Back in 2017, I was invited to join Brian Zahnd, Greg Boyd, and Bruxy Cavey to voice our lament about the atrocities committed by white Christians against Indigenous Peoples here in North America. (Thanks to Rex Harsin for producing this video.) Now, four years later, I want to follow up the heartfelt message of that video by expressing my public opposition to the Line 3 pipeline — and by asking you to add your voice as well. 

I am motivated to speak up by two loves: love for this precious earth and love for the Indigenous peoples in whose ancestral lands I have lived my whole life.

I was born on Turtle Island—the descendant of immigrants, settlers, and colonizers; but so much of this land’s history was hidden from me as a child. For example, I was unaware of the Doctrine of Discovery and its brutal aftermath until I was around fifty years old. 

Now my life has been enriched through the writings and friendship of Native Americans, and I joyfully honor the Indigenous Peoples who stand as stewards of this precious earth, its waters, and its living creatures, all of which are beloved creations of God. I lament the tragic history of wrongs against my Indigenous siblings, and I join them in their wise opposition to Line 3. 

The Line 3 pipeline is the work of North America’s largest pipeline company (Enbridge), which is responsible for the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history (1.7 million gallons). Each day for the next forty years and more, Enbridge plans to ship a million gallons of pollution-heavy, climate-destabilizing crude and Canadian tar sands oil into the US. This project will make big profits for Enbridge, but it will mean heavy costs for all of us, as it further intensifies global warming and unleashes a wide array of harms to human health and to our precious, fragile planet at this critical moment in history.

Not only that but Line 3 once again violates treaties made with Indigenous Peoples. In the US, it crosses the lands and precious waters of the Anishinaabe people without their consent. The United Nations’ International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) has spoken against the pipeline as a violation of the human rights of the Anishinaabe people and urged the US government to stop it.

As a Christian thinker, writer, teacher, and former pastor, I invite my fellow Christians and other people of faith and goodwill to put the long-term well-being of our neighbors—and our planet—above the short-term profits of powerful corporations like Enbridge.

READ: Women of Faith Can Help Advance Climate Justice

I call upon political leaders—especially President Biden, Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, and Governor Tim Walz—to put a stop to this pipeline as an expression of their commitment to human rights, human dignity, treaty integrity, and ecological responsibility. I stand with Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan, an Ojibwe woman who has spoken out against Line 3. I affirm that this is not simply a political matter, but a moral one, rooted in our mandate to care for the earth (Genesis 2:15) and to love our neighbors, especially those who have been victims of injustice (Isaiah 1:17). 

If you would like to add your voice, here are five simple steps you can take right now.

1. Forward this message to others via social media. You might also take a picture of yourself holding a #StopLine3 sign. Tag @potus, @govtimwalz, @senamyklobchar, @sentinasmith. Add #StopLine3 in your message.
2. Stay informed here and on Twitter: @ResistLine3. 
3. Vote for candidates who take First Nations and Native American concerns seriously, and join indigenous peoples in caring for the earth and protecting its waters.
4. If you live in Minnesota, contact your representatives and ask them to stop Line 3.
5. If you are a Christian, read the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 – 7), reflect on God’s concern for “the birds of the air” and “the wildflowers of the field,” and open your heart for guidance on how you can respond to the Climate Emergency and Indigenous struggles to defend for our common home.

My home state of Alabama often makes the news for the wrong reasons. We have the lowest COVID vaccination rate in the country. The state’s newly christened largest city, Huntsville, generates story after story of police brutality, with the mayor constantly attempting to defend the indefensible. We sentence people to death at a rate higher than any other state, despite having one exoneration for every seven executions. And now, here in the buckle of the Bible belt, we are putting the finishing touches on a new method of execution – nitrogen hypoxia. 

Over the summer the state completed construction on a new gas chamber that will be used to suffocate people to death with nitrogen gas. The new method will allegedly be more humane and sidestep the many problems that have arisen with execution by lethal injection. However, the state refuses to release any information related to the execution protocols for killing people in the new gas chamber, citing security concerns. So much for the belt of truth buckled around our waist. The state aims to operate in secrecy as it kills, just as it did with lethal injection protocols in the past. This is the same Department of Corrections that is currently under a lawsuit from the federal Department of Justice for unconstitutionally bad prison conditions. It’s the same state that just tried and failed to launch a multi-billion dollar enterprise to build new privately owned prisons. The good stewards among us might suggest that a shiny new gas chamber was not the best way to use our limited resources.

The search for more palatable methods of execution is nothing new and is not limited to Alabama. Lethal injection, the near-ubiquitous way to kill in the United States for two decades, arose largely after the troubling sight of botched executions in the electric chair. Many remember the gruesome botched execution scene in Stephen King’s The Green Mile; this scene was based on a real event that took place in Florida in 1990. What’s worse is the man killed, Jesse Tafero, was innocent. Lethal injection gave the promise of a humane way to kill, but it quickly became clear that the sterile environment and clinical look of the gurney were for our benefit, not the benefit of the condemned. Numerous botched executions have plagued lethal injections, perhaps the most infamous being that of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma in 2014. Oklahoma, like Alabama, has approved nitrogen hypoxia as a new method of execution. What has become obvious is that the state wants execution to appear humane for the masses, but has no concern over whether the condemned suffer in violation of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. So much for the least of these.

READ: Faith Leaders Gather in Houston in Response to Gun Violence

Alabama and Oklahoma are not the only states trying to circumvent the many issues with carrying out lethal injections, like the difficulty in obtaining approved drugs and the constitutional challenges to execution protocols. Tennessee and others have reinstated the electric chair as a method the condemned may choose. Even overlooking the macabre practice of asking a person to choose how they die, choosing between two methods known to cause incredible suffering is akin to Sophie’s choice. Arizona has now approved a gas chamber using the gas commonly known as Zyklon B. If that name seems familiar, it may be because it was what the Nazis used in extermination camps. Arizona is shockingly unbothered by that parallel. South Carolina has approved the firing squad as an option for execution, joining a few others with that method on the books. One could be forgiven for thinking the last execution by firing squad might have been in 1910, but in fact, it was in 2010 in Utah. Ronnie Lee Gardner was killed in a hail of gunfire, and his brother Randy still speaks around the country on the horror of seeing Ronnie die that way. As states grapple with how to resume killing, the only debate seems to be over the method.

The entire modern death penalty era has been marked by wrangling over the best way to kill. Since Gregg v. Georgia revived the American death penalty in 1976, states have tinkered with the machinery of death in vain attempts to make the process of killing fair and humane. The debates have been over appeals, public defenders, judicial override, racial discrimination, and yes, the actual method used to kill. All of these machinations by states like Alabama have not avoided hundreds of exonerations and countless botched executions. Paradoxically, the states most known for evangelical Christianity have precious few who ask whether we should kill people at all. After signing an anti-abortion bill in 2019, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said, without a hint of irony, “This legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.” The same governor who worships an executed savior, who boldly proclaimed that every life is precious, approved of building the new nitrogen hypoxia chamber. 

The reality is that there is no such thing as humanely killing a human being made in the image of God. The whole debate over process and method is a farce meant to make the rest of us feel as though our hands are clean. Even if nitrogen hypoxia is “two breaths to death,” as I was taught in industrial safety training, that does not assuage the absolute horror felt by the condemned and their families as time marches mercilessly toward an execution date. I know that firsthand, as I describe in my book Child of Grace: A Death Row Story; my father being suffocated by nitrogen gas rather than killed with a lethal mix of drugs would not have changed anything about that day, the days leading up to it, or the days that followed. When Jesus said he who was without sin should cast the first stone, it was not a lament that only stones were available. A convenient sword or flask of poison would not have caused our Lord to render a different answer. Debating a method of killing misses the point entirely; the debate should be whether, to paraphrase Bryan Stevenson, we have the right to kill at all. I believe our executed savior would say all life is precious, and mean it.

I am a Christian woman and work to advance climate justice as the leader of United Methodist Women’s Just Energy for All campaign. It might surprise you to learn that my academic training was not in climate science; it was in history, political science, and theology. Even though I am not a climate scientist, I recognize that the climate crisis is an existential threat impacting all of creation. As a woman and a person of faith, I have a unique responsibility to act.

Women, children, and youth are already being disproportionately affected by the climate emergency. The UN reports that 80% of people already being displaced by climate change are women. And when natural disasters hit, women and children have been 14 times more likely than men to die, more vulnerable to gender-based violence, and afterward, there has been as much as 20-30% increase in trafficking. Therefore, we must be actively involved in advancing solutions to the climate crisis.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Aug. 2021 report warned that limiting global warming to close to 1.5 degrees Celsius or even 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels “will be beyond reach” in the next two decades without immediate, rapid, and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

The good news is that we still have a chance to turn the tide on the climate crisis: we can reduce emissions at an individual and corporate level. To do this, we need to understand our carbon footprint. It’s called carbon footprint because most of the planet-warming pollution is carbon dioxide. The energy sector accounts for nearly three-quarters of worldwide emissions, followed by agriculture. The primary source of emissions comes from the energy sector, and chiefly from fossil fuels – coal, oil, and increasingly natural gas, used for electricity and heat generation, followed by transportation and manufacturing. In fact, the past IPCC report noted that we must completely eliminate fossil fuels by 2050, and move towards renewable, lower energy demand, change dietary habits and consumption, and protect and restore natural ecosystems.

But how we respond is vastly different based on where we are from and how much pollution we have created in the past and currently. About 60% of GHG emissions come from just 10 countries, while the 100 least-emitting contribute less than 3%. The 10 countries include China, the United States, the EU, India, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, and Canada. Some countries have polluted the least but are experiencing the worst effects of the climate emergency because of countries like the United States. 

Though the U.S. is 4% of the world’s population, we have emitted 25% of cumulative emissions. In fact, we have the highest emissions per capita. The top 10 largest emitters, especially the largest historic emitters, must do more to not only reduce their own emissions but also to finance and support the mitigation efforts of countries least responsible. This will allow us to help countries least responsible for the climate crisis with reparations for loss and damages, and resources for adaptation and resilience. 

For those whose countries are the historic emitters we have a responsibility to amplify not only how the climate crisis is impacting our own domestic communities, but the realities of our sisters from countries least responsible but most impacted, from Kiribati, Fiji, the Bahamas, Tuvalu, Mozambique, Samoa, the Philippines, Kenya, Sri Lanka, to name a few.

While the 10 largest emitting countries must take drastic actions, all countries and all people can be part of turning the tide on the climate crisis.

READ: A Lovesong for the Longhaul: UMC Pastors on Hurricane Ida Aftermath

One concrete step we can take is to reach out to our government leaders and urge them to commit to eliminating fossil fuels as energy sources and to transition completely to clean renewable energy sources like wind and solar. We need to urge them to transition from fossil fuels to just energy sources that do not cause harm or cause communities to relocate because of rising sea levels. Instead, we can envision and advocate for a world where there is equitable energy access, where women are not dying because of smoke inhalation from cooking or being raped while getting water or kindling. We can advocate for an energy economy that is not extractive but just; where we are stewards, not pillagers, of creation.

Advocacy can take many forms, and it can occur amid a global health crisis. In April 2021, more than 300 United Methodist Women leaders from 40 states had 80 visits with Congressional members. Our group urged our elected leaders to quickly transition to renewable energy that is centered on justice and equity. We also met with car manufacturer Ford at their headquarters and dealerships. Some members even went to Chevron’s headquarters and met with staff. In each meeting, we urged a just transition to renewable energy.

At the personal and communal level, we can determine our carbon footprint by using an online carbon footprint calculator. Good calculators where one has a large carbon footprint and avenues for modification. Advocating for energy policy change is key, but I can also turn off the lights, replace lightbulbs with LEDs, ride public transit, compost, eliminate waste and plastic use, and reduce the amount of meat I eat on a weekly basis.

Another crucial thing we can do is to talk about not only the climate crisis but the climate solutions with our family friends, schools, colleagues, companies, and our government leaders.  

The current climate crisis is doing incredible harm to God’s creation. Women of faith have an opportunity to be like the widow in the parable with the unjust judge. The widow did not get justice because the judge thought she was right, but because she was persistent. Even when we get discouraged, we should persist in demanding that our government officials, fossil fuel companies, churches, and communities do their part to address the climate crisis. In the process of calling nations to account while also reducing our own emissions, we have the possibility to do as John Wesley advised: to do no harm, to do good, and care for creation.

“As Christ-followers, we are called to be long-haul neighbors committed to authenticity and willing to take some risks. Our vocation is to invest deeply in the lives of those around us, devoted to one another, physically close to each other as we breathe the same air and walk the same blocks. Our purpose is not so mysterious after all. We get to love and be deeply loved right where we’re planted, by whomever happens to be near. We will inevitably encounter brokenness we cannot fix, solve, or understand, and we’ll feel as small, uncertain, and outpaced as we have ever felt. But we’ll find our very lives in this calling, to be among people as Jesus was, and it will change everything.”—Shannan Martin, The Ministry of Ordinary Places

If Louisianans held anything in common two Saturdays ago, surely it was the onslaught of disaster-decision texts shooting out from the southernmost communities of our state, as folks attempted to employ the most frustratingly impossible superpower of predicting the future. Here’s what hurricane-veterans know: the storm can change in an instant. Therefore, the months to come are anyone’s (losing) game once the warm waters of the gulf have fed a system to the point of naming her.

“We’re headed north.”

“We’re hunkering down.”

“Can we bring our dogs?”

“There’s no way she can travel.”

Houston, Lake Charles, Grand Isle, and Gulfport all navigate the same possibilities when the weatherperson’s maps begin to show spirals. Monday could have brought with it business as usual or life-altering devastation once Hurricane Ida—a powerful, Category 4 storm—made landfall. For communities like Destrehan, LaPlace, Houma, and Hammond, Louisiana (and every small town in-between), this time, it was the latter.

