Do You Have an Escapist Faith?

Tomorrow is election day in much of the USA. But that’s not why you came here. You just wanted some time to think about a Bible passage or two. I get it. You want to escape from a broken world. We all do. I’m sick of seeing President Baby Hands and his sycophants destroy democracy, culture and decency and would frankly rather just tune out. But I have some bad news for you if you are Christian: when faith is stripped of ethics and civic duty, faith becomes a sanctuary for self-interest and not a summons to courageous discipleship.

Allowing your faith to guide you in the public square is not just a series of abstractions. Things are getting way too real right here, right now my folx. ICE recently bashed a peaceful blind protester’s head against the concrete multiple times for the offense of just sitting there. The next generation of Republican leaders are racist and misogynist and no one is doing anything about it. The FBI is knocking on protesters’ doors trying to threaten them to chill their first amendment rights. Recent cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are expected to affect millions of low-income Americans, with significant reductions in benefits due to new eligibility restrictions and work requirements. I must stop here because I could literally go on for 100 more lines with terrible things that have happened just this week. Are you OK with this? Silence is complicity.

As Christians, we must be guided by the ethics of our faith. We have real moral commitments that should be guiding our action toward others. These aren’t personal values or internal beliefs. I don’t care what your tax policies are for the most part, or if you think private corporations are better at certain things than government. I might disagree with you, but I don’t think those things are on par with the abuse of our neighbors going on right now in our communities.

You may feel that civic responsibility needs to be separate from your faith life. It’s uncomfortable. But civic responsibility means actively participating in public life to advance the common good and that is an extension of our Christian faith. Our political reality, things like policies, institutions and social structure shape our daily lives. Why do we treat civic engagement so differently from other areas of our lives when it comes to faith? Why is this area off limits? If our pastors were begging us to help with hurricane relief, no one would complain. But we’re facing a very real hurricane right now that is damaging more lives than a typical storm.

Jesus didn’t come to give us a self-help toolkit. Jesus was not some kind of unschooled “life coach.” Jesus went to the cross because he preached turning the social order upside down and our Lord asked us to similarly pick up our own crosses. Yes, faith is indeed transformative, but faith is not an escape from courage and engagement. If we don’t fight injustice, what are we even doing? If you take the sacrament but do nothing in terms of ethical action, you are not practicing faith, you’re role-playing your faith.

Civic Engagement is Foundational to Faith

The prophets repeatedly linked faith to ethics. This blog is named for Micah 6:8 which calls us to justice, mercy and walk humbly with our God. I wrote at length how Amos is all about social justice. The Hebrew Scriptures call out leaders and market practices all over the place, demonstrating that true faith includes work for political and economic justice.

God’s consistent concern is for the vulnerable. Despite what this administration wants to do to the SNAP benefits of poor families, scripture is often centering widows, orphans and foreigners.

Zechariah 7:9-10

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy each to his brother, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart.”

People tried to throw Jesus off a cliff simply for quoting Isaiah on social justice. Jesus went on to heal in public places, uphold the most marginalized people in His society and demand that we prioritize care for each other. In Matthew 25, Jesus tells us that how we treat the stranger is how we treat our Lord. When you see what ICE is doing to immigrants, you need to understand that your faith is telling you they are doing that to Jesus Himself.

Of course, none of this was lost on the early church. Acts shows us how the earliest Christians modeled a kind of communal economics and didn’t shy away from public witness. How should we respond to the threats of ICE against the stranger in our midst, the very people Jesus commands us to serve? Acts 4:29 has an answer that may make you uncomfortable: “And now, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness…” Our mission from the earliest days is certainly about care, but it is also proclamation.

Our faith says that every person bears God’s image and therefore human dignity is intrinsic and universal. We don’t serve power and profit. We serve the whole people and the common good. We fight for justice, peace and strong institutions that serve the weakest in our midst. Certainly, we should love each other one at a time. But through civic engagement we can love our neighbor at scale.

