A Loving White American Christian's Apology for Hateful White American Christians

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

Sometimes I feel like I'm on the wrong side of the fight.

Sometimes I feel like an accomplice to a crime.

Sometimes I feel like I'm part of the problem.

As a person of faith committed to love, there are many days when I hear myself loudly pushing back against the brimstone-breathing preachers, Bible-pounding bigots, and filth-spewing pew sitters, and I wonder if I'm mistaken.

Though I often feel burdened to climb to a high place and to let people within earshot know that the sick, fearful, snarling creature running amok in this country today isn't Christianity; that it is a terribly deformed abomination disguised as it, but sharing nothing in common with it—I realize that isn't true. It may have been true for me, but it is not universally true.

I know that for many people, the grotesque monster in America right now is Christianity.
It is all they know or have known of it.
It is the only kind of Christianity they have experienced.
For them, the violence is commonplace.

Every day, I sit with people who, because of their gender or who they love or the color of their skin or their nation of origin or the faith they profess, have known only condemnation, sustained only injury, received only sorrow from people claiming to speak for Jesus.

Lately, the tears come easily when I hear their stories, because these stories compellingly testify to a different reality than my own. They suggest to me that I might be wrong to defend this faith so fervently, because practically speaking, the faith I defend is the same one harming them. The more I argue for them not to discard or reject Christianity, the more I feel complicit in their wounding because it is putting them in proximity to those so hell-bent on inflicting those wounds.