“The Sunday School building [where so much activity takes place] is a complete loss and needs to be demolished,” Rev. Michelle Harris of Saint Charles UMC in Destrehan said on a call between spotty cell service in the days following. “There isn’t a house that doesn’t need a tarp . . . we’re getting to the point where we’re asking how much rain we can take before the ceiling caves in.”

Michelle’s husband Rev. Jason Harris also serves a United Methodist congregation in LaPlace, LA whose church, she said, had two feet of floodwater throughout the whole building—the most they’ve ever taken on.

“It doesn’t look as bad as Hurricane Katrina [here] . . . but it is as bad in terms of infrastructure and system damage,” emphasized Michelle, noting the massive hit to the oil refinery industry in Southwest LA along with gas shortages and power outages in the thick of the August heat.

Just 45-minutes down HWY 90, Rev. Ted Fine of Houma First United Methodist Church reiterated what so many in the area who rode out the storm said of that Sunday night: “That was a horror story.”

“We kept thinking, ‘That’s the worst,’ and it just didn’t stop.” The howling winds and snapping oaks have been described by many who stayed as nightmarish or the worst hours of their lives. Also haunted were the thousands of evacuees lacking control and proximity, waiting to hear what would be left of their worlds.

Rev. Ted shared that electricity in Houma—where massive wind damage occurred— is likely to be out for at least a month. Ida evacuees were instructed by Gov. John Bel Edwards not to immediately return, especially to areas with road blockages and water outages.

To be sure, it wasn’t just the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain that felt Ida’s rage. Updates from Rev. Drew Sutton of FUMC Hammond have shown the chaos of downed trees in the community, including significant damage to the church. Video of wild roots and large branches rammed through roof shingles and scattered across property into natural barricades indicate a long road of recovery ahead.

“You can see the extent of the tree damage at FUMC Hammond,” Drew writes. “This is reflective of the damage everywhere in Hammond and the surrounding communities.”

With transition towers obliterated, barges loose, levees overtopped, extensive flooding having occurred, rescues necessitated, and schools closed indefinitely for many in parishes like Plaquemines, Lafourche, Terrebonne, and Tangipahoa, this is long-haul pain.

But Louisiana United Methodists are long-haul people.

READ: The Morning After Ida Makes Landfall, a Prayer

Rev. Michelle Harris shared that their top priority was to get the Fellowship Hall up and running to serve as food and water distribution and team-hosting.

“We have experience hosting Red Cross Staff post-Katrina, and we hope to be able to do that kind of ministry again, both in short term and long term recovery. We definitely want people to know that we can host. There’s so much need all around us.”

Rev. Ted Fine confirmed many of the same immediate needs outlined by Michelle: gas, tarps, water, work gloves, box fans, big black trash bags, sunscreen and bug spray, first aid kits. His church’s campus, which thankfully experienced little to no damage, is also opening to serve as a distribution center.

Rev. Drew Sutton —encouraging his community to utilize the Crisis Cleanup resource—shared that 600 people would be coming into the Hammond area this past weekend to address needs. This is just the beginning, but it is beginning. Help is on its way and is, to be sure, already here.

“[I want people to know] how thankful we are . . . we are so relieved to know there is help coming,” Michelle answered when asked what additional words she wanted shared with readers at large.

“Tell them that [the meme that said ‘If you want to know what it means to be an American, look to South Louisiana tomorrow morning] is true. The person who shows up on your driveway to help is the indicator that God is alive and afoot in Houma, LA,” Ted exclaimed.

“I’ve gotten so many calls from people outside of this community,” Drew shared, “from people asking how do we help. I’ve seen so many people in our church who need help who are getting support, whether that’s from other church members or other people in our community. The church is not in recovery, the church is actually at work, doing what it knows how to do so well, which is show up for people . . . This keeps happening, and we know how to do this.”

Rev. Bob Deich, interim Louisiana Conference Disaster Response Coordinator, offered a needed reminder for this moment in a video shared online last Tuesday, “It was out of the darkness and in the chaos that God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And it was in the darkest moments of the disciples’ lives when Christ sent his Holy Spirit to be with them in very dark and troublesome times. And we’ve seen some dark days this last week with Hurricane Ida . . . Be patient . . . Be prayerful . . . Be generous.”

The journey ahead is complex and rightly so—filled with both triage and rehab efforts, insurance claims and bucket truck parades, adrenaline highs and compassion fatigue, questions about climate change and environmental refugees, retelling the story, and sharing the load again and again and again. What is essential now is exactly what we vowed to give as United Methodists: our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness; to show up in the ways we can for the people God loves for as long as is needed—a reality which is itself a story of grace.

South Louisiana, we’re with you. Today and all the days ahead.

To donate to disaster relief efforts through the Louisiana Conference of the UMC, use this giving link.

“Love Song for the Longhaul” is a phrase inspired by author Shannan Martin.

This piece first appeared on the Louisiana Conference of the United Methodist Church website.

The bright Florida sun beamed through the windows of my boyfriend’s Honda Accord as we drove the three miles between our apartment and campus. Howard Stern’s voice boomed through the speakers. As he argued with his co-hosts about why he hadn’t slept with Pamela Anderson, American Airlines Flight 11 flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Given the messenger, I thought it was a joke. Walking into school immediately proved him honest, at least in this case. TVs hung on every wall and the burning 110-story skyscraper digitally surrounded me as I walked to my 9am editing lab where my classmates and instructor sat silently glued to the screen. 

The rest of the day’s classes were canceled, and we made our way home under palm trees and absurdly blue skies that now felt out of place, the Florida sun somehow dimmer than before.

“I guess we’re at war now,” I said, half question, half bewildered statement.

“We’re not at war,” my boyfriend laughed, not the first or last time a man would attempt to undermine my inner Knowing. It was too early to say with who, but surely someone attacking the United States on our own soil would not end well. I didn’t argue. My world was still small, and the way 9/11 would shape us all far beyond it.

Details fell slowly like ashes from the crumbled towers. Around 9:30 pm the director of the CIA told President George W. Bush—tucked safely inside a bunker beneath the White House—that Osama Bin Laden was the attack’s mastermind.

Like every other college student and most Americans, I didn’t know the name Osama bin Laden. I also didn’t know God. As a child, I begged God to keep my parents from divorcing. As an adolescent, I plead for God to keep my mother from moving me out of state. And as a teenager in the throes of depression and suicidal ideation, I cried out again. God didn’t answer, and I came to the only natural conclusion—God’s not there. Or maybe, if God is there, God didn’t care about me. 

READ: The Amnesia of ‘Never Forget’

I packed “lack of belief” along with my meager belongings and thrifted furniture into a U-Haul that my dad drove from Indiana to Orlando. It wasn’t an identity I wore as a badge but rather a receipt I kept in my pocket from the first two decades of life, evidence that the Divine is absent.

But on September 11th, 2001, I prayed. I prayed for the families of those who were killed. I prayed for the first responders searching for survivors among the rubble. I prayed for Osama bin Laden.

For some reason, on that day, I knew God was there. Everywhere. I had no former embodied examples of this, no mystic experiences to draw from, no Sunday school felt-board illustrations or youth-group-planted seeds to credit with my sudden faith. I just knew God was enough to hold all the pain in the world. The pain of those killed, of their loved ones, of the Muslim community, and even the pain in the hearts of the men flying those planes.

September 11th led me to a God who doesn’t take our pain away but chooses to be with us in it. In the two decades since, She has continually joined me there—in terminal illness. The death of a parent. The betrayal of my spiritual community. The mental illness and incarceration of my child. 

The presence of the Divine does not mean the absence of suffering as I once hoped. To take away our suffering would be to take away our freedom. And control is the opposite of Love.

I don’t know what to make of a loving God amidst a culture of death, when twenty years later Afghans fall from the sky, attempting to escape terror my tax dollars funded. What I do know is Jesus weeps with them, is them. Ours is the Broken-Hearted God who from the beginning of time is with the broken-hearted. 

My Knowing communicates to me the way the salt-soaked wind talks with the palm trees. In doing so, it tells me that the Divine loved Osama bin Laden and those he killed, that one faith tradition is too small to contain Mystery, and, because you cannot truly love what you are trying to control, expansive, always-with-us love is God’s heart for us all.

That morning, I’d just finished a run along the Potomac past the Pentagon. I was in Army ROTC freshman year at Georgetown University. September 11th, 2021, clearly marks a significant anniversary because of the arbitrary duration of two decades. Yet, this year is different: the same Taliban that hosted Al-Qaeda before 9-11 is now victorious in Afghanistan after the longest and costliest war in US history. There is much to remember and much we’d like to forget. Yet sometimes, remembering must be a conscious choice.

Every 9-11 for the past 20 years, I weep when I remember the smoke coming from the Pentagon with the sound of fighter jets and helicopters swirling above. I remember the live footage of the towers falling that morning while standing across a crowded room from a young woman who had a loved one inside one of them. I never saw her again, but I will always wonder if her relative survived. I will never forget her face. I will also remember an interfaith prayer service an hour or so later. I was in uniform, and I remember opening my eyes during prayer to see my hands tremble in anger. I will always remember that day and the 2,977 civilians who died.

I also recall how things changed immediately after 9-11. The ROTC upperclassmen and the Army instructors began talking about “going to war.” As we held deactivated M16s and wore camouflage fatigues, the tone and intensity of the weekly role-playing scenarios in a nearby park became more dark and serious. I suddenly began hearing dehumanizing language towards foreigners. One course instructor led a close combat drill where he told the assembled cadets what to do when encountering an unconscious enemy combatant. He instructed us cadets to “kick the guy in the nuts as hard as you can to see if he’s still alive. If he moves, double tap him in the head.” No one spoke up. I didn’t.

Double tap means to shoot the incapacitated enemy combatant twice. To be clear, this was only a drill. Yet, a veteran of past failed wars was instructing officers of future failed wars to commit a war crime, a summary execution that would be at odds with the Geneva convention and the “rules based international order” for which we claim to fight. Weeks later I was injured running with the Army Ten Miler Team. I was kicked out of the program.

Every 9-11, I imagine what life would have been like without that injury and how I would have acted in the field of combat. Every 9-11, I feel such mixed feelings: I deeply regret not serving. Yet, on 9-12, I will always remember what has happened since.

While I couldn’t serve, as a citizen of the US, I still do have blood on my hands. Every 9-12, I remember the 244,000 civilians who died in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan alone. Even the right-leaning Cato Institute calls this number an underestimate. This also doesn’t include the destabilization and destruction we directly caused in many other countries, especially Syria, Libya, and Yemen. The true civilian cost of the amorphous “War on Terror” is much higher.

Every 9-12, I remember how that the well-meaning “never forget” sentiment I hear incessantly the day before does a lot of forgetting. At some point in last 20 years, “never forget” became synonymous with collective amnesia and indifference. Not caring about all subsequent civilian deaths is a disservice to the 2,977 civilian victims in our country whose memory was cynically invoked as a causus belli for America’s longest, costliest, and most counterproductive war.

In fact, “never forget” seems to forget the fact that most of the families of the 9-11 victims couldn’t rely on their own government and took matters into their own hands: today 2,000 of these families are still in court to expose our “ally” Saudi Arabia’s involvement in 9-11. “Never forget” really means a gradual forgetting of our values, our Constitution, and our civil liberties at home. Abroad, “never forget” hides a slow forgetting of the universal morality to which we once aspired as a country. Our high water mark was in 1945 when we helped establish the “rules based international order,” which we’ve abandoned over the decades in favor of the solipsism of that befalls all empires. The towers were not the only thing to fall on 9-11.

Some might ask, how can you connect the loss of civilian life at home to the loss of civilian life abroad? How can I not? How can I not see the intrinsic worth of all civilian life beyond arbitrary political, racial, cultural, or geographic boundaries? Furthermore, if I am really a follower of Christ, aren’t I supposed to extend empathy beyond my biology and nationality? Isn’t that the point of the parable of the Good Samaritan?

I can connect state abuses abroad and state abuses at home because of the least common denominator of racism. We wildly devalue and even ignore the body count from state violence at home and abroad because we see these victims as less-than-human. That very discounting or downplaying of another’s humanity is the very core of racism.

READ: Faith Leaders Gather in Houston in Response to Gun Violence

Our indifference to civilian deaths caused by the US abroad is directly tied to the same racism that emboldens police to indiscriminately shoot minorities at a higher rate. For me it is impossible to just mourn the 1,000 or so yearly victims of state violence here while not also mourning the 12,000 civilians who have died every year, year after year, for the past 20 years because of the very same state’s violence abroad. It’s connected. Does morality stop at the water’s edge or some arbitrary boarder? What sort of morality would that be?

On 9-12, I remember my utter surprise at how dozens of even my “liberal” friends – many who have Black Lives Matters signs on their suburban front yards – have directly dismissed my concern about the dead civilians abroad and my insistence upon their full humanity.

“Those civilian casualties are different,” one allegedly “woke” white friend said. “They were not our citizens,” he insisted.

How is a dark skinned victim of state violence at home any different than a dark skinned victim of state violence abroad? Do foreign families weep for their loss any less than American families? Isn’t it the same racism that has led to indifference of the state’s violence at home and the same state’s violence abroad? Both our empire abroad and police abuses at home have direct antecedents in the concept of settler colonialism, marked by slavery of Africans and genocide of native peoples (both of which required the prerequisite of racism to allow perpetrators see the victims as “less than human”).

How – for example – is the Haditha massacre (where Marines killed 24 unarmed innocent civilians in cold blood) any less evil than similar state violence at home? It’s the same shoot-first/questions-later approach. It’s the same dehumanization process that precedes most acts of human violence. Does it matter what passport an innocent civilian holds?

