Honest History, True Theology, and The Church in America Today: Some Thoughts

When information comes to light showing that the medical industry has covered up harmful and dangerous elements, showing that there are structural imbalances and practices that harm those they are supposed to help, or showing that corporate gain is prioritized over patient health, we do not think twice about declaiming the medical industry and demanding that the inadequate and wrong elements of its system be changed. We do not take such concerns as unpatriotic or unqualified. And we do not respond to such legitimate concerns by immediately crying: 

“Not all doctors! They are good people who want to serve! Instances of malpractice or abuse, or of proven harmful behavior towards those in poverty or of a minority group, the potential dangers of vaccines and some drugs, the lack of patient/provider trust, and prohibitive medical expenses don’t mean the system that results in repeated instances of all of these things is broken! It just means a few bad apples!”. 

Nor should we. We should acknowledge that the heart of the issue is deeper than individual members of it (good or bad), desire change, and seek structural revision to enable better and more equitable care for all. 

When we push against the demand for abortion in our society, we do it with the most sucess not just through black-and-white legislation against it. We are far more effective when we instead begin by observing the cultural, economic, and political factors at play in a throw-away, hyper-sexual culture that glorifies and ‘necessitates’ it, and by pointing out the objectification and oppression that lead to many of the human ‘choices’ we see represented as numbers in a stat. By doing so, we are more equipped to holistically resist- again- an unjust and skewed structure (broadly represented by Planned Parenthood) that is largely hurting those it claims to help while also existing in symbiosis with an economic system that depends on the objectification and commodification of the female body and sexuality. We certainly never clutch our pearls over the conviction that, specifically, Unborn Lives Matter. We must recognize that in order to assert the sanctity of ALL life, we must champion the rights and dignity of EVERY individual life. The unborn life, elderly life, the disabled life, the incarcerated life, the gay life, the undocumented life... the list could go on. The recognition of one does not negate the many, but rather underscores the value of all.

Less than a month prior to the day when I sit now, typing these thoughts, scores of American ‘patriots’ took to the streets, most without complying to any public health guidelines (an important distinction to contrast with current protests for racial justice). Their grievance? A new and temporary structure of living that was even then in a constant state of evolution, as data and knowledge progressed the understanding of a new and often deadly virus that had wreaked havoc on other developed countries only weeks before that. In doing so they claimed to be 'resisting tyranny'. However, much of their public rhetoric was full of self-centered sentiment that dismissed the needs of others, and refusal to acknowledge the possible harm their words, rather than simply their actions, could cause members of the community around them. By centering their personal, social liberties in a nuanced and controversial situation of public health, they revealed their true concern was not all human rights, but their own rights. Other folks be damned. Bob and Karen wanted their Applebee’s and AR-15s and woe to them that stand in their way.

This one-sided focus is not new. Many Conservative or ‘Establishment’ Christians have been either eerily silent, in outright denial, or in vocal support both throughout history and particularly in recent years, about many of the forms of tyranny committed by wealthy, white leaders against those with less power and privilege- forms of tyranny and abuse that have been around on our soil since before ‘America’ as such was even established. In my years of life among Evangelicals, I have rarely heard full honesty about the founding and fostering of our nation or our current structural injustices. I have not heard prominent, public voices in the Church reckoning with the reality that, despite current conservative hyper-fixation on abortion or liberal attention to the affirmation of alternative lifestyles, our nation has NEVER been pro-life in almost any sense. 'All lives', from the very first step of European settlers onto soil they claimed with excessive violence of every kind, have never mattered in either our policy or our practice. 

