I’m not usually one to say, “If your pastor doesn’t say X about Y this Sunday, then you should leave your church.” I usually encourage talking with your pastor, helping your pastor and fellow layfolks see the perspective you’re bringing to the situation, helping your church become more faithful to the gospel, etc. That’s how we grow as communities. Not by leaving.
But tomorrow, Jan. 25, 2026, if your pastor gets into the sacred pulpit and defends or excuses or lukewarmly hem haws around the brutalization we are experiencing in Minnesota right now — state violence that has been publicly narrated by the “pastors” of this place — then you should leave.
Cody Sanders
I don’t mean slip away unnoticed never to be heard from again. I mean get up in the middle of the sermon and walk out and slam the door behind you and never look back. Find a community of faith that is following the way of Jesus against the violence of empire.
If your pastor defends the killing of Renee Good, or the man who was executed by a gang of federal agents today while he lay on the ground after being subdued by about a dozen agents, or pulling old men out of their houses in their underwear into the Minnesota winter, or detaining children, and on and on, then they would likely have defended the state execution of Jesus and the martyrdom of the disciples, too.
“Find a community of faith that is following the way of Jesus against the violence of empire.”
If you are that pastor, then the “Woe unto yous. ..” in Scripture were written for you.
But you have the opportunity to change your mind, dear pastor.
Does what you’re seeing take place in our beautiful, hospitable state look like the gospel to you or not? You’ve had a month’s worth of testimony from those of us on the ground here to base your perspective upon. You don’t need to listen to the “liberal media” or the politicians you despise. Just listen to your pastoral colleagues here. The ones feeding the hungry and comforting the mourning and putting their bodies on the line for the love of their neighbors.
The problem with how much we hold up Bonhoeffer as an exemplar is that he resisted the Nazis very early on. But a whole lot of other pastors — Martin Niemoller, Ernst Käsemann and many others — took some time to come around to what was transpiring and join the resisting Confessing Church. We need those stories right now. Some of them voted for Hitler before realizing what a mistake it had been to do so. But when they did, they joined the faithful opposition to the oppressive status quo. We need you to join that faithful opposition now.
But if you decide that what you’re seeing happen to us here is just exactly what you believe Jesus would be into and you get in the pulpit tomorrow and defend the slaughter of our neighbors, then your church deserves to be hollowed out by the faithful responding with their feet. This is the time for the great emptying of the whitewashed sepulchers of a distorted American Christianity. And a time for churches that have, heretofore, been asleep to now be jolted from their slumber.
And for the rest of you, dear pastors, who are reworking your sermons now and trying to find the faithful words to say about a nearly unspeakable horror unfolding before us, blessings upon you. You won’t be alone in that pulpit tomorrow. We’ll be joined in solidarity together across space and time with the communion of the saints from age to age.
“Your church deserves to be hollowed out by the faithful responding with their feet.”
If you’re leaving your church, I’m glad to help you find another one. We need community right now. Isolation is not good for any of us.
If you’re deciding it’s time you go back to church, I’m happy to help point the way to some, wherever you happen to live.
If you’re a pastor who needs a little encouragement and solidarity because you’re going to say something tomorrow you’ve never said before, reach out. I’m glad to talk. We practice courage together.
Also, if you’re in a “purple” church or an otherwise divided congregation and your pastor is trying to find the words to say that will help that church be faithful in this hour and in the days ahead — striving to preach and practice the gospel while bringing others along (often amid criticism), who may lean more on language of compassion than of justice in this moment, who may speak in prayers what they don’t know how to say in the pulpit, who may not be saying all that you wish they might say but you know is trying to help people get there — that is a church that needs you, and that is a pastor who needs you.
There’s a difference right now between defending the oppressive violence of empire (which many clergy will inexcusably choose to do tomorrow by justifying what is happening in Minnesota) and walking a congregational tightrope while proclaiming and living a gospel of compassion, peace and justice.
“Laypeople who step out of the shadows and stand in solidarity with their pastor are a gift to us.”
Laypeople who step out of the shadows and stand in solidarity with their pastor are a gift to us when it sometimes seems like whatever we might say will drive a deeper wedge into an already fractured church. (And sometimes that wedge is unavoidable when the stakes are so very high.) But if that’s your church, stand in solidarity with your pastor, learn and practice courage together.
Don’t let the voices of the gatekeepers of the status quo be the loudest voices in your pastor’s ears. Send an email now with your prayers and encouragement for their preparation to stand in the pulpit tomorrow.
We wade, then we swim, then we dive. And we need churches moving along that continuum. But we do need movement, not stagnation.
I’m moving along that continuum, too, feeling guilty for not risking arrest alongside 100 of my clergy colleagues yesterday. And learning courage with them. And deepening into relational spaces that help us take the risks we need to take when we need to take them.
Pastors, if you’re feeling the pressure, know you’re not alone. Reach out to your colleagues. Call the congregant you know stands beside you in solidarity. Reach out to me. And find the words you need to speak in this critical hour, knowing so many in your congregation will hear in them the faithfulness to the way of Jesus that is behind them.
Cody Sanders is a Baptist pastor who lives in St. Paul, Minn.