A Positive Vision for Christianity

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”  And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the great and first commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 22:36-40 (NASB)

He has told you, O man, what is good;

And what does the Lord require of you

But to do justice, to love kindness,

And to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:8 (NASB)

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I Corinthians 13:13 (NIV)

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

James 1:27 (NIV)

“Love God. Love others. Don’t take yourself too seriously.” ~ Pastor Jack Stiles

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An online acquaintance challenged me to write a positive vision for Christianity, so here goes. I have been working on this for a few months now – writing and rewriting – it just takes a while to get thoughts like this down.

***

It is easy to dwell on the negative right now, because American [white, Evangelical] Christianity has essentially gone over to the Dark Side in the last few years.

As in, I don’t recognize it as having any resemblance to the example or teachings of Christ.

As in, politics that are indistinguishable from those of the Ku Klux Klan - and that goes for the candidates, parties, and yes, POLICIES that they support..

As in, putting an ur-Fascist in the White House, and being the only people I know who justify abusing children to keep brown-skinned immigrants out of our country.

It has been a seriously depressing couple of years. I have lost my church connection, a number of relationships (including some extended family), and I have had to come to terms with the fact that many people I thought I knew and liked are white supremacists. (Although they, of course deny it…but if it quacks like a duck...)

(Yes, yes, #notallevangelicals…80%...just saying. Call me back when you are ready to take moral responsibility for the damage you caused…)

But while I have lost faith in the organized American church, I have not lost my faith in Christ, or my love for what Christianity should and could be. And for what Christianity has been for the truly faithful over the centuries.

It is hard to nail down a comprehensive vision, and I don’t think it is helpful. If my time in Bill Gothard’s cult taught me anything, it is that the more one focuses on details, the more likely one is to get off track. Christ Himself seemed rather unconcerned with the things the religious leaders of his time cared about. He wasn’t focused on doctrinal purity (inviting Samaritans to the table?), sexual moralism (between hanging with prostitutes and giving “loose” women a pass, He made some enemies), political power (which He rejected), or the letter of the law. It was all about the heart, and it was all about an upside-down Kingdom. And, as He pretty clearly stated (but American Evangelicals refuse to accept), our eternal destiny turns, not on mental assent to theological dogma, but on how we treat the most vulnerable in our world.

I listed the four passages above, because they are summaries that lay out what I believe are the CORE elements of Christian practice. (One of the mistakes of Protestantism, in my opinion, was a shift from Christianity as primarily a practice, to one primarily of belief. The early church was largely the opposite, where creeds and beliefs - and the future books of the New Testament - were embraced as helpful to the practice of living as Christian, not the core of the faith.) Here in America, white Christians have largely abandoned any pretense of Christianity as a practice focused on our fellow humans, and made it into an unholy amalgam of Culture Wars™ (essentially a demand to return to the hierarchies and injustices of the past - and roll back modern human rights), political loyalty and power, White Nationalism, and sexual moralism against the poor.

So here is a positive vision as I see it. I have broken this down into sections based on the verses above.

***

1. Love the Lord Your God With All Your Heart, Soul, and Mind

I have noted before that one reason we left our last church (and are uninterested right now in looking for another) is that we were unwilling to leave our intellect and - more importantly - our conscience at the door. We are not allowed to use our minds or our hearts once we cross that threshold, because to do so would be to reject the cruel and toxic political commitments necessary to be part of the group.

Here is my alternative:

Loving God with our minds.

This means an open embrace of Truth, wherever we find it. As Aquinas believed, ALL truth is God’s truth. He and others once truly believed that the universe we live in was God’s other book - it tells of us of Him too - and in ways that no ancient text can.

