Red Letter Christians

Where Love Ends (And the Fight for Disability Rights)

Sat, 17 Oct 2020 02:03:08 GMT

Editor’s Note: This is an anonymously written essay taken from Keeping the Faith: Reflections on Politics and Christianity in the Era of Trump and Beyond. Each Friday between now and Election Day 2020, we will be sharing new excerpts from this anthology of dissent.

Disciples of Jesus know that God persistently asks us to consider what we might love more than him. “You won’t sacrifice that, huh? What if I wanted you to?” “You say you won’t live in that place or take that job. How about for me?” “What if I was the one asking you to help that person instead of them?” God always questions the limits of our love so that we might find more of his love, which knows no limits, on the other side. I love this about him [sic].

Unfortunately, I and those like me often find that love for us is beyond those limits. I have a disability caused by a genetic mutation. Throughout my life, when it came to including me in social activities, games and sports, lessons, or job opportunities, there were always friends, coaches, teachers, and employers who shrugged and said it would be too hard. My parents had to fight for me to be in a mainstream school. Friends and dates were tough to find. I’m still working through the insidious anxiety of the constant exclusion, rejection, and doubts about my abilities.

But as disabled people know, being outside the limits of love can get much darker. Over the summer, a woman recorded a conversation she had with a doctor in Texas telling her that the hospital decided to stop treating her husband for COVID-19 because even if the treatment was successful, he would have a low quality of life. Why? He was quadriplegic and had a traumatic brain injury.

The belief among medical practitioners that disabilities detract from the value of life itself is familiar to disabled people. Last year, I went to a new doctor who asked if I was going to have children any time soon. She wanted to inform me that there were treatments nowadays for ensuring that children did not have my condition. I naively asked what the treatment was. It was early detection of the genetic mutation in fetuses, and abortion. Of course. I should have known. One of this doctor’s colleagues once asked me to participate in a survey he was conducting of patients with my condition to assess – what else? – their quality of life.

Experiences like these lead the disability community to almost uniformly oppose physician-assisted suicide. The risk is too high that a doctor will readily believe a disabled person’s desire to die is rational. And in most places, it is only disabled people who can request this treatment, which is discrimination. Everyone else gets suicide prevention. We get assistance.

READ: Being the Other Voice

Abortion raises similar risks. Parents afraid of life with a disabled child opt to terminate. Individual choices add up, decimating whole populations of disabled people. American parents, for instance, abort two-thirds of fetuses diagnosed with Down Syndrome.

Here is where I depart from much of the disability community who believe that the bodily autonomy of pregnant people requires that we should fight discrimination in abortion while keeping it legal. That, too, is a boundary on love. The decision not to allow a life to exist is a determination of that life’s value. This fetus cannot be born because – fill in the blank. The people in that blank aren’t valuable enough to warrant birth.

But valuable to whom? The individual parent might value the life enough to give birth under different circumstances which society prevents. So society’s willingness to invest in those people, the people in the blank, matters.

And here is where I depart from the Republican pro-life movement. They too have borders around their love; a wall, if you will, reinforced with concrete conservative ideology. If, for instance, you think America is both exceptional and a meritocracy, then why invest in anyone? An individual’s poverty is nothing more than their failure to avail themselves of the opportunities America offers. Their anxiety about how they will raise a child betrays their lack of faith because in all things, America works for our good. If they choose abortion, they, or their doctor, or someone deserves punishment. Trump knows his Christians think this way. They will not connect his desire to slash benefits, increase policing, segregate public and private housing, heap scorn on vast swaths of people, or any number of other issues to parents calculating whether they want to raise a child in this world.

The only way that anyone seriously argues Trump is pro-life is by pointing to the Supreme Court. But overturning Roe v. Wade will likely have a marginal impact on the abortion rate, which in any case has “been plunging since 1990.”

So, how do you fight for life? Invest.

Invest your prayer, your money, your time, and your love in vulnerable people. Fight for disability rights and disability pride so expecting parents won’t be afraid after a diagnosis (and so we won’t have so many bigoted doctors). Do everything you can to make sure people have housing, and food, and mental health care, and regular health care, and money; lots of money. Stop demeaning people. Shout “Black lives matter!” from the rooftops. And listen; for God’s sake, listen to people whose lives are not like yours. Then fight alongside them. If your politics or your feelings give you pause here, I hope you reconsider the line you’ve drawn.

Being the Other Voice

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 23:50:50 GMT

I had never felt so attractive. As I stood on a corner across from the federal killing facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, car after car drove by with people shouting or signaling that they wanted to fornicate with me. What could draw such a reaction?

Perhaps it was the inflammatory sign I was holding, which read “All life is precious.” Perhaps it was the group of nuns to my left holding signs with radical messages like “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” Or perhaps many of these passers-by were so supportive of the federal government killing about to take place because they simply couldn’t imagine anything other than a violent reaction to violence.

Whatever motivated the shouts and signals from so many vehicles, it became clear to me in that moment that even if I knew nothing else about Jesus, I would rather be with the people of peace gathered on that corner than with the angry masses calling for death. Even if it was hard and unpopular, I would rather be the other voice.

I was there in Terre Haute to protest the fifth federal execution of 2020. As I write this there have been seven federal executions in 2020, meaning this administration has executed more prisoners than any since the Eisenhower administration. Given this administration’s preoccupation with being the biggest and best, I expect they will try and rush in a few more before the year is out. Much has already been said about the timing of these executions, some set to coincide with the party conventions and some set to happen immediately prior to the debates. It seems clear that the Trump campaign is trying to create a Willie Horton moment for his opponent, but despite this administration’s best efforts most of the country continues to move away from capital punishment, so the playbook from 1988 will likely have no impact.

Nonetheless, the Trump campaign’s intentions were laid bare immediately following the first federal execution of the year – one conducted illegally on an expired death warrant, in the middle of the night, with no notice to the condemned’s counsel – because mere hours after the execution concluded the campaign sent an email bragging about it. They wanted everyone to know right away that the Trump administration had gotten the federal government back in the killing business.

The conspicuous timing of these executions, made obvious by the Trump campaign’s immediate exploitation of them, belied other more subtle issues of timing that get harder and harder to see as coincidences. It’s bad enough that the administration hand-picked cases for execution as part of their campaign script, literally playing politics with human lives during this election year. It is even more horrifying that they were so intent on these executions happening on time per their script that they conducted the first two of them illegally, in the middle of the night, and in the first left a man strapped to the gurney for hours while legal wrangling took place. But we then saw a Navajo man executed in a gross violation of tribal sovereignty.

The federal government had used a bizarre loophole having to do with carjacking in order to sidestep tribal law and treaty obligations. The execution took place the day after Navajo Vice President Myron Lizer appeared at the Republican National Convention. One day Mr. Lizer is appearing at President Trump’s convention, the next day he and the Navajo President see one of their people killed against the wishes of the nation by President Trump’s administration. More recently, we have just seen a Messianic Jew, who was a teenager when he committed a terrible crime, killed by this administration in the week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Many of our Jewish brothers and sisters expressed their disgust that two executions had been scheduled, and now carried out, during the Ten Days of Repentance. Beneath the obvious political timing of this year’s executions lies a clear contempt for the traditions of many in this country.

READ: I’m Drinking Coffee With Jesus

When I left my home and made the long drive to Terre Haute on August 28th, 2020, I didn’t go to protest the timing or the particulars of that case. In some ways it is easy to protest when the victim’s family opposes the execution or when there are significant questions of innocence. In some ways it is popular to protest in a case of clear violation of tribal sovereignty, when the condemned committed his crime as a teenager, or when there is an incredible story of redemption and transformation in the life of the condemned.

On August 28th, 2020, the man set to die satisfied none of those conditions, although in the end he did ask for a nun to be with him at the execution. No, he committed a terrible crime against a child, as an adult, and the family of that child was in favor of the execution. There were no significant legal concerns or claims of innocence, no other compelling external circumstances, and no amazing story of redemption. That is exactly why I wanted to go and be the other voice.

Being the other voice is a lot harder when there is nothing particularly compelling about the case, but I believe that makes it all the more important. We are all made in the image of God. My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ died for all. To say that even the worst of the worst is beyond redemption is to say that Christ and the cross were not enough. I cannot look my Savior in the eye and say, “Lord, your passion wasn’t enough to save that one.” And I cannot look at my country and say that this society has the right to take the place of God and choose when someone’s life should end.

I had to stand, with a few of my brothers and sisters, against the Trump campaign’s political theater and against the coliseum mob shouting for death. When it seems the hardest and the loneliest, that’s when being the other voice is most crucial.

I’m Drinking Coffee With Jesus

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 23:09:18 GMT

I don’t feel like I’m living in the real world. The things I’m living through are meant for dystopian novels and action films. The hero should be here by now and the credits should have rolled a long time ago. Every day I make decisions that I’m unsure about and then feel guilt for the path I’ve chosen almost immediately. There is a war going on inside of me everyday. Sure, on the correct time line there would be little battles and a gauntlet of challenges in my life but here the stakes are higher. At least that’s what it feels like. We’ve been on high alert for so long and our bodies have been fighting or flying or freezing for months. The seasons don’t even register, the overarching theme is crisis. There are voices saying now is the time to create, to lose weight, to invest, you’d be stupid not to.

I am LDS, once upon a time we were called mormon a name we accepted but have since released, as it no longer serves us. A religion often known for its “nos”. No sex before marriage, no shopping on Sundays, no coffee.

I’ve been drinking coffee. A few weeks into lockdown, gripped by doubt and fear, I stopped sleeping well. But I woke up to 3 tiny eager faces who still needed me. I woke up to 1 face in the mirror who still needed to be whole and happy. I woke up to a man who felt the weight of work and survival, who needed comfort and love.

Without sleep there was so much less of me. I prayed and asked for help. I showered and tried to find energy in cold water and coaxed sleep to me through exercise. Maybe with time things would have worked themselves out but I didn’t wait, I didn’t suffer through it. I bought the coffee and every morning I pressed the grounds down with my fears and filled an empty Wonder Woman mug with that hot drink.

READ: Faith Is on the Ballot: A Call for the Latino Vote

I’m drinking the coffee, Jesus. I know you see me.

I’m drinking the coffee and being kind.

I’m pouring the creamer and teaching people to share.

I’m drinking the coffee and I’m writing again.

I’m drinking the coffee and listening to a man’s career being solidified by trials and adaptation.