On 9-12, I remember that we have responded to the very real trauma of 9-11 with the civilian equivalent of four 9-11’s per year, every year, for the past 20 years. Why do so many ration their tears, mourning only 1.2% of the total civilian casualties? And given how an average of 11,000 more civilians have died each year for the past 20 years abroad than they die at home to police violence, why do many on the left resist adding a robust anti-war and anti-imperial element to a broader anti-racist coalition, just as MLK Jr. called for in his almost universally condemned  “Beyond Vietnam” speech? Perhaps the centrist war hawk Democrat is the modern equivalent of MLK Jr.’s “white moderate?”

King made a moral and financial link between the misdeeds of empire abroad and their intimate connection to the misdeeds of empire at home. He knew that dollars diverted abroad are directly related to the same as dollars denied at home. MLK Jr. saw the internal moral rot that befalls all empires. He was literate in what Jesus preached, that to be a follower of Christ means you no longer have an “other” in your politics and morality.

He knew that love and empathy ought not stop at the parochial and arbitrary boundary of a tribe, a race, or a nation state. The Jesus who informed King’s politics was clear about extending empathy towards those outside of his tribe and re-humanizing those who have been deemed to be “less than” human. Just as the FBI hounded and harassed MLK Jr. before his death, Jesus was of course also targeted by the empire of his day for his radical message that inverted the script of the normal human tendency towards intertribal barbarism. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they need all the help they can get.

On 9-12, after I mourn both our 2,977 victims and the at least 100 times more civilians who died abroad than died here on 9-11, I remember the $5.4 to $6.4 trillion spent on the longest, costliest, and most counterproductive war in American history. (This could pay for the spending of even the most radical left-wing domestic proposals out there today, yet both Republicans and centrist Democrats call for brutal austerity.)

Isn’t there a moral difference between the deficits spent abroad in military defeats and the ongoing cost of 800 plus military bases worldwide compared to deficits that could be spent investing in people, their infrastructure, their healthcare, and their education? If a nation’s budget is a moral document, our moral priorities are laid bare.

Trillions are spent abroad in an endless succession of military defeats while our bridges collapse, tent cities of homeless swell, and 17 million children suffer food insecurity. While 40% of US aid to Afghanistan is now in the hands of criminals, warlords, drug lords, and insurgents, our government bails out banks, defense contractors, and “corporate citizens” first.

In the words of King, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” I would only argue that “defense” might not be an accurate way to describe what happened in the ensuing two decades.

On 9-12, I remember the strategic incompetence of the “experts” of our bipartisan foreign policy establishment who rotate through the revolving door between the Pentagon, industry-funded “think tanks,” defense contractors, and oil and gas corporations. This conflict was designed – legally and strategically – to combat terrorism (an ancient tactic that will always exist as long as nation states do) instead of any one state actor. It was meant from day one to have its center nowhere and circumference everywhere, an embodiment the same Military Industrial Complex nightmare feared by President Dwight Eisenhower. After an awkward soul-searching decade of America not having an external enemy after the unanticipated implosion of the USSR, 9-11 gave the “defense” establishment exactly what was needed: justification for permanent war mobilization. The War on Terror metastasized into a War of Terror.

Every 9-12, I remember the lies from the Pentagon of multiple administrations who knew from as early as the second half of the Bush administration that the war was not winnable. I remember Obama’s continuation of this delusion, the surge, and his drastic escalation of drone warfare based on legal gray zones, the same sort of creative legal carve outs created during the Bush administration. I remember the distraction and destruction that was the second Iraq war, and the directly-related destabilization of regimes like Syria.

I remember Fallujah, white phosphorus being used around civilians, and Abu Ghraib. And, I will especially remember that nearly 20 years ago, just months after 9-11, the Taliban tried to broker a deal with the Bush administration to hand over Osama bin Laden, an offer which was quickly rejected outright. As I write this the Taliban has rejected an attempt by the US to give the civilian evacuation effort more time. While that is tragic, I can’t ignore the tragedy that the best time to negotiate with the Taliban – when we had all the cards after bombing started – was in 2001. Such negotiation was attempted but rejected by the US. Any student of history should not be surprised that every empire is susceptible to the fatal flaw of hubris.

The founders and framers based their cautious optimism for our Republic on the assumption of highly educated public. That is nearly impossible when our corporate media has been distracting and entertaining us instead of informing us. (No, liberals, while Fox is egregious, it’s not just Fox). Your favorite columnist and TV show personality has been feeding you the Pentagon’s propaganda instead of speaking truth to power. If history is any guide, in a decade or so another crisis will be used as a justification to maintain and expand the budget of a military that already outspends the next ten countries combined yet still can’t manage to decisively end a conflict on favorable terms since 1945. The very amnesia behind “never forget” will make the repetition of history inevitable.

Big flags cast big shadows. We must have the moral imagination to illuminate these shadows. In the last 20 yeas we have become much more similar to the Roman Empire described in the gospels than we are to the radical moral vision of Jesus, whose ministry had everything to do with the social injustice caused by Rome and it’s collusion with the religious establishment of his day. At ballgames and commemorative events many politicians parrot the platitude that we are “one nation under God,” without stopping to wonder which God? The one who commanded us to love the other before he was executed by the empire of his day? Or Mars, the Roman god of war and empire? Or Baal? Or mammon? Or power? Or the U.S. flag? Or Trump? Why are those who like to call us a “Christian nation” the very same people who are so very un-Christ like in their politics and morality?

If we only see the victims on our side of an arbitrary tribal, geographic, or political boundary, our morality is closer to the Neanderthals than a species who may have prematurely named itself Homo sapiens sapiens, or wise wise human. There is no “other” in the politics of someone who really follows what Jesus preached. We must re-humanize the dehumanized “other.” We must tear the veil that surrounds the tribe and practice empathy where it is difficult to do so. We must question and confront the inherited human impulses towards parochial tribalism, narrow self interest, and intertribal brutalism.

Jesus was tortured and executed by the empire of his day for this very message. This irony seems to be especially lost on mainstream Christians in this country who – of all things – overwhelmingly support the use of state torture. They were joined by the “New Atheists” who also helped sell the war and its related human rights atrocities. Should we at all be surprised when the injustices abroad are mirrored at home? It’s the same racism, it’s the same state, it’s the same tax dollars, it’s the same myopic morality, it’s the same voters, it’s the same apathy and indifference, so where is the same outrage? Racially-motivated state violence towards innocent civilian life must be called out no matter where it happens.

I have more than enough tears to shed for civilian victims on both sides of arbitrary imaginary lines. This 9-11, let us shed a tear for our own victims. On 9-12, let us also mourn those whom we have victimized in the past 20 year quagmire. On 9-12, let us remember our amnesia. I hope you will join me in a boundless morality that doesn’t stop at the ocean’s shore. A morality that illuminates the shadows cast by big flags. A morality overflowing with empathy. A morality that emulates Christ instead of many emulating the “Christians” who often seem so Christ-illiterate. A morality that doesn’t ration its tears domestically or close its eyes abroad.

This is the higher path to which Jesus pointed, a morality that isn’t afraid of crossing imaginary lines on maps or in our hearts.

[Editor’s Note: Since the weekend’s rally has already occurred, tense has been changed from the original piece to reflect past events.]

Red Letter Christians, a movement of left-leaning evangelicals, led a diverse group of faith leaders in a two-day rally against gun violence in Houston this past weekend. The event came the same week as a new Texas law went into effect allowing citizens to carry firearms in public without a license, while eliminating a previously mandatory five-hour gun law and safety training.

Planned to coincide with the National Rifle Association’s annual convention, originally scheduled for Houston last weekend, the Red Letter Christians’ gathering went on despite the cancellation of the NRA event, which would have included a 150^th anniversary celebration.

Calling the rally “Change: A Faithful Response to Gun Violence,” it also is available to view online through Facebook Live archives.

The two-day event also took place after more than 20,000 Americans died by gun violence in 2020 — the highest rate in at least two decades — and another 24,000 lost their lives to suicide with a gun, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

“In the last 45 years, we’ve had more gun deaths domestically than in all of the wars in US history combined,” said Shane Claiborne, co-founder of Red Letter Christians. “So that’s worth grieving.”

On Saturday there was a hands-on gun disarming workshop at Houston Mennonite Church in partnership with RAWtools, a Colorado-based organization that transforms guns into garden tools as a reflection of Bible prophecies about turning swords into plowshares. The workshop taught local faith leaders how to safely disable unwanted firearms according to federal guidelines.

Saturday also included a service of remembrance at Houston’s Episcopal Christ Cathedral to honor the memory of those who have lost their lives to gun violence. During the service, an AR-15 rifle from an anonymous donor was forged into a garden tool. On Sunday, there was a national service of hope and action at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church.

Events took place outdoors when possible, and attendees were required to be masked and vaccinated.

“It’s time to stop trusting in this myth of redemptive violence that more guns are going to make us safer,” said Claiborne.

READ: The Morning After Ida Makes Landfall, a Prayer

Faith leaders participating included the Rev. Deanna Hollas, gun violence prevention ministry coordinator with the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship; Daniel Cardinal DiNardo, the archbishop of Galveston-Houston; and the Rev. Harvey Clemons Jr., native Houstonian and pastor of Pleasant Hill Baptist, among others.

Red Letter Christians, founded in 2007 by Claiborne and Tony Campolo, aims to mobilize Christians to live out Jesus’ “radical, counter-cultural” teachings, according to their website.

GRrrrrrRRRRRaar!! I lept out of bed as Max, our German Shepherd, went berserk in the middle of the night. Stumbling to the window, I watched three boys, silhouetted by moonlight, pedal furiously out of our driveway.

My heart sank.

These kids had slashed our tires. We didn’t know exactly who the offenders were, but we had a pretty good idea. They belonged to a gang of ninth-graders who were tormenting our son. 

Jesse had taken an unpopular stand at his high school. The language teacher implemented a lesson plan that consisted entirely of showing the kids rental movies with Spanish subtitles in lieu of actually teaching. Our boy raised a stink for a couple of reasons: these R-rated films showed more skin than Ft. Lauderdale during Spring Break, and he really wanted to learn Spanish. The blowback came when this teacher, Mr. Movie Buff, handed worksheets to each student in class the next day with the following explanation:

“Well, I’m afraid we’re done with movies. Jesse complained, so now you’ll have written work to do.”

And so it began. Taunts in the hallways. Food missiles in the cafeteria. Threats, insults, and cruelty. I knew there was more, but he wouldn’t tell us. Our appeals to school authorities only made matters worse. 

I felt sick. And powerless. And furious. And terrified. I wanted to fix it, but my son insisted he could handle it. After dropping him off every morning, I had to practically reach down my throat to squash the fear that rose in my chest. I’d drive home, fall to my knees, and plead with God to protect my son. My memory might not be spot-on, but I’m pretty sure I also called down some fire and brimstone on Mr. Movie Buff and those nasty little twerps. While I knew that God heard my prayers and understood my pain, I probably could have been a little more . . . 

Positive . . . 

Courageous . . . 

Encouraging . . .

Merciful . . .

Understanding . . .

Farsighted . . .

Hopeful . . .

Empathetic . . .

Peaceful . . .

Yeah, those things. And if this were happening today, you can bet I’d be standing in line for help with better words, a lighter load, and Scripture-based hope in everyday English I could pour out to God.

Kayla Craig, a writer, podcast producer, former journalist, and mother of four is the author of To Light Their Way- A Collection of Prayers & Liturgies for Parents. While I prayed earnestly, passionately, faithfully, and honestly for my children, a resource like this would have been tucked into my purse, dog-eared, well-worn, and used on a daily basis. In the fatigue of parenting, I could have used this gentle guide to ease the burden of trying to find the right words.

To be honest, I was skeptical of yet another prayer guide. I received an advance copy, and while I looked forward to reading it, I’m 65. I’ve read a lot of books. When I was a young mother, friends and relatives gifted me similar resources. While some were certainly worthy of my extremely limited reading time, I generally fell back on my go-to prayer: “Lord Jesus, please help!” The prayer that never fails.

READ: The Morning After Ida Makes Landfall, a Prayer

We have precious promises from the Bible that we are loved, we are heard, and that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express (Romans 8:26). So what difference might another book make? 

Would different words in our petitions change His answers? Have times changed so much since I was a young mother? What’s so different about the here and now? How is Kayla Craig’s script different from prayer guides of the past?

More than beautifully formatted words on a page, I see To Light Their Way becoming a loving member of our support community. Prayer may or may not change God’s mind, but I know prayer changes me. When I can better express my fear, my pain, my joy, and my longings, I feel a deeper peace come over my soul. Giving it all to God, in the best way I know how, helps me relax and trust that somehow, God has everything under control. 

For those worried about their kids in these days of active shooter drills and other unsettling events, Kayla Craig fearlessly opens doors into frightening scenarios. How do we pray about gun violence in schools? How do we talk to our kids about racism? Frightening headlines? Media consumption? Adoption? Divorce? Job Loss? Self-worth? Being bullied?

What if our child is the bully?

One of my personal favorites is “A Prayer for Learning to Drive.” I probably could have saved considerable shoe leather, not to mention wear and tear on my passenger-side brake pedal, if I’d had this resource.  

Clearly, the author has done her homework. There’s no way one parent could possibly have the wisdom and perspective imparted on each of the circumstances addressed. In her Acknowledgments, she recognizes the loving contributions from a community of experience, suffering, and pain. 

“I’m grateful to every mother and father who shared their deepest joys and sorrows with me—their fingerprints and heartbeats are woven into every prayer in this book.” 

I am grateful, too. There are times that sorrow is too deep for words. When Jesse’s sister, Catherine, died on her church’s youth group snowmobile trip, we survived because the saints were interceding for us. “A Prayer for the Death of a Child” rings true because someone else has lived this nightmare, survived it, and shared their experience with Kayla. 

