Elisabeth Neumann also helped me to understand one of the things I’ve been wrestling with these past months. She said something about how it’s the people on your own side that can give you the most trouble. I have several close friends who are very intelligent, objective, well-read and who pride themselves on their measured responses and academic analysis rather than emotional responses. But in recent months I’ve been shocked and confused when I tried to gently present them with a point of view – often a point of view that was similar to things that they themselves had said – that was presented in a way and by someone who was outside of the style or profile that they deemed credible or respectable. What I found so upsetting is that they didn’t argue the ideas themselves as I would have expected, with the kind of intellectual integrity that they stand for and admire, but rather they made snide remarks that dismissed the person and ridiculed them. It seemed petty and unworthy of their usual “fairness”. 

After listening to Elizabeth I realized that these friends (with whom I agree with on many political issues) have an attachment to their tribe. That tribe speaks a certain way, presents ideas in a certain way with a certain vocabulary. There are codes to how emotions can be expressed. Someone who does not fit in with that tribe is threatening and they will protect that tribe, sometimes by ridiculing or dismissing the person or people who are outside. They will not hear or receive the content that is being expressed by a person that doesn’t pass their litmus test of legitimacy. 

I have heard one of these friends say “I know it’s terrible to say, but if all of those MAGA people were killed, I think that would be a good thing.” This is someone who rescues animals and comes from a family that has fought extensively for racial equality, human rights, etc. I thought of Elisabeth’s definition of extremism as resorting to violence to solve the problems of outside groups.

Last night my Uber driver bringing me back from the airport made jokes about a machine gun in my violin case and ammo in my suitcase. I made a joke back and he said “Ah, I didn’t scare you off!” He had a look about him (clothes, way of talking) that made me assume he was a supporter of the current president. He made a few more remarks that confirmed that. He also said “I’ve never been to jail, though I could have gone several times.” He told me he had a one-year-old, a three-year-old, and another baby on the way. He claimed some guy with a gun hid in his building recently until the police found him and said he wants to move because he’s scared for his wife and children, scared of drug addicts hanging around his building. I felt awkward and as if I came from another world. How good am I at being able to have a simple conversation with someone way outside of my tribes? I felt both a little scared of him and touched by him, by the struggles he expressed. I thought of a talk I recently heard by the priest Fr. Greg Boyle who spoke about a former gang member he worked with and everything he had gone through in his childhood and his life. Fr. Greg said something like “I had compassion and admiration for him. Life had asked him to carry things that I don’t think I could carry.” 

I agree with the image of the fire. It’s burning and I feel like we need to accept it first, accept that nothing will be the same going forward, and maybe, just maybe something new can be born out of this. She said it would take a long, long time. I agree, that’s likely. My hope though, is that with God’s grace, miracles can happen… and perhaps new ideas can take hold in enough people, and things can change faster than we dream.

Through Elizabeth Neumann’s book Kingdom of Rage and her subsequent talk to our cohort I was struck by just how much I have underestimated the violence and aggression endorsed by the Christian Nationalist movement, and how many have been radicalized into full on Christian Extremism.  I suppose I should not be surprised to hear this.  After all, the propagation of racist, xenophobic, and hateful ideologies that I thought were buried in the past or held by a fringe minority are now being championed at the highest levels of the political sphere.  Where I fell short was in recognizing, through radicalization, how those ideologies turned into acts of real violence.  While I wasn’t looking (or perhaps refusing to) my humble Savior has been recast in the image of the dominant warrior that the zealots of ancient Israel longed for.  

It is no secret that the entanglement of Christianity and our American political system runs deep, affecting methods of prayer, practice, and theology.  For many years I have cast judgement on those who proudly wore this unholy fusion of the flag and the cross.  It wasn’t until this cohort that I began to search inward and pull apart those tangled knots of hypocrisy within my own spirituality.  As I search my heart I feel drawn to press into the areas where this fusion still exists, asking Jesus to transform the parts of myself that resemble the politicians I admonish.  

Lord, let my desire for power melt into meekness, my unjust anger dissolve into mercy, and my speed to aggression soften into the pursuit of peace.  

Through this reflection I have come to believe that I will not be able to fully engage with the messy overlap of church and state within my neighbor until I pry the two apart within myself.  

Today is May 4th, day 576, since October 7th, 2023. Which means that for more than 576 days, I have been increasingly aware daily, via the Palestinian genocide, of the way that American Christianity and partisan politics are fused together.  I am fully aware that this has been impacting me personally as well as impacting my organization – the local church.

Today is also day 104 of Trump 47, with 1356 days remaining in this term.  All 3 of these numbers also cause me to be fully aware of the way that American Christianity and partisan politics are fused together and negatively impacting myself and my spheres of participation and influence.