Forgive me Lord, for the beverages I have poured.

Standards and righteous desires need to rest, and grace needs to take center stage.

The juggling act is on pause, the hustle is on the back burner and grace has the floor. Whatever needs to happen to get me to next month, to tomorrow, to lunchtime, that is what I will do and grace will be poured through me and into a mug. Some days it will be sipped gingerly, each drop savored and tinged with guilt. Some days it will be guzzled about halfway and left to grow cold as the day passes by.

Taking the easy way out is always looked down upon. But when it comes to Heavenly Father looking down on me, I know it’s with love. Maybe a little smile and a head nod, perhaps an accompanying shrug. Jesus said “let the little children come unto me”. Was that an offer to babysit because it feels like an offer to babysit. Do I hide in the closet occasionally and remember the beforetimes where there was the library, the gym daycare and open museums and fast food playgrounds? Yes. Yes, I do. In these times I know Heavenly Father has his face twisted up in concern. The Holy Ghost sitting there with me as guardian angels make sure no one changes Netflix to ‘American Horror Story’ or busts out through the front door. But we breath and we sigh, we pick up our sorry selves and emerge fully prepared to give long hugs and literally nothing else.

I am raising tiny people with voices and needs, which even in a perfect world is a daunting task. But I am raising them in a world that is in full transition, things change so fast that I don’t know which way to turn. That’s where the coffee and the grace come in. If there is nothing else in this life that my children learn from me other than how to forgive themselves, then I will feel like a successful parent. Every good and righteous work is hard, and hard work means you will inevitably make mistakes. That’s where the lesson lies.

I can teach them pride, the ugly pride that will not move even when she is firmly in the wrong and in desperate need of help. Or I can teach them the power of grace, grace precedes everything else necessary to progress. Grace precedes the apology, the learning and the repentance process. Before you face anyone else for your mistakes you first face yourself. What am I modeling for them when I make space for imperfection and forgive myself? What do the small breaks throughout the day say to their little eyes, always watching? I’m saying, Mom is strong because Mom lets herself be weak.

So what will my children think when they are grown, whether in the Church or not, when they remember me clutching a warm cup of temporary relief, during world wide unrest? Knowing it went against what the Church taught?

They’ll think, mom knew her limits, mom did what she had to do, mom was a badass.

Faith Is on the Ballot: A Call for the Latino Vote

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 21:03:46 GMT

The faith-based choice for president is the one who extends empathy to everyone across our states.

Empathy, after all, is the value that Jesus lived and breathed. He saw throngs of people in his travels and “had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless.” He said nations will be judged on how they treat “the least of these” in society—the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the strangers.

Other faiths have commitments to empathy, too. But as voters, do we?

This election, we will find out. As a pastor and activist, I believe the right candidate for Christians and other people of faith is a person who attempts to live out the faith virtues of kindness and compassion.

That should matter to Latinos especially as a community that is more collective than individualists. One that cares for family forever and where strangers become family over a cup of cafecito. No human being should be easily dismissed, called names, or be stereotyped by people who have the power to form the opinion of others through media. Puerto Ricans and Mexicans may have memories of such things.

Cuban Americans, for their part, know as well as anyone about the danger of a leader who tries to undermine elections, muses about becoming a dictator, demonizes asylum seekers and won’t commit to a peaceful transition if he loses. We cannot give up the American way. Albeit far from perfect but still narrowly a democracy.

How is caging migrant children and rejecting America’s history as a nation of immigrants, a good thing for a great America?

America needs a President who will have an approach of inclusivity and caring for all people. One who also believes that the success of America involves the embrace of the diversity of America.

We need a President who cares about a $15 minimum wage, expanding childcare, and ensuring universal access to pre-K; actual policies that show that people without money matter, too.

We need a President who will fund programs for entrepreneurs of color, including small business funding for Latinos and commit to breaking down the barriers often faced by women of color in small businesses.

We need a President who trusts science, has plans to combat climate chaos and invest in clean energy jobs, shows he cares about communities that stand to suffer the most.

READ: Love for Enemies

We need a President who puts people on the same plane as profits and if necessary over it. Who has a plan to battle COVID-19 quickly especially in communities that are showing the disparate harms Black and Brown lives are facing. Who cares about healing—both physically and across ethnic barriers.

We need a President who values all voices, not just some voices with the biggest bank accounts.

We need to think long and hard about the President that can bring about the quickest and most compassionate change in our country. Because regardless of our ethnic background, we all know deep in our hearts that we’re more than flesh and blood. We have something in us that is divine. But here’s the reality: we’ll never be able to manifest that part of us fully without a society that encourages us to live lives of empathy.

That includes how we vote.

When considering these things, the choice is before us: crueler or kinder? Voting is always a mixed bag because no candidate fits our values 100 percent. But I believe most people know what kind of world they want to live in.

Love for Enemies

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 20:45:42 GMT

Editor’s note: Singer/Songwriter and participant of the Red Letter Christians Artists and Musicians Collective, Paul Demer, recently released a new congregational worship song entitled “Love for Enemies.” Read about it and watch the lyric video below!

I originally wrote “Love For Enemies” for New Braunfels Presbyterian Church (USA) in the Texas Hill Country. I was coming through on tour, playing a concert and doing some guest worship leading. One of the lectionary passages for that Sunday was Luke 6:27-38. After some searching I realized that I didn’t know many songs based on that passage, so I decided to write one. We strive to love our enemies because Jesus loved us “while we were still sinners.” This is such an important part of Christianity, but it’s so hard to actually live out, especially in an election year! As we seek to do justice let’s not forget to love kindness and walk humbly with our God, even in 2020. They will know we are Christians by our love.

V1:

Your rain falls on the wicked ones

And those seek your way

Your kindness waters all of us

Who grow beneath your grace

V2:

You lend without a hope of gain

And give to all who ask

Your love is not a scarcity

Your mercy holds us fast

You reached across the great divide

In drawing near to us

Teach us to cross our battle lines

And face our foes with love

V3:

To love the ones who loved us first

Is fine and commonplace

But love that asks for nothing back

Reflects the Father’s face

V4:

Then let us to practice charity

And lay our judgement down

Till enemies are understood

And empathy is found

V5:

You found us when we lost our way

Recalled when we forgot

When we were foes you sent your Son

To be all that we’re not

Watch the full lyric video here.

The Fairy Tale of Caring

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 15:42:56 GMT

Yes, children, there was a time, long ago and far away, when Christians, or those of any faith, maybe even no faith at all, cared for, stood up for and lived out compassion, generosity and even sacrifice for the larger good.

It was not, as now, a joke to care for others, even strangers. It was not a punchline or a political throwaway line to mock those who cared for the earth, the disabled, people not like them, future generations or even one’s own health.

You could make the argument that many people, even those of faith, do care only for themselves. But now, it seems, they don’t even do that.

The whole idea of “caring” is seen as weakness, and nothing in an era like ours invites attack – verbal or physical – more than even a hint of vulnerability.

Sacrifice is for fools. My rights are more important than anyone or anything else. These are the guiding principles of 2020.

There is nowhere to go from here.

At least in that direction.

A calm, clear, barely noticeable voice calls us back.

Back to God, back to our own humanity, and back to the community that desperately needs us.

Once there was a time when a community in pain was an invitation to heal, restore, and revive. Go advocate for, not fear or arm one’s self against. There was once a community who lived, and believed, as Jesus did, that our gift, our destiny, and our place in the world was to heal and lift up, to reach out, to be a companion and hope to those lost and forsaken – not to forsake them even more. Could any of us even imagine a belief system that inspired us to wash the feet of the poor – instead of washing our hands of their pain? Could we even begin to picture a life or a community where, as St. Francis put it, the afflicted are comforted and the comfortable are afflicted?

In our system (though few would put it into words), those who are afflicted, the homeless, the refugees, the cast out and vulnerable for some reason warrant even more abuse and discrimination.

And those who are comfortable and write the laws, deserve even more. Such is history and human nature you might say; the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

It’s a force of nature, like gravity or the changing of the seasons.

There is nothing we could, or should do about it, the lives of many attest. We should all accept our biological destiny – born rich or poor, here or there, this race or that race, it was all meant to be, and would be defying God if we worked to leave, or even did not adequately appreciate our appointed place. We obviously “deserved” our fate if God put us there.

Except that we all know it is wrong. And we all know that God calls us to something far higher and better. And far beyond ourselves than this.

In fact we are called to act as God would in the world; to give, to heal, to treat person and created being as coming from the same hand, with the same inherent, undeniable, unquenchable dignity.

READ: Scars of Honor: Fighting White Supremacy, Then and Now

The movement of the Messiah is grounded in a simple message of restoration He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has exalted the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty (Luke 1:52-53).

The “has filled” in verse 53 refers to being fully satisfied. The wealthy and powerful on the other hand, the scriptures tell us, “have had their reward”. And one of the people who gets the highest praise from Jesus is not the one who gives the most, but who gives little—who sacrifices the most. (Luke 21:1-4).

Matthew 6:31-33 is a reminder that only unbelievers should worry about food or clothing or even, one could assume in our current world, paying our bills. And anyone who “hastens” to be wealthy courts poverty and personal ruin (Proverbs 22:1).

In other words, our fullest and truest calling is to a truly upside-down value system. Or at least to us it seems upside-down; right-side-up is how it was intended. We’ve been upside-down for so long, we can barely recognize it.

Being a person of faith in a broken world would never be easy, but our hearts, our faith, and our Creator nudge us in the right direction if we are able to listen. Yes, children, there will be a time, when our first impulse is to care for each other. We won’t need laws or rules or even teachers. We won’t even need to remind each other to do what’s right, we will do it eagerly, respectfully and instinctively.

There’s no magic in this fairy tale, no secret words, no special ceremonies. It is literally the eternal kingdom. And the way in is right in front of us.

Scars of Honor: Fighting White Supremacy, Then and Now

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 15:21:43 GMT

When I was little, I thought everyone’s dad had one. The scar was long and curved and deep, carved into my father’s back between his spine and his left lung. Because we lived in South Florida without air conditioning, he was frequently shirtless, and I just thought it was something all men had.

Then I went to my friend Linda’s house and saw her dad mowing the lawn without his shirt. Typical pale suburban dad back, but no scar.

So I asked my mom about it.

“Shush!! We don’t talk about that. Don’t say anything to Dad. Just ignore it.”