Lastly, there are prayers for parents. For you saints who are still deep in the forest of day-to-day, hands-on parenting, God bless you. I know you’re too tired to pray for yourselves and so does the author. The last chapter is “Breath Prayers.” If you can still breathe and can focus through 2-4 lines, you can inhale hope and exhale rest. You deserve it. 

I’m a grandmother now. From this distance, I can see that the Lord did intervene in Jesse’s high school situation in a wonderful way none of us could have imagined. Fifteen years down the road and far from the pizza projectiles of yesteryear’s cafeteria, now he’s challenged by two children under the age of five. He and Brooke are lucky if they get to read cereal box labels. Buying them another book will probably be met with a wan and weary, “Thanks, Mom.”

I’m sending it anyway. I’m keeping mine. There’s never been a time my child needed prayer more than he does now, and I’m privileged to include my daughter-in-law and the grands. In this world that is not our home, my serenity depends on casting my cares upon the Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. 

Our God is the God that never fails. 

This past weekend, I visited the “mask-free” worship service of Global Vision Bible Church, led by charismatic Trump-apologist, Greg Locke.  And I managed to wear a mask, without getting kicked out.  In fact, I was invited to stay late to help fold up chairs after the service, which I gladly did.  The people were nicer than I anticipated that they would be.  But the theology was worse than I could have ever imagined.  It is clear that “Christian nationalism” now has its own delta variant. 

I had plenty of pushback.  Some folks thought it was picking a fight, and reminded me that many of the folks who attend these services come armed and ready for a fight, why encourage them?  Others questioned if attending the services would simply legitimize the fringe-group or give them more of a platform or airtime than they deserve.  I get the concerns.  My mom probably made one of the best challenges to my decision to attend the service, reminding me that Tennessee has snake-handling churches which also have bad, even deadly theology, but I’ve never felt the need to attend one of them.  She makes a good point . . . except that the only person whose life is at stake in the snake-handling churches is the one handling the snakes.  Not so at Global Vision Bible Church – there are many lives at stake as the church insists on hosting “mask-free” services.

I thought it might be a couple of hundred people, bigger than most of our snake-handling churches but not nearly as big as our megachurches, and I was right about that.  The service was held in a big top, old school red and white candy-cane-striped circus tent.  I was guided to a parking place by a very friendly man with a security vest on.  And I was boxed in, so I wouldn’t be able to leave even if I wanted to.  

After much prayer and reflection, I had resolved not to disrupt the service, no matter how bad it got, despite Jesus’s own decision to flip tables in the temple.  After all, I’m not Jesus, and while I’m willing to take up my cross, I’m not looking to be a martyr.  I did, however, decide to not be subtle with my message (being an evangelical at heart), and I wore a mask with the words “Love Thy Neighbor” on it.  I also wore a shirt that said, “Black Lives Matter To God” since one of the many troubling things I’ve heard from Mr. Locke is a total discrediting of Christians concerned about systemic injustice or the residue of slavery and racism.  And I wore a large metal cross, made from the barrel of a gun.  One of the things I am convinced of is that the cross and the gun offer us two very different versions of power: one says that there is something worth dying for, and the other says there is something worth killing for.  

I chose an entrance where I saw a smiling face, a kind greeter welcoming visitors. She welcomed me with the same smile, even with my mask on.  But it wasn’t long before two security men, with earpieces in their ears, came to talk to me.  They asked me if I had a medical reason for wearing a mask.  I said yes, which was honest: I believe we all have a medical reason to wear a mask, which goes back to the great command of Jesus inscribed on my mask itself, “Love Thy Neighbor.”  Even after the conversation with the security guards, I got a fist pound and a warm welcome.  

As people settled in I couldn’t help but notice the wide array of messages on shirts, hats, tattoos, and bumper stickers.  It’s something evangelicals are passionate about, “spreading the word,” and we are well equipped with a multi-million dollar Christian industrial complex to assist us in bearing witness.  And hey, I had my message unashamedly displayed on my body, too.

But these were different.  

Seated in front of me was a man in a shirt with two guns crossed over each other with the words: “Born to Protect the Second Amendment.”  Another hat said “All Aboard the Trump Train.” There were MAGA hats and shirts, and even a MAGA spinoff- “Make America Godly Again.”  There were Jesus shirts with Bible verses, patriotic shirts with the stars and stripes, and lots of shirts that blended the two.  Despite Greg Locke insisting that he is not tied to either party, I sure didn’t see a Biden shirt in the crowd, only Jesus and Trump.  And, I appeared to be the only one with a mask, feeling a little like the kid who was told it was a costume party when it really wasn’t.

As sweat began to drip a little in the summer heat of the circus tent, ushers handed out fans with the words “Fan the flame of revival” on them.  Slides scrolled on the screens announcing an “Ironman” event for men and other retreats and upcoming events.  One of them is a visit from Christian worship leader Sean Feucht who has embraced the title given him by Rolling Stone magazine: “Jesus Christ Super-spreader,” priding himself off of maskless revival services, even stooping to sell “Superspreader” t-shirts on his website.  Sean would be joining Greg for a big tent “American Revival” on August 28th.  More on that later . . . 

Worship kicked off with songs very familiar to me, what we used to call “contemporary worship” back in the 1990s, with a few classic hymns thrown in like “How Great Thou Art.”  The worship leaders were young and hip, one of them had a hat on that said “Edge” which I assumed was a wink at U2 guitarist “The Edge,” but am always cautious when it comes to pop-culture references, as my wife says I am not as hip as I sometimes think I am (she also informed me that “Edge” is also a professional wrestler). 

Nothing I’d seen so far was that surprising to me—even the guys who had guns strapped to their hips as they worshipped the “Prince of Peace.” I expected all that.

Here’s what was surprising, and I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t say it, even though it may ruffle a few left-leaning feathers.  I understand why people are drawn to Mr. Locke.  

He entered the room, giving away hugs and high-fives with an authenticity that shocked me.  From the moment he entered the room, he had a down-to-earthiness about him that lasted until the last person left the service.  I watched as people showed him photos of their children, as he prayed with grown men in tears, and as he waited in the heat until the last person in line had a chance to talk with him, including me.  He genuinely seemed to care for his people, as he said, perhaps unknowingly quoting Pope Francis, he was a shepherd that “smelled like his sheep.” 

As Mr. Locke took the stage to the song “Our war cry is praise,”  his opening words stirred the crowd: “Protestors ain’t going to stop us.  Vandalism’s not gonna stop us.  Death threats are not going to stop us.”  He started with some in-house stuff before the sermon.  Their property had been vandalized on Saturday night, again.  Apparently, that happened before, when they had Roger Stone visit as a guest “preacher.”

Among the graffiti messages and property damage, someone wrote: “Your lies cost lives” on the wall and “FU” on the pulpit.  And Mr. Locke was livid.  For me, it was the latest reminder of how unhelpful tactics like that are, even if I can understand the anger behind them.  Hate only fuels the fire of hatred, or in this case, it adds conviction to the idea that there is a persecution of Christians coming “like the world has never seen.”  Locke cleverly took the “FU” and spun it on its head saying that now it stands for “Fired Up” and even his biblical mandate to “Forgive You” which he tossed to the cameras as if the culprit were watching.  He took back the FU from the one who sprayed it.  This was one of the first times I smiled, despite my most determined attempts not to.  Good thing I had a mask on.

Still, in his pre-sermon remarks, Mr. Locke built up anticipation as he announced a major decision they were making as a church.  They were about to upgrade to an enormous 3000-person tent (massive burst of applause). But parking was an issue, so they were also purchasing all the land in the immediate area – 9 acres which would be used for parking (giving them a total of 16 acres).  They were ready to sign the deal for 1 million dollars and had 2 weeks to raise it.  This is when I began to realize that this is very different from the snake-handling churches which are a dying denomination (no pun intended).  They are dwindling out like an old campfire, but this thing seemed to be taking off like the wildfires out west. And it has the potential to do its own unimaginable damage.  

Mr. Locke made it clear that they are not about money or extravagant spending, and I believe him on that one.  After all, they don’t even have a building, only a tent.  He told the endearing story of an event that he just spoke at that took up a “love offering” of $10,000 for him – which he committed to donate to the church as the first offering gift of the morning.  I found myself smiling again as he gave a little jab to the televangelists and the millionaire pastors with their Lear jets – as he mentioned his rented house and joked about his “1992 Bubba Truck.”  As he described his philosophy on honorariums for speaking, I found it uncomfortably similar to my own: he doesn’t have a price and seems to believe that there is something wrong with charging a bunch of money to preach about a man who tells us to give it all away.  As if that were not enough, he celebrated a Bishop from India who was visiting and happened to be sitting in front of me.  He had the Bishop, who had founded 10 churches in India, stand, and Greg announced that he felt God compelling him to tithe from the 1 million they were raising for the parking lot.  They would be giving $100,000 to the Bishop.  He said it with what seemed to be genuine tears in his eyes.  

But then came the sermon.  

READ: The Morning After Ida Makes Landfall, a Prayer

It began in Exodus, with the story of God rescuing the Hebrew slaves from their bondage to Pharaoh – Exodus 14.  I’m very familiar with this iconic story, which has inspired so many enslaved and oppressed people over the centuries.  But it was uncomfortable to hear it in the context of an audience that is 99% white, and who seem convinced that they are victims of an oppressive empire, persecuted by the federal government under the leadership of a Pharaoh named Biden.  

Several times he mentioned running Joe Biden and the “Demon-crats” out of the revival tent if they showed up.  And I believed him, though not convinced they’d make it out alive.  Just as God hardened the heart of Pharaoh, Locke continued, so God continues to harden hearts.  Of course, he named names: Biden, Pelosi.  “Cuomo is out!  Newsome is next!” he shouted with a kick of the leg.  

Multiple times, Mr. Locke claimed that the election was stolen and that Trump won.  In his words, “That doesn’t make me a terrorist, that makes me a Truther.” 

Immediately after saying, “The Left hates the Church,” he unconvincingly assured everyone that he is not partisan:  “Republicans and Democrats are two heads of the same snake–My loyalty is to Jesus.”  He went even further to placate those who might be concerned that his presence at Trump rallies or the Jan. 6 insurrection crossed a line and politicized Christianity.  “I ain’t never got up at a political rally and preached about Donald Trump.  I preach about Jesus.  Jesus.  Jesus. He’s the sweetest name I know.” The place exploded.  And my head was spinning.

This is where I begin to identify a few distinctive ways this “delta variant” of “Christian” nationalism diverged from its predecessors.  Let’s call it “the new American revival” since that’s the language many of them use.  The incongruities they are attempting to hold together, like opposing magnets, are impossible to reconcile.  I’ll name three of them.  

First, the new American revival insists that it is not partisan but that it is “all about Jesus,” even as they simultaneously say that Democrats are demonic and Trump is God’s messenger.

That’s the first thing that hit me as very different from most previous iterations of the “religious right.”  They were unashamedly in bed with the GOP.  And most of them didn’t even deny their partisanship, despite the glaring contradictions between the values of Jesus and those of Trump.  I think back to Jerry Falwell, Jr. in 2018 where a reporter pressed Falwell to reconcile his fidelity to Jesus and to Trump.  This was his response:  “I don’t look to the teachings of Jesus for what my political beliefs should be.”  

The new American Revival genuinely seems to be delusional or in denial about its partisan bias.  

I went to Greg’s service fully prepared for a Trump rally, which it was.  But I was not prepared for it to simultaneously be a Jesus rally.  I remember watching Trump speak a few years ago at Falwell’s university, one of the largest evangelical schools in the country, hardly even mentioning the name of Jesus as he made his infamous reference to “two Corinthians.”   In the recent past, it is not unusual to hear Trump-evangelicals speak at churches without even mentioning the name of Jesus a single time.  I noted one 12-minute sermon by Trump-evangelist Mark Burns where he mentions Trump’s name 20 times without once uttering the name of Jesus.  

Not so with this new American revival.  They seem to be convinced that their love for Jesus can easily be merged with right-wing politics and conspiracy theories, though it is noteworthy that the text of the Sermon did not come from the Gospels.  At one point Mr. Locke even mentioned “the red letters” of the Gospel, referring to the words of Jesus often highlighted in red, for which the movement I am a part of is named, “Red Letter Christians.”  This is what makes this delta variant even more confusing and dangerous than its predecessors. 

For years, my friends and I have insisted that mixing Christian faith with a political party is like mixing ice cream with cow manure – it doesn’t do much damage to the manure, but it sure messes up the ice cream.  In fact, I co-authored an entire book entitled Jesus for President on this very theme.  More recently, it seems clear to most people that Jesus and Trump are like opposing magnets – you can’t hold them together, no matter how hard you try.  I’m still convinced of that.  But this new delta variant of “Christian” nationalism, led by folks like Greg Locke and Sean Feucht, sure hinges on the hope that opposites attract.   

The problem is every mention of Jesus seems to be by name only, turning Jesus into a mascot rather than a model for life.  Or to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, “Just as God created us in his image, we decided to return the favor.”  That’s how you end up with a version of Jesus that prefers an AR-15 over a cross.

It becomes nearly impossible to actually reconcile the teaching of Jesus with the policies and rhetoric of Trump-defenders.  It’s hard to obey Christ’s command to love our enemies, and simultaneously prepare to kill them, despite having crosses and guns in the same big tent revival.  And it’s hard to imagine any version of faith that centers the great commandment of “love thy neighbor as thyself” that does not translate into wearing a mask in a pandemic to protect the most vulnerable among us.  This is also what makes this new “delta variant” much more dangerous than its original form of “Christian” nationalism.

Greg jumped from Scripture to politics without missing a beat. “It’s amazing how accurate the Bible is for where we are living at this very second.”

