Dispirited Christians must prepare to stand in the gap, historians urge

“We’re obviously in a very different space than we were in the last two times we had this conversation,” Robert P. Jones said to open the third “Faith and Democracy” tour event with historians Diana Butler Bass, Jemar Tisby and Kristin Du Mez.

The four spoke Nov. 17 at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta, 12 days after the election that sent Donald Trump on a path back to the White House.

“We’re all feeling very different things,” said Jones, founder of Public Religion Research Institute.

The “Faith and Democracy” tour began before the election, and this was the group’s first appearance together since the election. As Jones has emphasized at each event, their desire is to cast a vision for a Christian engagement with politics that emphasizes “pluralism instead of Christian nationalism, equality rather than hierarchy, truth rather than propaganda, and love and compassion rather than power and fear.”

In October, Du Mez told BNG: “When I travel around the country, I love meeting people at events. But so many people feel alone, isolated. Doing this work publicly has its downsides, but one benefit is that we are connected to others doing the work. This is so important. One of our goals is to work to connect people with each other in their local communities. There are so many incredible people doing incredible things. We need to find ways to connect these people to each other. I don’t think we’ve cracked this code yet, but this tour is one attempt to do just that.”

Due to the results of the election, that need for connection is stronger than ever, the four believe.

Trump has pledged to deliver power to his own people, not to all people.

“If I get in there, you’re going to be using that power at a level that you’ve never used it before,” Trump told the National Religious Broadcasters during the campaign. And now given his cabinet nominations, it would appear authoritarian Christians are attempting to turn their Canaanite Conquest Cosplay into policy.

We live in a country where white Christian nationalists have considered Native Americans, Black people, women, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, and anyone who won’t submit to them to be the Canaanites of the book of Joshua. And on Nov. 5, the walls of our Jericho came tumbling down.

“Now the white Christians are coming over the rubble for us.”

Now the white Christians are coming over the rubble for us. And we’re watching their approach while wondering how much of their rhetoric was metaphor, bloviating for votes, or if they’ll actually execute the punishments they promised they would with Trump as their retribution.

So while Du Mez mentioned that many people felt alone and isolated prior to the election, today many people feel surrounded as white Christians are closing in “with a trumpet in one hand and a sword in the other.”

Acknowledging our feelings

“I don’t want to sing about joy today,” Ruby Amanfu confessed in the opening song. “We thought there was truth enough to save all of us,” another lyric lamented.

This was an evening not for celebrating certainties, but for silently sitting in rubble and ash.

“I’ve struggled all week leading up to tonight because I’m coming to you with a tank that’s nearly empty,” Tisby shared with a broken voice. “And it’s not because of just the past three or four months of the campaign. It’s because I’ve been Black my whole life. And I appreciate the Black folks who came out tonight because you’re staying at the table in the midst of what I’m sure is exhaustion.”

Tisby quoted Brittney Cooper, who goes by Professor Crunk on social media: “The hyper vigilance that is Black people’s perpetual condition is exacerbating the world weariness I already felt. … What I feel is tired. … While I am very glad there are organizers who are apocalypse ready, I do not feel ready. … We are on the brink of … subjecting Black folks to the brutality that our ancestors prayed and fought for us to never have to experience again. … I am tired. … I came here to say that we deserved a victory lap, not a marathon tacked on to us at the 26-mile mark. … My tired is tired.”

“It feels like Black people have carried America on our shoulders as far as we can without the help of a minority of some white folks.”

Tisby added, “It feels like Black people have carried America on our shoulders as far as we can without the help of a minority of some white folks.”

“Not that long ago, we had a whole Civil Rights Movement that was mostly us,” Tisby continued. “And we bore the brunt of this nation’s recalcitrance, its refusal to change. Our churches were burned. Our spokespeople were killed. Our activists were jailed. … So I don’t have a whole lot of ‘atta boy, atta girl’ on this evening. I’m deflated, defeated in the sense that I think democracy suffered a defeat. I’m grieving. And I’m also frustrated.”

Telling the truth

One of the strengths of the “Faith and Democracy” tour is that it brings together qualified scholars who understand our nation’s history and current crisis, and who can communicate these realities to Christians who care.

“I’m a historian. And I’m a Christian,” Du Mez acknowledged. “And I’ve always thought those two things go really well together because what historians do is they tell you how we have gotten to where we are.”

Through her years of research into evangelical masculinity, she’s carried her burden of knowledge about “what happens when we idolize power and hierarchy and order and when we call that cause, ‘God’s cause.’”

Bass believes these “Faith and Democracy” events may play a role in providing a community where scholars, pastors and laypeople can share one another’s burdens that come through a growing self-awareness.

