‘Are You Okay?’: Pretti’s last words

One of the most discouraging phenomena of the past ten years has been watching evangelical Christians continue to support Donald Trump despite an ever-intensifying stream of immoral behaviour they wouldn’t have tolerated from any other candidate. By now it seems there may be no limit to how far this will go. Trump’s myriad moral shortcomings are well known and thoroughly priced into the Faustian bargain evangelicals have made. And yet with each successive outrage, I can’t help but wonder if this will finally be the “bridge too far” moment when evangelicals withdraw their support.

Current events move at a frantic pace, so by the time you read this, we’ll know more. But in the aftermath of the shootings of Renée Good (writer and poet) and Alex Pretti (intensive care nurse) by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis, the polling data I’ve seen suggests that support for ICE and the Trump administration’s approach to immigration enforcement remains strongest among white evangelicals (though Pretti’s killing seems to have provoked more “unsure” sentiments than any previous ICE action). And so, at least for now, it seems that we have not yet reached the bottom of what evangelicals will tolerate or endorse from the Trump administration. (For anyone trying to understand how we’ve arrived in this position, I strongly recommend Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.)

Where does this put the church?

All of this is a real problem for our church communities. My friend Phil once described the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) as a group of “fringe evangelicals,” and this characterization feels exactly right. As far as I can tell, we are deeply divided on issues like the conduct of ICE, the weakening of the rule of law in the United States, and the larger ideology of Christian nationalism which looms in the background.

This probably explains why the CRC isn’t having a public conversation about these developments, other than through our endless bickering about the Human Sexuality Report and subsequent Synodical decisions, which on some level is surely a proxy war for the larger social and political currents running through the denomination (or what’s left of it). We seem to have arrived at a place where either we don’t care, or we are so fractured and confused that we can’t muster a consensus to condemn the glaring evils taking place right in front of us. As Jesus put it in Matthew 13:15, “This people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.”

Whoever has eyes, let them see. If our best thinking over the past decade has led us to a place where we can watch the videos of Renée Good and Alex Pretti’s killings and still reconcile this with the Gospel, then our thinking has failed us. If we can look at the now-infamous image of five-year-old Liam Ramos – wearing his Pokémon toque, terrified, detained by ICE – and call this acceptable, then our hearts have indeed grown calloused.

By now it should be obvious that lawlessness and performative cruelty are not accidents but aims. If the CRC continues to tolerate them through passive acceptance, our fringe evangelical denomination will fail. Maybe it already has, and maybe it should. Our hope, after all, is not in preservation but in resurrection. And maybe what is required now is precisely that: to be broken down, purified and made new.

Beyond statements

But perhaps it isn’t too late. Through all the tumult of the recent ICE surge, I’ve taken a lot of hope from the courage and non-violent resistance practiced by the people of Minneapolis. Love compels us to take care of each other, and this is what Minnesotans have done in staggering numbers despite bitterly cold weather and the demonstrated risks of unlawful detention or physical harm – or even death.

Many of these people are motivated by their Christian faith. Many are deconstructing Christians or “exvangelicals.” I was moved to tears listening to an interview with one peaceful protestor, who explained why, for the first time in his life, he had taken to the streets. He said, simply, “Jesus said to love your neighbour, and you can’t love your neighbour if you stay home.” Similarly, an Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire made headlines for telling clergy to make sure they have their affairs in order “because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.”

These are only two examples of the many voices in the culture and in the broader stream of Christianity reminding us about the demands and potential costs of selfless love. Here’s another: Alex Pretti was murdered by ICE for trying to help a woman they had just pushed to the ground. His last words were, reportedly, “Are you okay?”

It’s time for evangelicals – and “fringe evangelicals” – to listen to such voices. Whoever has ears, let them hear.

All of this brings me to a poem I’ve reread many times in the last year. Geoffrey Hill’s “Christmas Trees” reflects on the impact of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian martyr who defied an earlier authoritarian state. The closing words of Hill’s poem are hauntingly applicable to Pretti and the other voices of selfless love who’ve had the courage, recently, to speak with moral clarity:

Against wild reasons of the state
[their] words are quiet but not too quiet.
We hear too late or not too late.