Living maladjusted in the United States

As a Christian living in the United States, in Texas specifically, sometimes I find that the Christians around me seem more concerned with empire than empathy. More concerned with fencing who belongs at the table than fostering love. 

What I see is white Christian Nationalists celebrating conquest and devaluing the compassionate care Jesus came to extend to the world. I’m sure you’ve seen the headlines in Canada. The marginalized of my country are terrified. DEI initiatives have been dismantled; those honouring DEI initiatives are punished. People in this country who are here legally with visas, who have followed the rules, are wondering if they are going to be snatched out of their homes or offices. And this is just what’s happening within the borders of the U.S.

I feel like we’re living through a horror show here, yet I have empathy for what you’re experiencing outside of the U.S. too. I cringe every time Donald J. Trump so much as mentions annexing Greenland or repeatedly states that Canada should become the 51st state of the U.S. I wince when I see that the Gulf of Mexico now reads as the Gulf of America on map applications. I’m awash with dread when red MAGA hats are a dime a dozen in my state. While flexing American authoritarian muscles, the Trump administration speaks as if the U.S. is doing the world a favour, and many American Christians applaud this imposed benevolence.

We are resisting 

I hope you hear one thing from me: there are many Christians in the U.S. who are resisting. There are those who still believe in and embody the radical love of Jesus. We are appalled at what the current administration of our country is doing. 

We are resisting on behalf of our neighbours, who are being grabbed off the street and shipped to a prison camp in El Salvador. We resist by printing and passing out simple cards that help our immigrant neighbours know their rights when threatened and intimidated by immigration agents. We are resisting for our friends who are losing their jobs and their livelihoods. We are resisting by showing up to local town halls and city meetings and by joining school boards, so that totalitarianism is not unchallenged. We are resisting the authoritarian ideology that thrives under the guise of Christian faithfulness. We are resisting because while the United States has a terrible history of conquest, we also have a rich history of nonviolent resisters in whose footsteps we labour to follow. We are incredibly ordinary people, but we follow the footsteps of the ordinary radicals who have gone before us.

Jesus was radical

“What radicalized you?” This question pops up on social media in spaces focused on advocacy and activism. Some of the folks in those spaces who answer may specifically identify as radicals doing radical work, but many people believe themselves to be ordinary. It’s another way of asking, “You weren’t this engaged before. What changed?” Or maybe a better translation: “How did you come to care such that you now advocate the way you do?” 

I’ve been a follower of Jesus for the last two decades. Throughout that time, I’d say that I’ve always cared about the world around me, but there’s been a notable shift in how I articulate my faith. Some folks perceive me as (and have called me) a “woke joke” as I advocate for social justice in the American church. Divine love, including care for creation, is a hallmark of the Christian faith that Jesus initiated. Jesus was divine love incarnate. He showed us that when the surrounding empire has normalized exploitation and harm, it is radical to love your marginalized neighbor. As followers of Jesus, divine love is what sets Christians apart. Jesus told us that the world would know that we were his followers because of our love for one another (Jn. 13:34-35). 

What first “radicalized” me was witnessing how Jesus’s name has been used as a seal of approval to sanction abuse and dehumanization. I witnessed this personally during my time working on staff at a church where spiritual abuse was pervasive. My experience revealed that there can be one person – in this case, a pastor – who is the sole perpetrator of spiritual abuse. However, for abuse to thrive in a community, there has to be a system that sustains, normalizes or ignores red flags. Once you see that this system exists, you cannot unsee it. When it comes to systemic spiritual abuse, the system uses God’s name to call what it is doing faithful.

There are many ways in which God’s name and words are used so that those who abuse power remain unchallenged. These can be difficult to challenge because they are difficult to detect. They don’t only exist in local churches navigating abuse scandals and cover-ups. We’re seeing this sort of malformed system at a nationwide level in the United States. One person in power – pastor or president – can leverage the name of God to justify the oppression that comes with empire-building. I lament that many self-proclaimed Christians believe that oppression and God can be so intertwined. But for those who embody the radical love of Jesus today, a crucial aspect of our vocation is to help others see the harmful powers and principalities masquerading as God to choke our world.

