Tag: ExEvangelical

Ten Things I’ve Been Meaning to Say to You (Christians)

Dear Reader,1

If you identify as a Christian in present day America, especially a member of one of the many flavors of traditional Protestant or the Protestantized American Catholic church, these are 10 things I’ve been meaning to say to you:

1. Love was never negotiable. Jesus didn’t include caveats or escape clauses when he told you to love your neighbors. It doesn’t matter who came after, whether J. D. Vance or St Augustine, Jesus could not have been more clear when he explained to the young lawyer that your neighbors are the human beings you share this world with. Yet, I have watched you bending at every wrong angle like contortionists trying to justify your cruelty towards those who live and love differently than you. You’ve crept into every wrong place to kick down doors where Jesus would gently knock.2 You wield love like hate and wonder why so many of us reject you—we’re not persecuting you, we’re setting boundaries because we are tired of being struck by the hands you can’t keep to yourself.

2. Before you shout, “it’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” I’d caution you to read the text a little closer. The order and pairing does not preclude other orders or pairings, but if you insist on a strictly rigid literal reading, I will remind you that the first lie uttered in the Bible comes from the mouth of God.3 Feel nervous? See how you’re ready to reinterpret something about “spiritual death” into the text despite the language leaving no room for you to do so? Your negotiations, consolidations, and reinterpretations establish orthodoxies your texts can’t sell. The Book’s voice is far from univocal, so perhaps, find what works for you and leave us to find what works for us. After all, it was Paul who told you to “work on your own salvation with fear and trembling”4 –not ours.

3. The Rapture is not biblical. It is an invention of the nineteenth century. When the world collapses under the mess you’ve made—I promise—you’re going to die right next to the rest of us. Side note, the Apocalypse of John is not a prophecy; it’s apocalyptic literature. Look it up.

4. “The gays” aren’t coming for your children. Drag Queens aren’t grooming them either. The trans woman is just trying to use the bathroom, she’s not interested in your daughter. The argument is a distraction meant to make you overlook the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of documented cases where your pastor, your priest, your youth leader, your deacon, your elder was caught in the pants of your children. Stop letting your leaders project their sins onto others. Rise up and clean house! Remember, Jesus flipped the hell out of some tables and got a little crazy with a hand-braided whip. You might want to try to be more like him.

5. But being like Jesus means letting go of the ideals of meritocracy. It’s funny. You say Jesus loves, forgives, and saves freely, but the moment we try to give free lunches to starving kids or shelter the homeless, you’re the first to accuse us of being socialists. Look, if Jesus who was neither were measured under the standards of capitalism and socialism, my hand to the gods, you would accuse him of conspiring to triple “D”5 your beloved billionaire CEOs.

6. I think you forgot you can’t serve God and money.6

7. Many of you have convinced yourselves that forgiveness is delivered upon request, regardless of the tone or intent with which it is requested. Many of you have convinced yourself that forgiveness requires no work, no reparation, no repentance, and no consequences for your actions. You conflate forgiveness with access as if forgiveness removes the boundaries we erect to keep ourselves safe—from you!

8. Stop throwing rocks at your brothers and sisters who have the stones to say, “I think somewhere along the way, we’ve gotten a little off course.” Of course, it is hard to admit you’ve taken a wrong turn in a system that insists on its own perfection, but listen, heed their words. Every prophet God sent to set right his people got axed, too.7 For the love of God, learn something from your Book, stop repeating the same mistakes.

9. Paul didn’t write the pastoral epistles. They’re regarded as forgeries. Eject them from the canon already.

10. At some point, you must take accountability. Not letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing refers8 to charity. It wasn’t a call to ignorance. Look in the mirror. See what you have become—not becoming but have become. Something’s wrong. There is a cancer metastasizing, spreading, and killing everything that made you Christ-like. Seek treatment now . . . before it’s too late . . . I hope it’s not too late.