Thus, Christianity should embrace science, not distrust it. The scientific method has enabled us to learn vast amounts - more than ever in history - about our world. That’s a good thing! Our faith should not be so fragile that it requires that we never embrace new knowledge that causes us to re-think some of the details of our theology. The fact that the sun is the center of our solar system and that a supermassive black hole is at the center of our galaxy does not shake my faith. The fact that the universe is ~13.8 billion years old and that our solar system is ~4.6 billion years old does not shake my faith. The overwhelming evidence that life on earth has evolved over time, that humans are relatively recent (and share common ancestors with other animals), and that death has existed long before humanity, has required some adjustments in my theological views - but that isn’t a reason to reject the whole faith. It has, however, required me to acknowledge that the human writers of the bible didn’t have all the information - they wrote with the understanding of their time and place. It makes it a bit harder to worship the bible as an idol, obviously.

So, as a positive vision, we Christians should embrace science, even - especially - when it forces us to change our viewpoints. If the universe was written by God, then we understand Him better as we understand the universe. We should embrace that.

Likewise, in a theological sense, humans are “inspired.” God breathed life into us - and we are made in His image. We therefore reflect in some way the Divine, and we learn about God as we learn about ourselves and others. (As Saint John put it, if you can’t love your fellow humans who you have seen, you can’t possibly love God, who you haven’t…)

We should therefore seek to understand humanity - and others - and embrace what we discover. This means, sometimes, that we discover things that contradict our previous beliefs. That’s okay! Just like we tweaked our view of the universe as better information came in, we can also tweak our view of humanity.

As part of this, we need to be pragmatic, not dogmatic. If our beliefs aren’t “working” - that is, if they harm rather than help - the problem is with our beliefs. I am reminded about Galen, who wrote about human anatomy after dissecting animals. Later medical researchers would assume that if Galen and the actual corpses they dissected didn’t match, the corpse was in error, not Galen. We do the same thing today with psychology (and yes, sexuality.) If the “experts” of the distant past said something, they must be right, reality be damned. A positive Christianity shouldn’t do this. We should assume the error is in our understanding, not in reality – and change our opinions when we get better information.

We should also embrace the messiness of history. We were not always the good guys. The world isn’t getting worse. We have gotten things badly wrong in the past - in ways that hurt other humans. Rather than trying to recreate the past, we should learn from it, and reject its injustices. We need to stop perpetuating racism and misogyny and calling them “Christian values.”

To summarize, my vision of a positive Christianity would be one where our minds are fully engaged as we worship God, and we explore our world with an open mind. In contrast to the Evangelical/Fundamentalist practice, where our minds exist only to “prove” to ourselves what has already been “revealed” by past interpretations of scripture.

Loving God with our souls.

I do not profess to understand exactly how this works, so I will just give an approximation - my best attempt to put into words what cannot really be put into words.

I am a classical musician. Specifically, I play violin (and occasionally viola) with the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra and other groups here in town. Sometime, I should write about how I became a violinist, but for now, suffice it to say that I don’t just play because I can, and sort of like it. I have a genuine passion for the instrument, and for music. Music touches my soul, and it deeply affects me in a way I can’t explain. Even after hours of practicing something, and knowing exactly what a piece will be like before the performance, I still get chills and tear up in certain places. I can feel a wrenching in my soul at so many moments. There is an ecstasy that goes along with great music that is hard to explain to those who haven’t experienced it.

That is how it is with worship.

I cannot explain my connection to the Divine any more than I can my connection with music. There is a soul communion that is not rational, logical, or explicable, really. This is why, for me, I believe in God in part because I believe in music. Both are elements of transcendence.

When I was in my early teens, our family spent time in the Charismatic movement. Now, I realize a lot of the excesses and problems there - I was part of it, right? But there really was something going on, and it was a oneness of soul with the Divine. I don’t know how else to explain it. I think that is why much of the best worship music of the last 60 years has come out of the Charismatic movement. The transcendence of music and a mystical communion with the Divine go together.

On a somewhat related note, the Charismatic churches I have attended have generally been more racially integrated than the others. I believe that when you have the emotional/spiritual/mystical experience shared together, it is much harder to “other” people who are different.

So my vision for a positive Christianity would be one where we embrace, rather than fear, mysticism. We should share an unexplainable one-ness with the Divine and with our fellow humans.

Loving God with our Hearts.