History repeats itself 

I work as a writer focused on holistic spiritual formation. “Holistic” is critical because in my study of church history, navigating the various schisms and divides that have shifted the Christian faith, I’ve realized that there are many cruel forms of Christianity. In these forms, “discipleship” is understood as conforming to cultural norms and calling them Christ. In these forms, spiritual formation is actually malformative and toxic. Likewise, “mission” is conflated with objectifying people as problems to solve – units to assimilate – rather than people to love. 

You’ll know this to be true if you’re familiar with the papal bulls of the Catholic Church from the 15th century and their global influence. Three papal bulls comprise what we know as the Doctrine of Discovery. These papal bulls granted Europeans the authority to subjugate the populations of non-Christian nations, placing people from all over the world in perpetual servitude. Through the Doctrine of Discovery the Catholic Church sanctioned slavery, but it also implied the supposed goodness of European colonization, believing subjugation was necessary for the salvation of these nations. This belief paved the way for African Americans to be kidnapped from their lands to work the land of another. Indigenous peoples were coerced to leave their ancestral lands; Indigenous children were forced to attend the horror that was the residential schools where they were assimilated into the dominant culture. They were required to give up their native languages and native dress by school leaders, many of whom were also leaders within the Catholic Church. We know these atrocities for what they are now, but we might forget that the Doctrine of Discovery influenced and guided international law and the laws of both the United States and Canada. It reigned for nearly 500 years before Pope Francis renounced it in 2023.

Cruel Christianity, in any age, celebrates conformity, malformity and assimilation. However, radicals who embody holistic spiritual formation see the fractured world and work to make it whole – to bring shalom. 

Pursue shalom

I wish I could say that a sense of holistic spiritual formation is what I see in the U.S., my home country, but I cannot. I see Christians more concerned with conquest than compassion. 

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once called upon folks to be maladjusted to the systems of oppression in this world. Many of us are radical in that we are committed to living maladjusted lives in a country where conquest is celebrated. We are radical because we dare to love our neighbors as ourselves. Those of us who are resisting in the United States see our global neighbors and are clasping hands with you. We want the people of the world to experience the shalom of liberation, and we know we have to resist our own government to make that a reality. 

Speaking of the American church’s complicity in racism, historian Jemar Tisby once wrote that “racism never goes away; it just adapts.” It may seem to be eradicated in one context, but the nefariousness of evil is that it shapeshifts. What is true of racism is true of other forms of dehumanization and abuse of power. The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave is full of chains. Yet, Christians known for their radical love are working to loosen bonds and liberate captives. Don’t give up on us. Instead, be maladjusted with us. Help us resist by breathing life into a suffocating world.

An unnecessary task force

On May 1, prominent Christian leaders in the U.S. including authors and historians Jemar Tisby, Kristen Kobes Du Mez and Diana Butler Bass published a letter condemning the U.S. government’s “Anti-Christian Bias Task Force.” In part, the letter reads:

“We reject the proposition that there is widespread persecution of Christians in the United States. Christianity in America is diverse in its practices, beliefs, racial and ethnic backgrounds, political affiliation and understanding of the way to manifest our beliefs in our work for the common good. Marshalling the resources of the federal government for a nonexistent threat is a gross misuse of taxpayer resources, especially when there has been a rise in not just bias but hate-based violence against Jewish, Muslim, and other religious communities. We fear that the “Anti-Christan Bias Task Force” will be weaponized to privilege one tradition within Christianity over others, ironically creating anti-Christian bias even as it claims to combat it. We are also aware of how claims of “anti-Christian bias” are shown to provide cover for white supremacy.”