I am a realist.  So I will always choose to know rather than not know.  I will always be moving toward gaining understanding.  This module, designed for growing our understanding of this fusion, has served me very well in this respect.  From the ARC self-assessment, reading the 2 recommended books, and the conversations with David Gushee and Elizabeth Neumann, I have gained knowledge and perspective.  With these I do feel more equipped to engage than prior to this module.

But being a realist also brings me the recognition that my being equipped to engage can only make an impact if I “Do it Scared”.  I pray that God will allow me to see clearly; when, where and how I am to engage.  I pray that God will grant me the courage to act, despite fear and personal cost.  And while I am daily, carrying lament, I pray that God will allow me to be surprised by hope, as I hold firmly to Ephesians 3:20.

I couldn’t agree more fully about this and wanted to share a practice we’re developing with UniteBoston based on a chapter entitled Wrath: From Polarization to Peacemaking by Elizabeth Oldfield.  Here, she describes a practice:

• Write two lists, one titled “types of people or groups I feel instinctively comfortable with” and the second, “types of people or groups I feel instinctively uncomfortable with.” A helpful test is, how does the thought of going to a party filled with this kind of person make me feel? Start with the obvious ones, such as political tribes, beliefs, social types, but you can get a lot more granular than that. Personality types. Interest groups. Just get it all out, and don’t stop until you have at least ten on each list.
• Then attempt to fill in a second column for each marked “Why?” The challenge is that your reason has to be about you, not about them. If your list isn’t slightly painful, you’re probably not being honest. You don’t need to show it to anyone. Just let it make you more conscious.
• Then, take some time to pray for the people on the “Not Like Me” side. 

It’s powerful for me to think about who I identify as people like me, and not like me, and why. While some of the reasons are related to my background growing up, others seem to be based on my own innate stereotypes, some that I didn’t see (like poor people, gang members) until I did this exercise. I realize how much I distance myself from the NLM people; yet there is so much power in proximity.

At the end of the session, we talked about what actually causes people to change their minds – challenging someone’s beliefs doesn’t cause them to change their beliefs but love and empathy does. The invitation is to stay in relationship, be present for the moment that may or may not come and pray and watch their example. Waiting and being patient for the change can be hard for me but this was a great reminder., 

I’m still holding onto Elizabeth Neumann’s description that the effects of polarization and disinformation is like a forest fire… So much today is burning down, it feels like decades of positive international relations and ministry to the poor and marginalized are being demolished, how long will it take to regrow everything?

The biggest takeaway from examining the beliefs given to me in my formative years was that I was taught and shown that white men should always be in charge, their opinions are always more important than a woman’s or that of a person of color, and we all need to protect and respect their dominance. Their ego, however fragile, was always my problem.

Even in the Vineyard Church where my husband and I went to church for 30 years, they gave lip service to women being equal. The Vineyard changed it’s belief statements to say that women were equally called to any leadership role twenty years ago, but the men in charge were careful not to add a seat at any table for women. That way, only the most persistent (or really the women who were married to a pastor that was willing to let his wife have a bit of power) could have a voice. And not even lip service was given to wanting integration racially.

When I was fired several years ago from the preaching team for preaching on the Beatitudes, I had spoken frankly about a need for us to look at our racism and then I had spoken in a second sermon about our need to have zero tolerance for violence. We are Christians, not Empire builders. The second sermon was actually the one that brought out the most rage in my listeners. (They both made church members angry.)

So where do these threads of the tapestry lead me now?  I think empathy for the way we were all taught such non-Christian priorities and values. I was as blind as anybody else just a few years ago.  We didn’t set out to prop up patriarchy and white supremacy. I want to engage with a soft heart.

And I really appreciated both David and Elizabeth’s wisdom to show us the greater trends and attitudes as they have been evolving. There is a coherent belief system that folks are afraid to examine or let go of. Both Elizabeth and David  deepened my desire to approach these things with tenacity and patience. I must take the long view and accept that it could be that nothing will change this week or this year in the people I love or work with. Empathy and patience.

And in doing a bit of dreaming for the future, I have a percolating idea about offering Spiritual Direction groups for folks who feel ready to explore softening or deconstructing their conservative Evangelical beliefs and feelings. I have been leading a weekly small group the last year and a half on identity and calling for women, and the breakthroughs I’m starting to see now are beautiful. We were patient and content with baby steps and grieving and setbacks for over a year, and then the deep internal lies and fears began to really give way to new life. The support and togetherness offered by the group is like a lovely greenhouse. I wonder if a similar approach could create a safe space for slow, safe change for those who want to but are afraid to change. Or for those who don’t know where to start.

Thank you for reading my long post!!!

