As followers of Jesus,
the Jewish prophet for justice whose life reminds us to, “Love your neighbor as
yourself” (Mark 12:31) we hear the cries of women and men speaking out about
sexual abuse at the hands of leaders in power and we are outraged. We are outraged
by the current trends in Evangelicalism and other expressions of Christianity
driven by white supremacy, often enacted through white privilege and the
normalizing of oppression. Confessing racism as the United States’ original and
ongoing sin, we commit ourselves to following Jesus on the road of costly
discipleship to seek shalom justice for the least, the lost, and the left out.
We declare that following Jesus today means fighting poverty, economic
exploitation, racism, sexism, and all forms of oppression from the deepest
wells of our faith.
“Love your
neighbor as yourself.” — Mark 12:31
This is a time of
heightened racist and patriarchal empire where wealth is concentrated at the
top. The Living God asks us to make a decision: "Today I offer you the
choice of life and good, or death and evil. ...Choose life." (Deuteronomy
30). Following Jesus today means choosing life, joining the Spirit-led
struggle to fight the death-dealing powers of sin wherever they erupt. Whenever
one of God’s children is being oppressed, we will fight with them for
liberation with the power of the Holy and Life-Giving Spirit. And yet, we live
in a moment when death and evil seem to reign supreme in the United States,
when those with the power of a uniform or the president’s pen or a position of
authority or fame or economic tricks of capitalization and interest or sheer
brute force… again and again choose death rather than life. In a moment when
too many who confess Christ advocate evil, we believe followers of the Jesus
Way are called to renounce, denounce, and resist these death-dealing powers
which organize and oppress our world, not to embrace or promulgate them.
We acknowledge the
manifold and complicated ways we participate in these systems, even as we are
often complicit in them. We confess that the Church, in a variety of forms, has
too often failed to follow the way of Jesus and perform the good news. We are
people who are still discovering the ways we participate with death and evil,
even while we continue to seek the good, to choose life again and again. This
declaration is such a choice, hoping and clinging to the God of life and
seeking to bear witness to that life in our present moment. Acknowledging our
own failures and embracing an appropriate sense of humility should not,
however, silence us. While we do not have ready-made answers for all the
problems we face, we know something about the pathway we must follow if we are
to find those answers, and this is the pathway of Jesus.
Who is our God and What is the Jesus Way?
We believe in a God who
holds all difference within God’s own life and in whom there is no one or no
people who are distant from God’s justice, merciful love, and presence (Micah
6:8; Acts 10:34-35). We affirm the beauty and humanity of all people in their
manifold difference--race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and religion--as
reflecting God’s image through lives of love and hope.
We believe the
Jesus Way calls us to the possibility of living in a world where all can love
and be loved, and live into joy.
The Jesus Way continues
through our best, prayerful, honest, and empirical attempts to understand why
and how the world has come to be in the shape it is today. This pathway calls
us to act in ways that are Spirit-led and strategic in confronting evil
wherever evil exists, to combat ignorance wherever ignorance has led people
astray and to place our lives and our bodies on the line with whoever is being
threatened, beat down, or oppressed in any way, anywhere.
Lamentation
As followers of Jesus
who is our Sabbath, who preached and lived Shalom, and who offers the gift of
jubilee to the world, we mourn the coarseness of our politics, the loss of
compassion for those in need, the disrespect we routinely show each other, and
the thoughtlessness with which we use and abuse our planet. We especially mourn
the way in which the name of Jesus has been used to support and encourage
actions and attitudes that demean others and threaten the community of
creation.
We acknowledge and
lament the realities we see around us: broken lives, broken homes, a broken
social system that incarcerates more people than any other nation on earth. We
lament a broken and corrupt police system, a broken economic system that
prioritizes profits over people, a broken sense of national identity. We lament
national boundaries that make our worries about security a pretext for
destroying the lives of others, and a broken church that disrespects and
marginalizes many people rather than honoring and embracing them. We rebuke the
ideologies and idolatries that lie beneath the death we see in our midst and
collectively hope to point to ways we might all choose life.
As followers of Jesus,
it is vital that we take action when our government seeks to continuously harm
life made in God’s image by cutting social safety-nets and forcing the poorest
and most powerless among us to spiral into an abyss of desperation. Action on
the part of the church is warranted at a time when women, people of color, and
various ethnicities, individual religions, immigrants and distinct sexualities
are targeted for slander and violence from the highest offices of government.
