I saw the symbol on a navy blue pickup truck, parked on the street where I live. I’m in the process of moving out. That’s why I was out and about on that particular Sunday morning. There’s a church nearby that I’ve never set foot in. I had a bad experience at a different church in this town. Although, to be totally fair, I went to several others that seemed perfectly fine.
I don’t mean to be sarcastic. Religion and faith are actually, unironically, very very important to me — especially right now. It’s not just the hostilities with Iran. It’s not just the murder of Renée Good. It is a few matters that are deeply personal. I’m not sure how much more I want to say. People are incredibly quick to judge. Even when politics don’t come into it.
Anyway, we were talking about religion. Specifically, the red, white, and blue Jesus fish on that truck — and what it represents.
This statement:
“America is a Christian Nation.”
To some, that is deeply offensive and frightening. To others, it’s just the gosh-darn honest truth.
It sort of depends on who picks up the phone when the pollster calls. That’s the problem with data science these days. There’s no 360° method of getting responses from all people. You can walk up to folks on the street or in malls. You can knock on doors. You can query people on the internet, or by having them fill out a mail-in card. You’ll get different results from any and all of these sources.
What do Americans — and by that, I primarily mean those of us currently residing in the United States, whether or not we were born here, whether or not our first language is English — really believe?
It’s hard to say. I remember seeing this statistic in Newsweek when I was young. Grade-school young. That 95% of Americans believed in God — or some other astoundingly high figure. Not necessarily Jesus, mind you, or the Christian Trinity. Just the idea of one God.
“In God We Trust.”
It’s comforting. It’s even on our currency.
I spent about an hour this morning having a lovely discussion at a house church about a certain scriptural verse:
“No man can serve two masters, or he will hate one and love the other.”
Specifically, this was how Jesus chose to close the Sermon on the Mount. Specifically, Jesus was talking about money.
Another curiously American value.
Along with religious freedom.
Remember, the Establishment Clause — otherwise known as part of the First Amendment — was written to protect the Church from the State, and not the other way around.
Really, anytime you get guns, money, walls, locked doors, and human nature together in a room — this includes a congregation based on faith — you’re going to have trouble.
Church people bicker. Church people make dividing lines:
- “Us” vs “Them”
- “Real Christians” vs “Those in Need of Saving”
- “The Needy” vs “Those Who Are Welcome to Attend the Church on Sundays”
And remember, church populations include a whole lot of old people. People who may not be totally “with it” mentally, but still write the checks, gossip, and have a whole lot of time on their hands.
The problem is that faith gives people license. They don’t need to explain their actions. They can just say, “because I say so.” Which wouldn’t be so bad, except usually that’s couched as “because God says so.”
News flash: your pastor may be a wonderful or saintly person, but…
Your pastor is not God.
I don’t care how learned or inspired they are. They can make mistakes. They can have blind spots. Huge blind spots.
Blind spots. They happen in real life.
They may not seem like very much, but if you’re backing out of a parking space and only using the rear-view camera, you can run over a child. I’ve seen children get out of parked vehicles suddenly — even in shopping malls. On a Saturday afternoon in March, at Lloyd Center in Portland, Oregon.
The above is what we call a metaphor. But it’s really just an illustration that a blind spot may not be where we think it is. It may not be what is right in front of you. It may not matter what speed you’re traveling, or what the conditions on the road ahead are.
A blind spot can result in a fatality. At any speed.
So — about “Christian nationalism”?
I don’t have much truck with it (sorry, pun intended).
The problem is that it is in direct contradiction to the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19), found at the closing of the Gospel of Matthew, and also Mark. Go and make disciples of all people in every nation. It is an extremely theologically central invocation.
The idea of a religion that is open to all, regardless of nation or tribe, is what defines Christianity — like Islam, but unlike Judaism or Buddhism — as an evangelical religion. That is to say, one that seeks converts. A lot of secular people the world over, and especially close to home, are not comfortable with this aspect of the faith I was raised in.
I’m not an expert. I have never, ever wanted to be a priest or a pastor. Not even a deacon, for heaven’s sake. That’s not my calling. And see especially the comments above about buildings, locks, walls, gates, and human nature. I just went looking for a home church in Oregon last summer because I was severely ill and knew I would need medical transport at a few times in the future. What I found instead was God looming large and unmistakeable. Maybe not enough proof for total certainty. But enough to keep me going through difficult times. No better coping mechanism.
If you were looking for some sort of post about AI, or about literature, or something fun and breezy and lightweight — I’m sorry. I got freaked out by a red, white, and blue Jesus fish on a truck this morning. But all the same, my religion tells me to pray for the person who drove that truck to my neighborhood, and then thankfully drove that truck away — because we have at least a few things in common.
It’s so easy to rush to conclusions. So hard to actually live out the principles of a religion that is grounded in love. Not a lot of other hard and fast rules to it.
Blah blah blah.
I should note that a lot of the culture and jurisprudence of the United States has in fact been shaped by different variants of Christian theology — remembering, of course, that if you go far enough back, the Europeans who ended up in this particular stretch of North America were mostly dissenters and people who were made to feel extraordinarily unwelcome in the countries from which they hailed. (Problem being, of course, people were already living here. The oppressed quickly became the oppressors.)
I think that we are, as a culture, far more secular than we were 20 or 30 years ago, when I was coming up. I think that has a lot to do with the end of the Cold War. Maybe also with the explosion of knowledge fueled by the internet. But most of all, because this has been a good time for a lot of us — here at the apex of our century’s civilization.
Unparalleled prosperity.
People don’t typically look for faith when things are going well. This is paradoxical, because having a faith community of any sort — definitely, for the most part — helps things tend in that direction. As in, “go well.”
A social circle. Pastoral care.
What is frightening and sad is when people get excluded from that circle — and when gossip, prejudice, and snap judgment do a lot of the work to cause people to step back.
Again, another part of my religion tells me — and others — that we should not judge, lest we be judged.
Unless, of course, you are an actual judge.
Those have included women pretty much since the dawn of recorded history. Pretty cool, eh?
We could in theory have a Supreme Court someday composed of nine women and no men — chosen strictly on merit, of course! What would that look like? No more or less diverse than many governing boards of many gigantic financial entities, including corporations, trusts, and foundations.
But enough with the gender politics. Being female, I have to bring this stuff up occasionally.
I guess I want to say that where Christian nationalism becomes not only frightening but truly abominable is when it is simply a cover for white racism.
I know where those people live.
At least some of them.
It’s this majestic, mountainous state known as Idaho.
I’ll be moving there in August, to a quaint campus town called Moscow — so named because of all the wheat farming in the region.
Luck and prayers appreciated.