It wasn’t until this past summer that I realized I needed to reach out in an attempt to repair. I did that. It did not go well. There are things I could have said better, done better in that attempt to repair, and I also know that this person just wasn’t in a place to hear any of it. Where this leaves me is with some pretty significant learnings around my capacity to harm (Nina’s comments around our aspirational selves being shocked by our real selves hit!!) and my relationship to power, authority, and control. And deeper than that…how is power, authority, and control expressed in the faith community I lead? It seems that when leaders have an unhealthy relationship to these things it can show up as harm…enter the work of repair. Here’s to our transforming selves!

Lately I’ve been experimenting with another way. Since becoming a part of this cohort I now find myself wondering “you’re learning to be a peacemaker, and that’s how you act?” With this in mind, I find that I am no longer satisfied by these two reactions. I am challenged to engage… and yet I am constantly trying to be aware of any intensity flaring up inside of me. And yes, there’s a lot of it! Triggered all the time. I’ve been trying to allow the conflict to just “be” and notice when I was feeling attacked (by the difference in opinion or the conflict). How often do I think that I am speaking such “perfect words” and then realize that the words may be right, but I am radiating an emotional energy and intensity which probably feels to the receptor like they’re getting run over by a bulldozer? I am trying now to let go of the intensity and the emotional violence and simply allow the conflict to exist without the expectation to resolve it or force my “brilliant” resolution onto the other. It’s very hard! I believe it was Osheta who said that we aren’t very convincing peace makers when people can feel that we aren’t at peace with ourselves. 

Something else that is starting to take flame within me is a growing sense of urgency about the current situation in the country. I feel like I need to act but I’m not finding the places or the people that draw me into action. Part of me keeps hoping that the questionable actions of the current government will be held into check (through the courts, through upcoming elections, through the changing tide of opinion). This feels like a common hope in most of the people around me. But when I think harder and longer, I don’t truly believe this will happen. I keep thinking of that advice which is often given for relationships “when someone tells you who they are, believe them.” I feel like the current administration and the people surrounding it have clearly said what they want to do, and they are doing it, and there is no reason for it to stop. I remember a book that I read, the memoir of a teenage Jewish girl in Poland during the holocaust called Hope is the Last to Die. I bought it thinking it would have an inspirational aspect to it, but the title referred to the fact that the worst part of her experience was her hope. No matter how bad things got, she said the hope was always there even after her family was killed, after she was arrested and put into a camp…and yet things kept getting worse.

Just a couple of days ago, I read about hundreds of international students receiving emails telling them that their visas were revoked and that they are asked to “self-deport”, or else they could be deported at any time (possibly to a country other than their country of origin), mostly because of opinions expressed in protests or on social media regarding Palestinians. This feels like a huge shift in the nature of our democracy. Punishment for expressing political views? And last week a friend of mine told me that he went to a conference in Canada and was interrogated by US Immigration in Canada on the way back for six and a half hours as if he were a criminal (and he said there were many others like him). He is: from Belgium and has lived in the US for 15 years. He’s a lawyer working for a copper mining company and is currently in the process of getting a green card. He missed his plane, of course. He is in a privileged category. If this is happening to him, I can’t begin to imagine what is happening to those who represent categories that are more vulnerable. I’m having trouble seeing how these situations are a question of Left or Right, Democrat or Republican… and not simply a question of Democracy vs. Autocracy?

The cohort is one of the few places that I’m connected to now where I feel that people are open to looking for and thinking about another way forward. I know that the cohort is not designed to be a place to generate or promote specific forms of action and I find that approach very honest and wise. And yet, I am fearful of being complacent, wallowing in my own reflections and philosophizing too much at a moment in history when action is urgently needed, or it may be too late.

I am wondering are there any movements that offer a new vision forward for the country? One that seeks to create the beloved community and refuses the ways of violence and dehumanizing the other? One that recognizes that if we have arrived at this extreme moment of division and suffering no one group is entirely responsible… that there are people and groups from all sides who have contributed to bringing us here, and it is important to recognize our own shortcomings in order to create something better? I am not hearing these voices. If any of you are connected to groups that are addressing the current political crisis in the country from that perspective, I’d love to hear about it.

In the meantime, as I prayed the other day, I began to wonder… if I don’t see it anywhere, perhaps I should do something about it? Start small with just a few friends who are receptive to another way of addressing things? On Zoom, perhaps? Maybe framing it as something along the lines of “Citizens for the Beloved Community”? A place where we can begin to exchange ideas based on principles of non-violence and the refusal to dehumanize directly in regards to the political crisis in our country now. A place where we can begin to form a vision out of which we can take action. It’s just an idea. Maybe it will end up being one meeting…maybe more. Or maybe it will lead me to people who are already doing this or something similar? 