We cannot sit idly by and allow the people and the earth to be accosted with
series after series of unjust policies that allow the interest of corporate
profits to expunge the future for coming generations of humans and other living
species.
Condemnations
We reject the false
ideology of empire building and the myth of racial laziness and substance abuse
that harms the people of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the US territories.
We reject the false
ideology that peace is achieved through military strength and that violence is
the necessary foundation for freedom, safety, or security. We stand against the
manufacturing and proliferation of weapons which continue to drown the planet
in the blood of millions through global war and the terrorism of domestic mass
shootings.
We reject the false
ideology of the corporate ruling class that services and supports the US
military, dispossess and represses poor communities of color, and which erodes
and blocks real empowerment of the most vulnerable of peoples and of any real
people's democracy.
We reject the false
ideology of American exceptionalism and the evil of political corruption,
calling for integrity in our elected officials and multilateral governance. It
is this myth by which moral responsibility is suspended in the pursuit of its
interests.
We reject the false
ideology of white normalcy and bigotry. We reject the false identification that
exclusively binds whiteness with Christianity, true humanity, and United States
citizenship. We reject antisemitism, which is driving much of white Christian
nationalism.
We reject the
patriarchal and misogynistic legacies that subject women to continual violence,
violation, and exclusion. We stand strongly against sexual abuse and harassment
in the highest offices of power.
We reject violations
against the Earth, especially the stripping of her resources and polluting that
harms her and the creatures that inhabit her soil and seas.
We reject economic
policies that are grounded in an illusion of extreme individualism and favor
the accumulation of wealth for a few to the detriment of the many.
We reject Islamophobia
and anti-Muslim bigotry.
We reject homophobia and
transphobia and all violence against the LGBTQ community.
We reject all
anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies that fail to recognize the contributions
of immigrants who have come from every corner of the world to strengthen the
fabric of this nation—culturally, economically and spiritually.
“Choose you this day whom you
will serve!” —Joshua 24:15
Call to Action
Today, we as Christian
followers of the Jesus Way, call on the people of the United States who call
themselves by the name of Jesus, to reject all political and social movements
that do not lead to life.
May we live in this
world continually welcoming the stranger and “treating the foreigner with love,
for we were once foreigners in Egypt” (Deut. 10:19). Likewise, we resist
the continued subjugation of the Indigenous people of our land and call for new
relationships to be formed, and better policies to be forged, as we learn to
become good guests to honored hosts.
May we bear witness to
the hues of difference in God’s life – a God who is neither male nor female and
who embraces all people regardless of their identity.
May we not fear the loss
of power or certainty when confronted by our very real weakness. May we
discover the gift of being creatures not as something to be overcome, but
embraced, discovering the fullness of our humanity in the flourishing of all
women.
May we embrace a future
where the legacies of white supremacy are dismantled. We refuse to dehumanize
any individual, reducing their identity to singular markers and possibilities.
May we work toward a radical openness for every individual as we fight together
for a better today and tomorrow.
May we build not to kill
but to enliven. Let us garner all of our economic power to fight desperately
for one another’s health, for full stomachs, for equal access to buildings and
teachers where we might discover the fullness of our gifts and skills. May our
power not be oriented toward empire but towards mutual community.
May we witness to a
beloved community where we seek to be with one another as Jesus is with us. May
love and mutuality be the marks of our lives together, our community building,
our budgets, and our public policies.
May we work together to
care for the community of creation, fighting against the influence of the
pursuit of petrochemicals and all other earth diminishing, non-renewable and
polluting practices that exploit Indigenous and poor peoples, poison our waters
and contribute to the extinction of species. We speak for the earth herself and
all her creatures, human and non-human, for the preservation of life over
monetary gain.
May we stand in
solidarity against anti-semitism and the use of any language and actions that
threaten the lives of our Jewish sisters and brothers while standing with the
plight for human rights with our Palestinian brothers and sisters.
May we stand in
solidarity with our Muslim sisters and brothers and all immigrants, fighting
against Islamophobia and xenophobia. We denounce any legislation that
discriminates against people on the basis of their religion, race or ethnic
identity.
We welcome and seek the
wisdom of all people of all faiths and those who confess no faith, believing
that God’s faithfulness breaks into the world in many ways and through many
people.
May we continue to stand with
anyone who calls for justice, mercy, and love in this world.