He shouted it out: “Let my people go.  Let my people go.”  That seemed to be a familiar war cry for Greg – “they” are coming for us, but God will deliver us just like God delivered the Hebrew people. God will deliver us from communism.  And from the liberal agenda.  “There is a book called Exodus because they found the exit sign and they got out,” he said.  And so can we.  

Bridging the centuries from Exodus to 2021 required some theological gymnastics, but the parallels he made were not the least bit subtle.  Mr. Locke pointed out that God led the Israelites to a specific place where they were to camp (through a “stuttering prophet with nothing more than a hickory stick”), and then he boldly claimed the tent and hill God had called them to in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee.  This would be their refuge.  

The obvious stretch was seeing things like mask mandates as religious persecution, but America’s idolatry of individual rights over the common good has made fertile ground to see any inconvenience as persecution.  I’ve often thought, Wouldn’t it be great if churches were the last places to reopen because of how obsessed we are with loving our neighbors and protecting the most vulnerable? While masks were not an issue in the Bible, loving your neighbor and protecting the vulnerable is one of the Bible’s most consistent themes.  

Pastor Greg sees it pretty differently.  Referring to the Israelites in Exodus who considered going back to Egypt, Greg made it clear, “They would rather die as slaves than live as free people.  I can promise you one thing – I’m gonna die free before I ever die a slave to the government.”  

Here’s where I saw the second distinguishing mark of this new delta variant of “Christian” nationalism: faith over fear.  They say they are all about celebrating “FAITH over FEAR” – as the words on the banner in front of Global Vision proclaimed in all caps –and yet it is fueled by apocalyptic end-times theology and is convinced there’s imminent persecution coming “like the world has never seen” and mask mandates are just the beginning.  Multiple times, Mr. Locke mentioned that what has begun as a lockdown of public worship services during the pandemic is just a foretaste of what is yet to come. We are getting ready to see is not a lockdown but a “shut down.”  The government is going to try to shut down the church.  On Twitter, Greg put it plainly:  “We have a 1st Amendment right to worship. If that’s impeded upon, we will invoke our 2nd Amendment right and meet you at the door. We will not be bullied. To be clear, that’s a fact not a threat.”  Hence the guns.  

Greg certainly set himself up to walk in the lineage of Moses leading them out of the empire with “nothing more than a hickory stick.”  He put it like this:  “I have a choice as a shepherd.  I can protect the sheep.  Or I can open the gate to the wolves and let them all go to the slaughter.  I can warn you, and protect you, and love you, and sometimes have to shear you, or I can put my stick down and let the wolves devour you and take your kids.”  

The irony is hard to miss though.  Choosing faith over fear means refusing to wear a mask because God will protect you, but you still need a gun.  And I don’t need to speculate about whether people had guns in the service last Sunday, I saw them (they were hard to miss).  

Just as Trump and Jesus feel like clear opposing forces, like magnets that push against each other, so are the forces of love and fear.  

As a committed Christian, I am convinced that “Perfect love casts out fear,” as Scripture promises.  We have a choice, as individuals and as a country, between love and fear.  When fear motivates us, as is happening on so many policy issues like guns and immigration, we do really terrible things.  And any theology that is fueled by fear rather than love is bound to be toxic.

The compelling force at work in this new American revival seems to be that “they are coming for us.”  It is not a coincidence that this new “delta variant” of nationalistic theology comes on the back of the first Black President, a racial justice awakening in the Black Lives Matter movement and the changing demographics of Congress and of our country in general.  Some folks like Tucker Carlson are less subtle about their fears of immigrants replacing “us.”  Or as the Unite the Right marchers in Charlottesville said, “Jews will not replace us.”  There is a white fear, white fragility, and white nostalgia that is the underlying force behind much of the current theology, and policies; but that fear gets covered up by a militant, masculine battle call.  

Many will say it’s all about freedom, but it’s really about power.  And on the back of one of the greatest racial awakenings since the 1960s, equality can feel like persecution to those who have been privileged to hold the power.  Many of those who say, “Make American Great Again” are really saying “Make America White Again.”  White evangelicals are losing power, and that is what Donald Trump promised to change, and in many ways delivered on.  It is also what the devil tempted Jesus with: “all the power of the world.”  As much as many folks will insist that they are choosing faith over fear, perhaps the real choice is between fear and love.  Perfect love casts out fear.  As I listen to American revivalists, I hear a lot about fear but not as much about love, at least not the love I see embodied in Jesus and displayed on the cross, a love so powerful that it would rather die than kill.  

Finally, the last distinctive contradiction I recognized as I attended Global Vision and as I look at the new American revival, is this:  they love America, but hate the government.  With the not-so-subtle parallel of Pharaoh’s pursuit of the Israelites, Greg made it clear that the government forces, the helicopters, and the tanks, are coming for the Church.  “Huge soldiers, trained military assassins” were sent to destroy the people of God by the “wicked governmental leader,” Pharaoh (or Biden).  And now they are coming for us.

Just as Pharaoh had chariots and horses pursuing the escaping slaves, the federal government has tanks and helicopters, and they are coming for the church.  In the words of Greg Locke, “They are going to attack the church this year like never before – not lockdown but complete shutdown; Wake the crap up. They are gonna shut down churches in this country. . . It’s not going to be lockdowns, it’s going to be lock-ups . . .  They will roll helicopters and tanks up into this parking lot.”  He went on to talk about a new initiative of Homeland Security to track domestic terrorists like the people responsible for the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6.  

Mr. Locke not only denied the insurrection, as many extreme right-wing conspiracy theorists do, he also defended it.  According to Mr. Locke, January 6 was “not an insurrection.”  He goes on, “I was there.  I am not ashamed that I was there.  I’m not apologizing that I was there.”  And he is surprised that Homeland Security is monitoring domestic terrorism and white supremacist religious extremism.  

This too is a divergence from much conservative evangelicalism which often quotes Romans 13 to say that all authority is established by God and needs to be respected.  In many ways, it has been used to give a blank check to the government.  Jeff Sessions used it to justify putting kids in cages on the border, and Trump-apologist Robert Jeffress used it to say that Trump had God-ordained authority to use any amount of violence he wants to, including nuclear weapons.  But this new “delta variant” is more suspicious of government, perhaps that’s just because of who’s in the White House right now.  There is little talk about submitting to the authorities and a whole lot of talk about going to jail and refusing to comply with federal mask orders.  

Let me pause just to say that I am a firm believer in the rich tradition of civil disobedience.  As St. Augustine said, “An unjust law is no law at all.”  It is as much our duty to disobey the bad laws as it is to obey the good ones. Our country has been shaped by civil disobedience, from the Boston Tea Party to the Underground Railroad. “If a law is unjust,” Thomas Jefferson said, “a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.”

And people of faith in particular have a rich history of going to jail for Jesus. The Bible is a subversive book, after all, filled with folks who confronted the powers that be. Yes, Moses told Pharaoh, “Let my people go.” Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace for defying royal orders. Daniel ignored the orders of King Darius and was tossed into a den of lions. The early Christians were called “enemies of the state” by the Romans, and many followers of Jesus, accused of “defying Caesar’s decrees,” were jailed and martyred. Jesus himself was executed by the state.

So Christians at their best have always had a precarious relationship with power. I stand in the great tradition of holy troublemakers like Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr., Daniel Berrigan, Rosa Parks, Franz Jägerstätter, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth, all of whom broke bad laws.

I’m no stranger to handcuffs myself. I’m proud to say that I lost track of my arrests somewhere after 20.  Along with dozens of my Christian friends, I have gone to jail for defying anti-homeless laws, calling our legislators to take action on gun violence, challenging current immigration policies, standing against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, putting our bodies in the way of executions.  Every time we go to jail, as the legend John Lewis used to say, “We smile in our mugshots because we know that we are on the right side of history.”

One of our most effective arguments in court has been that we are simply exercising our religious freedom. We’ve argued that feeding the homeless, providing sanctuary for refugees, and putting water in the desert for immigrants are all essential acts of our faith. And we have won in court, over and over.

I believe in religious freedom, and I’m committed to continuing to defy the government policies that violate my faith.  But the quarantine restrictions are not among them.

The role of the governing authorities is to protect people, and in the case of quarantine restrictions, that is exactly what our government is trying to do. When the policies of our government are destructive of life, we should defy them. When the policies of our government are protecting life, we should respect them.

As for the First Amendment, James Madison, the “father of the Constitution,” once said: “Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty.” One person’s freedom can encroach on another person’s right to live. Mask mandates are not about religious freedom. They are about neighborly love.  More important than the First Amendment, as important as it is, is the Great Commandment, which calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves.

I’m all about the good trouble and revolutionary love.  One of the things I cling to from my evangelical upbringing is a willingness to protest the things that are wrong (after all half, the word Protestant is “protest” and our history is filled with it).  So at face value, I love Greg’s fire: “We don’t escape this without some jail time, without some fines, without some bruises and scars.  We are not going back to Egypt.  We are going forward.  When they put us in jail, we’ll go forward.  When they sue us, we go forward . . . ”  But then, as all good things can be distorted by the devil who is always a liar, it starts to sound like the Bundy militia in Oregon, especially as he begins to point back to the text in Exodus:  “When all hell breaks loose, and it will, there will be a place of refuge right here under this tent. Right here.”  Just as God protected the Israelites from Pharaoh’s army, so God will protect the faithful remnant of the Church from the American government.  

He ended the sermon, with an awkward pivot to praise America–a reminder that this is certainly a version of American nationalism, but it’s not your grandparent’s version.  The new revivalists love a romantic, mythical idea of “America” but are fully prepared to confront the police or the national guard like we saw on January 6.  That’s what makes this version of “patriotism” so peculiar, as we remember the Capitol police beaten bloody with the American flag in hand. 

“The whole world is counting on America right now.  Because when America falls, we are the last bastion of freedom and capitalism.  Our friends all around the world are counting on America to stand and fight for what God gave us because the government gave me none of it.  God gave me all of it.”  

I know many folks will discount this new American revival as something we should not pay much attention to, like a snake-handling church in West Virginia.  But I’m convinced that this militarized “delta variant” of Christian nationalism is one of the most dangerous threats both to democracy and to orthodox Christianity.  It is not just a fringe movement, it is a new American revival and there are thousands of people who are fanning the flames of this revival. 

Some will say that Mr. Locke is just a performer in a circus tent.  To that I offer Greg’s own response to NPR when he was asked if he sometimes gets caught up and carried away in the moment, saying things he didn’t mean to say.  His response:  “I don’t get caught up in the moment. What I say creates the moment.”  He knows what he is doing.

I am convinced that this new American revival has the potential to create many more “moments” like January 6.  Let us never forget that people lost their lives that day.  And they were not just Trump flags at the Capitol as blood was shed – they were also Jesus flags and Confederate flags.  And when the insurrectionists took over the Capitol and stood in the Senate chamber, this is the prayer they prayed, led by the QAnon shaman with the Viking horns:  

“Thank you Heavenly Father for gracing us with this opportunity… [removes horns]… to stand up for our God-given unalienable rights.  Thank you Heavenly Father for being the inspiration needed to the police officers to allow us into the building, to allow us to exercise our rights, to allow us to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists, and the globalists that this is our nation not theirs, that we will not allow America, the American way, the United States of America – to go down.  Thank you divine, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent creator God for filling this chamber with your white light and love, your white light of harmony.  Thank you for filling this chamber with patriots that love you and that love Christ.  Thank you… for allowing the United States of America to be reborn.  Thank you for allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists, and the traitors within our government.  We love you and we thank you, in Christ’s holy name we pray.”  Amen.

Sitting there last Sunday morning, I thought to myself with a heavy heart, the QAnon Shaman’s prayer on January 6 could serve as the liturgy of the new American Revival.  But it is a dangerous liturgy, a deadly theology, a blasphemous distortion of Christian faith.  And it is a danger to our democracy.

When I met Greg after the service, he was very kind, even as he told me that he recognized me.  I confessed to him that I am very disturbed by many of the things he says.  In the Spirit of Matthew 18, where Jesus says that if our brother or sister is missing the mark, we are to talk directly with them – that is why I came to the service.  I made sure he knew that I have no allegiance to either party – I did not endorse Trump or Biden. I’ve thrown all my chips in with Jesus.  It is my love for Jesus that causes me to be so concerned about what is happening under the big red and white tent there.  He grabbed me and gave me a hug.  I gave him my cell phone number and told him I’d like to talk and to pray.  

Some days I wake in the morning disoriented, my mind mixing up my dreamscape with the reality of what transpires in life. In my dreamscape, my arms reach for a cerulean sky, a perfect sky. This image becomes the metaphor for the total goodness and beauty I wish would enfold this earth we inhabit. Then I awaken in full to a new day with the weight of all that remains unchanged pressing against my shoulders and telling me to keep my eyes closed. It is almost as if to keep my eyes closed I can then continue to imagine a different sort of world—empty of natural disasters, empty of human beings holding hateful intent toward other human beings.

One such week prompted the words of lament unfolding in this litany. I hesitate to name the week because I find these events could be part of another week or another week or another week.

But I wrote these words as a yearning to encounter hope even as I cupped a depth of hopelessness. I wrote these words because although this earth can be unrelenting, I wanted a space to acknowledge and confess the ways we are complicit. I wrote these words because I wanted to remember that unrelenting can also describe God.

READ: For Afghanistan, Hospitality is the Least We Should Do

ONE: This earth we inhabit is a place 

Where hurricanes ravage and mudslides refuse to retreat, 

Where hate carries torches instead of cowering in fear, 

Where too often we speak of lives lost as numbers and not names, Where our place of birth impacts our length of life. 

ALL: Our children, our small ones, they sing of a world held in your cupped hands. 

And the psalmist writes of righteousness and justice, the Foundations of your throne.

ONE: In Lamentations, we read of your mercies, 

Your mercies, Oh Lord, as New each day. 