It was years before I discovered the truth. I knew my father had served in Europe during WWII. What I didn’t know was that he had been captured by the Nazis and tortured. That particular scar was the only one visible on the outside of the man they had broken. It was the internal scars that never healed; they were the ones that twisted him into a father who, in turn, broke his children.

I don’t write much about my father. Now that I am older than he was when he died, I think I can finally see him with some clarity and detachment. The best of him instilled in me an unshakable set of ethics. From him I inherited the knowledge of right and wrong, a profound devotion to the truth, a kick-ass work ethic, an unflagging honesty, a decided aversion to bullshit, a lifelong dedication to standing up for what’s right, and the absolute unwillingness to tolerate racism. When Miami schools were desegregated in the late 1960’s, the local PTA dads were sure they could count on my father’s support to protest the disruption in our little white bread neighborhood. My father had fought the Nazis, authors of white supremacy, so he clearly declined their invitation. Furious with his lack of enthusiasm for their plan, these local racists threatened harm to me and my brother Matthew.

Big, big mistake.

These men had a secret sign among them as a signal of their white supremacist leanings. Each of their porch lights glowed green in the night.

My father, who had been a sharpshooter, took out each of those green bulbs. One shot per bulb. That’s all it took.

READ: The Evangelical Gaze

Nobody bothered me or Matt after that. The other dads yanked their kids out of public school and put them in Christian school. Matt was bused to Brownsville, and my school (which was mostly Cuban) welcomed hundreds of Black students from Brownsville. And honestly, I never thought anything about it. This was Miami. We were a spicy gumbo of Cuban, Caribbean, South American, Black, and other miscellaneous influences. Folks like my parents had moved from the Midwest, and we were the minority. To me this was just life, and I was quite comfortable in this melting pot of humanity.

The long-term effects of my father’s brokenness played out in my life, as well as my brother Matt’s (1958-2007). I’ve spent a lot of time sorting the bad from the good. By the grace of God, and the healing that has come from my relationship with Jesus Christ, I believe I’ve been able to let go of much of the darkness that came from my childhood. Instead, I’ve allowed and encouraged myself to cling to the positive aspects of my upbringing. Above all else, I appreciate and celebrate the gifts my father gave me from an unbroken place in his soul:

The knowledge of right and wrong, a profound devotion to the truth, a kick-ass work ethic, an unflagging honesty, a decided aversion to bullshit, a lifelong dedication to standing up for what’s right, and the absolute unwillingness to tolerate racism.

My father taught me what is worth dying for. His many-times-great paternal grandfather Elijah was decorated for heroism in the American Revolution. His mother’s family home was a stop along the Underground Railroad. My family has stood up for independence from England, for civil rights, and against fascism. I come from people who fight for what we believe to be right.

Now honestly, I never thought I would have to stand up against my own people. I thought I was in with the good guys. But Donald Trump is not a good guy. He’s not even a decent guy. He is the epitome of everything my family fought to protect us from. Sadly, the crowd I was hanging with (Evangelical Christians) largely support him. Of course I had to go.

Consequently, many of my relationships with friends, family, and community members have become strained. Or worse. Yeah, mostly worse. Because I was conditioned, from an early age, to speak up when I see injustice, dishonesty, and racism. Recently I was mocked for writing that I would “fight against Donald Trump with my dying breath.” Clearly, the author doesn’t know me.

I have grandchildren. Would I give my life so they can have a future free of Trump’s legacy? I’d rather not, but if necessary, I will.

I wear a scar on my soul. It’s the price of being raised by a broken warrior; a man who gave his all for his country to fight the evil of fascism. It’s a battle scar that, for a long time, plagued me with the phantom pain of torture in Nazi Germany. Now I wear it with pride. The man who raised me would deserve to see it used to defeat evil once again.

I know what I stand for, and I’m ready.

The Evangelical Gaze

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 17:56:32 GMT

Beware comment sections.

I recently wrote a piece here at RLC arguing for affirmation and inclusion of LGBTQ Christians on the basis of compassion. Whenever one of my articles goes live, I also post it to my Facebook, hoping the people in my social network will read the materials and engage in thoughtful dialogue. The comment section that erupted when I posted that piece was so instructive that I’ve spent some time reflecting on it. If you’ve spent any time online recently in social settings, you’ve likely witnessed a familiar phenomenon: the evangelical gaze.

But first, let’s consider the OG gaze—the white gaze—courtesy of Willie James Jennings’s masterpiece, The Christian Imagination (the next four paragraphs are based almost entirely on my limited understanding of this wonderful book).

Race (as a concept, or more accurately a construct) was developed as a tool for the colonial project. European colonizers created a racial scale with Whiteness at the top and Blackness at the bottom. Any people group living outside Europe—regardless of where they were from, or what their distinct art, beliefs, and practices were—registered as some version of Black. While there were hierarchical distinctions in this scale (some peoples were more similar to Europeans in skin tone or culture), Blackness was a category that cut across continents, cultures, and languages.

What’s crucially important for our reflection here is that the real goal of the racial scale was to establish, empower, and protect Whiteness. Whiteness (along with the Europeans who embodied it) was not only the pinnacle of the scale but was its “organizing conceptual framework”—only those in the White category could determine the race of another people, based on how that people related to the features of Whiteness.

Here we see the origins of the white gaze—that evaluative posture by which white people judge the beauty, truth, and goodness of all people and peoples. And the difficult truth many Christians today must face is the historical entanglement between colonialism and Christianity. For centuries, the white gaze was (and in some ways, still is) fused with Christian mission to carry forward a world-reshaping colonial project.

Jennings brilliantly describes this fusion as the moment when the ancient principle of faith seeking understanding mutated to faith judging intelligence. Christianity’s adoption of this evaluative posture, this seat atop the religious scale from which it judges all beliefs and traditions against itself, has had tragic consequences. One of them, according to Jennings, is the complete absence of theological concurrency—the possibility that people with different ways of thinking might form intimate relationships and actually learn from each other.

No, in the colonial project (as in today’s evangelical America), those atop the scale would be doing all the teaching.

READ: New Name, Same Mission

It is easy enough to find the evangelical gaze alive and well in our time. One prime example is in evangelical mission work. (I was an evangelical missionary for five years.) When being trained to enter a new context, a missionary is of course taught important lessons about cultural norms and the need to be sensitive. In the everyday aspects of learning a new culture, there is a sense of mutuality and even humble submission to the native people. But not so with the theological mission itself! The missionary is indeed trained to ask questions to learn the native person’s beliefs. Once those beliefs are known, the playbook is clear: affirm what can be affirmed (read: what conforms to my interpretation of the Bible), and challenge anything that can’t be affirmed (read: what is contrary to my interpretation of the Bible).

How can there be any concurrency in a dialogue like this? What can the missionary learn, theologically speaking, from the other person? Nothing! Because anything the person says will be mentally held up against what the missionary already believes about the Bible’s contents. If it matches, then great! If it doesn’t, the missionary must pivot to sharing the gospel message. The theological learning only moves in one direction, and only the missionary can decide if learning has successfully taken place.

This brings us back, I’m afraid, to the comment section of my Facebook post. For there, too, the evangelical gaze is alive and well. In my post, I invited people to engage in kind, thoughtful dialogue—with a reminder and caution that this is a deeply personal issue, and that many queer people would be reading the comment section. This warning failed to mitigate the evangelical gaze as it went to work comparing both me and LGBTQ folks against itself. And just as white colonizers found new peoples around the globe to be deficient in their measuring of white European-ness, so these commenters found both me and my queer friends to be deficient in their measuring of conservative evangelical-ness.

The effects of this evaluation—this judgment—are of course brutal for LGBTQ folks. Two commenters explicitly stated that there will be eternal consequences for any practicing gay person who does not repent of this sin (i.e. live a celibate life). One commenter said he will not attend any same-sex weddings, should he be invited to one.

So to be clear, I’m not the victim here. But I do want to point out that the evangelical gaze—like its white cousin—does not spare anyone. Because I had departed from the accepted evangelical interpretations of a few Bible verses, I too needed to be judged. One commenter told me that people would be in danger of hellfire if they read and believed my words. Another said I was only interested in proving people wrong, drowning out their views, and relying on “appeals to emotion.”

Friends, I’m sure that if you’ve taken a risk to speak, stand, or act for anyone in the margins, you too have felt the pain that comes with solidarity. I pray you will not grow weary! We are all called to follow Jesus into intimacy with those who are hurting and oppressed.

I hope that as you’ve taken even small steps like mine to work for justice, you have had the blessing to see some fruit. When I posted my article, even as the evangelical gaze turned upon me, I received a private message from an old friend of mine who is queer. They told me that reading my piece was “the first time in a long time I haven’t felt hated from someone who I associate with the church.”

Those words, while affirming to me, are utterly heartbreaking.

But I hope they inspire you, as they do me, to keep working for love and justice. Even when judgment is lurking. I’ll leave you with an excerpt from my comment section, when I replied to someone who warned me that I am heading down a dangerous path:

We have arrived at something we can agree on: I am walking down a dangerous road. The road of solidarity with oppressed and marginalized people is always dangerous. It was dangerous for the prophets, dangerous for Jesus, and it is dangerous for folks like me. It’s dangerous because there is always a powerful religious class (Pharisees, conservative evangelicals) who benefit from maintaining a status quo that privileges people who look, act, and think like they do, a status quo that provides the absolution and sanction they need. When those privileges are threatened, it means danger for those in the margins and anyone who chooses to stand with them.

Perhaps someday you’ll join me where it’s dangerous.

Why We Do Not Celebrate Columbus Day

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 11:58:31 GMT

Christopher Columbus may have been a daring adventurer… but he is not someone we want our kids to think of as a hero or role model.

A growing number of cities are no longer celebrating Columbus Day, swapping it for “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

While we are thankful for this land we call America, it is important not to romanticize our national history. In his book “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” James W. Loewen points out that Columbus and the Spaniard conquerers approached the native Americans and would read aloud what came to be called “The Requirement”, which went like this:

“I implore you to recognize the Church as a lady and in the name of the Pope take the King as lord of this land and obey his mandates. If you do not do it, I tell you that with the help of God I will enter powerfully against you all. I will make war everywhere and every way that I can. I will subject you to the yoke and obedience to the Church and to his majesty. I will take your women and children and make them slaves . . . The deaths and injuries that you will receive form here on will be your own fault and not that of his majesty nor of the gentlemen that accompany me.”