  1. This is an essay I wrote for class. The assignment was to write a “list essay” using Jason Reynolds’s “Ten Things I’ve Been Meaning to Say to You” as a mentor text. What follows is the result of that assignment. Enjoy? ↩︎
  2. Revelation 3:20. Now to be fair to this verse, it refers to the church in Laodicea. The author bears witness to a letter written to a church that is “lukewarm” and will be rejected by “the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation . . .” Even as this church stands to be cut off, the letter writer knocks and calls with the promise that if their voice is heard and a response is made, then the letter writer will “come in and eat with (them), and (they) with (him).” ↩︎
  3. Genesis 2:15-17. ↩︎
  4. Philippians 2:12-13. ↩︎
  5. This is a reference to “Deny, Defend, Depose,” the words etched onto the bullet casings found at the United Health CEO’s murder scene. ↩︎
  6. Matthew 6:24. ↩︎
  7. This play on words refers to a story found in Acts 7. ↩︎
  8. Matthew 6:3. ↩︎

Does God Bring Out Our Best?

I was taught that the Christian God brings out the best in us, individually and corporately. If we follow God’s commands, arbitrarily selected and defined by Christian leaders, we will become a happy, loving, joyous people living in a happy, God-honoring society. Christians, as guides for the blind, were to seek out places of political power so we might lead the world to this imagined paradise on earth.

I used to believe this, but now I am less convinced, so much so that I have renounced my faith. Some of the most angry, miserable, hateful, and violent people I have met were faithful, church-going Christians. The politics of the Christian church in America has become highly authoritarian–less concerned with genuine communion with God and more concerned with controlling every aspect of life.

If the Christian God brings out our best and creates a community of love, then why are American Christians (Catholics, I’m including you, too) known not by their love but by their hatred and bigotry? Why do we see organizational Christian leadership and its laity participating in harming those identified by the Bible as “the least of these” (Mt 25.31-46). I believe it has to do with the intellectual dishonesty and inconsistency of American Christianity.

American Christianity, primarily American Protestant and White Evangelical Christianity, makes dishonest claims about the Bible itself. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, formed in 1845 in Augusta, GA, as a response to slave-owning Baptists being disqualified to serve as missionaries, claims:

[The Bible] has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. (Southern Baptist Convention).

The SBC asserts that the Bible is “totally true and trustworthy,” yet it is filled with contradictions and errors. Consider the creation account in Genesis chapters 2 and 3. In chapter two, God says to Adam, ” ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die’ ” (Gn 2.16-17). God states clearly that on the day that Adam eats the fruit of the forbidden tree, he will die. However, in chapter three, the Serpent says to Eve, ” ‘You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’ ” (Gn 3.4-5). When Eve and Adam ate the fruit, their eyes were opened. They were like God, knowing good and evil. What the Serpent tells Eve comes to fruition. The warning God gave to Adam, saying that he would die on the day he ate the fruit, proved to be a false and empty threat. God even confirms the truth of the Serpent’s words (Gn 3.22). God lied.

This example of God lying contradicts the proof texts Christians use to claim that God does not or cannot lie. One such proof text is Numbers 23:19. Balaam, a non-Israelite prophet, is called by Balak, king of Moab, to curse the people of Israel. When Balaam attempts to curse the Israelites, the Israelites’ God gives Balaam a message to deliver to Balak:

God is not a human being, that he should lie,
or a mortal, that he should change his mind.
Has he promised, and will he not do it?
Has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
See, I received a command to bless;
he has blessed, and I cannot revoke it.
He has not beheld misfortune in Jacob,
nor has he seen trouble in Israel.
The Lord their God is with them,
acclaimed as a king among them. (Nm 23.19-21)

God cannot lie, they say, but then he does. Inferred from this proof text, also, is the claim that God does not change their mind, yet we have examples of God changing their mind in other texts, such as in Jonah. In the story of Jonah, God instructs Jonah to tell Ninevah, “Forty days more, and Ninevah will be overthrown!” (Jo 3.4). There were no conditions. It was a statement. Forty days, and you’re done. When the people of Nineveh received this message, they repented, hoping to avoid destruction, and “God changed [their] mind about the calamity that [they] had said [they] would bring upon them, and [they] did not do it” (Jo 3.10).

The Bible is not a single work that speaks with one unified voice but a collection of texts written by different authors for different purposes, audiences, and contexts. What one text says about God may–and does–contradict what another text says about God. This isn’t limited to the Old Testament. Textual critics and biblical scholars know the New Testament is filled with errors, additions, and omissions–some intentional and others not. Bible apologists will point out the thousands upon thousands of New Testament manuscripts available while neglecting that many do not agree, are incomplete, and developed hundreds of years after the account of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Most scholars agree that Paul’s “Pastoral Epistles” are forgeries, yet Christians hold on to them. Perhaps it is because they like the power 1 Timothy gives men over women. Other Pauline letters are in dispute, yet Christians assert every word in the Bible is god-breathed.