Then tell us, tell us, we plead and we beg 

What happens when over days or weeks or months or years or even centuries 

This world spins out of its orbit: 

A ball of dirt and stone 

Flung adrift in the galaxy 

When these foundations 

Of righteousness and justice 

Become rubble beneath our bare feet?

ALL: When we wake in the morning and 

The new day is worse than the old, 

When we long for you but 

We don’t see Heaven pressing against earth or the righting of wrongs, 

When we don’t find you 

In the groan of the wind, 

In the splintering of quaking land, 

In the heat of flames and fire.

ONE: Instead, all we hear Is a whisper 

A still small voice.

But Lord, we don’t want just whispers. 

We long for the might 

Of raging rivers that carve canyons, 

Of hands raised that calm the storm, 

Of a moon that blots out the sun. 

ALL: We cry, show us the foundations of your throne. 

ONE: And you, Lord, you invite us forth Into a sacred confession that gives rest. 

Make us people who can say 

We confess there are ways we have kneeled before a power that ignores 

Instead of falling face down at the foot of the cross. 

We confess that we are complicit in maintaining the very world we say we want changed. 

ALL: We confess we have thirsted after the fount of a comfort that blinds. 

ONE: It is not us that holds this orbit 

But you. 

With these words of confession, we say for ourselves and our communities 

ALL: Holy Holy Holy Lord God Almighty! 

ONE: The very foundation of all that was, and is, and is to come 

You cup the orbit of this spinning planet 

Between your holy palms. 

This earth is held, this earth is held, this earth is held. 

If your mercies are new each day, oh Lord Then as the earth spins on its axis 

And faces the rising sun, 

Spill this gold over our bodies. 

ALL: Make us fearless beacons of your radiant light. Amen.

This is an excerpt taken from Rally: Communal Prayers for Lovers of Jesus and Justice (Fresh Air Books, 2020).

If you are watching the gut-wrenching pictures of Afghans fleeing the impending rule of the Taliban and asking hard questions of your government I have a question for you – where were you 20 years ago? 

There are and will continue to be political debates about President Biden’s decision to pull US troops out of Afghanistan at this particular point in time, but what is shocking is how little reflection there is on why we invaded Afghanistan in the first place, either by our political and military leaders or even among leaders in the church. It is intriguing to hear so many people question the timing of pulling out of Afghanistan when I know so few of these same folks who questioned our initial invasion. The truth is we will only continue to invade countries, stay for decades, and then act shocked when we suddenly leave those countries in a complete mess unless we first reflect on why we were there in the first place and what is driving us to determine what is best for other nations. 

With Afghanistan, we were originally told we were going in to get Osama bin Laden because he attacked the U.S. on 9/11. That sounded reasonable, though it was a full 9 years later under a completely different administration when bin Laden was assassinated. And since 2011, when bin Laden was killed and the Al Qaeda networks were largely disrupted, we were told U.S. troops were needed to remain in order to build up a stable and strong Afghanistan. Now, in all of ten days, all of those years of creating a stable and strong Afghanistan were dashed. I can’t say I am surprised. 

I learned early on that our presence in Afghanistan was doomed to fail through a mission trip I led with some college students from Baylor University to Atlanta in the Spring of 2002. During that trip, we had dinner one evening in the home of a family who had recently arrived from Afghanistan. The son translated for his father as he told us their story.

Essentially, they were a Christian family who was persecuted for their faith by their government, fled to other countries to escape, experienced persecution in those countries as well, and eventually, after many years, were allowed to come to the United States. Because of the persecution the father experienced through beatings, he was unable to work. This created hardship for the family financially and in their marriage as the mother had to become their primary breadwinner. You could hear the pain in the father’s voice: the pain of him losing his status and especially the pain of him losing the country and culture he loved so much. 

All the while we listened, CNN was playing in the background showing U.S. helicopters and tanks and troops moving across the Afghan terrain, taking over this man’s country. It was eerie, but there was some slight solace in the Taliban government—who had persecuted this man for his faith—now being displaced by the U.S. and what was then called the Northern Alliance.

The Northern Alliance was made up of various Afghan non-Taliban factions, with the former pre-Taliban government, the Mujahadeen, being primary. So, one of us asked the man how he felt seeing the government that had persecuted him now being thrown out of power. The father told us that the government that had persecuted him was not the Taliban government, it had been the Mujahadeen government—the very same forces our country were escorting back into power. Naturally, we were absolutely stunned.

READ: With Red and Blue Fingerprints on Afghanistan Horror, a Call to Grieve

I will never forget that night. It was the words of a refugee father, an Afghan Christian, persecuted by the people the U.S. had decided to aid, that radicalized us against the Afghan invasion and later, the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq. Few were questioning the wisdom of the invasion of Afghanistan at that time just as few are doing any serious reflection today on why we were there in the first place. Few seem to be asking what are the implications of the violence we have helped perpetuate on that country and their culture. 

We invade. We occupy. We leave. Things fall apart. Rinse and repeat. 

Now, the media and U.S. political leaders are saying we should feel bad for Afghan refugees and welcome some of them into our country. They are wrong. We should certainly feel horrible (isn’t that a part of repentance?) and make space for as many of them who want to come. We owe them as much due to the recklessness and short-sightedness of our policies and actions over the last 20 years. The number of refugees could easily go into the tens of thousands. Bring them all. If this end to our occupation of Afghanistan is like any of the other historical calamities that the U.S. has caused, we will never truly live up to what we promised when we invaded: an American tradition. 

But our hospitality should not flow out of pity for the people of the country we ravaged and colonized for the past twenty years. Our hospitality must flow out of the reflection, acknowledgment of past corporate sin, lament for that sin, and honest repentance for policies that were clearly based on vindictiveness, cultural ignorance, and racism. We are all complicit. We are all guilty. We never should have invaded. We never should have occupied. 

Our refusal to learn about the history of Afghanistan and to at least know more about the Mujahadeen with whom we partnered to remove the Taliban before we took over the country was beyond detrimental. Afghanistan has a long and proud history of resisting change from outsiders, which is common among most counties to be honest. We should remember that the next time we opt for invasion and occupation. And yes, there most definitely be a next time. 

President Bush’s insistence that Afghanistan would become a U.S.-style democracy begs the question: Why do we assume other countries and cultures want what we have, which, if we are honest, is a proclaimed idea of democracy (an idea not widely experienced by most of our residents as can be seen with the plethora of anti-voting rights bills sweeping through state capitals right now). President Bush’s continued pleas even today for keeping a military presence in Afghanistan reflect his lack of understanding of how cultures change. 

It is true that faith communities throughout the United States will rise up and welcome resettled Afghani refugees, and that is a good thing. This is what faith communities do best. But our hospitality, if not matched by passionate advocacy for an accounting of the horrific and racist policies started by President Bush and continued under Presidents Obama and Trump, will be something of a hollow effort. I have never met a refugee who actually wanted to be a refugee. They fled their home countries not out of joy, but out of sheer terror, without knowing where they would end up. 

We should demand a political, economic, and spiritual accounting for how all of us created such suffering and violence in Afghanistan (and we should quickly move to Iraq while we are at it). This knowledge should lead us to lament the terrible damage we have caused, and this should then shape how we move forward. The U.S. cannot save Afghanistan. The U.S. cannot even save itself outside of honesty, lament, and repentance. And let that work begin with the House of God. 

In 2017, I was invited to get involved with Vote Common Good, led by my long-time friend Doug Pagitt. Vote Common Good aimed to help white Evangelical and Catholic Christians stop voting for their own racial and religious advantage and start voting for the common good. I had been involved in electoral politics before, most notably doing some surrogate work for Barack Obama in 2008. But this was a much deeper dive into electoral politics, and I learned a lot.

Early on, I learned this discouraging fact: the vast majority of voters stay loyal to their party and its candidates, year after year, decade after decade. All of the billions of dollars spent on campaign ads and other forms of electioneering only shift a small percentage of swing voters.

That surprised me because I had a lot of anecdotal evidence of people I knew who had changed, starting with myself. But I realized that my circle of friends and I were outliers. Most people vote as loyal members of their ingroup, world without end, amen.

I wondered why so few people change their minds. I started researching the literature on unrationality and bias and eventually wrote an extended essay on the subject, called Why Don’t They Get It? (Overcoming Bias in Others— and Yourself), which eventually led to a podcast called Learning How to See. That research then led me to study authoritarianism, leading to another extended essay called The Second Pandemic: Authoritarianism and Your Future. Through these studies, interactions with others, and personal reflection, I began to better understand why we remain so persistently and deeply divided.

When you study bias, you have to learn about brain science. You discover that our brains are very efficient, meaning that they don’t want to waste energy in their quest to keep us alive. And in order to conserve energy, they develop certain shortcuts that happen so fast we aren’t even conscious of them. Authoritarian leaders learn how to manipulate us for their advantage by these mental shortcuts.

One of those shortcuts is called confirmation bias. When a new idea comes along that fits in comfortably with what we already think, our brains welcome it. When a new idea comes along that will upset what we already think, our brains get nervous. The brain realizes it would take a lot of energy to rethink our current assumptions. So it gives us a bad feeling about this new idea before we are even conscious of it, before we even consider whether it might
be true.

Another shortcut that our brains employ could be called complementarity bias. If you like me, if you flatter me, if you make me feel good, my brain says, “Ahhhh. I can use some encouragement from a friendly person.” So I relax and welcome what you say. But if you challenge me, if you appear angry with me, if you don’t seem to agree with me and like me, my brain gets nervous. It says, “This person is going to upset you, and that will take a lot of energy, so I’m just going to give you a bad feeling about them so you won’t let yourself be bothered with them.”

Let me mention one more, community bias. Our brains know that we depend on our belonging groups for security. So our brains monitor our behavior to be sure that we don’t get into too much trouble with our belonging groups. If we were to get kicked out, our lives would grow complicated, which would take a lot of energy and threaten our well-being. So our brains monitor our behavior, including what we say and even what we think, and if we are about to think or say something that would get us in trouble with our belonging group, the brain says, “That’s a bad idea. Don’t think that. It could get you in trouble.” It gives us a bad feeling about that thought so that we will not need to go find a new belonging group.

READ: How Mormonism Can Save America

Put those three biases together — confirmation, complementarity, and community — and then add ten more equally powerful biases, and you can see why we humans tend to flock with birds of a feather who confirm what we already think, who make us feel good about us and nervous about them, and who value division as a marker of in-group identity. Because of our biases, attempts to bring people over to “our side” often have the opposite effect: hardening both us and them in our postures of mutual hostility so that eventually, we humans typically hardly know who we are until we know who we are against.

Sexism, racism, classism, ableism, regionalism, religious bigotry, partisanship, and many other -isms flow from this common feature of human thinking. In large part, that’s why we become so persistently polarized, and that’s why our divisions can intensify to the point of mutual fear, hatred, and hellish violence.

And that’s why [How to Heal Our Divides: A Practical Guide] is so important. The Apostle Paul once wrote, “If…you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another” (Galatians 5:15 NRSV). In other words, the strategy of identity-by-hostility can easily lead to mutually assured destruction.

In this volume, Brian Allain has brought together a diverse team of creative practitioners of un-division. All of these practitioners are translating peace-making theory into practice on the street, in the neighborhood, and in the
human heart. Not only that, but they are developing and revising theory through their practice. That’s what makes each contribution so powerful . .  . If you read [the book’s] chapters with an open mind and heart — and especially if you read them with a group of friends — you will be more equipped than ever to join these practitioners in your own setting, doing your own creative work to help heal our divides.

Environmental genius Annie Leonard famously said, “There is no away. When you throw something away, it must go somewhere.” What is true in our physical environment is also true of our social environment. When we identify someone as alien, other, outsider, and enemy, we think we can throw them away. But there is no away; we are neighbors, and we can’t escape that fact. Eventually, we will need to learn what Dr. King said: “The only way to get rid of an enemy permanently is to make him your friend.”

This excerpt is from How to Heal Our Divides: A Practical Guide, edited by Brian Allain, and is republished with permission.

This past week I was bombarded with inquiries from Christian friends and acquaintances wanting to know my opinion on the different petitions and groups around their cities that are offering solutions to our homelessness crisis. The folks asking are thoughtful and kind; they want to be informed and compassionate but, like many of us across North America, they are weary and want to see change.

To these fellow Christians and to you, dear reader, I say: before we can begin to roll up our sleeves, put our heads together or rally a response, we must first acknowledge that we are building on the wrong foundation and are in need of a paradigm shift.

As a society we refuse to look at, really look at, what this is all about. Our transactional, charity-driven, systematized attempts at care for our unhoused community are disconnected from our actual humanity and heart-based knowledge. And the tents that line our streets serve to make visible the death that has been here all along: our inability to think communally and remember that the very needs we have within us are kin to what our neighbor in the tent needs. 

In short: we continue to create, participate in, and demand models of care that we would never set foot in ourselves and we are, in real-time, contributing to the dehumanization of a people group in thought and action. 

Let me explain: I have spent the last 18 years with intention towards my unhoused neighbors, accompanying them in the day-to-day stuff of life. I’ve spent time in shelters, hospital rooms, on street corners, at appointments, and in the non-profit drop-in center and medical clinic that I co-founded. What I have learned in this world of mostly systemized charity is that we have neglected to include even the slightest trappings of the things that make us all human and upon which a human being’s mental health depends: the lived out questions of who am I and what am I. These questions can’t be answered by professionalized care, for it has to do with a sense of belonging, of counting, and of mattering.  It is the “stuff” of being human. The very fleshy, messy, particular to only you, hand-on-your-heart questions and birthright of every single one of us.

My experiences with this beautiful community convince me that the overall health of the human being is directly correlated with their sense of belonging and purpose in society. As they are, our policies and programs aimed at caring for our unhoused neighbors only serve to perpetuate a social death and lack of meaning that further isolates. This growing isolation and dehumanization then keep this population from feeling safe enough to access the social, health, and housing services that they desire and deserve and that we so desperately want them to utilize.

