jesus offered a powerful example. They were by his side when he preached, as he suffered on the cross, and when he was resurrected. When Jesus spoke with a Samaritan woman at the well, [John 4] he was breaking social taboos that taught an important lesson. He could have chosen anyone, but it was “the woman at the well” whom he chose as his evangelist. The one and only example we have of Jesus learning from someone was a woman. A mother seeking healing for her daughter, reminded Jesus to live out the lessons he is teaching others, namely, to treat everyone equally. And he obliged—his lesson learned.
Women also helped lead the early church. There was Phoebe a deaconess [ Romans 16:1] and Chloe (1 Corinthians 1:11), Nympha (Colossians 4:15), and Apphia (Philemon 1:2). Paul was impressed with Junia (Romans 16:7), and Priscilla was a church planter (Romans 16:5). Tabitha led a ministry (Acts 9:36) and Philip’s four daughters each became prophets (Acts 21:8,9).
In Acts 2, gifts of the Spirit (wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues) are poured out to both men and women equally. Galatians makes it clear, male or female, all are equal and worthy.
Of course, there are always biblical verses interpreted otherwise and two are routinely used to basically say, shush in church! In 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and 1 Timothy 2:11-15, we find Paul trying to keep order. People spoke in tongues and prophesied, women were talking at once, and proceedings got loud and out of control. Paul didn’t like it. We know his reprimands for quiet were certainly not an exclusion of women from leadership, because he’d already put both men and women in ministry roles.
Yes, women are centerstage in this election. But they’ve been centerstage throughout history, including Christian history. This fall, each of us will cast our vote for a string of offices, including of course the presidency. Voting is a personal decision. I hope each of you will vote. I also hope, no matter who you vote for up and down the ballot, any idea that the church says women cannot lead will be left outside the voting booth. Because our Christian story is one that sees each of us equally, no matter our ethnicity, race or our gender. As Jesus taught, the world is way better when everyone gets a seat at the table.
Will there even be a “we” going forward? Or will it just always be a fight between us and them?
Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933, lived in a building called Maryhouse in New York City. Next to that building was some pretty great graffiti. It said:
“Reporter: Mr. Gandhi, what do you think about Western civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.”
How about this update for today?
“Reporter: What do you think about Christians following Jesus?
Millennial: I think that would be a good idea.”
There is a Jesus who has miraculously survived all of us Christians. And while that may sound cynical, that’s the Jesus who raised fundamental gospel questions that need asked again today.
Perhaps the most pertinent question was when Jesus was dismissively asked by a lawyer, “Who is my neighbor?” In response to this lawyer’s attempt to redefine who actually qualifies as his neighbor, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29–37) a parable we all know. But what that story tells us is deeper than, “Whoever you’re seeing who needs your help, go and help them, and help them bind up their wounds and make sure they’re better.” Jesus is saying in his parable, “Your neighbor is the one who’s different than you.” Jesus makes it clear that your neighbor is anyone around us, regardless of their ethnic, religious, or economic status. Your neighbor is anyone who is in need. Your neighbor is the one who’s different than you.
At the core of the trial of Jesus, Pontius Pilate self-servingly asks, “What is truth?” From Pilate’s position of power, he’s ridiculing Jesus’ idea of bearing witness to the truth. For Pilate, the truth is optional, even inconsequential, and can be defined anyway one wants. “What is truth?” is not about the number of lies politicians tell, it is about being told not to believe there is truth anymore.
Jesus said eight times, “Be not afraid. Be not afraid.” Politics and political leaders who tell us to redefine neighbor, redefine truth, and “be afraid all the time” aren’t just fear-mongering, they’re acting in ways that invite extremism and that is anti-Christian and anti-Christ.
Jesus is not normally judgmental, but in this text is one of the very few places where he is: “As you’ve done to the least of these, you’ve done to me. It was me.” He’s saying there is judgment, and choices have to be made.
We who follow Jesus have to see the extremism being fed to Christians for what it is, a violation of neighbor and truth. Christian nationalism isn’t only racist, it’s anti-Christ. Dehumanizing, demonizing immigrants and refugees and causing people to fear isn’t just a lack of compassion, it’s anti-Christ. Mistreating women, taking away their agency, assault and trafficking—these aren’t just sexist, they’re anti-Christ.
In Jesus’ opening sermon at Nazareth—a kind of manifesto—he announced his mission and the kind of leader he would be He said, “The spirit of the Lord,” quoting Isaiah, “is upon me because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, release the captives, recover sight of the blind, set free those who have been oppressed.” Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” This text from Matthew 25 has brought many closer to Christ. He has quenched our thirst, fed us, welcomed us. He has healed us and brought us out of prisons of our making.
What if we made the good news of Christ good news again?
In Acts, we’re told the first followers of Jesus were healing, teaching, and preaching in His name. They were called ordinary uneducated men, but nonetheless, the authorities said, “You’ve got to stop speaking in that name. It’s stirring the people up, moving the people. Stop speaking that name.”
So let’s start speaking that name authorities fear—the Jesus who judged and challenged us at that moment when he said, “As you’ve done to the least of these, you’ve done to me. It was me.” Let’s take on that challenge with courage and let’s bring back the belief in our ability to bring about change. That’s a call to get out and vote this election if ever we heard one. Let’s carry forward the spirit of courage, of hope, and of change.
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