How can God bring out our best if the book that Christians assert ought to be “. . . the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried . . .” is filled with so many contradictions and errors? Consider also the millions of interpretations made by Christians regarding their own text. Their book is confusing and inconsistent for a God who is not the author of confusion (1 Cor 14.33, ESV).

Beyond the book, anecdotally, we see Christians behaving in the worst ways, from antisocial behavior to behaviors that are criminal and dangerous. The same SBC from which I drew the example about the Christian view of the Bible is the same SBC found to have a secret list of hundreds of pastors and church-affiliated personnel accused of sexual abuse (NPR, 2022). Only after the list was exposed did the SBC release it, offering questionable justifications for keeping it hidden and the sudden decision to release it to the public (McLaurin and Slade, 2022). The SBC is far from the only Christian organization diseased with allegations of sexual abuse and vile misconduct.

Christian organizations, such as the Heritage Foundation, advocate for political policies that prioritize the Christian religion and value structure in a country that guarantees religious freedom. They attack women’s healthcare, labor rights, and civil rights protections. They are developing and proposing–through their Republican cronies–policies that target the right of LGBTQIA+ individuals to exist in the public space (Project 2025). Their goals target and harm the most vulnerable communities in our society (Mt 25.41-46).

If Christians are the example of what their God desires from us, then I think they have demonstrated quite clearly, both presently and historically, that the Christian God does not bring out the best in us (Brucker 2014; Christianity and Colonial Expansion; Pahl 2010). On the contrary, this lying, lecherous, and murderous god seems to draw out our worst qualities.

The Science of Smaller Plates

—a commentary on evangelical diet culture and its assault on women.

Smaller plates
mean smaller meals.
Smaller meals
for that smaller you
because they told you
the best you,
the ideal you,
God’s design for you,
is a smaller,
lesser,
wasting away you.
A smaller you,
they say,
is a prettier you,
a more fuckable you,
and a more fuckable you
is the whole reason
God made you.
A holy,
fuckable,
baby making you
because if men
can control themselves
around you,
then you are failing
to honor the purpose
god gave you.

The Rapture

dedicated to Calvary Chapel Hanford

You promised us a rapture.
You said,
‘no one knows the day
or hour,
but the prophecies are aligned,
so any day now.’

But—

It’s been thirty six years.
You’re still looking up.

Maybe God slept in.
Maybe he’s not coming.
Maybe its time to find
something else
to pour your heart into—

like people.

Your Father the Devil

Your god
points to a mass grave
where tangled Palestinian bodies
gasp for breath,
a gospel
of bullets and bloodshed
brought to bear
upon the least of these.
He is a white AR-15
mowing down children
in the second grade
while fucking little girls
of the same age—
a coward
accusing queer communities
of crimes committed
by his pastors and priests.
Your god
is an idol,
created in the likeness
of your hate.

But Grace

is a headstone
bearing your names,
buried in a landfill
for which
none of us
mourn.

god

“You were so enamoured.
You couldn’t see it
for what it was.
Its brilliant light blinded you.
Convinced you that your hands
labored in love.

But look for yourself.

This blood,
these bodies,
your hands.
Your work.”

“But, sir,”
He spoke,
“how were we to know?
You saw it.
It’s power.
It’s beauty.
How were we to know
It wasn’t God?”

“See these bodies?
See this blood?”

The Prophet to the Pastor

In the hard places where bread
becomes stone and crowns
become thorns, there I wander
the palm lined pathways, leading
to the debt you have yet to forgive.
It is exhausting trying to keep up
with you and the nails you drive into
the hands holding out for mercy.
I suppose Grace is just a name
you give your daughters to pretend
you do all this—for Jesus.

But in spite of it all, I still wander,
smuggling in an orchard where
bodies no longer burden the
outstretched olive branches I offer
to those whose backs I buried
beneath broken boughs and
splintered words.

Someone has to sweep the
manger clean. You never know
what displaced souls might need
to rest, like an infant pauper king
held in the bravery of his mother’s
breasts, or a Palestinian leper
just trying his best to survive
the brutality of a Gaza stripped
of its rest.

