Watching Vice President JD Vance, a professed Christian, stand before our nation this week and repeatedly lie about the Trump Administration’s illegal and immoral assaults on our America and its people, I’m reminded again that White, self-identified Christians have caused all of this.
They have fully, grievously, and irreparably failed us all.
If not for them, Donald Trump’s video confession of assault over a decade ago is a deal breaker.
If not for them, his ridiculing of a disabled reporter is a bridge too far.
If not for them, he isn’t declared a Christian.
If not for them, he isn’t elected.
If not for them, he isn’t reelected
If not for them, there are no stomach-turning photo ops of opportunistic phony religious sycophants laying hands on him.
If not for them, thousands of people aren’t being terrorized by their own Government right now.
If not for the White Conservative Church, sick people aren’t creating GoFundMe pages to stay alive,
Nazis aren’t marching through our streets and through the halls of Congress,
our elections aren’t polluted by murderous dictators,
his unhinged, racist vanity rallies are deservedly empty,
climate change isn’t ridiculed and disregarded,
and gun victims get more than #thoughtsandprayers platitudes.
If not for the White supposed Christians, bigots aren’t emboldened to proudly parade hatred in the light of day,
sexual assault survivors aren’t belittled and traumatized anew,
all of his lies are named and condemned,
he is held accountable for his crimes and his immorality,
this planet is safer, more compassionate, and more just.
and we aren’t saturated in tribalism and chaos and suffering.
The irony of our current national nightmare is that despite all their sanctimonious sermonizing and finger-wagging condemnation and sky-is-falling histrionics, the white Evangelical Church has enabled, nurtured, and championed more inequity, more immorality, and more misery in these days than any other entity, and there is no close second.
For the disparate masses of the world, the Conservative American Church has become a barrier to belonging, a sanctuary for supremacy, and a hostile presence for the least of these.
By its marriage to a politics of exclusion, the white Evangelical Church has failed the poor, women, people of color, gender fluid human beings, and non-heteronormative people.
It’s failed immigrants and refugees and foreigners; vulnerable and marginalized communities; non-religious and non-Christians.
It has failed everyone outside the tiny gated community of the white and the wealthy.
This is indeed a tragedy.
But more than anyone, the white Evangelical Church has failed Jesus.
They have misappropriated his likeness, hijacked his name, and weaponized his message into something grotesque and oppressive—and it is rightfully repelling good people.
If not for the white Evangelical Church, people might see the peacemaking, wound-healing, leper-embracing, crowd-feeding Jesus that deserves to be seen and run toward it.
If not for them, religion might not be a trigger of the worst abuse and the greatest harm and the fiercest violence that has visited them.
If not for the White Evangelical Church, Christianity might be the refuge for the hurting and the hopeless that it was intended to be, and it can be again.
Other White Christians are going to have to fix this grievous national error.
Followers of Jesus can be the healers and lovers of people that we were called to be if we have the courage to be, if we have the strength to oppose this bitterness, to flatly reject it, and to leave it, instead of making a bed or making peace with it as so many have.
So, I say cue the exodus, throw open the doors, and let the good people stream out of the pews and into the streets.
May that thing become a deserving dead relic of the distant past; a dusty, darkened museum of another fully fallen empire, a decaying monument to a soon-to-be obsolete hatred.
Let us set a table big enough for everyone who has been failed by this Frankensteined freak show claiming to be of God, and let us remind people that where Jesus is, there is good news for the poor, embrace for the unloved, rest for the weary, and a belly-busting meal that demands no prerequisite but hunger.
Let us make sure love gets the last, loudest word.
Yes, the white Conservative Church has failed us, but actual followers of Jesus cannot fail him, and we cannot fail one another.
It’s time to turn over this table, as Jesus would.
