The logic of the religious right is eurocentric Christian supremacy which is just white supremacy plus theocracy. The impulse can be summarized as something like “god wants us to conquer and subjugate savage lands by imposing our values over society and displacing what was there first”.
Modern expressions of the prison state which incarcerate black and brown people through legislated morality like the drug war, criminalized sex work and vagrancy laws targeting the homeless (especially gender and sexual minority youth), and migration policy that views the stranger in our land as an invader instead of a neighbor are built on this logic, even when they mask themselves in secular law. The assumptions packed into who they vote for and why they vote for them are coded into the way evangelical faith is practiced and preached in conservative American churches.
The side effect of this, of course is that people turn away from the church altogether. And who can blame them? Scripture tells us the truth is encoded on our hearts. Ordinary people instinctively see that Christian supremacy as a political doctrine is abhorrent, unconscionable and frankly antichrist. One doesn’t need scripture to know on a deep, humanitarian level that every child of god was placed here with a purpose, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made with love by the almighty and that every human on the planet has all the justification they need to walk its surface as a full and valid piece of Creation. The proof of God’s desire for our existence is our existence itself!! We do not need permission from worldly powers to exist for God has willed it so.
Modern evangelical political doctrine is repugnant and cruel; and it manifests the will of the adversary through the suffering of the people who become its targets. This is not OK — it is a profoundly disturbing sin. Xenophobic American Christians are fond of the narrative where all Muslims are responsible for the acts of its outliers, but in America the violence of christian supremacy holds political dominance. Who will remove the plank from our own eyes, before we point to the speck in others? People of faith *must* be driving a conversation in faith communities that undermines this logic at its root.
There are countless biblical teachings which directly contradict the idea that god’s name works as a justification for oppression, enslavement, subjugation, and exploitation. There are Psalms of liberation, there are teachings against arbitrary political classifications, there are exhortations that lift up a promise of triumph for the meek — those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. The beatitudes are not just empty platitudes for grandma to stitch onto a quilt. They are a call to action!!
In my opinion, social anarchism with its fundamental commitment to an egalitarian spirit that empowers and respects the agency of every human being on the planet is the most closely aligned with my spiritual values. Our agency is primary because God made it primary. Evangelicals are right about free will, but their logic which connects it to a law and order paradigm of punitive judgment and condemnation is totally backwards. They often appeal to Romans to justify this, today I want to offer another teaching from Romans as an alternative centerpoint for the relationship of a person of faith to civic insitutions:
When Christ-consciousness enters our hearts and minds, it changes everything about how we look at the world around us. What does it mean to love each other as we love ourselves? What does it look like when we practice this as a way of life? What can happen when we make love our only law, and turn away from worldly powers to embrace our neighbor as an equal child of the universe? This is my meditation this morning and I hope it inspires you. Have a blessed day and week. I love you all.