This world is too hard. We have
forgotten how to make room for
love to thrive. We salt the earth and
examine splinters with wooden eyes
underneath the neon glow where hangs
a miracle whipped Jesus, who holds
a sign that reads: ‘God is love, but he
has his bad days, too.’ If what
you say is true, then God has just as
many bad days as we do.

There has got to be a better way
to make our days brighter—
like bringing in more chairs
and making room for everyone
at the inn, or finding ways to love
the face of God staring back at us
through the eyes of our neighbors—
every neighbor, not just the ones
who gather on cute sing-along
Sundays. All of them. But especially—

especially the ones we’ve crucified
in full view of the Son.

Ode to Calvary Chapel

The Moses model was established to give the pastor
complete control because Chuck Smith did not like
to hear the word ‘no.’ And so followed suit his cult of
imposter pastors who wielded power accountable ‘only
to the Lord.’ Such a strange interpretation falling outside
all models for the Church, but for them, it worked—to
keep the flock in line. Under-shepherds too quick to
identify with Jesus and not the Judas in themselves.
I condemn it. The bath, the water, the baby—all of it.

Strange were the men, never women, who assumed
the role of pastor. Charismatic, arrogant, filled with
all manner of pride, but—they say—holy, and to say
otherwise, was to Divide—division is the greatest sin you
can commit outside of being gay, or a woman who lost
her virginity before marriage; these men were always in
our pants. They were always in our lives pointing our
eyes to distant stars while picking our pockets for their
con—Jesus is coming, they still say, and every earthly
strife is a sign.

We waited. We watched. Jesus never showed up—to
a single Sunday service. Probably because they did
so little serving beyond themselves. Riding the coat
tails of every Evangelical pearl clutch, they stoked the
fears of the flock inside the lines drawn in the sand
between them and everyone else—us versus them.
Them, a euphemism for non-Calvary Chapel believers,
the unsaved, the unclean, the Black, the Brown, the
Other—and especially the misfits who were a misfit
for the cross-shaped coffins they’d stuff us into, like
Lonnie Frisbee who first brought the youth. Lonnie,
who gave Chuck his start. Lonnie, who they threw
away when he couldn’t stop being gay. Lonnie, who
Smith and Laurie claimed repented on his deathbed.
We know they are lying.

Chuck is gone now, I wish Laurie was, too, but his
legacy lives on in the broken bodies beaten down
by illiterate men who use the Bible as a weapon, God
as a scapegoat, and Love as reason to hate. And there
was so much hate.

I condemn it. The bath, the water, the baby—all of it.

Summer of 2021

This photo still enrages me. I took it in the summer of 2021 outside Kingsburg City Hall. The sea of, mostly, older white faces, armed with American flags, Bibles, and an illiterate understanding of American history were joined by far-right hate groups such as the Proud Boys, 1776ers, and others, to oppose a Pride Month proclamation in the City of Kingsburg. The grueling three-hour spectacle saw these “patriots” engage in anti-patriotic and dog-whistle-laden rhetoric.

The American flag was weaponized and used in a manner not dissimilar to the symbols of hate waved about by white supremacist hate groups. In a display of irony, many of these white (and Evangelical) individuals spoke to the American flag as being all inclusive while actively seeking to exclude what they understood to be a social other, an enemy of America. Several opined they would be called bigots as they spewed bigoted speeches to oppose recognizing Pride month in their small town.

I couldn’t help but notice how many referred to passages in the Bible with the same fervor of those who had once used scripture to justify segregation, bans on interracial marriage, to stand against feminism and the right to vote for women, justify slavery, ignore police brutality and murder, etc., etc., etc. It was the same tired arguments to scapegoat their little god as the source for the hate they called love.

Others appealed to a slippery slope argument, claiming that allowing the Pride flag to be flown would cause all manner of requests for other flags to be flown. This argument, of course, is born out of ignorance. First, such requests are not being made. Second, the only ones who seemed to want to fly other flags were those who came to oppose both Pride Month and the flying of the Pride flag–and the flags they proposed were ones of hate and intended intimidation–the same sort of bullshit that saw statues of Confederate generals and figures erected all across the south during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

This particular moment sparked a radical change in my personal life. I, along with several others, joined with the council member who proposed the proclamation to organize and host a Pride celebration in the City of Kingsburg–which we did with great success. But also, I found it incredibly important that I weaponized my white privilege and my less-than-humane past to confront the white supremacy, bigotry, and systemic bias deeply embedded within my community and the communities surrounding my own.