READ: Keeping the Faith: A Call to Prophetic Resistance

And from Howard Zinn:

“When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, ‘there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it….’

Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas. That beginning… is conquest, slavery, death. When we read the history books given to children in the United States, it all starts with heroic adventure-there is no bloodshed and Columbus Day is a celebration.”

Part of what we must do is re-learn our history – so that we do not read the Bible with imperial eyes but learn to read the empire with biblical eyes. We can’t get our future right until we get our history right.

Let me close with a quote from our book Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

“Our history is different from the history told by nations and empires—our heroes are not the pioneers of colonialism and capitalism like Columbus and Rockefeller, but the pioneers of compassion like Mother Teresa and Oscar Romero. And our holy-days are different from the holidays of pop-culture and the dominatrix of power.”

Keeping the Faith: A Call to Prophetic Resistance

Thu, 08 Oct 2020 13:04:51 GMT

“The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.” —Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

I was in a car traveling to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon when the presidential victory of Donald Trump was announced on November 9, 2016.

My colleagues and I were on our way to visit a local church partnering with our NGO to provide humanitarian assistance and non-formal education to hundreds of Syrian refugee families. It had been five long years of watching refugees flood into Lebanon from war-torn Syria. The years were full of urgent pleas for assistance in the form of countless grant proposals and impassioned speeches that we had made to potential donors. Late nights with my husband visiting Syrian families in their tents and tenements, dropping off food vouchers, hygiene kits, and winter supplies were the norm. Years of hoping and praying that more help was on the way; that the world would take notice; that the pledges made would be fulfilled.

When Donald Trump was elected in November, it felt instead like a slammed door in the face; not for us as humanitarian workers, but for “the homeless, tempest-tost [sic]” fleeing from devastation and war. It was as if a bad dream had turned into a nightmare. The grim reality of our cold, hardened world began to sink in. This was the “new normal”- an epoch bereft of compassion.

Most gut-wrenching of all was that 81% of white evangelical Christians had voted for Donald Trump. From that point on, an inner scream began to rise in my soul. My anger was directed not so much toward the voters themselves, but toward the leaders who had led them astray; the narratives that ensnared them; the lies and idolatry that poisoned the holy water.

As our car ascended and descended the familiar roads on our way to what was once known as “the breadbasket of the Middle East,” now marked by a patchwork of informal tented settlements, I railed and lamented to my brother over the phone. I was overcome by shock and disbelief.

I have heard many say, even in recent weeks, that Donald Trump is not perfect, but he is doing the Lord’s work. “Is God not able to use even sinful leaders for his purposes?” they say. “Look at King David.”

To them I reply, yes, but where is the broken and contrite spirit? When I look at Donald Trump, I do not see a man after God’s own heart. Where is the seeking after the Kingdom of God and His righteousness? Where is the call to justice, mercy, compassion, and care for the poor and the oppressed? Where is the good news for the hungry on food stamps, the sick who are uninsured, the incarcerated with little hope of release from the chains of a bigoted system, and the sojourner and foreigner among us?

It is the prophetic job of the church to call out unjust leaders. As theologian Walter Brueggemann has taught us, it is the work of the prophet to challenge the unrighteousness of the status quo and to reimagine and galvanize the community of faith toward an alternative reality more in line with the character, rule, and reign of God.

Will we, as the people of God, embrace this call?

READ: When Worship is Resistance: Hymn for the 81%

Many are faithfully doing so in opposition to the dominant narrative of the Trump administration, and those are the voices that we need to heed. They are the voices rising from the margins. As Trump once promised his Christian supporters, Christianity will have power, but it is not a power that is tied to political expediency or the machinations of Capitol Hill. It is a subversive power that is bold in its truth-telling and radical in its love.

Keeping the Faith: Reflections on Politics and Christianity in the Era of Trump and Beyond, the recently released book that I co-edited along with Jonathan P. Walton and Sy Hoekstra, is one attempt to animate the church to reclaim that power. It is an anthology of dissent consisting of essays and articles by Christians who are calling out the false piousness of the Trump administration. It is a collective work, comprised of voices both Democrat and Republican, conservative and progressive, and from ethnically and demographically diverse backgrounds. The two unifying attributes are a firm commitment to faith in Jesus Christ and a rejection of Donald Trump as the de facto Christian choice in this election.

Joined by my co-editors and over thirty Christian leaders like Alexia Salvatierra, Andy Crouch, Randy Woodley, Brandi Miller, David French, Robert Chao Romero, and Miluska Aquije; we seek to topple the idols of Christian nationalism and white supremacy. We are critiquing the political dispensations of the religious right and the theological fallacies of white American folk religion. We talk about abortion. We talk about foreign policy. We talk about race and cultural conflict. We talk about the decolonization of our hearts and minds. We seek to challenge, to disorient, to be “lovingly disruptive” in our journey toward justice and Kingdom wholeness.

Time and time again, Donald Trump panders to his Christian constituencies. He claims to be for them, of them; ordained by God and anointed with God’s favor. He dangles the Supreme Court over their heads; and they buy it hook, line, and sinker.

We are here to proclaim, as Christians, that the Trump administration does not represent us or our values.

As my sister, Brandi Miller, declares in Keeping the Faith:

“…we are given a test of how to find God in politics and what the way of Jesus might look like, even in a political system that is corrupt throughout. We use this test to lean as close as we can to Jesus’ way, knowing that no nation will fully politicize the way of God – that was never the point. Our test is two-fold. One, how are the most vulnerable voting and engaging? How are BIPOC and LGBTQ+ seeing themselves in this political moment? How are the poor treated? What is happening to the elderly, to children, and to immigrants? And two, as we look to the cross, do we see hints or calls to the radical forgiveness, enemy love, and inclusivity of the cross and the shalom way that invites all people, regardless of identity to life abundantly in our political options?

With this as a test and principle used in the scriptures, I hold it up to viable options at hand in our two-party system. I hold it up to Donald Trump and see his hatred of enemy, his abuse and demonizing of immigrants, his disregard for the vulnerable, and his radicalizing of violence against the marginalized among us. I see the Christians who support and quote him more than the God that they say upholds him. I see in him echoes of the leaders of Rome, Egypt, Babylon, and Judea in the Scriptures, echoes of violence as a means to peace, rhetoric and fear as a means to social control, and politics as a means to personal deification.”

Echoing Miller’s words, to my white co-religionists I say, will you hold up the truth of the Gospel to the lies of Donald Trump? Or will you continue to sacrifice your marginalized siblings on the altar of Self? Are you willing to listen long enough to their pain and suffering to allow your heart to be touched and your mind to be transformed? Are you willing to repent and take up the call of lament at the ballot box; a call to contrition and to love your neighbor?

This book issues a call to collective realignment with the true message of the Gospel for the whole church; a call to unity rooted not in supremacy of race but in the beautiful plurality modeled for us in the Trinitarian nature of God. It is our cry for prophetic resistance. Will you join us?

Why "All Letters Matter” isn’t a Good Response to Red Letter Christians

Wed, 07 Oct 2020 18:05:20 GMT

“All lives don’t matter!” shouted the speaker at the Black Lives Matter protest. I felt my body tense. “Until,” continued the speaker after a pause, “black lives matter!”

What a rhetorical coup. By saying it that way the speaker reminded us that we are in a story. We are in a wider context. Black lives have been devalued and thus we need course correction. It isn’t about demeaning other lives.

Similarly, Christians are in a story in which we’ve often ignored the teaching of Jesus. As the towering theologian Karl Barth put it (echoing German reformer Melanchthon), Christians prefer the benefits of Christ to Christ himself (The Humanity of God, 24). The burden of Bible scholar NT Wright’s book How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels is how Christians distill the person of Jesus into a doctrine and ignore the Jesus found in the gospels.

A movement founded by activist Shane Claiborne and professor Tony Campolo addresses this problem with its provocative title, “Red Letter Christians.” Red Letter Christians (RLC) is an organization that “mobilizes individuals into a movement of believers who live out Jesus’ counter-cultural teachings.” They do this by paying special attention to the words of Jesus, words that in some Bibles, are in red.

Joel Looper (Ph.D, Aberdeen), a respected acquaintance, invited me to respond to his article entitled The logical —and theological—problem with Red Letter Christians. (His article is just the latest in a number of anti-RLC articles such as this one by the Gospel Coalition and this one in Christianity Today.) Looper’s primary concern is that RLC ignores the rest of the Bible and thus lacks the necessary context to understand the words of Jesus. He writes that when we don’t understand the words of Jesus, we re-make Jesus into our own image.

In response to Looper, I must admit that my analogy with BLM isn’t perfect. “Black Lives Matter,” while provocative, doesn’t logically exclude the possibility that other lives might matter too. “Red Letter Christians,” however, seems to at least marginalize, if not completely exclude, the rest of scripture. From this, two questions emerge. First, is it legitimate to prioritize the words of Jesus over the other words of scripture? Secondly, do Red Letter Christians simply prioritize the words of Jesus, or do they ignore the rest of scripture altogether?

To answer the first question, I answer a hearty “Yes!” It is important to see all of scripture through the lens of Jesus and to prioritize Jesus’ words and witness. I grew up in a context in which all scripture was seen as “flat” or as equally inspired. Theoretically at least, a verse from Leviticus had as much weight as a command from Jesus. This kind of Bible reading has dangerous consequences. I think of the Jabez prayer rage that happened years ago in Christian circles. Jabez prays a short prayer in 1 Chronicles 4:10 that God bless him and enlarge his territory. A book, The Prayer of Jabez, promoted the prayer and sold nine million copies.

If we continue reading in 1 Chronicles 4, we learn that the Israelites find good pasture land and exterminate its inhabitants so that they can enlarge their territory. Apparently, the prayer has been answered, and reading it in context seems to indicate that the sacrifice of others was God-ordained.

It is easy to imagine Christian colonialists using such a passage to justify the extermination of native peoples. The necessary guard against this is to interpret all of scripture through Jesus and his words “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matt 7:12).

READ: New Name, Same Mission

In an article written by Campolo that Looper quotes, Why Christians Don’t Like Jesus, Campolo explains that Christians often want retribution, a God who will bless their wars, a God that only requires 10% of us, a God who ensures our superiority. In the span and sprawl of the Bible narrative, Christians can find verses to justify almost anything. This is why Christians need to interpret everything through the demanding, merciful, and loving words of Jesus. Ironically, Campolo has the same worry as Looper—that we will remake God into our own image. Only, Campolo believes that this happens when we don’t see all of scripture through Christ.