“Telling a true story in community is often the very thing that needs to happen in order for the door to be kicked open and the Holy Spirit to come blowing in,” she said.

As historians, Bass, Tisby and Du Mez can tell us how we got here. And as a sociologist, Jones can show us with greater clarity where we are.

For example, while Du Mez connects her understanding of Nazi German Christianity to evangelical masculinity, Jones shows how this leads to eight in 10 Republicans supporting Trump’s plan to round up and deport immigrants, even if it means creating encampments that are run by the military.

As a Black scholar, Tisby shares his lived experience as well as additional resources from marginalized people for learning about the great divide in American politics that leads more than 80% of white evangelicals to vote for Trump and 85% of Black evangelicals to vote for Harris.

And to Bass, having this clarity is where hope can be found.

“If you’re not lying about what’s going on in the world around you, there is a kind of hope that can be found.”

“We’ve all just had an incredibly difficult couple weeks. And this is just the preparation,” she noted. “So I don’t know that that exactly sounds like hope. But it is clarity. And I always find hope around clarity, that if you can be honest about something, if you understand the story you’re living in, if you’re not lying about what’s going on in the world around you, there is a kind of hope that can be found.”

Counting the cost

Although Jones pointed out the conversation would be nonpartisan due to being hosted at a church, he also said it would not be neutral: “We are here to talk about love and justice and what that requires of us in this moment. And it requires more of us than silence and neutrality.”

For white Protestants, Jones suggested, “it is hard for us, for those of us who grew up in that tradition, to kind of wrap our heads around the kind of discomfort that is going to be required of us to be faithful in the days that are coming.”

He recommends people prepare their plan ahead of time. For example, he proposes, “drawing some bright lines ahead of time that say, ‘When we see this, we are loud. When this happens, we will speak up.’ … If we set those lines now so that when we see immigrants being rounded up by police and military, and when we hear the word ‘encampments’ and ‘concentration camps,’ that has to be a bright line for us.”

“People who are in a slightly safer position themselves are simply going to have to invest themselves in risk,” Bass agreed. “It would be helpful if you start thinking about what that’s going to look like in advance, not to negatively anticipate, but to realistically think about what people are already feeling, what people are already experiencing. And then to ask yourself, ‘What can I do to alleviate the suffering and the pain and the loss of hope that these people are having? And is there something that I can do if those people are physically in danger?’”

One of the particular groups that will be faced with these decisions soon is schoolteachers. Specifically addressing teachers, Du Mez said, “You may well find yourselves on the front lines here, sooner rather than later.”

She noted how Oklahoma and Texas already are proving to be laboratories for authoritarian Christians to make demands in public schools.

“Do exactly what you have always been doing,” she encouraged teachers. “If you have worked to create a safe and a brave space for your students, keep doing those things. If you have worked to bring in diverse voices into your curriculum, if you have worked to show students the truth about America’s past, keep doing it. Keep teaching what you know to be true and commit yourself to doing that whatever comes your way.”

Ironically, another group that will be faced with persecution will be other Christians.

Du Mez explained: “If you actually look at who are the targets of Christian nationalists, more often than not it’s their fellow Christians who are saying, ‘No. I am a believer. And I am going to stand and put myself between you and more vulnerable populations.’”

“Non-authoritarian Christians are considered threats.”

Non-authoritarian Christians are considered threats because they question the dominant narrative of the Christians who are climbing the rubble and claiming ownership of their Jericho. These Christians deconstruct authoritarian understandings of the Bible, society, history, justice and love.

And in a pluralistic democracy, non-authoritarian Christians are there for everyone, not simply for a particular kind of Christian. According to Bass, “People are in danger, and that includes gay and lesbian people.” And as Duz Mez reminded everyone, “You’re doing it to protect authentic religious faith, Christian or otherwise, and to protect people of no particular faith, to push back against this coercion.”

But to do this well in the face of the conservative Christian army that’s being funded by billionaires, it’s going to require money, the group said.

Despite being best-selling authors, these scholars simply don’t have the means to travel the country for the rest of their lives and rent out meeting space on their own dime. And even for a news organization such as Baptist News Global, which will prove to be vital for our democracy in the coming years, publishing the much-needed theological and political analysis we do requires financial support.

This is why Jones bluntly stated: “For many of us who have means, it is going to mean that the bottom line, our bottom lines are going to have to come into play because these movements are going to need resources to resist those things. So I’m talking about endowments. I’m talking about foundations. I’m talking about that second vacation home. These are things that are going to have to come into play because we’re going to need the resources to preserve and protect and to live into the kind of country we want to live in.”