Americans fetishize the Pilgrims and Founding Fathers into saint-like heroes, despite the multi-faceted and often dark history that surrounds them. Concerted efforts have been made to keep students in the dark about things like native genocide and the horrors of slavery. After the Civil War came to a close, racism and segregation flourished and resulted in unjust laws and systems designed to oppress many, and these systems are the direct forebearers of our legal system today. Below the Mason-Dixon line, memorials to Confederate generals- who were enemies of the supposedly sacred Constitution and champions of the ownership of human beings- were erected as racial tensions grew in the Jim Crow era, blatant idols to a falsified history of the South and a desire for a White Supremacist future. During armed conflicts, World War 2 and Vietnam in particular, segregated military branches piled racial divides on top of already rampant violence throughout American involvement. Even as Civil Right victories were gained, policy makers found ways, such as redlining, to circumvent equality and maintain systems of oppression to those in poverty and minorities of all social classes. Even today, the data shows grievous levels of injustice in the operation of our courts and prison-industrial complex, which incarcerates innocent lives for profit and political weight.

A concept known as the ‘bootstraps mentality’- the claim that those who want to climb the wealth and social ladder will do so, if they want it and work hard enough- is prevalent in American society. In particular, and ironically, it is popular among the already-wealthy and privileged, many of whom have amassed their assets in dubiously moral ways and from a position far in advance of a fair starting point. They disprove their own claims to this misguided outlook, which is based on individualist assumptions of equal opportunity and resources that are simply out of reach for many members of society of all ethnicities but with greater statistical emphasis on minority groups. Despite economic and educational barriers, many students of color achieve academic excellence only to face further prejudice in the workforce (see link to data above).

During reconstruction from the Civil War, the land grants that citizens were given forced Native Americans onto reservations, often through violence. The expansion across the country has led to much extreme poverty for First Nations people. Strict segregation prevented financial mobility to many Black people in the South. Or, look to the Tulsa Massacre in 1921- when Greenwood, an affluent neighborhood of successful Black people who had earned the name ‘Black Wall Street’, was attacked and razed by white mobs after Greenwood residents reacted en masse to the imprisonment of a young Black man, over an unprovable incident involving a white woman. This resistance by his community to the charges he faced was used to justify a violent uprising that killed an estimated 100-300 Greenwood citizens and destroyed the livelihoods and homes of several hundred more. It also removed them as economic competition to their white neighbors. Incidents like this have hindered minorities from being able to find a community foothold in the monolith of free-market American capitalism. White America has had 400+ years to gain wealth and power; minority groups haven’t even had equal rights as human beings until within the last century. America itself, as we know it, would not exist if scores of humans hadn’t been killed and enslaved. This alone should reveal the inevitably of inequality within our entire socio-political structure.

This is why I bring up these historical reminders (which are far from exhaustive). To demonstrate how broken the system created by this history is, the system that we now live in. A legacy like this doesn’t disappear just because politicians or public figures say it has. Nor is it fixed by surface level solutions that simply compound the problems at play. These are historical facts with which we, preferably as a nation, but at the very least as the Church, have to reckon with in an honest way. The world should not be ahead of the Church in pursuing and disseminating hard, historical truth! We must be able to look beyond our mythologized conception of what America both has been and currently is, and deal honestly with the historical facts instead. Only then can we begin moving toward a reconstructed society that is truly free and just for all. If we claim those ideals were genuine, Biblically Christian ones when the (Deism-influenced) founding fathers invoked them, we must back that up with the way we champion them NOW. We must take a hard look at where and how our theology and practice reflects our culture and Western historical worldview rather than God and the testimony of scripture. If our theology doesn’t lead us to championing the dignity and good of others and seeking to be a more whole, diverse, and unified body, then I believe that either our theology or our practice of it is fatally flawed. Scripture repeatedly shows God’s heart towards justice and the oppressed, and toward greedy, proud abusers who seek to maintain unjust status quos- especially when they do it while claiming His name or His word to enable them. It is clear in both the Old and New Testaments that His people are to lead the way in caring for the marginalized, supporting the weak, and divesting ourselves of our own privileges in order to make room for those who don’t possess the same ones. This will mean seeking changes in our governing bodies, our social structures, and our communities- but it should be the movement and heart of the church first. And as long as issues of human rights remain divided between political labels and the selfish partisanship in which we have come to place so much undue identity, false righteousness, and value, the church will continue to fail to do so.