The American Church Needs Courageous Christians
Right now, if it really believes what it preaches, the American Church has one foot in Hell and one on a banana peel—and this God-forsaken wannabe theocracy, is that banana peel.
And by "Church," I mean:
Every human being who will fill buildings all over the country this weekend, singing and listening and amen-ing for an hour.
Those who follow Jesus outside of a local faith community; who pray and study and worship beyond those buildings and away from those campuses.
Those with Bible verses adorning their social media profiles, with Scripture references tattooed on their forearms, those with crosses on their walls and with Jesus fish on their bumpers.
Christians along every square inch of the political and theological spectrums.
This Church needs to step very carefully in these days.
It needs to think very clearly about why it exists.
It needs to recognize the urgency of the moment.
It needs to know what it stands to lose.
We're all in this together.
This is our shared burden.
It's our ball to collectively carry or drop.
Theologically speaking, the Church has never been a building. It's never been made of brick and mortar and glass, but of flesh and blood and bone. It's always been the collective presence of ordinary people here on the planet, seeking to make the love of Jesus tangible in the messy trenches of daily existence. (Or at least that's been the idea.)
In Scripture, the Apostle Paul calls this global assembly of Christians the "body of Christ"; the breathing sanctuaries moving through this space. The Church was intended to be composed of followers of Jesus personifying him here in the starkly lit, butt-naked truth of our lives.
In other words, the world is supposed to look at us collectively; at how we live, love, speak, and forgive—and see what Jesus looked like when his feet were on the planet. That is the sole reason we exist here two thousand years later. We are made to be the visible legacy of Christ.
I'm terrified, more than that, I am flat-out pissed-off at what the world sees when it looks at us right now. I don't think it sees whatever it was Jesus intended them to see.
I think the world more commonly sees something monstrous; a crudely-fashioned Frankenstein of the worst kind of greed, prejudice, and selfishness. I think it sees something that looks right at home in politics of fear, in the intolerance toward outsiders, in the ugliness of bigotry that is helming our nation right now.
In so many instances, for a watching world, there is no distinction between the supposed "ambassadors for Christ," and the sycophantic shills for a Godless President without morality or empathy. That's a problem, a disgrace—and a sin.
If the American Church is indeed a collective body, then it also has a shared soul. And if it does have a soul, then that soul is surely in danger of damnation for its current offenses. It is certainly in dire need of the redemptive, reverse-direction repentance Jesus spoke of—the kind its Evangelical preachers and Conservative practitioners are so fond of demanding of those outside their doors.
And to change its catastrophic course, the Church doesn't need more church buildings, market share, Supreme Court seats, preferential legislation, or political capital—The Church needs courageous Christians.
It needs people who value their personal faith convictions more than their allegiance to a political party, more than fitting in at Thanksgiving dinner, more than being comfortable by staying silent, more than the softness of their privilege, more than allowing preachers to say whatever they want just because their daddies and patrons gave them a pulpit.
The Church brave needs men and women who will say that bigotry wrapped in religion is still bigotry, that Christianity was never supposed to be about power—and that Jesus doesn't give a damn if America is first.
The Church needs people who know that diversity, equity, and inclusion are the very heart of everything Jesus was doing here.
The Church needs Christians who aren't afraid to follow Jesus right out of the building if that's where he leads them.
The Church needs courageous pastors, ministers, and pew sitters who will condemns this MAGA Christian abomination as the vile, fraudulent, sinful filth that it is.
The Church needs human beings who will say to hell with a loveless, Trumped-up, Jesus-less Christianity.
The American Church is teetering on the precipice of irrelevance, of uselessness, of moral bankruptcy—which all may be fine. Maybe it needs to fully die so that something beautiful can be born in its wake. Maybe.
But I'm not willing to wait for that. I'm not going to leave it to the future to have to fix what we destroy now. I’m not going to sit back and allow hundreds of millions and generations of vulnerable people to be sacrificed on the altar of hateful people’s phobias, privileged people’s convenience, or fearful people’s cowardice.
I'm one of those breathing sanctuaries here and now, and I for damn sure am not letting these phony faithful performance artists mask their white supremacy in a veneer of religiosity.
I'm using whatever daylight I have to speak the words and walk the path and live the life that I believe Jesus intended—even if that causes me to lose opportunities and church friends and family members, and even if it disturbs Christians who slap that name on themselves without seeming to be inconvenienced by Jesus in the slightest.
I'm going to do my part as a member of the body that is the Church—to not allow it to lose its soul on my watch.
Be courageous, Christian.
You're needed right now more than ever.
I am not a Christian--and would never adhere to a religion that in its many forms would have declared me and my ancestors heretics, Christ-killers, and anathema. Indeed, the likelihood of my survival in any century before the post WW2 one would have been in serious doubt. I have a Flying Spaghetti Monster insignia on my car. But I do appreciate, John, that you are trying desperately to get American Christians to sit up and take notice. But apparently not even the pope is capable of turning hearts and minds toward the Good and away from Evil. As an historian by profession I could give you a myriad reasons why this is the case (history doesn't show Christianity in a particularly charitable light). But right now we have reached a depth of despicableness that even I could not have anticipated. So good luck. UCC, UUA, liberal Episcopalians, Quakers, liberal Methodists and Lutherans: it's up to you.
John, as right as you are, there is something that needs to be addressed. The Christian Nationalist movement in the evangelical churches is succeeding, in large part, because of the failure of the "mainstream" denominations to call Christians to follow Jesus, and to abandon the false notion that we are called only to "believe" or to "claim our salvation." I am proud that the United Methodist Church, in which I am ordained, is finally standing up, and I pray it is not too late. But at the local church level, we must instill in pastors the backbone required to preach truth to power and the call to follow, which must begin with calling out the false prophets of the power-seeking evangelical nationalist churches. Too many--far too many--pastors are preaching and leading with fear in their hearts--fear of rejection, fear of removal, fear of offending those who give to support the church. But they must be helped to realize that it is that same fear which has rendered the church--the church which does not seek power, but Jesus--irrelevant and impotent. Not one more sermon can we bear that is preached in fear, or with "balance," or which is not a call to radical action.