This begins to answer the second question: do Red Letter Christians simply see Jesus’ words as more important, or do they see them as the only authoritative words in scripture? Looper, careful writer that he is, begins by making the modest claim that RLC “rank the words of Jesus . . . as more important than the rest of scripture . . .” Later, however, Looper suggests that RLC don’t just see Jesus’ words as more important, but that RLC “ignore” and “tacitly reject” the rest of scripture. Is this the case?

It isn’t what Campolo and Claiborne claim to be doing. It is worth quoting at length from the book, Red Letter Revolution, which they co-authored:

Not only do we say that the red letters are superior to the black letters of the Bible, but Jesus said they were! Jesus, over and over again in the Sermon on the Mount, declared that some of the things that Moses taught about such things as divorce, adultery, killing getting even with those who hurt you, and the use of money had to be transcended by a higher morality.

When Jesus said he was giving us new commandments, I [Campolo is writing here] believe they really were new commandments. They certainly went beyond the morality prescribed in the black letters that we read in the Pentateuch. Furthermore, we don’t think you can really understand what the black letters in the Bible are telling you until you first come to know the Jesus revealed in the red letters. This in no way diminishes the importance of those black letters; we believe that the Holy Spirit directed the writers of Scripture so that all of Scripture was inspired by God. (Red Letter Revolution, p. 5).

Looper devotes much of his article to the danger of disregarding eyewitness testimony and the other writers of scripture. He rightly notes that the eyewitnesses/New Testament writers had the best understanding of the language Jesus was speaking, knew the context, and had access to words from Jesus that we don’t have.

It doesn’t follow, however, that those who especially treasure the words of Jesus disregard the testimony of the eyewitnesses and the New Testament writers. Red Letter Christians should know that they are dependent on the first eyewitnesses for the words of Jesus. In order to best understand the red letters, Red Letter Christians need to pay attention to the context in which the eyewitness place Jesus’ words, the early Christians’ commentary on Jesus’ words, and the acts of Jesus in which the words are embedded. Red Letter Christians should be the biggest fans of the early writers and eyewitnesses.

This doesn’t mean that there isn’t the occasional literalist in progressive circles— who, in a new Marcionite enthusiasm—would take the shears to all but Jesus’ words. But that isn’t what Campolo and Claiborne are doing, in my opinion. Pick up any of their books and their respect for all of scripture is evident. And, while I’m not familiar with all of them, I suspect this is true for those in the RLC “leaders’ network.”

Why does RLC prompt this concern in Looper and others? Certainly, the name is provocative, and for anyone concerned with scriptural authority, it is understandable that it might prompt questions. Beyond that however, Looper writes that he is uneasy the RLC will “downplay, ignore, or even oppose” the evangelical and Catholic church teachings on the issues of abortion and gay marriage.

There are two important responses to this: a) focusing the words of Jesus doesn’t mean that a person will necessarily “oppose” the evangelical and Catholics stances on these issues, and b) he is right that an RLC person might “downplay” or “ignore” them—and that is a good thing.

First, it isn’t true that an emphasis on the red letters decisively tilts people toward gay marriage and legalized abortions. In the case of abortion, there is no Bible verse which specifically prohibits abortion. Indeed, some of the most powerful arguments against abortion come from Jesus’ words about his care for children and “little ones.” Beyond that, both Campolo and Claiborne are “womb to tomb” pro-lifers. That is, they are anti-abortion, but they also care about all the other forces that rob life such as poor health care, wars, gun violence, and capital punishment.

As for gay marriage, conservative veterans of the marriage wars will attest that their best argument is not the few Bible passages which seem to condemn gay sex. After all, most commentators agree that in the context of Biblical times, such sex was usually exploitative. Rather, the central conservative argument is that Jesus reaffirms a “creation ethic” of heterosexual marriage when he affirms in Mark 10:6-8b, “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.”

To be fair to Looper, Campolo has become affirming on gay marriage (as am I). Claiborne, while speaking against the ways the church has hurt LGBT+ people, has never come out as affirming, and has received strong criticism from the guardians of progressive dogma for not doing so.

To return to the question, why might it be wise to downplay or even ignore these evangelical and Catholic stances on abortion and gay marriage? As the words of Jesus attest, his primary concern was not to be a morality coach for the wider society.

Instead, Jesus called the people of God to live out an ethic of love so costly, compelling, and winsome, that people would be drawn into God’s love-conspiracy. By advocating this, I’m not arguing for an easier, softer Jesus. I’m arguing for the Jesus of the New Testament, a Jesus who was tough on the people of God (demanding that they live out God’s sacrificial love) and welcoming to outsiders.

I’m asking that we judge the church by the example of Jesus, and not project on to Jesus the later preoccupations of the church. During Jesus’ time, gay sex and abortion were all well-known practices, and yet Jesus never says an explicit word about them. Jesus did however call out the religious leaders for their hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

What if the church were known for the humble confession of its misdeeds, and its self-sacrificing love? Wouldn’t that be a better stance than being known for being “anti?”

What if all of us, both conservative and liberal Christians, paid special attention to Jesus’ words, words which call us to sacrificial love?

I agree with Looper that context matters. But this insight goes deeper than he seems to acknowledge. We live in a historical context that has pushed the life and teachings of Jesus to the side. We live in the current context of an unfaithful church that uses the black letters of the Bible to neuter and tame Jesus. We must resist this by interpreting everything through Jesus. Jesus’ own teachings are the best access we have God’s will and wisdom. It is the red letters that hold our feet to the fire of God’s costly love. It is the red letters that matter most. That is why I’m glad to be a Red Letter Christian.

New Name, Same Mission

Mon, 05 Oct 2020 12:36:23 GMT

Editor’s Note: The following is the official announcement shared by executive director Nikki Toyama-Szeto of the newly renamed Christians for Social Action. Find out more information at Christiansforsocialaction.org .

As of September 15, 2020 Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA) has changed their name to Christians for Social Action instead. For a season, it would suffice to say that ESA represented “a different kind of evangelical.” But as “evangelical” and “Trump supporter” grow more synonymous to the average American, many individuals and organizations have been pushed to weigh whether the baggage associated with that term is worth carrying any longer.

“It was the right name—for a time. But the social environment is so different,” says Ron Sider, Founder and President-emeritus. In the wake of the Trump presidency, ‘evangelical’ has become increasingly conflated with certain political movements that don’t accurately reflect the values ESA was founded upon and has held for almost 50 years.

“We are excited with this new change,” our executive director Nikki Toyama-Szeto explains. “Jesus Christ is the fuel for the social justice work we do. We have the same mission, working with the same people, led by the same leaders, but we’ve noticed that what our people are calling themselves has changed—especially as our presence is growing in communities of color.”

A bulk of CSA’s members identify themselves as Christians but are moving away from the evangelical label.

“This name-change by ESA makes a world of sense,” offers Mark Labberton, President of Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, CA. “The primary goal is to clarify the identity of the organization. This new name does this so well—centered in Jesus Christ for the sake of justice in the world. The secondary goal is to clarify any confusion over identity. Again, with the current roiling semantics over the world ‘evangelical,’ it can lead to confusion over what this organization is or isn’t affirming.”

READ: Christians Demand Binsar’s Release from ICE

JoAnn Lyon, General Superintendent Emerita of the Wesleyan Church and Vice-Chair of Board of NAE, in affirming the change, “This is not a recent discussion but one in which I personally have been involved for the past 30 years. I am happy to say the name may have changed, but the mission is as strong if not stronger in the same manner as the founding in 1974 of which I was a part. I am honored to continue to affirm the ministry of Christians for Social Action.”

Labberton continues, “Nikki Toyama-Szeto, the Executive Director, has led her team with wisdom, humility, and honor through a thicket of words and associations to the better light of a new name: Christians for Social Action.”

ESA was founded by scholar-activist Ron Sider in 1973 after convening a group of social justice-oriented Christian leaders to issue the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Concern. Sider led the organization until 2013, and he retired from teaching in 2019. He continues to serve as the co-chair of the board of CSA. Nikki Toyama-Szeto promises that, although the name has changed, the organization will continue building upon Sider’s legacy. “Our mission, working towards a fuller expression of Christian faithfulness, and a more just society is reflected and re-affirmed in the name. Our Christian faith fuels our social action.”

Christians Demand Binsar’s Release from ICE

Wed, 30 Sep 2020 18:43:06 GMT

People of the United States of America who call themselves Christians, it is time to look–behold. Do not look away in trivializing or undermining the lives of the people who are being crushed under the weight of American empire.

What if we rewrite the Bible for our own time. Remember the parable that Jesus told about the Pharisee and the Tax Collector? What might that story sound like today?

The Bible-educated Jesus follower prays:

“Thank you God for this Great Country! Thank you that I am not like these law-breakers that are running for their lives. If I were running for my life I would do it in a legal way. I would stand in the right line and not steal or break any laws. I respect the laws of this country. I am not like these DACA kids, or even worse their parents who brought them here illegally. I go to church, Bible study, and I have my daily devotionals and I pay my tithe.”

But the poor immigrant prayed at a distance and would not look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

And then the expert in the law saw the brown-skinned immigrant praying and suspected that he was in the country illegally and reported him to ICE. ICE came into the church, handcuffed the immigrant and detained him because that is the law. In the detention center, the immigrant was sexually abused, beaten and fed food that was rotten. He was taken before a judge, shackled like he was a violent threat. Humiliated before the judge, he was read his rights, without any legal counsel and ordered to return to his home country. In the process of returning he caught COVID and was returned to those that would take his life because of his Christian faith.

If this parable sounds ridiculous then consider this story unfolding in Maryland this month. Binsar Siahaan lived on church grounds and volunteered to care for the property. We see before us a man who has lived in the US since 1989. He was awaiting his court date. One morning as this man was preparing for the day, ICE came onto church property. In a devious maneuver, ICE coaxed Binsar Siahaan out of his home acting as if they were there to help him.

ICE knew this and came in plain clothes in order to trick him, telling him he needed to check his ankle tracker. He was lured out and handcuffed. He was transported to Georgia; he faces trial on October 2, 2020. Not only was he detained unjustly, ICE put his life at risk by moving him during a pandemic. Additionally the cruel move to Georgia puts greater distance between Binsar and his family. Is it just that ICE continues to hunt human beings in these safe locations? Churches, schools, courts, and hospitals are places where people should be free to seek care and education, both physically and spiritually.