This is one which seems to have nearly disappeared from the modern American white church. There is a pathological lack of empathy toward those outside of the tribe. Which means toward people lower on the socioeconomic ladder, those of different race, those of different sex or gender, those of different sexual orientation, those of different national origin, those of different religion (and that includes different denominations too), or different political party. Everyone outside the Tribe is viewed as a threat to be vanquished or destroyed, not as a neighbor to be loved as one’s self.

I’ll get into this a bit more in a later section, but my vision of a positive Christianity is that we should be more empathetic than everyone else, not less. We should have consciences sensitive to the ways we hurt others, and actually focus on being loving toward those different than us. As I said, a totally opposite approach.

2. Love Your Neighbor As Yourself.

Of all the things I have seen over the last several years, the most distressing to me is that this commandment - the one that governs how we interact with our fellow humans - is no longer believed by most American Christians. I have asked, over and over, when discussing seemingly ANY political issue, how the position the Christian was taking was showing love for his/her neighbor. And each time, the duty was either rejected outright, or explained away as unnecessary in this instance. Immigration. Health Care. Police Brutality. Refugees. Public Benefits. The Environment. Mass Incarceration. It doesn’t matter. On every issue, the one thing that didn’t matter was loving one’s neighbor. Instead, pure selfishness seemed to be the “Christian” position.

I even read on a friend’s thread on refugees lately: “Why do we owe a duty to let these people in?” - from a freaking self-proclaimed “christian.”

My view of a positive Christianity is this: whenever we discuss something that affects our fellow humans, whether politics, our personal behavior, or whatever, we should always start with “is this loving my neighbor as myself.” If we cannot show how what we do to others is loving - and what we wish would be done to us - then we should not hold that position or take that action.

Sadly, my ATHEIST friends are far better at thinking this way than a majority of my “christian” friends.

This should not be so. We as Christians should be known - renowned! - for being loving to the point of personal sacrifice. Why on earth is this controversial?

3. Do Justice.

The modern (white) American Christian vision of justice is thoroughly emaciated - and rather unrelated to the Biblical concept.

Throughout the bible, the root word we usually translate “righteousness” is better translated “justice.” And justice doesn’t mean (as we tend to believe here in White America) that criminals get punished as harshly as possible – particularly the brown-skinned ones.

Justice is so much more than that. As the African American church has understood since the days of slavery, true Justice encompasses everything about our society. That some have mansions while others go without housing, food, or health care isn’t a minor issue. It is a JUSTICE issue. (Seriously, have you actually ever read the Prophets? Or the early church fathers such as Augustine? Seriously, read that link. St. Augie would be too radical for the Democrats these days, let alone the GOP...or white Evangelicals. But I repeat myself.) When our nation has the highest incarceration rate in the world (let that sink in…), that isn’t a minor problem - it is a JUSTICE issue. When low income neighborhoods like Flint, Michigan lack safe water for years because of unwillingness to pay for safe water, that is a JUSTICE issue. When 12 year olds with toy guns are murdered by the police (which curiously seems to happen almost exclusively to non-white kids), that is a JUSTICE issue. When the number one cause of bankruptcy and financial disaster in the richest nation in the history of the world is illness (both medical bills and loss of income are big factors)  - that is a JUSTICE issue. When the top 1% has doubled its share of our national GDP over the last 30 years, while real wages have gone down for the bottom 50% - that is a JUSTICE issue. When younger workers have seen their wealth decrease by two-thirds since I was a child - that is a JUSTICE issue. When hate crimes are on the rise against religious, racial, and sexual minorities - yet white Evangelicals believe they are somehow more persecuted - that is a JUSTICE issue - and it explains why white Evangelicals are fighting so hard against the cause of justice: they mistake loss of privilege for persecution.  There are so many others I could mention. Lack of access to health care - particularly mental health care. Unaffordable housing - which is worst for younger people, who find it hard to afford the basics, let alone have children. Crippling school debts – essentially redistributing the future wages of young people to older people – and lenders. High suicide rates for LGBTQ people - particularly children rejected by their parents because toxic religious leaders tell them too. Our world is full of injustice, and Christians here in America - the white ones at least - are largely silent. Except when they vocally support the oppressors.