READ: Stewarding Our Privilege for the Kingdom of God

Until we begin to ascribe to the people we’re attempting to “serve” the same kinds of complexities, nuances, kindnesses, and curiosity that we ascribe and acknowledge in ourselves, we will continue to create models of care that simply do not work.

So, before we propose our solutions, may we close our computers and place our hand on our heart. We must begin here. And then we must create programs and services that take a person’s sense of place into account; programs and services that are restorative not retributive, wholeness enhancing not problem solving, subjective not objective, contextualized and not cauterized. Successful programs put a person’s inherent dignity and particular personhood front and center, just as you (my neighbor) and I would desire and demand.

Some may say that our cities are “dying” because of these tents, but I say that maybe, just maybe, the denial of our shared humanity has finally been made visible enough that it can give way to a fertile ground that is worthy of a humanizing harrow. And this is our work to do. We have the answers within ourselves more than we know.

What’s happening in Afghanistan is grief-inducing and will haunt us for a generation, both the images coming out of there as well as the foreign policy decisions that brought us to this moment. We desperately want someone or something to blame to alleviate our discomfort, but this failure has both Red and Blue fingerprints on it. Blame isn’t going to be easy to pinpoint and it will distract from our ability to grieve and feel the weight of what’s transpiring.

Sadness is a strange emotion. Of all the primary things humans feel, it’s the one emotion that is difficult to get people to sit in either alone or together. We aspire to happiness, we compound our fears, and we justify our anger. But we run from sadness, and oftentimes that’s exactly where we need to stay for a moment.

The mere suggestion to sit in that sadness, however, doesn’t always go over well. Western cultures especially don’t like the idea of sadness because it means something is broken. As an achievement-oriented society, sitting in sadness is considered a sign of helplessness. Tragedy after tragedy, any offerings of “thoughts and prayers” on social media is met with derision: Thoughts and prayers don’t bring the dead back to life and delays us from producing actionable solutions.

Such criticisms aren’t exactly without merit, but they fail to recognize the power that grief has in helping illuminate what keeps us from recognizing honest-to-goodness resolve that produces sustainable solutions.

READ: The Generational Grief of Decolonizing Faith

In his book Art + Faith, artist and author Makoto Fujimura expounds on the idea of grief modeled by Jesus in John 11 after the death of Lazarus.

“Before showing his power as the Son of God to resurrect Lazarus, he does something that has no practical purpose: he ‘wastes’ his time with Mary, to weep with her,” Fujimura writes.

Mary and Martha, who are sisters of Lazarus, become angry with Jesus for not coming sooner.

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” Martha says in verse 21.

Jesus becomes deeply moved by her words and he weeps. Fujimura explains:

“We are used to hearing the Christian gospel as a victorious message, but when viewed through the pinhole of Christ’s tears, that gospel may appear a bit ‘upside down.’ We are told that by following Christ, everything will be restored; in some cases, we are promised prosperity. Church programs seem to be dedicated to helping us improve our lives, have better marriages, and become better parents. All of these good outcomes are not against God’s design for abundance in the world, but John 11:35 adds to the complexity of this version of the Good News.”

Grief, then, isn’t a barrier to restoration; it is a portal. Grief forces us to acknowledge our brokenness and to tend to our wounds. Our first inclination might be like Mary and Martha: we want to identify someone at which we can direct our anger. But that merely puts a band-aid on a bigger problem. And just like a doctor who cleans a flesh wound before bandaging it up, so too our tears help flush away toxins from the human condition that could leave our hearts prone to infection down the road.

As these images continue to flood out of Afghanistan, you aren’t wrong to be angry. But do give yourself permission to grieve and sit under its weight. Feel it. Acknowledge the brokenness that could produce such gut-wrenching darkness. Internalize. And then get to work with fresh perspective and clarity, the kind of which is only possible through the cleansing of tears.

There was a spot, right at the back of my dining room, in the cheap rental house where we lived after losing our home to foreclosure.  

A cramped, annoying spot. Difficult to get to, because the room was more of a breakfast nook really, and our big clumsy table took up far too much space. Frustrating to clean, because the broom or mop would just clatter around table legs, barely making a notable difference to the aging, stained floor.  

This spot was always the last place I got to when sweeping the kitchen. Always the last corner to be cleaned on “house cleaning” days. It was a weary old spot that had somehow come to hold all my frustrations: all my yawning, gaping exhaustion and the hurt of losing a home. All the shame of being powerless and poor, all the unmet longing for change.  

Of course, myself and I, had never had a conscious conversation about this “spot.” It just sat there, being a corner: disliked, cramped, awkward, and annoying to clean.  

One day, while going about my daily mom-tasks, picking up clothes and washing dishes, absent-mindedly wondering if  something new and good would ever come along, I said out loud (as one sometimes does), 

“Where are you, God?”  

And almost before the thought had gathered itself to become a sentence—almost before it had left my tongue, almost before it was even a question—I knew the answer.  

God was in that spot.  

God was in the most mundane, powerless, painful place. God was here with me, waiting and longing, hoping and aching, experiencing every inch of my humanness with me, dying and crying for change.  

This is the poem I wrote about this “spot” that day:

READ: Roots of Justice

“Between the Wall and the Table”  

Between the wall and the table  

In the last place I sweep  

In the last piece of dirt  

I found you  

And round by the sink  

At my sentry stand  

With suds on my fingers  

Old food on my hands  

Not doing what I love  

Just doing what I should  

There, I found you  

Then, out on the prairie  

Where it’s lovely and wild  

Where no word, or breath, or sigh could

express it Where every color is singing

and shouting  And every bird’s whistle

crushes my heart  The whole Earth

inhales  

And releases again  

And the wind cries ‘low’  

As she sweeps across the valley  

The birds gladly ride it  

To the mountains high  

Where my peering eyes follow  

And I’m blessed, and I’m blessed  

Gulping down love  

Famished babe at the breast  

There, I found you 

In every song that I ever sang  

Ripped clean from my lungs  

Red flesh from my breast  

A ragged sharp edge  

Like the beat of a heart  

Or a butterfly’s wing  

This wild thing  

Comes soaring or whispering  

Out of my soul  

That single note  

Now it rises  

Up in the tower room, when I was a child 

I’d sing the whole hymnal just to cry out your name  

There, and there, and there  

I found you 

In my father’s benediction  

In my mother’s tears  

In the bread and the wine  

Your body for mine  

In my lover’s skin  

In the lush green grass of my children’s laughter  

In my best friend’s mind  

Understanding mine  

There, and there, and there  

I found you  

Between the wall and the table  

In the last place I sweep  

In the last piece of dirt  

I found you

The ancient Scots, my ancestors, believed that in the liminal space of nature, on the night

when one season ends and another begins, the Spirits can be more vividly seen, more clearly

heard; they enter in.  

It’s in the liminal space, when there is both light and dark, both sunshine and rain, that we are

able to see that which is always there. Always there, but normally invisible to the naked eye:

the rainbow of colors from which all light is made.  

It’s in the middle-space of both dying and rising that reality widens out and we see

everything, from one end of the  horizon to the other:  

A God who chooses to be weak with us. A God whose strength is love.  

A God you can be angry at, while you are held, deep in the womb of Her love.  

The Great Love that spans over all and can’t be manipulated or owned, only freely given and freely received.

While glancing through articles at the digital magazine TheGrio.com, my eyes landed on an interview with The Lucas Brothers. They’re twins who write, create, and perform standup comedy, and most recently wrote and produced the film Judas and the Black Messiah about the 1969 FBI murder of 21-year-old Black Panther Fred Hampton.

The Lucas Brothers are young, Black visionaries with an incredible education, having attended the best universities and law schools. Both wanted to make a difference by bringing real justice to their communities as lawyers. Two weeks before graduation from a prestigious law school, both decided to drop out. They said law school was hell, and they weren’t talking about academics or rigor. They were talking about substance: “…we already had a pretty antagonistic relationship to the law so once we got to law school it became even more apparent that this institution isn’t built for African Americans, in fact it’s built as a tool to oppress African Americans.” (The Lucas Brothers) The law was all about the systemic and structural continuation of white power and the ongoing oppression of African-American people.

Well, I immediately thought, that sounds just like the church and American Christianity. In fact, the substantive issue with the majority of American institutions is that they were envisioned and created with white people, more specifically white men in mind. Moreover, the goal of these great institutions was/is the maintenance of white supremacy. It was one of the reasons Black people in the U.S. had to diligently work at starting their own institutions like schools, colleges, and churches. The other reason was that due to Jim Crow and other unjust laws, Black people were not permitted to attend white schools, colleges, and even churches.

After having taught at a white Christian college a number of years and feeling like a piece of left-over uneatable food ready for the garbage pail, I had to figure out what was happening with me. Why did working in white institutions, even the Christian ones, leave me feeling worthless, sad, and horribly depressed? Eventually, I attended a Damascus Road anti-racism analysis training and that training became my sigh of relief, my aha, my liberation. Everything began to make sense as these incredible and insightful trainers gave language, explanation, validation, and affirmation to my experiences and feelings. I felt seen. I wasn’t alone or insane. I felt compelled to join this team and become an anti-racism trainer too.

Roots of Justice, Inc. (ROJ) is an anti-racism analysis training program that was born within the church. ROJ was founded under the name Damascus Road in 1995 by Tobin Miller Shearer and Regina Shands Stoltzfus, two Mennonite church leaders, a white man and an African American woman. Damascus Road referred to the biblical story of Paul, first known as Saul, who was on that road traveling to get official papers from official institutional leaders to capture and imprison any followers of that man called Jesus. Saul was on a mission to protect his religious and cultural institutions.

Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.

As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

“Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything. (Acts 9:1-9, NIV)

Damascus Road was born from a core belief that for most of us, especially those who call ourselves Christian, it takes a blinding encounter with God for real transformation to happen within ourselves and within our institutions, especially for white Christians who unknowingly, and knowingly, support white supremacy. You cannot serve God and white supremacy.

Another core belief within Damascus Road is that in order to heal our divides we can’t ignore institutions. White people focus on interpersonal relationships for the healing of racial divides, but Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) know that much of the trauma and life altering harm comes through institutions.

It is the policing institution that showed up at 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in riot gear with weapons drawn, but barely showed up and barely drew weapons at an actual riotous attack, January 6, 2021 on the nation’s Capitol building.

It is the housing and banking institutions that draw red lines around certain neighborhoods calling them high risk and loan adverse.

It is the health care institution that has historically used Black bodies as test subjects without their knowledge or consent (for example, the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, the HeLa cells from Henrietta Lax, gynecological experiments, and so forth).

Today, health system data reveals that white medical providers don’t listen well to Black patients, underestimate Black pain, and give less than stellar care to their Black patients when compared to white patients.

And then there is the Christian church that tried to convince Black believers that their lot in life was to be the perpetual servants of white people because God designed it that way (the so-called curse of Ham and other such offenses). Phrases heard in churches around the country, “natural order” and “God’s ordained hierarchy” are triggers for me today.

Institutions can be dangerous.

In 2011 Damascus Road formally split from its church birthplace and went independent. A name change was needed, and Roots of Justice was born. ROJ continues to be committed to our core values but we don’t only serve churches or religious organizations; we have broadened our reach to all people, institutions, and possibilities. Our emphasis is still on institutions and racism. Much of the healing involves acknowledging that institutions, not just people, are racist.

The exhales in the room that we see from people of color are always so familiar. It’s the same exhale that came from many of us trainers years earlier at the realization that you are not the misfit or the problem struggling to survive in white institutions or at the realization that the institution was not designed for you to thrive or survive. For BIPOC people in the training that is the beginning of healing.

For well-meaning white people in the training space, it can be jarring and a bit traumatizing. The knowledge that you and your BIPOC colleagues are not on the same journey and are not having the same or even similar experiences in the same institution can be bewildering. It’s difficult to come to grips with the fact that perhaps you’re doing so well because you’re on a moving sidewalk and your BIPOC colleagues are on an unending jog up many flights of stairs. The institution works for you, and against others. However, once they get past the pain, denial, tears, and anger, the real work of transforming the institution can begin.

Institutions have public legal policies and procedures, and also private or ghost policies and procedures. Ghosts refers to policies and procedures only revealed to a few in the organization, usually white people, to help them get ahead.

Structural and systemic transformation is a long and steady process. Transformation doesn’t happen overnight. If current longstanding institutions can be transformed, we are here to help transform them.

However, I would be remiss if I did not mention many critics who say you can’t change institutions that have been racist and oppressive since their inception. The famous Audre Lorde said, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” We say that we are not using the master’s tools. We’re using freedom tools. And time will tell.

This excerpt is from How to Heal Our Divides: A Practical Guide, edited by Brian Allain, and is republished with permission.

The headline was heartbreaking: “Firearms are the leading cause of death for American children and teens.”

It turns out that the numbers were not as fresh as the news. Because of the delays involved in collecting and analyzing data, the gruesome record reported last month was reached in 2019. That means that it does not include data from 2020, during which a record number of guns were purchased, many by first-time gun owners.

The 2019 numbers did include the local death of a six-year-old who was sleeping on the couch in her family home when a drive-by shooting killed her in October 2019 in my city. But they do not include the 15-year-old shot and killed a couple of weeks before Christmas as he left a community meeting about the deadly police shooting of 19-year-old Arthur Keith in November 2020. Nor do they reflect the loss of the five-year-old boy who died last month of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The numbers, as horrifying as they are, do not include any of the exponentially larger number of children injured or traumatized by gun violence nationally, a tragedy recounted by John Woodrow Cox in Children Under Fire: An American Crisis.

Certainly, we are in crisis if gun violence now presents the highest risk of death for children whom we have pledged to raise in peace, who should never have to see a gun. The numbers can be numbing. As they continue mount, they may appear insurmountable.

