Tell a Different Christian Story
The people who surrounded and invaded the US Capitol on January 6th did so under the banner of Christ. That statement may seem too blunt, but consider the facts:
We cannot escape the truth that to most observers this was an overtly Christian event. So, what do we do with that truth?
In the minutes and hours before the event, the crowd could be heard chanting both the name of Jesus and the name of Donald Trump. The speakers at the preceding rally included Christian ministers. Outside the Capitol, we saw banners that read JESUS 2020 along with TRUMP 2020 banners, and the people who entered the Capitol carried the Christian flag with the Confederate flag onto the chamber floor.
Some of us would like to say the people who committed violence at the Capitol were not really Christian. They were only pretending to be Christian. Or they were outside the bounds of mainstream Christianity. Their violence and their racism (evidenced by the Confederate flag) made them un-Christian. But that, too, goes against the facts.
Most of Christian history is riddled with violence. It’s probable that ever since Emperor Constatine took the cross as his battle standard in 312 CE, Christians somewhere in the world have been at war with someone else. Some of the bloodiest periods in world history — the Inquisition and the Hundred Years War — were perpetrated by Christians. Violence has been more a part of our story than not.
The same is true of racist causes. For six hundred years, the Church of Jesus Christ has been at the forefront of race-based violence. The greatest attempted genocide in the history of humanity, the attempted extermination of the native peoples of the Americas, was undergirded by the Christian theology of the Doctrine of Discovery. (A theology the Central Pacific Conference only officially rejected in 2019.) Likewise, race-based chattel slavery is a uniquely Christian invention. Our sibling religions of Judaism and Islam had slavery of a different kind, as did some African religions. Many Asian religions had caste systems that led to serfdom, and some American religions had human sacrifice, but race-based chattel slavery is uniquely Christian and was upheld by Christian theologians. The same goes for the theology that undergirded segregation and Jim Crow laws in the South.
We can’t hide from the fact that the insurrectionists on January 6th claimed the banner of Christ. And we can’t pretend that people who advocate violence and racism aren’t real Christians. So what can we do?
What we can do is acknowledge that this is part of our Christian story, often part of the story we ourselves have unconsciously accepted (like the Doctrine of Discovery), and then we can begin to tell a different story. We can confess, repent, and live differently.
In the Missouri Mid-South Conference, I served as an Open & Affirming Steward, ushering churches through the process and conversations of becoming ONA. Inevitably, in those conversations, someone would ask, “Our church already says all are welcome, so why do we have to say LGBTQ people are welcome?”
My answer was always the same, “Because in our society, people assume the default setting for church is anti-gay, and if you are not explicitly pro-gay, then everyone will assume you are anti-gay. No queer person will ever ask if the All Are Welcome sign means them, because they’ll just assume it doesn’t.”
What we saw on January 6th was what most Americans consider to be the default setting for Christianity in the United States. It was an act performed under the banner of Christ, and I predict it will not be the last such violent act this year. Those who research such things, point to a growing threat of racist Christian supremacist terrorism. (If you’re interested in the theological and philosophical underpinnings of this movement, I highly recommend the podcast Bundyville.) We are moving into a period where Christianity will face the kinds of stresses Islam faced following 2001 — when people will ask, “Where are the ministers and laypeople speaking out against this?”
If we are to navigate this coming period with grace and courage, we must become adept at explicitly rejecting racist and violent Christian theologies. We must study the Doctrine of Discovery, and know why it is bad theology. (You can do that here.) We must face squarely the racist theologies in our own families and churches — and even in ourselves — and reject them. We will not be able to say, “We love everyone” and assume people know that means we’re against racism and violence. We will have to reject racist and violent theologies explicitly. We will have to do it repeatedly and loudly. And we will have to educate ourselves so when we say we’re different, we mean what we’re saying.
We can also remind ourselves of others who have rejected violence and racism and who are saints of the Christian story. From the beginning, there have been Christians like St. Martin who, we’re told, put down his sword and took up the cause of people who lived in poverty. This week, we celebrated the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose Christian faith spurred him to work for racial justice, for justice for the impoverished, and to speak out against an unjust war. On January 10th, we remembered our own baptisms, and our call to be saints who resist evil. We can hear that call, committing to resist and repent every day.
Siblings, sisters, and brothers, although the Christian flag has already been carried alongside the Confederate flag into the broken-down doors of the US Capitol, and the symbolism of that image has seared people’s minds and taught them a lesson about Christianity, we can be the face of a different kind of Christianity.
Now, more than ever, we need you to be the United Church of Christ for our time and place.
As always, thank you for being the Church.
Blessings,
Tyler
Subscribe to receive email notifications each time Tyler posts a new article