This whole term “social justice” is unfortunate, because it relegates one significant facet of justice to a sideline - something optional. Whereas, if you actually take scripture seriously (which is different than taking it literally, in many cases), it is inescapable that God will judge nations according to whether they act with justice toward the most vulnerable in their population.

A positive Christianity should be zealous for justice. In fact, 150 years ago, there were many examples of this. It used to be the Christians who sought social reform, higher wages, health care and food for the poor, care for the vulnerable, and so on. Now, it is the “christians” who are the greatest obstacle to social justice. How did this happen? (I have some ideas…)

At minimum, a positive Christianity should make a priority out of helping the needy. The poor, the sick, the homeless, the vulnerable in our society should feel that Christians are their greatest ally, there best source of aid, and the one place they can go for help without being humiliated.

The opposite is true these days.

4. Love Mercy.

Another concept which has been so perverted in American Christianity that it is unrecognizable.

Let me say it: the rich do not need mercy - yet they always get it. The powerful do not need mercy - yet they always get it.

I dare you, follow a defense attorney around for a few weeks. There is no doubt that the criminal justice system looks a LOT different for the poor than for the rich. If you don’t have bail money sitting around, well, you might have to sit in jail for a few months until you can get a trial. You’ll lose your job. Your health insurance. Your kids. And the jury will assume the cop is right and you are wrong. Particularly if you aren’t white.

It isn’t an accident that we have the highest incarceration rate in the world. It also isn’t an accident that we disproportionately incarcerate minorities, the poor, the disabled, and the mentally ill. Because we view “mercy” as something you show to someone in the [white] mainstream of society who “just screwed up,” not the “thugs” or “animals” that we see those lower than in society as being.

Just one example from the last month is the way we view immigrants and refugees. Someone flees violence or poverty and comes here. They have no place to stay on the other side of the border while they wait (perhaps years) for an asylum petition to be heard. So they cross over and try to find work and housing.

We take their kids away, lock them up, and call them criminals.

We punish them for the slightest error in accessing our complex immigration system, while giving a pass to sexual predators who have money and power.

No mercy.

Not even basic human decency.

Mercy is something WE want. Not something we extend to others.

Okay, except for, say, pastors (or presidential candidates) who abuse women. They get mercy.

Morgan Guyton wrote a fantastic piece on the real biblical meaning of "mercy." It's a lot different than what I was taught. It incorporates the rescuing of the oppressed from evil.

A positive vision for Christianity would be that we be eager to show mercy to those who have the least margin for error. Not to those who use “mercy” as a cover to allow them to abuse others. Sadly, my experience over the last couple of years are that American white Christians exemplify the opposite of this, eager to forgive the powerful, while kicking those who are down.

5. Walk Humbly

This one is related to loving God with our minds. A Christian should understand that our ability to understand reality is limited. We don’t see the whole picture. The writers of the bible didn’t either. And those who interpreted it didn’t either. All of our beliefs should be held lightly. Our trust - our faith - is in God, not our beliefs.

So many things about our beliefs have changed over time. Just as one example, note the vast difference between the polygamy of the Old Testament, the [sort of] monogamy of the New Testament, and the companionate marriage model most of us live in today. Or the fact that slavery is no longer acceptable. We haven’t magically arrived at perfection now, and we haven’t in the past either. We see the truth but dimly, as through a glass. We should be on a path, following, not screaming at everyone else that they are wrong.

As Christians, we should realize that there is no one true “culture” of Christianity. As my missionary-kid parents taught me, Christianity looks rather different around the world. It also looks different across history. White American culture (either of the present, the 1950s, or the 1850s) is not “christianity” in any real sense. And certainly, the culture of Colonialism, Imperialism, Slavery, and Jim Crow is not “christian” in an recognizable sense. Christianity is about imitating Christ, not conforming to any particular culture. We should be humble enough to realize that there is a human tendency to confuse culture and Christ-following, and to judge people more by whether they conform to our culture than whether they look like Christ. We should be humble enough to recognize that a lot about our own self-image and how we view others is just about cultural differences - and have the grace to let go of our cultural chauvinism long enough to recognize the image of God in others.

