Photo by Edward Cisneros, Unsplash
Photo by Edward Cisneros, Unsplash
White evangelicals have misappropriated Jesus's likeness, hijacked his name, and weaponized his message into something grotesque and oppressive—and it is rightfully repelling good people.
Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz
Over the last ten years, self-identified followers of Jesus have almost singlehandedly destroyed all that was good and decent and beautiful in America by hitching themselves to a monster and refusing to let go, no matter how unrepentantly evil he has proven himself to be.
I mean, think about it:
- If not for them, his vile Access Hollywood video confession of assault is a deal breaker in 2016.
- 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 or reelected.
- If not for them, there are no stomach-turning photo ops of opportunistic religious sycophants laying hands on him.
- If not for them, thousands of brown-skinned families aren’t violated, terrorized, and treated like animals.
- If not for them, no one breaches the Capitol on January 6th and throws our electoral process into chaos.
We are living in a completely different timeline, now, because of them.
If not for white, alleged Christians in our government,
- sick people aren’t creating GoFundMe pages to get routine medical care,
- our elections aren’t polluted by techbro oligarchs.
- women aren’t losing their fundamental liberties,
- and ICE isn’t murdering people in cold blood and without accountability.
- If not for White Evangelicals, his unhinged, racist vanity rallies are empty.
- If not for them, climate change isn’t dismissed, science isn’t opposed, expertise isn’t mocked, and sound medicine isn’t disregarded,
- If not for them, gun violence victims get more than #thoughtsandprayers platitudes.
- If not for them, every pedophile and rapist in the Epstein Files is facing a legal reckoning right now.
- If not for these Christians, MAGA is the extremist fringe movement it should always have been.
Talk about losing the plot. Talk about mission drift. Talk about gaining the world and losing your soul. Talk about effing everything up for this monster… for this human garbage… for this loveless, joyless, empty, vacant nothing.
If not for the professed followers of Jesus, throughout this country, bigots aren’t emboldened to proudly parade their hatred in the light of day.
Sexual assault survivors aren’t belittled and traumatized anew.
Every one of his lies is named and condemned.
He is held accountable for his crimes and his immorality and his trampling of the Constitution.
If not for them, this planet is safer, more compassionate, and more just—period.
As a white person who grew up in the Church and pastored for decades, that’s a tough pill to force down.
Ironically, despite all their sanctimonious sermonizing, finger-wagging condemnation, and sky-is-falling histrionics, the white Evangelical Church has enabled, nurtured, and championed more inequity and more misery in these days than any other entity, and there is no close second.
For the disparate masses of the world, American Christians have 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 Conservative Church has failed the poor, women, people of color, gender fluid human beings, the disabled, and non-heteronormative people.
It’s failed immigrants and refugees and foreigners; vulnerable and marginalized communities; non-religious and non-Christian human people.
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.
As someone still aspiring to a life of faith and still trying to speak into my religious tradition, it’s sobering to admit that we’re not here as a nation in this brutal battle for our existential life, we’re not at the precipice of authoritarianism, and we’re not steeped in this unapologetic supremacy, if not for people claiming to be devoted to the same Jesus I’ve grown up trying to emulate.
There are tens of millions of white people here, both Christian and non-Christian, who wake up every day working to be agents of kindness and generosity in this world, who are driven to sickness by the irreparable harm being done to this nation, to humanity, to the planet in the name of God.
And we, not people of color, not immigrants, we white people, are going to need to be the ones to make our presence felt in our neighborhoods, on social media, in school board meetings, and at the polls, and drive these charlatans and frauds out of power and influence, and into the places of irrelevance and shame they so richly deserve.
John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities. When not actively working for a more compassionate planet, John enjoys spending time with his family, exercising, cooking, and having time in nature. He is the author of A Bigger Table, Hope and Other Superpowers, Low, and Stuff That Needs to Be Said.
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