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Habitual Fraud Under the Mask of Religion

The following is a spoken word piece recorded outside of an immigrant church while clergy and others stood outside as a show of solidarity and support so our sisters and brothers could worship safely.

Transcript

They called it
habitual fraud under the mask of religion.

Not an error.

Not a moment of weakness.

Not one hand caught
briefly in the offering plate.

Habitual.

A practice.

A discipline.

A liturgy.

The mask goes on in the morning.

God bless America.

God save the nation.

God protect the leader.

God secure the border.

God bless the bomb.

God bless the market.

God bless the prison.

God bless the order
we have constructed
to keep certain people
on one side of the gate
and certain people
on the other.

And beneath the mask

the old machinery turns.

Power.

Money.

Fear.

Land.

Blood.

Control.

The words change.

The machinery does not.

Pharaoh had priests.

Caesar had temples.

Kings had bishops.

Plantations had preachers.

Armies had chaplains.

Empires have always preferred
a God who salutes.

A God who stamps the paperwork.

A God who approves the budget.

A God who stands obediently
behind the podium
while the ruler speaks.

This is the oldest political trick:

put heaven
on the letterhead.

And perhaps that is the fraud.

Not believing in God.

The fraud is making God
believe in us.

Drafting the Almighty
into our party.

Putting Christ
in a campaign hat.

Making the Prince of Peace
pose beside the weapons.

Making the refugee Jesus
guard the checkpoint.

Making the condemned Jesus
cheer the execution.

Making the poor Jesus
explain why the poor
must tighten their belts.

Making the brown-skinned
colonized Nazarene

the patron saint
of empire.

Habitual fraud

under the mask
of religion.

And the mask is useful.

Because without it

we might have to say plainly:

We are afraid.

We want control.

We want the land.

We want the money.

We want the oil.

We want the votes.

We want the enemy
to disappear.

We want our children safe
and are willing for someone else’s children
to be terrified.

We want to win.

But these things sound ugly
when spoken nakedly.

So bring the vestments.

Bring the flag.

Bring the Bible.

Bring the choir.

Bring someone
to pray before the cameras.

Cover the machinery.

Hide the gears.

Bless the blade.

There is an old story
about a man in the wilderness

offered all the kingdoms
of the world.

Imagine that.

All the kingdoms.

Every palace.

Every army.

Every border.

Every treasury.

Every throne.

All yours.

And he said no.

We have spent two thousand years
trying to persuade him
to reconsider.

Jesus,

we can get you elected.

Jesus,

we can make Christianity great again.

Jesus,

we can protect you
from your enemies.

Jesus,

just stand here.

Hold the flag.

Smile.

Say nothing
about the stranger.

Nothing
about the prisoner.

Nothing
about the poor.

Nothing
about the peacemakers.

Nothing
about loving enemies.

Certainly nothing
about selling possessions.

We have polling
on that.

Just give us
your name.

We will handle
the rest.

Habitual fraud
under the mask of religion.

Perhaps someday
there should be a tribunal

not for unbelief

but for misuse of belief.

For laundering cruelty
through holiness.

For hiding ambition
inside prophecy.

For calling domination
discipleship.

For baptizing nationalism.

For canonizing vengeance.

For turning God
into an authorization code.

And perhaps the witnesses
would come forward:

the migrant,

the prisoner,

the hungry child,

the bombed family,

the woman silenced
by sacred authority,

the dissenter called traitor,

the believer told
that obedience to power
was obedience to God.

One by one
they would take the stand.

And somewhere near the back

an itinerant rabbi
from Galilee

would be waiting
to testify.

But perhaps
there would be no need.

Because he has already
given his testimony.

Blessed are the poor.

Blessed are the merciful.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Love your enemies.

Welcome the stranger.

Put away your sword.

Whatever you did
to the least of these

you did
to me.

The evidence
has been entered.

The record
is remarkably clear.

So when Caesar
wears the cross,

look beneath it.

When the empire
quotes Scripture,

keep reading.

When the ruler says
God is on our side,

ask what happens
to the people
on the other side.

When cruelty arrives
carrying a Bible,

do not confuse
the book
with the hand
that carries it.

And when they tell you
that domination is holy,

that vengeance is righteous,

that exclusion is purity,

that violence is peace,

that wealth is blessing,

that obedience is faith—

remember the charge.

Not religion.

Not faith.

Not devotion.

But

habitual fraud

under the mask

of religion.

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Calling Out the Church Is an Act of Witness

“Why are you calling the church out and making them look so bad?” someone asked me after I preached about the church’s lack of justice. “The people you’re preaching to probably don’t even need to hear that message. You were likely just preaching to the choir and calling out rare extremists.”

I always feel a bit gaslighted when people tell me this. I wish I had screenshotted all of the insane posts I saw from Christians I knew during the pandemic. The “rare” extremists are apparently many of my friends. I grew up with them. I played at their houses. They taught me who Jesus was. And now that they had been socially and politically provoked, I was observing in them an unimaginable behavior I didn’t know they were capable of.

To some extent, I need to speak out on these issues for evangelistic reasons, as the world needs to see a pastor address such behavior. Unbelievers think that the “rare” extremist is what Christianity looks like because they have seen the same posts I have. I also need to speak out to save myself. If I allow this kind of stuff to go on without saying anything, then I become complacent—and I can’t handle that. People need to know that Christians aren’t all like that. They need to know that Jesus looks different than what’s being presented to them.