Humility should be the second most noticeable thing about Christians. (Love, of course, being first.) Rather than always lecturing everyone else about what they are (in our view) doing wrong, we might spend some time listening. Rather than our obsession with making detailed lists of what isn’t and isn’t sin (particularly when it concerns genitals), maybe we could do some serious soul-searching about how Christianity in America became so toxic and cruel.

Right now, of course, the last thing that comes to mind with American Evangelicalism is humility. Overweening arrogance is more like it.

My vision for Christianity is that we spend far less time lecturing those outside our tribe, and a LOT more time listening. And a LOT more time helping, loving, caring for others.

Walking humbly.

Following God as best we understand it, while leaving others alone. Seeking to serve others, rather than lecture and harass. (Or persecute, as Evangelicalism is hell bent on doing to LGBTQ people.) Seeking to live quiet, upright, loving lives where we are, and with the people in our lives.

I suspect if we started doing this, a lot of the hostility we receive from those outside our tribe would go away. We are disliked because we are assholes - and that isn’t a good thing by any definition.

6. Faith, Hope, and Love.

Every so often, I re-read I Corinthians 13. (And, often, when I play weddings, it is the reading.) Every time, I am struck by the way Saint Paul dismisses what we often value as “spiritual,” from doctrine to gifts to martyrdom and persecution, as useless and worthless, without love. Maya Angelou is purported to have said:

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

There is a lot of truth in this. Even when we do good things, if we do them condescending to those we help, they will feel it. This relates to “walk humbly” above. Recognize that much of what we attribute to our virtue is actually just our privilege.

Back to I Corinthians 13. Faith. We have faith in God, not in our beliefs about God. As Pastor Stiles (more about him later) also said regarding the End Times, “I’m a pan-tribulationist. I believe that with God in charge, it will all pan out in the end.” If we really have faith in God, not in our theological beliefs, then the rest of this is relatively unimportant. Whether we get it all right in our heads, whether we figure everything out...not that important. But what is important is that we love. That is the greatest. The greatest commandment. The core of our faith. Our hope in Christ, even, is that He is Love.

My positive vision for Christianity is that we would be defined by our love. By our willingness to truly love our neighbors as we love ourselves. To seek their good as well as our own. When we are laughed at and derided, it should because we are silly enough to love too much, not because we act malevolently towards those outside our tribe.

They shall know us to be followers of Christ by our love.

7. Caring for Widows and Orphans.

Saint James includes this, and I have heard it quoted enough times. The problem is, it is usually out of context, and cited to mean exactly the opposite of what was intended.

It is impossible to read the book of James from start to finish without noting that he has a theme: favoritism toward the rich. All of those proof texts from the book end up used to mean something different - ignoring the elephant. The point Saint James is making is to stop kissing the butts of the wealthy - they ARE the problem! - and start expressing your faith in caring for the needy.

I think this verse expresses that general sentiment in a way that would have particularly resonated in the culture in which it was written. In a culture where the polis, the patriarchal family structure (including slaves, naturally) of the Greco-Roman world, functioned as the social safety net (such as it was), the most vulnerable were the women and children who had no one to support them. It corresponds to Matthew 25 and “the least of these.” Care for the vulnerable.

In our modern world, the social, political, and economic systems are a bit different. And so too are those who are most vulnerable. This is not to say that widows and orphans are not at risk. Of course they are. But they are not the only ones. (And better mortality rates have made them more rare than in antiquity.) Today, I would say that the elderly, the disabled, those with lower incomes, and others on the margins of society are the modern American equivalent. If you want to see who is vulnerable, look at poverty statistics. You will find a shockingly high percentage of children, the elderly, and the disabled.

I think in this case, it is reasonable to expand from limiting our care to “widows and orphans” to those who are needy today.