READ: Writing a New History of Immigrant and Racial Justice

Citizens of this country, behold this man and the many other humans unprotected by a piece of paper. We often hear, “But they broke the law.” or “ICE is just doing their job.” This dismissiveness breeds ignorance and apathy. Who holds these enforcers of the law accountable? The enforcers of the law use lies to enact punitive measures to “uphold” the law. If we accept injustice to enact justice what kind of society are we creating? Christians who call themselves “Pro-Life” must examine and ask themselves who is worthy of human flourishing? Are we really okay with children in cages? People left in rooms in freezing conditions? Are we ok with medical professionals performing illegal hysterectomies or separating children from their families? Like Pilate, are we okay with just washing our hands, calling it a day, and allowing the Empire to enact a distorted justice?

If you are not okay with this, then join us. Join the movement of people asking for the freedom of Binsar and humane treatment to the foreigner and children who should be with their families. We are destroying families. We are creating orphans and widows, which we are called to care and protect. We may very well be sending this father and Christ-like servant to suffering. In his home country of Indonesia he is not safe because of his faith. Additionally, the safety of our places of worship are being threatened. Shall we be silent?

Join us and apply Binsar’s voice this Thursday. We are meeting at Christ United Methodist Church (900 4th St SW, Washington, DC 20024) on Thursday October 1, 2020 at 8:30 AM. You can follow details at the Free Binsar Faith March to ICE HQ. You can sign online petitions here: Faith Leaders’ Petition, Faithful America Petition, and United Methodist Petition.

You can also call 1-844-332-636 to connect with your federal legislator. To assist you, a script is below:

Hi my name is _____________ and I am calling from ______________. I want [Member of Congress] to call ICE Director Tony Pham, and express outrage at ICE’s violation of their sensitive location policy, and demand Binsar’s immediate release and approval of his stay of removal.

To get connected to your member of Congress enter your zip code.

To call more than one Member of Congress, please complete your first call and then call back to hotline above.

Let our faith move us to action.

A Justice for All, In Memory of RBG

Mon, 28 Sep 2020 15:15:18 GMT

A Statement by the Auburn Senior Fellows:

Jewish tradition teaches that when a tzadeket—a righteous person—dies, an opening is created for a moral and spiritual awakening. We pray that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, an unimaginable loss that comes with devastating implications for our nation, will in fact spark that great awakening.

We grieve, first and foremost for the death of this brilliant, fierce and courageous woman, a role model to millions, whose revolutionary commitment to equality, fairness, integrity and decency has touched every one of our lives and made this country and the world better. We pray for her family and friends as they grieve this deepest of personal losses. We offer our voice of comfort, light and love as you mourn the loss of your mother, aunt, grandmother and friend.

READ: Poverty: Jesus, Jubilee, and Reparations

And we hold anticipatory grief for the ramifications of her death and the brazen political maneuverings that are ensuing upon her death. Justice Ginsberg remained deliberate in her dedication to our democracy, as she dictated to her granddaughter just before her death, her fervent wish that no replacement for her seat be named until after the election. We pray that our elected leaders take her wisdom to heart because Justice Ginsberg is not done yet. She of all people would fervently decry the passive acceptance of predetermined outcomes.

We join in community to mourn, honor and reflect on this pioneering champion whose values are seen in the extraordinary outpouring of love for this diminutive giant, a Justice For All. She remains a powerful role model. May we all find our own resilience and righteousness from the Notorious RBG in the consequential days ahead.

May her memory be a blessing.

– The Auburn Senior Fellows bring inspiration and action to the media and public square, reaching tens of millions of people every year with messages of faith, reckoning, hope and prophetic imagination.

Poverty: Jesus, Jubilee, and Reparations

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 12:00:07 GMT

Jesus is many things to many people. The Good Shepherd, the Great Physician, the Light of the world. The Alpha and Omega, the Lion and the Lamb, the crucified and risen Savior. If you study Luke’s Gospel, you might notice that among all these images and titles, one specific picture of Jesus rises to the fore: he is the one whom God has sent to the poor.

This isn’t something we need to deduce from the pattern of his many interactions with sex workers or leprous outcasts. It’s actually an explicit message in Jesus’ own words, often uttered at crucial moments. For example, after his temptation in the wilderness, Jesus begins his Galilean ministry in the synagogue. He reads aloud from Isaiah 61 and then says he is the fulfillment of the prophet’s words:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:11-12)

From the very outset, Jesus tells us who he is here for: the poor, the prisoners, the blind, and the oppressed. In another powerful episode, an imprisoned John the Baptist sends two of his followers to ask Jesus if he’s really the one for whom they’ve been waiting. Rather than give a straightforward and static, “Yes,” Jesus instead tells the messengers to point John to Jesus’ actions: “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor” (7:22).

Jesus’ identity is inextricably linked to proclaiming good news to the poor.

Why is this the case? Why the poor? After all, as so many have been litigating on social media this year, isn’t it true that all lives matter? To understand God’s deep concern for those trapped in cycles of poverty, it might help to look again at the first example above, when Jesus reads from Isaiah. The final line reads: “[God has sent me] to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” The ancient Jews who read Isaiah and listened to Jesus would have known right away that “the year of the Lord’s favor” meant a practice we now look back on as “the year of Jubilee.”

The year of Jubilee was one of several important pillars of economic policy enshrined in Old Testament Law. Let’s try to get the big picture of this economic system (with the help of pastor and community organizer Robert Linthicum’s “The Least of These: The War on Poverty by Israel and the Church” in the New Urban World Journal). Once we catch God’s view of poverty, Jesus’ words might take on exciting new meaning.

In Deuteronomy 15:4, God looks ahead to the people’s life in the promised land and declares, “There need be” (literally: there will be) “no poor people among you,” but just seven verses later, the text concedes, “There will always be poor people in the land.” What gives? Will there or won’t there be poor people? In this tension lies the tragic reality of human society: there does not need to be poverty, but because of the greed that causes and maintains wealth gaps and systems of oppression, there always will be.

The text of Deuteronomy 15 then provides an immediate takeaway: “Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.” But the crucial thing to see here is that the fight against poverty was not simply a moral command to be carried out by individuals or families. It was codified in the social policies that governed the economic system itself. These policies in Leviticus and Deuteronomy are fascinating ideals that seem to be millennia ahead of their time.

READ: On American Exceptionalism

Just consider four features of the Law that were designed to work together to end poverty: (1) money lenders were not allowed to charge interest, (2) regular tithes were mandatory to provide for not only the Levites, but also the immigrants, widows, and orphans, (3) every seven years all debts were forgiven, and (4) every fifty years (on the Year of Jubilee), all land—the cornerstone of wealth then as it is now—was returned to its ancestral owners.

Right off the bat, we can safely conclude that God does not want poverty to exist, and to that end, God desires both radical personal generosity and laws and systems that continually pull people out of poverty. As Dr. Linthicum observes, these ancient statutes were instated “so that wealth and power could not accrue among a favored few at the expense of everyone else;” instead, resources were to be “intentionally and systematically redistributed to the people.”

I was reminded of Dr. Linthicum’s article when this winter, about five years late to the party, I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s revelatory article, “The Case for Reparations,” in The Atlantic. The piece, which explains the history of housing discrimination within a much larger web of racist American systems, actually begins with a quotation from Deuteronomy.

The parallels between the Year of Jubilee and reparations for Black Americans quickly become apparent. Both seem “unfair” to our capitalist sensibilities: why should I, a hard-working White American, have to give up resources to help people whose ancestors suffered from historical injustices I had nothing to do with? (There are many easy rebuttals to this, but this question is here for the sake of argument.) But we might as easily ask, why should the ancient hard-working Jewish landowner have had to give up resources to help people whose grandfathers had squandered their family wealth or had been invaded by foreign enemies?

God clearly was not concerned with capitalist sensibilities. God’s sense of justice was not constrained by the laws of the free market or Friedman’s shareholder theory. What is fair and right and just in God’s eyes is for no one to live in poverty—no matter how they got there. Linthicum explains, “The pointed message of Deuteronomy is that it is irrelevant whether one’s poverty is the result of a reversal in a nation’s economy, a family calamity or generational poverty, or an individual’s bad choices, laziness, or unfortunate circumstances. However the persons or families got into these circumstances, they are now poor and vulnerable, and it is the responsibility of each Israelite and the political and economic systems of Israel to resolve the situation.”

In today’s America, we actually know why there is such an immense wealth gap between Black and White Americans. We don’t need to speculate about calamities or bad choices. There is a well-documented history of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, redlining, mass incarceration—and many more racist systems. Ancient Israel, had it followed this part of God’s Law, could never have inflicted this kind of generational poverty on any of God’s beloved children, because everyone would “begin every fifty-first year with an economically ‘level playing field.’”

Of course, American law doesn’t have a Year of Jubilee. But there’s a more insidious issue, isn’t there? At the end of the day, most of us don’t really want to repair the four hundred years of financial damage wreaked on Black Americans. To demonstrate this, Coates points to House bill HR 40. At the time of his writing in 2014, the bill had been sponsored every single year by Representative John Conyers since 1989—and in 25 years, it had failed to make it even once to the House floor. This is especially damning given that so many White Americans, even progressive ones, cite pragmatic and logistical problems as why they don’t favor reparations. This bill would simply form a commission to closely study the issue and make recommendations—recommendations that would address these complex pragmatic and logistical problems.

Imagine the Jubilee if we joined with God’s desire to end poverty! If we embraced the painful and costly work of not only rejecting but undoing systemic racial inequality. If we committed to follow, in Linthicum’s words, “the Jubilee Jesus, the Jesus who came to proclaim Jubilee to the people… and to call the Jewish political, economic, and religious systems to accountability for refusing to practice the full Jubilee.”

Cathedral of the Tropics and Worshipping Through a Pandemic

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 12:00:29 GMT

When my wife and I moved to Costa Rica, we began visiting the lush trails of tropical forests on our Sabbath days to listen and worship. In similar ways, the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing people all over the world out of buildings and toward other ways of worshiping on Sunday, giving us a chance to reframe how we experience Sabbath rest and experience God’s enriching nourishment in his magnificent creation.

How has “church” changed for you over the past few months? What do your Sunday mornings look like during the pandemic?