Privilege Turned Faith into Escapism

It seems like everywhere I turn, people are blind to the privilege they seek to protect. They don’t think that faith should be uncomfortable, they want to continue to live in a bubble. But faith without ethical commitment is just escapism. Going to church cannot become a retreat into your privileged comfy chair. Ritual is meaningless unless we’re then leaving our sacred spaces and enacting change on the world. I’m not criticizing your personal pieties such as prayers and private devotions. I hold those dear myself. But if your faith is only turned inward, it is empty. Faith isn’t here to reassure you about your status, safety and security.

Privilege has reduced faith to an identity badge. We’re not thinking of others, we’re protecting ourselves and our interests. We’ve lost our prophetic edge. If calling for justice, mercy and humility makes you shrink away, then maybe you should leave the faith entirely, not just your church. Leave Christianity, because if you won’t stand up for justice, you’re doing it wrong. There are places where you can celebrate privilege like shopping at Nordstroms, or eating steak dinners, or relaxing at a spa. I’m not saying those things are evil, they just aren’t church. And maybe church isn’t for you, because church is hard and it’s not for the weak.

Sanitized Faith is Dangerous

When we shrink away from the public demands on our morality, we become complicit in injustice. Every person who is complaining to their pastor about preaching politics is fighting for the status quo. There is no sacred middle ground. If you don’t want to fight injustice, you must want to continue injustice. This silence is costly in many ways. Jesus didn’t ask us to sit on our hands. We are here to confront economic exploitations, racial inequality, LGBTQ+ bigotry and abusive power in all forms. If we don’t confront these evils, we are at best allowing them to exist and at worst enabling the abusers in our public square.

People want to come up with all kinds of reasons why young people leave the church. I think it’s because we’ve lost the creditability of our prophetic witness. Our credibility rests on our consistency in moral speech and our commitment to justice. Young people see hypocrisy when we focus on things like personal virtues while allowing ICE agents to crack open heads and disappear innocents. We have done this to ourselves. We eroded the trust in our church as a real moral agent because we abandoned the uncomfortable responsibilities of public life.

I once had a blind faith in our leaders. I felt like they could argue things out on their own. Surely, their differences of opinion would lead to innovative compromises because we’re all in this together. I see now, thanks to Trump, that we’re not all in this together. Some people want to exert power, control and privilege unfairly over others. There is no innovative compromise. There is only selfishness, grift and weakness. If we cede our policymaking to these unfaithful bad actors, we weaken the protection of the poor and marginalized. We have no principled advocates in this administration; we have enablers of a criminal enterprise. It is now on us to act. There is no longer an avenue for neutrality, because neutrality only allows further abuses.

But What About Separation of Church and State?

Separation of church and state does not mean that religious people should withdraw from public life; it means the government should stay out of our religion. There should be no state religion, despite what the Christian Nationalists tell you. This nation is not a Christian nation. And even if it did mean that, who cares? I serve Jesus no matter what, and Christian practice has always stood up against injustice.

So many congregants think that taking a public moral stance is somehow, “political,” in a left v. right sort of way. Do not under any circumstances conflate partisan allegiance with prophetic conviction. The only thing you’re doing when you criticize a pastor who calls out injustice is putting your own political allegiances on display. Refusing to speak against injustice is an abandonment of your Jesus-commissioned duty to testify to truth. It doesn’t matter what party lines you cross; you must do it.

But Matt, you lift humility and taking a side on these issues seems to be a prideful thing to do. Don’t confuse humility with passivity. Don’t confuse love and patience with indifference. Humility requires us to listen (and potentially discuss things with more restraint that I usually do). Humility does not require us to withdraw when others are being harmed. Patience means being willing to work with people whose privilege blinds them to injustice, but it doesn’t mean waiting to make a change. Silence only allows these systemic wrongs to multiply and calcify into our culture. Have humility but also have courage.