(Side note here: I have not failed to note that the GOP “health care” plan involved cutting billions in funding from the programs which provide healthcare to children, the elderly, the poor, and the disabled. And no, private charity is in no way equipped to make up the difference. If your policies will harm these vulnerable groups, I seriously doubt they are motivated by Christian values…)

A positive vision for Christianity is one in which we always seek to help those who are in need, by whatever means are available to us. That doesn’t exclude our own giving. Of course we should do that. But it also means addressing the causes of poverty and hardship in our world, and supporting public policies that fight against the tendency of the rich and powerful to further enrich themselves and oppress the poor. Otherwise, you are just treating the symptoms of a larger problem. To quote Hélder Pessoa Câmara, "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist."

In the past, there have been Christians who led the way in advocating for a better world - one more compassionate to the vulnerable. St. Augustine encouraged the poor to advocate for better wages and conditions. Christians were at the forefront of movements for social justice of all kinds. (Alas, Christians of another stripe have always opposed them. See Slavery and Jim Crow for the most obvious examples.)

A positive vision for Christianity would be a return to the values of fighting for the vulnerable, not against them. (See more below on this.)  

8. Keeping oneself from being polluted by the world.

This too is a greatly misunderstood and misused verse. These days, it is a cudgel to beat anyone (particularly the impoverished) over the head when they have sex. That’s pretty much the way it is used in modern American Christianity. Being “worldly” is being sexual - unless you are married and middle-to-upper class. This is a rather modern view of this verse.

A longer-standing view of “worldly” is that it is adopting the values of Empire. It is seeking power. It is embracing violence. It is loving money. (“It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”) It is embracing materialistic values. It is putting profit over people. It is racism, sexism, and classism. It is imperialistic and jingoistic foreign policy. (That includes “America First” - pretty much selfishness in a nutshell.)

A positive vision for Christianity would look less like the values of Empire, and the values of...well, let me see. I am thinking of a certain person who was castigated for hanging out with the low-lifes, the sexual failures of his day (prostitutes), those who compromised with those outside of the religio-ethnic tribe (tax collectors), and the heretics (Samaritans.) What was His name again?

Clearly, for Christ, hanging out with those who the religious establishment considered “unclean” wasn’t a problem. And if you think he would have been welcome if he spent the time lecturing them out their sins, I think you are delusional. (And if you think prostitutes stopped being prostitutes, you are historically ignorant. Once they ended up in prostitution, there was no available way out.) Rather, the outcasts of society f felt he was on their side.

Instead, Christ warned about taking on the values of the establishment: the political and religious powers of his day. Don’t seek power like the Gentiles. Don’t place burdens on others like the Pharisees. Don’t serve money. Love your enemies. Love your neighbor as yourself. And yes, that includes those outside your tribe. The Kingdom of God is an upside down kingdom.

When I think of how to be a positive Christian, I think of rejecting the “success and money at all costs” paradigm. I see religious observance more in the Isaiah 58 line. Instead of phony shows of repentance, while we gut worker protections, slam our doors to the “poor wanderers” of our time, and vote White Nationalists into office, justifying it all the while with appeals to preserving our own wealth (that’s a whole other post - on something our former denomination did recently); we could be seeking ways to fight oppression, injustice, and poverty. Isaiah 58 has been one of my favorite passages since my childhood - gorgeous poetry, and a real glimpse of the heart of God.

This is my vision for a positive Christianity.

***

Let me finish with a story, and a prayer.

Not that long ago, there was a nation which believed that it was morally (and religiously) justified for humans with one skin color to own humans with another skin color. The enslaved sought freedom in many ways. One of those ways was to free themselves - to run away and seek freedom where they could find it. But they couldn’t do it alone. A journey a thousand miles long, over unfamiliar territory, with hostile forces everywhere hoping to capture them - and collect a reward - this wasn’t something you did alone.

There were other people. Together, they formed a legendary “organization” (for lack of a better word), which went down in history under the name of “The Underground Railroad.” We all know Harriet Tubman. And we should. In the pantheon of historical badasses, she ranks as a five star general. But she wasn’t alone either. Many - black and white - helped her in her noble quest to gain freedom for as many as she could.