In past years I’ve been involved in “church” in its most traditional evangelical form – weekly Sunday morning worship gatherings – and also in a number of its related activities: missions travel, social outreach, homework clubs, church boards, youth ministry, summer camps, Bible studies, Christian education, the sound/graphics/tech team—the list goes on. There is really an endless amount of social activities that can connect us to our body of fellow Christians.

The pandemic has severely disrupted this weekly rhythm and thrown our Christian social activities for a loop. Many of us are terrified and already missing our Sunday worship services and all those cascading social activities linked to the building and those Sunday-morning relationships. For my wife and I, we had already left those familiar Sunday-morning gatherings behind us nine months before the pandemic when we moved away from our bilingual church family in Nampa, Idaho to a rural, remote biological field station in the cloud forest of Costa Rica.

This separated us from our traditional “church family.” But what it gave us was the opportunity to be more intentional about taking Sabbath rest by trekking into the woods and enjoying the lush, green, dripping-with-life tropical lands surrounding us. We would tote along some portable chairs, hike into a spot overlooking a green wall of gallery forest, and then simply sit and watch, or read a devotional or scripture portion, or sing a few hymns, our voices blending with the chattering birds and gurgling brook. Our favorite spot gave us a good view of a Quetzal family in a cavity nest. The Quetzal bird has inspired contemplation of the divine for hundreds of years before European invasion of the Neotropics which is home to amazing creatures like it that attest to the incredible ingenuity of our Creator-God.

READ: Lessons from the Fog (And This Pandemic)

Of course, making time to enjoy nature isn’t something we are unique in practicing, only accessible to us in a tropical montane cloud forest. The pandemic and summer weather have pushed people out of buildings on Sundays, and in some cases into the wild. We watched friends and family in the U.S. and other parts of the world break their weekly church-in-a-building routine and instead opt for weekend hikes, multi-day backpacking treks, campfire conversations, cross-country jogs along rows of corn and alfalfa, drawing at the lake, motorcycle rides through curving pine forest roadway, taking a telescope out to watch stars and comets, raising chickens, foraging for mushrooms, visiting archeological sites, camping at national parks—all incredible, life-enriching ways of experiencing God’s majestic creation and learning from clues which God has placed in the world that point toward to the divine.

The Bible is full of references to God’s “two books” through which God speaks truth and instruction. There is Awe, and then there’s the Law (Psalm 19). There is God’s holy mountain and God’s house of prayer (Isaiah 56). There’s the temple and the tabernacle; the city of God and God’s presence in the wilderness. In both, God speaks love and truth; in both God is present.

And so why do we depreciate one and favor the other? Why are we so devastated when we are exiled from the house of prayer to the heights of God’s holy mountain? Our reactions and feelings of loss toward having our weekly temple worship stripped away might reveal something of an idolatry within us. Have we become too dependent, too anchored, too confined to the temple walls and to the warm fuzzies we get from the familiarity with our siblings in the church?

It’s not that those connections aren’t important and that the meeting and greeting of physical bodies in sacred places isn’t central to the body of Christ. But I think we can benefit at this time by reframing our narrow perspective on when and where God speaks loving truth to us. While the wildness of our awesome God awaits, we prefer mourning in the confines of our human constructions and constrictions.

So what I am proposing is to embrace the holy mountain (or whatever outdoor space you can access). To seek out wilderness. To spend a night in the forest, sit in your lawn, watch out your window. And listen. See that as holy communion with God – because it is.

Communities of Moral Deliberation

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 12:00:08 GMT

Like many political scientists, I was surprised when Donald Trump emerged in 2016 as the Republican nominee. Once the nominee, however, I was not surprised that he easily won both my home state of Tennessee (61.1%) and the rural county where I live (78.9%). What I did find shocking, perhaps naively, was that exit polls showed President Trump was supported by 81% of white voters who self-identified as evangelical.

I was raised in a predominantly white evangelical church and educated at predominantly white evangelical schools. I teach at such an institution now. It seemed clear to me that Trump lacked the morality and competence to lead our country. Why did so many around me see matters differently? Some commentators argued that many white evangelicals took no pleasure in voting for Trump; they simply saw no alternative. Perhaps that is true. But why did such a majority of white evangelicals reach the conclusion that Trump was the best, or even only, option? Why do so many continue to support him even now?

I’m certain there are many complex answers. Here, I hope to outline one possibility—that churches have largely failed in their task of becoming communities of moral deliberation. Too many white evangelical churches are not preparing their members to think critically about what it means to live like Christ in the world.

Much of our failure stems from a dualism that draws arbitrary lines between what is “biblical” (and therefore appropriate for discussion within the church) and what is “political” (and therefore off-limits). This dualism has profound consequences.

First, it obscures the ways that culture affects our faith. For instance, our society is highly individualistic, often in ways that stand in conflict with Christianity. Yes, individuals are created in the image of God and are therefore valuable and worthy of dignity. Nonetheless, Scripture teaches that we do not belong to ourselves but to Christ (I Cor. 6:19-20; Rom. 14:7-8). We must humbly consider others more significant than ourselves (Phil. 2:3).

This countercultural stance should affect our behavior in concrete ways. Should we emphasize personal rights over the responsibilities we owe each another? Should we emphasize what the law permits over what the Gospel demands? Of course not, yet these attitudes are all too common among white evangelicals. Consider current debates on gun rights, mask mandates, and the Confederate flag, etc.

Furthermore, our individualistic culture makes it difficult for us to discuss systemic issues. So much focus on individual sin and salvation, along with an unhelpful belief in American exceptionalism, tends to be missed by Christians who don’t grasp the ways that racial and economic injustice are woven into our social fabric. We might think, “I don’t hate people of color. I don’t cheat or steal. What’s the problem?” Can we acknowledge that we are rarely wholly responsible for our own successes just as others are rarely wholly responsible for their own difficulties? It is difficult to admit that we benefit from systems—past and present—that harm others. Personal accountability is essential, yet collective responsibility is also needed to address structural defects in our society.

READ: For Every Time: A Prayer for Moral Revival

Second, the false distinction between what is ‘biblical’ and what is ‘political’ limits many white evangelicals in the ability to say anything of practical value to the social issues of our day. We have too narrowly defined the moral questions worth considering as a community of believers. This constriction affects the choices we make as individual voters.

I’ve heard predominantly white evangelical congregations speak often about abortion and gay marriage. I remember such congregations vocally opposing the lottery when it was considered in Tennessee. They campaign against the seemingly perennial alcohol referendums that pop up in rural communities like mine. Yet those same congregations are often reluctant to discuss any number of other moral issues. Those who speak against racism are being “divisive and negative.” Those who express concern for environmental stewardship “lack faith in God’s sovereignty.” However, these are precisely the sorts of issues Christians ought to discuss. Racism perpetuates disparities in healthcare, criminal justice, wealth, etc.—issues of basic human dignity. Environmental degradation disproportionately harms the world’s most vulnerable populations, and it mars the power and divinity of God as revealed in Creation (Rom. 1:19-20).

The church is right to reject the subordination of faith to partisan agendas. Our identity ought to be, first and foremost, in Christ. Moreover, political questions are often polarizing, and it is right to desire preservation of the unity we have in Christ. Nonetheless, the church is being divided as Christians smile at one another in the pews but then mock one another on social media.

We must find a better way forward. The fear of unsettling a fragile veneer of unity must not prevent us from asking difficult questions or having difficult conversations. God cares about justice, and God’s people must as well. Some disagreement is inevitable, and it will be uncomfortable, but a church immobilized by fear will not form mature disciples (see Eph. 4:11-16). If the church is not the appropriate place to expand our ethical awareness and discuss faithful living, then where do we expect Christians should learn to do so?

Politics is about more than the exercise of governmental power. It is the art of humans associating to pursue the common good. Surely Christianity has much to say about this. Surely spiritual maturity should empower us to think critically and speak compassionately about a wide range of issues that impact human lives.

When God called us to be different from the world, God established a higher standard. The overwhelming and often uncritical support for President Trump among white evangelicals does not reflect this standard. A morally stunted conversation in our churches is partly to blame. The church ought to be a place where we labor together to discern how God’s will applies to the complexities of life. Living as communities of moral deliberation will not be easy. May God give us courage and grace in the endeavor!

On Gender Equality: We Have Made Great Strides & We Are Not There Yet

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 12:00:35 GMT

To have this conversation with everyone and anyone makes no sense. If you cannot accept that women are equally created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), or that women are called and sent to share the Gospel (as the women at the tomb were on the first Easter) then please stop reading, for this is not a conversation for you. This discussion is for those who see themselves as progressive, from within parts of the Body of Christ and movements for justice that outwardly approve the leadership of women. This is the “we” in “We Have Made Great Strides & We Are Not There Yet.”

There is a difference between being “allowed” a vote and being listened to. There is a difference between being tolerated in a position, and being valued for the unique contributions to leadership only you bring.

Yet still, hard-won rights should be celebrated. This year the United States marks one hundred years since the ratification of the 19^th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote. We have more women in public office than ever before, but not enough to break the hold of patriarchy on the halls of government on all levels. My church body, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is celebrating 50 years since opening ordination to women in our predecessor church bodies. The first related milestone occurred earlier this year, 50 years from when the wording was changed on official documents from “man” to “person.” Later this fall we’ll mark 50 years since the first ordination of an actual woman pastor in our church body.

Anniversaries can be both a celebration and a call to get back to work. We celebrate in the midst of tension, proclaiming in the same breath:

We have made great strides, and we are not there yet!

Any opportunity – 100 years, 50, 40, 10 – to appreciate grassroots organizers and to show others there are movements they can join in process, works for me. We have indeed come a long way on equality in leadership, but it is not because anything was “given” to us. The right to be included is always hard-won by those who made great sacrifices. Can we picture ourselves taking a stand as they did? Celebrating the “firsts” is a way of testing that out.

There is no denying that the 100 year milestone for women’s suffrage and 50 year milestone for ordination both count for white women only. My denomination is actually celebrating a 50/40/10 anniversary: 50 years since the first white Lutheran woman was ordained, 40 years since the first African-American Lutheran woman was ordained, and 10 years since the first openly LGBTQ Lutheran woman was ordained. It hasn’t been the same journey for all of us, because of all the intersecting layers of oppression, in addition to all being women.

