Stories We Tell

Reframes U.S. soldiers, or people posing as U.S. soldiers, in full tactical gear, wander a suburban U.S. street. Stories We Tell Recognizing victims and villains is not creating victims and villains. A series on living in a culture of repair, against a culture of abuse. Back in the days when I was still going to church, the pastor who eventually persuaded me to stop going to church had a phrase that he liked to say a whole lot, and for all I know he still likes to say it. I'll call this fellow "Pastor Mike" to avoid calling him out by his name (AJ Sherrill). Pastor Mike wasn't in an enviable position, I guess; he'd arrived at our church a couple months before our current temporary president was elected the first time, and before he knew it, the nation was being led by a guy who basically represented the antithesis of everything Christianity claims it is supposed to stand for. You probably remember what this time in our nation's history (2017) was like, but in case you don't, I'll remind you: It was basically the first attempt by white christofascist billionaires to create the authoritarian oligarchical ethnostate we are seeing take form around us today; all the same gutter bigotry and open corruption and incompetence and institutional complicity in the face of menace and hate that is present today was around then. This could have been an energizing moment for a Christian leader, but sadly for Pastor Mike, most white Christians were and are not only in support of this political movement, but represented the movement's enthusiastic loyal base of organization and support, while most other white Christians found the act of confronting this sort of thing uncomfortably divisive, and while my church had earned fame in my town as disreputably progressive, we were pretty white by demographic breakdown. I don't know the facts of all the conversations that happened in church offices and wherever else things got chewed over by church leadership, but I would guess that Pastor Mike was facing significant pressure to address the anti-Christlike actions and statements and beliefs of our country's new leader, as well as serious pressure to not address them in any way that pointed out how many Christians shared and supported those actions and statements and beliefs, and most of all to not do so in any way that might alienate all those Christians who were in favor of these actions and statements and beliefs. Anyway, if Pastor Mike wasn't facing such pressures, he sure did sound like he was facing them. He pretty quickly settled into an answer to this quandary that he seemed comfortable with, which was that political neutrality was the correct posture for Christians , and that our beliefs about these sorts of matters weren't as important as how we believed them. Week after week, he admonished us to focus on our shared belief in Jesus and not dwell so much on what that Jesus actually said, which...

Preview: ~500 words