But there are things that we can do in our own congregations to dial back the danger.

Of course, repenting of our violent ways, teaching and preaching the gospel of peace that shuns weapons and wields healing hands instead of firearms is a good, perhaps the best, place to start. Of course, we know, too, that not everyone will agree to give up their guns to be beaten into garden tools.

As I mention in Whom Shall We Fear? Urgent Questions for Christians in an Age of Violence, as we return to Sunday School or youth programming, we have an opportunity — whether it takes place in person or online — to inform and educate families as we ask for their information to register their young people. Advice about the risks of keeping guns in the home and education about the safe storage of guns, if a family really must keep one, could save young children from accidental triggers, adolescents from access to the most deadly means of suicide, and keep guns out of the hands of others who simply should not have them because of the harm and havoc they can sow.

Several years ago, a fellow parent was concerned about a turning-teenaged child who was getting into trouble at home and online. “They know how to get into everything,” their parent despaired.

I sympathized, but I also worried: “You’ve told me before that you keep a gun at home, and now you’ve told me that your child knows how to get into everything. What are you doing to keep them from getting that gun?,” I asked point-blank.

We can do no less — including our churches and Sunday Schools.

The headline is heartbreaking and troubling. But,

The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:17, Book of Common Prayer)

This week, August 14th, the Torah lectionary portion is Shoftim (Judges) (Deuteronomy 16:18 – 21:9). It is primarily concerned with different strata of leaders. Interestingly, this section does not describe so much what the leaders should do, but focuses on the ways that leaders frequently, maybe naturally, abuse their powers and seeks to prevent those injustices. We will address the centralized figures first, and then return to the local judges that the parashah is named after.

The author understands that the Israelites want to have a king like other nations. Concentrating power in one person is, in itself, dangerous for justice, so the actions of the king are circumscribed immediately to prevent the baser temptations of power. The king must not acquire many horses, and especially must not return to Egypt, the land of slavery, to acquire those horses. The king must not acquire many wives so that his heart will not turn away. And the king must not greatly increase wealth (Deuteronomy 17:16-17).

However, even after God’s warning that anyone with the power that comes from being a monarch will automatically become abusive (1 Samuel 8:10-18), the people begged for a king. Soon, King Solomon was importing 666 talents (about 25 tons) of gold a year (1 Kings 9:28), importing thousands of horses from Egypt (1 Kings 10:26-29), and married or held in his harem hundreds of women who led him to worship other gods and construct temples for those other gods within eyesight of the temple to the God of Israel (1 Kings 11:4-10). Solomon was exactly the kind of king that Deuteronomy warned about.

The Levitical priests were forbidden to have a portion in the land or have any inheritance. The temptation for priests would be to use their position to accrue wealth and acquire whatever they want of the offerings that people brought. This was precisely what was prohibited in Deuteronomy 18:1-5. In a time when land wealth was everything, they were not to acquire land, nor transmit it to their children nor receive it from their fathers. The priests were only to receive food by helping the people worship God. They received a generous portion, to be sure, but there was to be no possibility of hoarding transferable wealth (Deuteronomy 18:1-5).

If a Levite lived in a walled city, he could sell his house (without any land outside the walls, because they were forbidden to own any) and live off the proceeds (Deuteronomy 18:6-8) as he ministered. Priests could sell homes in cities, but could not acquire riches. Put another way, the religious leaders should not have any sustainable wealth, not be able to acquire any such wealth, and only have daily provision that came from helping people worship God.

Sadly, taking whatever and as much as they wanted from the offerings was exactly the sort of narcissistic abuse of worship and authority that some priests practiced (1 Samuel 2:12-17, 22-25). Note also that the wicked priests also used their power to sexually abuse their female coworkers (2 Samuel 2:22). Far too many religious leaders today build wealth from offerings and/or sexually abuse their coworkers or congregants.

The prophet was a unique institution that sought to make sure that God would have a human voice with which to speak to the people. The temptation here, of course, was/is to abuse the trust that people have and say anything that grants the “prophet” power or authority over others. In setting out this office, God orders capital punishment for the prophet who speaks of his own accord in the name of God. Telling people lies in God’s name was incredibly dangerous then (Jeremiah 28), as now with COVID-vaccine denialism, among other deceptions.

These three were the centralized forms of power to which people could appeal if they did not find justice locally (Deuteronomy 17:8-9). But the Torah portion opens by insisting that people should be able to easily find justice locally:

“Judges and police shall be appointed in [and available] in all gates of towns… and they shall judge the people with righteous judgement” (Deuteronomy 16:18).

The Talmud (BT Sanhedrin 16b) and midrash (Sifrei Devarim 144:1-5) insist that the work of judges and the police must be available to people at all levels of society, officers, and geographic location. Their work to bring righteous judgement cannot be denied to anyone. So the judges and police should be in all the gates of every town and there should be no area where people live that does not have equitable access to the justice system.

God knows that humans with a little bit of power tend to oppress others unfairly, and so warns about the temptations for judges and police. Three things are forbidden to the judges and police: 1) do not pervert justice, 2) do not be partial and 3) do not accept a bribe.

Working backwards on the list, we know that bribery, inducements, kickbacks and financial “favors” render a justice system completely unable to live up to its name. But the command for police and judges to “not be partial” is an inexact translation. The Hebrew says “לֹא תַכִּיר פָּנִים Lo takir panim” <<You shall not recognize faces>>. The LORD understands that humans are tempted to make snap judgments based on what different faces look like.  Further, God knows that judges or police making judgements based off whether they recognize themselves in the face or skin of the other is something that must be avoided categorically.

We do not need to wait thousands of years for Critical Race Theory to be drafted. Scripture already knows and testifies that those with power and charged with upholding justice tend to abuse the power.

One of the most dangerous vectors of that abuse is the tendency of police and judges to recognize some faces and not recognize others. The inclination to recognize faces, to be especially kind to people we know and trust, and to be hostile to people whose features make us uncomfortable is insidious, and scripture categorically forbids it.

We are left with the command to not pervert justice. If bribes and being partial to certain faces are also proscribed in the verse, what could not perverting justice be referencing? Jewish commenters noticed the apparent redundancy and understood that nothing perverts justice like unjust judges and police (Sifrei Devarim 144:7). If judges and police are to be present to give righteous justice to all (Deuteronomy 16:18) and they are to pursue “justice squared” (Deuteronomy 18:20), a dishonest, racist, corrupt police officer or judge distorts the whole justice system immediately.

God knows and scripture confirms that power is dangerous, and humans like to control things. Kings like to get rich; religious leaders like to control resources and people; prophetic folks loved to be listened to and trusted; and judges and police do not always provide justice without corruption or partiality. When each of these things happens, there are consequences for the normal people living under their power.

The good news is that thousands of years ago, God gave scripture to God’s community. We who have eyes to see and ears to hear can learn to look out for impediments to justice from God’s words, and follow the path toward wisdom and wholeness.

We must ensure that those in power do not succumb to human weakness, depriving those in their charge of the justice that God so passionately wants for all.

We are in a kairos moment and we must reckon with the fierce urgency of now! There is an all-out assault on truth, and we are in the eye of the storm. We no longer need to wonder what we would have done if we were alive during the Jim Crow Era — our nation is harkening back to exclusionary tactics and policies that disenfranchise and disregard the disinherited.

Amid a global pandemic, Gov. Ron DeSantis is threatening to cut state funding to school districts in Florida requiring students to wear masks. Politicians are crafting sinister legislation to suppress voting rights. Critical Race Theory has been strategically misappropriated into a catch-all phrase that’s deployed to denounce historic facts and discredit leaders with the audacity to renounce imperial propaganda. This strategy is suppressing the truth in many congregations and classrooms. (For example, Senate Bill 3 in Texas seeks to remove seminal content like Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech from the required curriculum.)

Lamentably, supporters of these trends exist in and outside the Church. Tragically, this un-Christlike behavior is not only alive and well within too many congregants, but is also present among some fellow ministers. In fact, some pastors are leading the charge of culture wars.

There is a spiritual battle going on within the body. As ministers strive to articulate a holistic gospel and call congregants to become “repairers of the breach” (Isaiah 58:12), too many members of the body feel emboldened to rebut pastors and denounce them as Critical Race Theorists. Dr. King once said, “Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.”

We must prophetically declare the truth in this seminal moment!

John 8:32 says, “The truth will set you free.” We desperately need God’s truth to elucidate fact from fiction, truth from deception, and the gospel of Jesus Christ from Christian nationalism. The truth will help us realize the ways we have conformed to the patterns of this world.

Unbridled privilege is the enemy of biblical truth. Scripture is clear: the devil’s sole purpose is to kill, steal, and destroy. Satan uses unbridled privilege as a vehicle for this mission.

The devil uses privilege as a constant temptation, baiting Christians away from the will of God into sin and self-centeredness. Unbridled privilege destroys our witness and credibility in the world, prohibiting disciples from taking on the mindset of Christ, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and seeking the peace and prosperity of our communities. Satan aims to seduce us into exploiting privilege for selfish gain rather than strategically leveraging it to further the kingdom and sacrificially love our neighbors.

Scripture provides a blueprint for faithfully stewarding privilege. We use all we have — our influence, power, resources, social capital, and voice — to advocate for systemic accountability, just policies, fiscal practices, and communities where all God’s children can flourish…not just some.

Micah 6, Proverbs 31-89, Isiah 58, Matthew 25:31-46, Luke 4:18-19, Acts 6:1-7, and Acts 16: 16-40 offer tangible takeaways for stewarding privilege. Each passage also illustrates that what we have is not just for us. We are blessed to be a blessing — to defend the dignity of the vulnerable, advocate for needed change, address injustice, reinvest in our communities, and seek the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

When we exploit our privilege for selfish gain, we forsake transformational opportunities to bear witness to who and whose we are. We miss the chance to participate in the freedom, liberation, and deliverance the Spirit is willing into existence where captivity, disenfranchisement, and despair have reigned for far too long.

In my new book Subversive Witness, I strive to soberly address privilege and illustrate how it can hinder us from perceiving and responding to God’s call on our lives. But I also strive to demonstrate how privilege can be generative and liberating, compelling us to participate in the inbreaking reign of God in innovative and surprising ways.

We are called to make God’s name known and love shown throughout the world. And we are commissioned for such a time as this!

I sat in bed staring at my laptop, the dozens of Google tabs detailing the journey I’d been on. Books were buried in my comforter, creating a type of literary war zone. My ojeras (the bags under my eyes) decorated my face the color of day-old bruises. I kept opening the folder on my phone titled “Do Not Open,” robotically scrolling through each social media app to distract myself from the sharp, sucker-punch pain in my gut that had lingered for days. It wasn’t the first time I had felt the pangs that come when the past reveals itself to you, when an unknown history digs itself up from the grave. Colonizer or colonized, oppressor or oppressed — there’s a moment after the deep, dark, often lonely work of becoming our own archaeologists that the pangs hit. It’s a surprising pain that often comes when we dig up the skeletons from the ground, when we realize the dirt we stand on is tainted and the reality we’ve been fed is curated.

While this wasn’t the first time reality hit, it would be the first time it pulled a fast one on me while I was writing an academic paper — a process, I was told, that was supposed to be “objective,” a discipline solely of the mind. Up until this point, no one had warned me this would happen, that the work would feel this personal. The dominating culture taught me to separate myself from what I study, and consequently, to live with a fragmented identity. But when our musings about life and faith exist only in fragments, we live disembodied realities. God becomes disembodied too.

It’s easier when we’re fed what to think, what to believe about ourselves, our histories, and God. When our identities are programmed, we’re not taught to really engage or to bring our whole selves to the table. We’re taught our own thoughts and hearts cannot be trusted in any way, and thus we live in shame, a widened chasm. But something painful and terribly beautiful happens when that chasm begins to narrow. I think this narrowing, this shrinking space where theology, history, and our identities —  hearts, minds, bodies, and souls — begin to blend together, is where the pangs are felt most sharply.

It may not feel like it in the moment, but this is also part of the journey toward liberation.

That day while in bed with my laptop and books open, that chasm narrowed again. Reality paid a painful visit. And it didn’t come alone. It brought grief along with it — that deep, gut-wrenching sense of grief. It was a sorrow from a time deep in the past, before I even existed — a grief that my antepasados, my ancestors, knew, one that hovered above time, spanning history.

What do you do with generational grief?

I sat in it for a while. And then I got to work.

Initially I called the angst that I felt that day “research grief ”; it’s the grief that comes when getting deep into the thick of researching difficult topics. Surprisingly, this is a common thing in the academic world. I once heard of a woman who began losing sleep, her hair, and her sanity during her time as a doctoral student writing her dissertation on the Holocaust. Even trying to make sense of other people’s trauma can traumatize.

This notable pang of research grief surfaced early in my seminary career during a Women in Church History and Theology class. Though I was several courses into my master of divinity program, I was new to exploring the topics of women and people of color as they pertain to theology. The dominating culture had yet to invite me to see myself and my culture within God’s story.

But I thank Creator for my stubbornness, for my combative spirit, which the dominating culture has deemed too much — muy fresca.

When I began this course, I was attending my second seminary. I had left the first one only months prior, after tussling with professors and pastors and experiencing firsthand the demons of sexism and racism. I admit, being raised in an immigrant Roman Catholic community and then transitioning to Protestantism as an adult left me unfamiliar with the ins and outs of evangelicalism. Not only was I blissfully ignorant of what I was stepping into spiritually, but as a Cuban American born and raised in a city predominantly made up of Cuban Americans, I had yet to wrestle with my cultural identity in a majority, non-Hispanic white context.
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This excerpt is from Abuelita Faith by Kat Armas, ©2021. Used by permission of Baker Publishing www.bakerpublishinggroup.com.