The stares and even blurted-out questions of “What are you?!” from strangers of different ages when I visit church members in hospitals or nursing homes wearing a clergy collar or dressed normally but observed giving them communion tell me that we are not all there yet. Women have been leaders in the Jesus movement since the beginning, and we have been specifically ordained in many Protestant denominations in this country for half a century. Yet we are clearly not all there yet. There are branches of mainline denominations that still do not ordain women. Certainly this exclusion is more common in Evangelical churches, where complementarianism is official teaching.

READ: Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

But we also have not arrived at equality:

—Until our minds have been renewed and adjusted enough to approach women’s leadership with hopeful questions about what the Holy Spirit might do through a woman’s perspective in the pastoral office, rather than focusing on perceived negatives . . .

—Until women’s voices are heard with authority, not talked over or only heard because a man re-presented the idea as his own . . .

—Until pastor interview committees stop asking only women candidates, “Who will take care of your children when you go to camp/attend retreats/lead worship/do a pastor’s job”. . .

—Until we discipline ourselves to stop referring to “mankind,” pretending that includes all. Until we acknowledge that language shapes us, and infiltrates our unconscious with more power than we can imagine—so we stop referring to God exclusively as Father . . .

. . . We are not there yet, because only some of us are even on this path.

Women bring the leadership the church needs now.

A humorous post made the rounds several years ago: Top Ten Reasons Why Men Should Not Be Ordained.

Of course, the reason it was so painfully funny was that by turning the tables, the absurdity of the arguments is exposed. How about a positive re-framing?

Top Ten Reasons You Need to Experience the Leadership of a Woman Pastor

10. Women have a depth of experience balancing multiple roles and the differing expectations of each simultaneously.

9. Jesus modeled servant leadership. Who has more practice at this than women? Think about many mothers you know.

8. A large part of ministry is emotional labor. Girls are socialized from a young age in our society to do emotional labor on behalf of those around them. That’s not necessarily a healthy pattern; but women are fully prepared for this part of ministry.

7. Many women have extensive experience navigating relationships between extended family, which is often how churches behave.

6. Remembering is key to pastoral care: remembering death anniversaries, to ask about how recovery is going, to notice the invisible labor of caregiving and stand in solidarity with those whose “work” goes unacknowledged.

5. Absolute rules must give way to the discipline and flexibility of God’s grace. Mothers especially can walk us down this path, adapting our discipline.

4. We tend to interpret Scripture and paint God in the image of those who preach for and teach us. We are missing so many of God’s mothering behaviors and other actions associated with femininity, without preachers to point them out to us.

3. Women have always tended the myriad details in church communities. It is time to pay them for it.

2. Women – perhaps especially mothers – can model a divided attention that reflects God’s attention not just for us, but for the whole world.

1. The Body of Christ, in order to act like Jesus and embody resurrection in this world, must be led by those who have been silenced and ignored.

It is well past time to truly value and seek out the God-given leadership gifts and calling to leadership of women pastors. And to be transformed by them!

Fire in the Sky: On Divisions and Forgiveness

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 12:00:57 GMT

“I’ve seen it raining fire in the sky.”- John Denver, Rocky Mountain High

Every August, for as long as I can remember, we’ve invited friends to join us in watching the Perseids Meteor Shower. Living high in Rockies, far from city lights, we enjoy amazingly dark skies. Sometimes clouds block the view; sometimes the moon is too bright. But every once in a while, we get a year like this one.

We were camping between the peaks in a meadow at 8300 feet in the middle of nowhere. The moon wouldn’t rise until almost midnight. We had a great site overlooking the lake with an expansive view of the sky. All we had to do was stay awake. I was a little sad that, unlike years previous, we had no one with whom to share the evening. We’ve only lived here two years. All the friends we made so far were at the church we just left. Only one stuck around.

Like most visitors in national forest campgrounds, our next-door neighbors waved politely but kept to themselves. These days, it seems like we are all a little more wary of speaking to strangers. Are they Trumpers? Liberals? The quality of their outdoor toys told me they were far above our socioeconomic level; Texas license plates told me they were more than likely Republicans. Back in civilization, we’d never sit down to lunch together.

But here’s what I did know: a glorious display of natural beauty and God’s majesty was about to unfold, and they didn’t even know to look for it. I just could not keep this information to myself. Late in the afternoon, as they were sitting out and enjoying the view, I air-knocked in the forest and walked into their camp. They waved me on in.

“I just want to make sure you two know about tonight’s meteor shower. You have a perfect site to watch the show.”

As my words sunk in, their demeanor leapt from cordial/reserved to unbridled excitement in about two seconds flat.

“A meteor shower! Tell us more.”

So I did. Pointing toward a peak in the northeastern sky, my finger traced out where they would probably originate, and which way they might fly. As I hiked through the brush back to our campfire, I remembered other extraordinary encounters with strangers. The first time I saw a whale breach in Hawaii, jumping up and down with a woman who was similarly gobsmacked by the sight. The rays of a setting sun exploding through a crack between canyon walls, bathing worshipers in an other-worldly glow. These, and other times, live in my memory as golden moments; extraordinary events to be treasured for their sanctity.

The overwhelming beauty and majesty of God’s creation made them memorable, but to me, sharing them with other human souls made them sacred.

READ: Environmental Racism & COVID-19

Eventually the sun set and dusk gave way to darkness. Stars came out one by one; then stars by tens, and stars by hundreds. The night grew so dark that the Milky Way glowed a faint green, something I’d never seen before. And finally, like quicksilver, they began to whisk out of the night, darting here and there- bright and faint, short-lived and long-tailed, arcing across the sky above the lake. Out of the corners of our eyes we’d catch movement and try to turn our heads in time. Every once in a while we’d be looking in just the right direction, straight on, and watch in amazement as they streaked along the peaks to the east. The sky would quiet for a while, with stationary points of light studding the darkness with diamonds. And we would wait.

Finally, Kevin and I could stay up no longer, so we put the fire out and turned in for the evening. The neighbors were still out there, still watching, with the occasional “ooh!” and “ahh!” whispered through the cold night air.

As we were packing up to leave the next morning, guess who came “air-knocking” through the forest?

“Eddie woke me up at 2:30am to come back outside!” She was just tickled, and surprised. Tickled that she and Eddie (each in their seventies) would do something so spontaneous; surprised by the unforeseen extravaganza orchestrated by God and shared with a stranger.

I never learned her name; I wouldn’t recognize her if I saw her on the street. I don’t know if she was a Republican, a Trumper, or an Evangelical Christian. These three categories of people have broken my heart and support a regime that threatens the very democracy my family has fought to protect. It’s all I can do to be polite to them, and I’m guessing they feel the same way. And therein lies the problem.

Our country is at the boiling point in the divide between these two people groups. We listen to different news sources and make up our minds accordingly. There is a great evil that perpetrates false conspiracy theories with the intent to divide us. Foreign leaders use high-ranking officials as puppets, also with the intent to divide us. Personally, I feel betrayed by the very people I trusted most, and powerless to stop the evil. It’s so tempting to take the low road. Fortunately, the words of Michelle Obama ring my ears: “When they go low, we go high.”

But ultimately, it’s the words of my Savior that are written on my heart. “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” The list goes on and on. Even though so much of the Evangelical Church has betrayed the teachings of Jesus Christ, his word stands forever. One of his own disciples betrayed him. His closest friends turned their backs, and his own church murdered him. Still he loved them, and gave his life for us all.

As hard as it seems at the moment, this time in history will pass. What now seems apocalyptic will, at some point, have scholars scratching their heads and saying, “What the heck was that about?” I’m old enough to remember the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK. I remember Vietnam and Watergate and riots and Kent State. Throughout history we’ve been infiltrated by evil. This is the only instance in my lifetime where the church was blatantly responsible, but it’s far from the only time in history.

And still, God loves us. And God instructs us to do the same.

If our country is to survive, we will all have to forgive eventually. The least I can do today is try to resist the urge to go low, and to see the person rather than the policy.

If I succeed, that will be quite enough to accomplish for one day. Whether I do or not, I will try again tomorrow.

Good News About Tony

Sun, 20 Sep 2020 12:00:31 GMT

Editor’s Note: This update was shared by Tony’s family at tonycampolo.org on September 10th.

Dear Friends of Tony Campolo,

The best news is that we expect Tony to come home on Friday, October 2!

Never have I seen anyone work harder at anything than my dear husband has at his physical therapy. The two therapists who work with him here are terrific. They have become like family to both of us. Because of their encouragement, Tony always wants to do more than he did the day before. The expertise and time these two women have invested in Tony are major factors in how much he has improved in the 12 weeks since his stroke on June 20.

In my last update, I said our goal was to have Tony accepted at a facility where his therapy would be more intensive, with multiple sessions each day. However, after his application had been submitted, I began to question the wisdom of having him transfer to a place where, in addition to having a much more demanding therapy program, Tony would not know anyone and my visits would be limited. When we talked about it, Tony said he really did not want to go anywhere else, but thought he was pleasing me by agreeing to go there. We talked with the head of the therapy department here, and she was very supportive. She thought we were making a good decision. About an hour later, we got a phone call saying Tony had been accepted by the other place!

Both Tony and I believe God showed us the way on that one. It would have been a mistake for Tony to leave this situation where he is doing so well. After he moves back home, he will be able to work with the same therapists on an outpatient basis.

READ: A Prayer Request for Tony and Update from the Campolo Family

In the meantime, it continues to be a delight for us to read the emails, cards and notes you send to Tony. Many begin with something like, “You don’t know me, but…” or “You probably don’t remember me, but 30 years ago…,” followed by a story about how something Tony did or said or wrote made a positive difference in the life of the writer. Tony remarked to me today that he likes to read those stories because they let him know that some of his most important Kingdom-work consists of things he did not even know about until now.

It is also wonderful to hear from people with whom we have lost touch, whose names bring back so many fond memories. Tony is especially interested in what folks write to him about the impact Eastern University, the Campolo Center for Ministry or Red Letter Christians has had on them. These organizations and the people who have dedicated their lives to making them what God wants them to be are never far from Tony’s thinking, and are always in our prayers. Tony would like you to pray for them when you pray for him.

Let me close by saying that, as good as it feels to look back, Tony and I feel even better to be looking forward again, eager to see what God has in mind for us in the days to come.

Peace and love and many thanks,
Peggy

P.S. For those who missed hearing Tony preach this past summer, The Temple, in Ocean Park, Maine has allowed us to offer the video Tony made for their virtual church service on Sunday, August 2, 2020. Just click on this link.