There can be only one Jesus, and he was a person of color murdered in the streets simply for proclaiming God’s kingdom, where the poor are blessed, not forgotten.
Letting go of the past and moving forward is a splendid suggestion. I’m just wondering how ministers and pastors will entice people to return to church. We saw how easily evil infiltrated our faith. Now we need to see how it is routed.
We recognize that evangelicalism, and white evangelicalism, in particular, has been susceptible to the heresy of Christian nationalism because of a long history of faith leaders accommodating white supremacy. We choose to speak out now because we do not want to be quiet accomplices in this on-going sin.
We must not sell our souls for the lesser power of nationalism, for nationalism will reap what it sows and get what it deserves—which from John’s perspective, is death.
This theocratic theology contrasts with historic Christian polity, based on the life and teachings of Jesus who espouses a domain called the Kingdom of Heaven, different from and challenging to the governing entity leading the country.
As professors—one a politically-engaged theologian and the other a theologically-engaged political scientist—we admit that this situation leaves us concerned and scratching our heads. In our current American context, we wonder: what does it mean to live an authentic life of faith?
With all due respect to the literal house of worship that stands at the center of the lower 48, we should not be working to preserve a chapel founded on denigrating “the Chinese” as godless, Black Americans as criminal, or Indigenous Americans as non-existent. We should be tearing down that figurative chapel instead, sundering flag from cross once and for all.
Unless the church in America is to be consigned to the ash heap of social history, we must identify actions that are hateful and unchristian, cast them out, and redouble our work for justice and repair. Seeking accountability for GiveSendGo by calling on Amazon to drop the site from its cloud servers is a good place to start.