This turning point made it clear that I could not simply be silent on matters of marginalization and oppression. I must act. Whether that means helping organizations that combat injustice, calling state and federal representatives, or simply calling out fucked up behaviors in the public space, I have to act.

It has been a long journey, and there is still much work to be done, but, in a way, I am glad I was forced to confront this evil head on. It’s made me a better, more compassionate, and a more loving human.

Silence Fell

The first time I found the courage to ask questions,
I placed them sideways, set them crooked because
I was too afraid to shoot straight, so I chose to shoot
like a star—cascading across heaven.

But your fluency in crooked was limited to speaking;
hearing was never your strong suit, so when—in the
midst of our firefight—I finally said the quiet part out
loud, clear as a bell, you stood still, and then everything
got very quiet.

A Tired Mom

God’s not dead,
She’s just tired
Of all this Hell
We put ourselves through.
It was never meant
To be like this,
The hurt.
But like so many new parents,
She’s still learning.
She’s still growing up,
So be gentle,
Because this
Is new for all of us.
We are all
Making this up.
So, please,
Let go of the guilt
Held hostage
Over your hearts,
Because someone
Has to teach God
How to let go of a grudge.

A God to be Pitied

Ought God be feared?
Or pitied?
To have formed us
In divine likeness,
She sought to love herself.
She tired of being alone.
So from the dust we arose.
And we
Could not make her happy.

So what then is God
If not abdication
And abandonment?
A damning silence
From beyond the stars
Watching our suffering
With such knowing.
Listen,
She is begging
For our forgiveness.

Stories from Deconstructing Over the Last 20 Years: Part I, The Framework

These are the bones—

From 1987 to 2004, my family was part of an Evangelical/Fundamentalist Imminent Rapture cult founded during the 1960s/70s Jesus People Movement. My siblings and I departed the cult c. 2004. My mother died a member (death unrelated) and my sperm-donor, as far as I know, is still connected to it. Their Christianity is the result of a long tradition of biblical illiteracy, superstition, and an intentional spurning of education.

The structure of power centers on the pastor. As a non-denominational organization, there were no outside checks or balances. It was assumed the pastor was uniquely attuned to the voice of the Holy Spirit. He (because always men) surrounds himself with yes-people, an inner circle faithfully adhering to his word and direction. They clamor for his approval—keeps them inline, as it were. The pastor is charismatic and charming; he knows how to play the crowd.

There is an emphasis on being a good Christian. Good, of course, is determined by comparing yourself to the more popular members. Popular members were always good, and you always wanted their approval. We enjoyed the same things and disliked the same things. Doing differently singled you out as being in a questionable state of Christian life.

The systems reflected our white supremacy and reinforced them. It was expected that a good Christian identify as a Republican and view abortion and LGBTQIA+ rights as an assault against Christians. Future generations were expected to vote against their own interests so to hurt sinners and make America a “Christian nation.” We spoke in dog whistles to convey the problematic politics of our system in order to maintain plausible deniability if confronted about our “unspoken” culture.

We were isolationists. The outside world was evil and meant us harm. We were different and set apart from the world. We were in a spiritual war against the outside. We received our orders, ethics, and morality in a verticle modality—direct from God . . . or rather the pastor’s interpretation of God.

Fear was our primary means of control—a fear of Hell, a fear of “accidentally” serving the devil, a fear of missing the rapture, a fear of suffering and pain earned through disobedience, mistakes, and missteps.

Parts of this structure will look and sound familiar if you follow American politics. Christofascism, a term coined in 1970 by theologian Dorothee Sölle, has deep roots, and it is cults like the one I grew up in that provided the fertile soil that has allowed it to blossom into the horrid abomination you see today.

This is the structure in which I was kept for 17 years. It is from this setting, and that of my childhood home, that I will draw my deconstructionist thoughts, experience, and theological discourse.

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The Inevitable Introduction

These are the ghosts that wander through the infinite corridors of a divergent, and admittedly, unsound mind. Some belong to a troubled past, others arise from social decay, while others are utterly fabricated. I speak them into being, bring them out for examination, and in doing so, unintentionally examine and critique myself.

Continue reading “The Inevitable Introduction” →