To represent God wrongly is what it means to take the Lord’s name in vain, and it was such a big deal to God that he made it one of the Ten Commandments. In the Old Testament, the Israelites bore the name of Yahweh just by being Israelites. Wherever they went and whatever they did, they were to be a specific representation of the name Yahweh. They were to have the character of Yahweh, do justice like Yahweh, farm like Yahweh, party like Yahweh, and take care of the oppressed like Yahweh. They failed over and over and over again until Yahweh eventually divorced his abusive wife, Israel. They had not done a good job of portraying Yahweh to the world, and they had taken his name in vain through their misrepresentation. Christians do the same thing.

So why do I speak about justice to a world that doesn’t always want to hear about it?

I speak because someone has to bear witness to it.

The Church’s Political Captivity

The COVID-19 pandemic was ruthless on pastors. Every single decision felt like a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. You got in trouble if you kept your church open, and you got in trouble if you closed it. You got in trouble if you required people to wear masks, and you got in trouble if you didn’t. Every word of our communications had to be carefully crafted to avoid offending others. We worked our butts off creating online services that nobody really cared about or watched.

But even more difficult than this was the social and political tensions we had to address during that chaotic season. Christians became anti-science and conspiratorial. Instead of advocating for justice and caring for minorities, many in the church fought against such efforts. Instead of calling out political nonsense, the church seemed to defend it or support it.

At the start of the pandemic, many pastors were taking a stand on these issues, but in the end, there seemed to be only a few. Too many of them had been crucified by their congregants early on for speaking out. They were walking on eggshells.

I started hearing a very similar testimony among pastors during that time. They each shared that they once made an online post, and their social networks blew up. At first, they were stunned by the comments, but after enough arguments, they decided that talking was pointless. “People never change their minds online,” they’d say. Or “ I don’t want to sow disunity in the church.” Or “Frank and Mary came after me, and they’re the greatest Christians I know! So maybe I shouldn’t speak.” Pastors used these kinds of logic to shut themselves up.

Many Christians have sacred idols they have not yet deconstructed, and it’s because pastors aren’t addressing the golden calf in the room. We all know the unspoken rule: American political issues are so deeply spiritual and important that pastors are not allowed to address them—unless the pastor shares the opinion of the majority of congregants. That is to say, pastors can generally say whatever they want politically, so long as it leans Republican or Conservative. 

The room is rigged, and it’s because pastors have spent the last several decades only making certain kinds of political statements, using certain kinds of political buzzwords, and addressing certain kinds of political issues. No one has to ask how the church leans, because these “certain kinds” of things have already made it clear. Pastors and congregants who stray from these views often stay quiet for their own protection, lest they be told that they’re not a Christian.

The church needs help. It is not meant to be defined by what a political party thinks, but by what Jesus thinks. And there is no way that any political party anywhere in the world has captured that.

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If Acts Happened Today, Would We Call It Communism?

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Is faith turning against democracy? Robert P. Jones, author of *Backslide*, and Joy-Ann Reid explore this urgent question. They discuss the Christian turn against democracy and paths to reclaiming faith and nation in a vital conversation. An insightful discussion by Robert P. Jones. Watch the full conversation here: https://www.joyannreid.com/p/live-convo-about-joy-reid-and-robert #FaithAndPolitics #Democracy

Justice, Faith, and Brotherhood: Reflections on Rawls, Christianity, Freemasonry, and Modern Politics

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Trump shares AI image depicting himself as Jesus Christ; Pope hits back

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Who Will Be Romero Today?

On this day we remember Archbishop Óscar Romero, murdered on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass. The church remembers him not simply as a tragic victim, but as a martyr whose blood was joined to the blood of the people he refused to abandon. Vatican sources still name him what so many already knew him to be in life: a “voice of the voiceless,” assassinated at the altar because he would not stop speaking for the poor.

Romero was killed soon after one of the most fearless sermons of the twentieth century. Addressing soldiers and police, he said that they were killing their own campesino brothers and sisters, and that God’s law stood above the commands of violent men: “Thou shalt not kill.” He declared that no soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God, and he ended with that thunderous plea: “In the name of God… cease the repression!”

That is why Romero remains dangerous. He did not speak in abstractions. He did not bless power from a safe distance. He did not soothe the conscience of empire. He named the sin directly. He named the victims directly. He named the moral responsibility of those ordered to carry out injustice. And for that, he was silenced by a bullet at the altar. Yet even in death he was not silenced, because martyrdom is a form of speech the powers of this world do not know how to answer.

Ten years later, in 1990, his name was still summoning people into the streets. The flyer for the Washington march commemorating Romero’s assassination called for an end to U.S. war in Central America, a march from the Capitol to the White House, and even nonviolent civil disobedience after the rally. It named the demands plainly: end U.S. aid to El Salvador, withdraw U.S. advisers, stop repressing the people, end the war against Nicaragua, lift the trade embargo, normalize relations. That call was real, and it was public. It survives in archival collections even now.

And I remember that day not as a line in a history book but as something lived in the body. Ten years after Romero’s assassination, I was arrested outside the White House after I and other activists built a miniature Central American village there. We were trying, in our small and vulnerable way, to make visible what policy papers and patriotic speeches tried to hide: villages, families, campesinos, the poor, the disappeared, the threatened, the dead. We were insisting that Central America was not a chessboard for Washington, but a place of human beings made in the image of God.

Read the rest of the essay at PeaceGrooves.

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Letter: Do evangelicals now choose to ignore the Bible in favor of electing Trump for president?

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