There was a particular group of people who, even before the Railroad became somewhat organized, were well known as “safe” for the enslaved seeking freedom. They were a bit “peculiar,” one might say. A bit mystic, quite countercultural, not quite “normal.” They rejected the idea of professional religious leadership. They centered their theology, not around a literalist and theonomic approach to scripture, but on the “inner light,” a personal call and enlightenment from the Divine. They were often persecuted by the more dominant Christian sects, from the Church of England to the Puritans. They were a driving force in favor of the separation of church and state that would characterize the United States Constitution. Their legacy was opposition to war, opposition to slavery, advocacy for prison reform and social justice.

If you were an enslaved person fleeing for your freedom, you could count on a safe place with them.

Quakers, they were called. Not by themselves. To themselves, they were the Religious Society of Friends. A denomination founded on love as the highest law. One of our states (Pennsylvania) and one of its cities (Philadelphia) are named after them.

When I think of a positive vision for Christianity, this is what it looks like.

The oppressed, brutalized, and needy of the world are, even as I write this, seeking refuge from the rich, the powerful, the brutal, and greedy of the world. They flee, they resist, they struggle to survive.

Positive Christianity holds a lamp out to them. We embrace them. We care for them. We stand up to those who would harm them. Even - especially - when those perpetrating evil claim the name of Christ.

As Christians, refugees should know that we are the safe place they seek. That we will embrace and care for them regardless of race, national origin, or religion.

As Christians, the rich should find themselves terrified of us. We should be their worst nightmare. (Christ already is - seriously, read the Gospel of Luke sometime. Christ is clear that wealth is a moral poison to its possessors.) We should be the conscience to power and privilege and tribalism - not collaborators.

As Christians, we should be horrified when anyone refers to fellow humans in a dehumanizing way. Period. We should be horrified at “shithole countries,” “bad hombres,” “bring it, you fucking animals, bring it,” and “hail our people.”

As Christians, we should be an alternative to the endless cycles of violence that plague our world.

As Christians, we should be the first to protect and care for battered women, to abused children. And the last to protect perpetrators from justice.

As Christians, we should be horrified that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

As Christians, we should weep that twelve year olds are murdered by the police - and there is no justice.

As Christians, we should look like Christ. Not like the Empire, and not like the Pharisees.

That is my positive vision for Christianity.

***

It’s more succinct, and more specific in some ways, but there is a lot to like about this statement from the Reclaiming Jesus movement. A lot of the signatories are people I respect as genuine Christians, and who have been helpful to me in my own journey away from Fundamentalism, Republicanity, and toxic religion.

***

From the ever-inspiring Saint Francis of Assisi:

***

Just a word on Pastor Stiles.

In my early teens, we attended a church near where we lived in the Los Angeles area. Pastor Stiles was the founding pastor, back in the 1950s, if I recall. He had recently “retired,” but still lived in the parsonage next to the church, and still ministered in a less visible way.

The neighborhood the church was located in had started out as a white suburb at around the time the church was built. By the time we went there in the 1990s, this had changed a lot. The neighborhood was mostly minority, and had quite a mix of people, both as to race and economic status.

In what I have come to realize is a real rare event, the church evolved to reflect its community. It was delightfully diverse. Racially, economically, and politically. And that went for leadership too. While no church is perfect (and if there was one, it wouldn’t let me in), there was a lot of good there.

And Pastor Stiles was a big reason why.

He embraced change, and truly lived out his mantra, quoted above:

“Love God. Love your neighbor. Don’t take yourself too seriously.”

In looking back on the 40 years of my life that I spent involved in church, this is one of the few churches that I look back on with genuine affection.

Pastor Stiles is one of the even fewer pastors that I can respect in retrospect. Yes, there were others. But I think he still best represents the kind of humble, compassionate, and wise leadership that is the best of Christianity. He wasn’t a particularly eloquent preacher - he didn’t crave the spotlight. But he always had time to talk with you, even if you were just an 8th grade kid. When I think of the thousands of unsung pastoral heroes in the world, serving in small congregations, with little if any praise, he comes to mind. I can guarantee you that if more pastors were like him, things would be a lot better in American Christianity. I bet there are more than a few, who like me, still remember his kindness and the good example he gave us of what Christianity could - and should - be.