In his email last week, pastor Ben Cremer wrote about leaving (being kicked out of) the Nazarene church mostly due to his “radical stances” on things that are, to me, at the core of the gospel (i.e., loving your neighbor, inclusion, standing against power, etc.) and taking a stance against the insanity within the church during 2020. He ended up moving to a Methodist church where he still works today.
Cremer wrote about the transition and the difficult process of realizing his place at the Nazarene table was slowly being elbowed out. It became about one idea, one set of standards, one agenda - none of which aligned with Cremer’s readings of the Word.
Cremer is a voice in the wilderness. I still have no idea how I found him online, but he along with a few others (Russell Moore, Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove) keep me sane and help me find a glimmer of hope for the American Protestant church going forward.
I grew up on a guest ranch in the middle of Colorado. The tens of thousands of acres of national forest around us were my playground. My grandfather, who started the ranch, longed to build a place where people could come and, surrounded by the grandeur God made, find the One who made them.
But vision and action are often two different things. Without unearthing a hornet’s nest, I will simply say I realized very early on that it was my grandfather’s show and I was an unwitting cast member. The version of God my grandfather exposed was very male-centric, works-based, all about my grandfather, and not open to people challenging his point of view.
I realized early on that there was an enormous disparity between the God who made the trees, flowers, animals, sunsets, etc. of the forest around me, and the God my grandfather professed. I saw my grandfather as a man striving to pull his worth from the accolades he got via the ranch, masking it all under a false humility of “doing God’s work.”
Before I really knew who God was, I learned to separate what He says via the Bible from the actions of His people. My grandfather was a broken person (as we all are) who I think was never quite satisfied with his place in the world.
We moved to Colorado Springs at the height of Focus on the Family’s push into the political arena. It is (still) a very conservative town with the right-wing agenda being preached as gospel. Again, I faced a contradiction between the stories I’d been taught and the actions of those around me.
I never got the hatred, superiority, and control behind the messages coming out of those supposedly standing for “family values” and the “Christian way of life.” The God I felt was real and had been told about wouldn’t exclude people based on decisions, but welcome them. I contend that if Jesus was born today, the angels would go to Club Q to announce His arrival.
The only anger Jesus ever exuded was towards the religious elite for their practices of being “holier than though” and creating a religious system that excluded the very people He told them to protect (see Matthew 23). What right do we have as the “church” to rank people based on our ideals? How can we claim to be “first” or “more important” when we can’t even do the basic commands Jesus gave in the Sermon on the Mount?
Even in the 90s, I recognized it was a system lost to hypocrisy. I was desperate to find God outside of the hatred and white-male-first-lies I heard around me. I thought my “Christian” college would be different, but nope.
It feels like we have reached a point where people’s idolatry of power and control and violence is getting ready to drive them over a cliff. The rest of us can only hope to untangle ourselves from their nets and snares so they don’t take us with them. So many times over the last few years friends who get it have asked, “What are we supposed to do?”
People far smarter than me have written books on how we got to this point:
(Find these books (all affiliate links) and other reading recommendations on my Bookshop list)
So where do we go from here? I wish I had a full answer for this deeply important question. I think it would take an entire book to answer it well. But I will say, I think part of the answer, at least for me, is that where we go from here must never lead us to be as dogmatic, controlling, or unkind as the Christianity we have left behind. Where we go from here must never be allowed to repeat this same mistreatment towards others over the convictions we hold most dear. Where we go from here must be defined by humility, compassion, mercy, accountability, and justice, especially for the most vulnerable, which includes those who have been harmed by Christianity. Where we go from here must look like creating a sacred community that fosters thinking together over the complex issues of our time without resorting to fear and hostility towards others. Where we go from here must look like the messy work of inclusivity and love rather than the rigidity of religious and political legalism. Where we go from here must be defined by striving each day to love God and our neighbors better today than we did yesterday, all within the humble determination to grow more capable of love. (Ben Cremer - emphasis added)
For most of my life, I’ve been told there is one narrative around who God is. God is to be identified by how one group of people paints Him (as if these people have a premium on Him). And yet, as we have now come to a place where that one group’s manipulation of God is one no one else wants to be associated with, it is time to let the Truth rise from the ashes of the American Protestant church.
Where do we go from here? It is in simple actions - the breaking of bread, getting to know our neighbors, and taking a stand in whatever way we can. It is in refusing to stay silent. It’s in Bible study that dives into the Word (instead of a book written by someone else). It’s getting curious about what God had said (and not said) about hard issues.
Someday every tribe and tongue will worship Him together - that is inclusion, not the exclusion we see being pushed by the church. It’s realizing (and stating!) all people matter to God. Jesus spent His time with the overlooked, the cast-aside, and the misfits, not the elite.
It’s in getting to know each other. In seeing other people. In getting curious and getting quiet. It’s learning about each other. It’s refusing to be divided. It’s realizing what is ours to speak into (poverty, censorship, violence, etc.) and what is not (how people identify, who they want to love, what are truly medical decisions we cannot make blanket bans over).
It’s realizing God never said, “build Me a city.” He never said, “craft me a theocracy.” God said to Love Others and that He would bring a new Kingdom with Him.
There is no hierarchy with God. He never called His people to exclude, legislate, rebuke, or hate. He called us to love. He did not say people would know us by our laws and legalism but by our LOVE. His last action was not to give His disciples a list of people who were beyond His grace but to wash their feet and leave them the command to go do likewise.
So let us go out and do likewise. That is the only way forward.
Photo by Pixabay.