I long for a movement that aims to create a greater “We”, one that can remind us of what we all love about our democracy (on all sides, and not dependent on a party) and can challenge us to look at the ways we have fallen short and ways that we can come together…. to grow closer to fulfilling the promise of our founding documents – enabling life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all. One of the reasons authoritarians are able to do what they do is because of all the “decent” people who go along with them. Rather than only attack the leaders, it feels important to win over the group of people who have been pulled into their spell, win them over with a vision that can remind us of the spark of beauty that is in this country’s blueprint and has helped to unite us over different crises. Is this delusional or naive?

(My apologies for the length, I’m having trouble doing better…)

• Their ability to stay curious and open-minded toward people whose behavior is deeply hurtful to them. While I like to think of myself as open-minded and gracious, I’m realizing I’m not as much as I’d like to believe. I recognize an ugly tendency in myself to write off people who hurt or frustrate me and, if I’m being really honest, even wish them ill—hoping they would feel pain equal to or worse than what I feel they’ve caused me. Learning about Ruth, Nina, and Osheta’s experiences has convicted me and encouraged me to re-evaluate these tendencies.

• The concept of belovedness in ourselves and the critical connection between believing in our own belovedness and the ability to extend that belief to others. I consider myself very people-oriented and empathetic, but recently, I’ve started to see how my own insecurities affect my ability to love others. This language of believing in my own belovedness—and the idea that making peace with myself is foundational to making peace with others—has given me a new perspective on my struggles and additional tools for working through them.

These themes have been surfacing outside of the cohort as well. Last Sunday, the sermon at church was about forgiveness. There are a couple of people who have hurt me so deeply that I haven’t been able to get my head or heart around the idea of forgiving them, even though some of the wounds were inflicted years ago. I know forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean forgetting or trusting the person again, but honestly, in these situations, I wonder—what does it mean, then?

As the pastor was speaking on Sunday, a thought hit me, and I think it may have been from the Lord: “What if forgiveness in these cases means releasing these people in my heart and mind to God and trusting His work in their lives?”

That would require me to let go of my own desire for justice as I envision it and instead trust God’s work. I’m not sure if that is complete forgiveness, but it feels like at least a helpful step in that direction.

One thing Lindsey said last week that has stuck with me has been to maybe approach our understanding of ARC’s influence by instead looking for the absence of Democratic Covenantal Abolitionism: to define ARC’s influence “by the LACK of democratic processes that represent everyone, where there are no voices to the voiceless, where people are not living in covenantal community, but are living for power; where there is not a sense of equality and everybody for everyone…where is that not happening?” I plan to follow her lead here and search for the lack of DCA in my faith, institution and leadership. 

Here are my other thoughts… First, I want to interview my mother and ask her why she chose the politics that she did; was it simply because of her own family upbringing? The only practicing Christian that I can think of in my family was my great grandmother, a devout Catholic who died when I was little, but my entire family seems to be on the same page with Republican political leanings. Was my mom, like me, a product of the environment she grew up in; what did the church have to do with it?  Was it the times? Did the major world conflicts affect or change her politics? Perhaps I will ask my laid back dad too, who seems to visibly pale when anything remotely controversial like politics comes up! 

I have also been having conversations with one of my best friends about the topic of ARC. We have been having conversations about how the LGBTQ+ community feels welcome at the church she has been visiting, whereas this was not the case at all at the evangelical churches we have been a part of. We have been talking about ARC’s influence on specific ways in which the evangelical community has ostracized and othered this community, and we have slowly started branching out to discovering other ways we see ARC at work in the church. I plan to continue these conversations with her and to ask if we can go through the Self assessment and Common Table at least in part. As this is also part of the Common Table plan, I am also going to read Dr. Gushee’s book.

I am also simply being more aware and allowing myself to ask these questions as I sit in my church.  I have been able to create an opportunity for the artists in our church to share their creativity with the church community, which I am truly thankful for. This summer I plan to create artwork that highlights the beautiful resilience and fragility of the Christians in Palestine during conflict (the current one as well as the decades of conflict), and perhaps give a critique of the American Christian response to the situation today. I have been diving into learning how an unwavering support for Israel and a strange obsession with end times prophecy is a great example of ARC’s influence on the church and on America. I am approaching this art piece with curiosity and some trepidation of how it will be received by my fellow church members. 

Lastly, I’ve begun to lean in to having conversations with those who I may not agree with, and these interactions have proven to be helpful case studies of where ARC might be fueling my brother’s and sister’s resistance to listening or empathizing with other perspectives, and a very black and white approach to issues. It is also a helpful way to assess my own progress as I look back and consider in what ways I might have responded differently, and why.