As someone who has been getting to know these scholars more personally as of late, I can assure readers this appeal to financial support is not the get-rich through seed money approach that so many Christian nationalist televangelists pitch. It’s simply the cost of loving one’s neighbors by strategically exposing power dynamics in a capitalist society where platforms and travel cost money.

Learning from the marginalized

As more white Christians are willing to listen and funds are raised in order to connect them with qualified scholars, it’s important that learning about white supremacist Christianity doesn’t become an exercise overrun by white Christians.

“There are no two groups that are further apart in their vote choices in this last election than white evangelical Protestants and African American protestants,” Jones explained. “They constitute the poles of our discourse.”

Given the polar opposite political views and lived experience of evangelicals based on race, as well as the fracturing white supremacist power dynamics have caused, listening to the marginalized provides much needed perspective.

“We need to be paying attention to what Black women are saying,” Tisby reminded the gathering. “Malcom X said the Black woman is the most disrespected person in the nation.”

“I see white people huddling up with other white people to try to figure this out and completely overlooking the Black experience and particularly the Black Christian tradition,” Tisby added. “It’s so interesting to me that white people will leap over an ocean and cross continents to find examples of Christians who stood up against injustice, Christians who stood up against a government that was mixing politics and nationalism in a toxic brew. And I’m just like, ‘Yo! Black Christians’ been doing this a minute!’ And maybe you don’t have to look all the way over there, not that we can’t learn from that. But there’s something in me that thinks until white Christians are willing to listen to, learn from, and follow the lead of the Black church, we still haven’t dealt with fundamental issues that have undermined democracy ever since the founding of this nation.”

“Until white Christians are willing to listen to, learn from, and follow the lead of the Black church, we still haven’t dealt with fundamental issues.”

But for white Christians to do that eventually will have theological consequences. According to Tisby, “For white Christians to truly look to the Black church for leadership, they’re going to have to confront why there’s a Black church in the first place. And that’s going to require a whole other kind of confessing church.”

This also may have relational consequences as conservative white family and friends participate in harming our neighbors.

“Have you genuinely faced that possibility that you may not be going to their house anymore, that you may not be spending the holidays with them?” Tisby asked. “Not because you don’t like them, not even because you don’t love them. But because people’s lives are at risk, and by their political choices, they’re continuing to put them at risk. It may not be a happy ending in every situation or circumstance.

“And I guarantee you for Black folks, there have been a lot of broken relationships because of injustice. And now, we’re getting more and more people who are starting to feel that. And it’s strange and it’s new. But it’s also part and parcel of what goes along with standing up for justice. And I would just invite us to truly ponder that it may not turn out to have a nice bow on it at the end.”

The reality is that we simply cannot have “both sides” approaches to this problem, as if our marginalized neighbors who are in danger have an equal culpability as our white, Trump-supporting family members have. According to Jones, “We do not end up in the situation we’re in without our fellow white Christians putting us there. And that is where the buck stops and starts.”

A goal-oriented rather than a belief-oriented faith

One of the more light-hearted moments that happens during these events is when Du Mez and Bass tease each other about Du Mez’s Calvinism and Bass’ background in Methodism. I’ve joked to Du Mez and Bass afterward that hearing Du Mez’s dark description of sin and then Bass’ sharing of hope often feels like watching Sadness and Joy go back and forth in Disney Pixar’s Inside Out movie.

“We have to come together over a shared mission, over a shared goal,”

The tour has purposefully embraced a variety of communities, with events being hosted at Methodist, Baptist and Episcopal churches. And while most of my articles emphasize the importance of reflecting on the theological underpinnings of sacralized authoritiarianism, it was helpful for me to hear these scholars recognize their theological differences while emphasizing a need to focus on their common political goals during this next season.

“What will not work is coming together to bridge divides. We have to come together over a shared mission, over a shared goal,” Tisby proposed. “What brings together a team? It’s not the fact that we’re all different. It’s the fact that we have a shared goal. We have a mission. And in order to achieve that mission, we need different people on the team who bring different skills and gifts and talents and perspectives.”

To apply this goal-oriented mindset to a particular policy, Tisby suggested: “It’s not saying, ‘Hey, you believe something different than I do. Let’s have a conversation.’ It’s, ‘We want these books in our library. Let’s make sure it happens. Oh, you believe that? I believe this. Interesting. Is the book on the shelf?”

And for Bass, Tisby, Jones and Du Mez, being more like Jesus looks like putting your own body between the white evangelicals who are climbing the rubble with trumpets and swords and all the marginalized they promise to hurt.

“When you follow the journey of justice, you become more like Jesus,” Tisby said. “You may not win. But you become more empathetic. You may not win. But you become kinder. You may not win. But you develop perseverance. You may not win. But you do have hope.”

 

Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.

 

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