christianity

Smoke and Mirror Politics

/ Jane Wedekind / 2 Comments

I have lived in seven states over the span of my 65 years. For eight of those, I was privileged to have lived in the state of Utah. As the world knows, Utah is primarily populated with people who descend from members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who immigrated to the area in the 1800’s to establish themselves as free people devoted to the teachings of Joseph Smith. You cannot live in Utah without influence from the church or its people. That said, because it is a state in a country of 49 others federal laws are obeyed and it is culturally very much blended in with the rest of America. A lot of people like us who are not members of the church live in the state and know well the constant tension that exists in creating laws for all of the people of the state when so many people are strongly influenced by one religion. There were some interesting realities for us living and working there within this framework but the one thing that mattered and held us together as residents of Utah, was the reality that we were all Americans. Laws that are passed are done so with that in mind and religious mandates are left to the religious leaders to issue to their own followers.

A few years ago, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints issued a mandate for its members to display The Family Declaration in each of their homes. When the annual conference where this announcement was made was over, Mormons went to work in droves creating, purchasing and displaying The Family Declaration. It is just how life is when you adhere to a religion led by authorities you trust. For my husband and I as outsiders experiencing this what we discovered is that we could determine the level of devotion a family had to the church by how they obeyed this mandate. If The Declaration was a large, expensively done work of art and centered above the fireplace in the living room? Devout. If it was displayed on an 8×10 framed print in the hallway, still devout but held to more privately. If someone just had it as a magnet on the fridge? Well, maybe it was a gift from a devout and concerned Grandmother. At the end of the day, you knew it was important to the church members and that it was left up to them to determine how important. I share this because for all intents and purposes, the intent of the newly established law requiring that The Ten Commandments be placed in every Texas classroom is just like that of The Family Declaration mandate in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Except, that this declaration is a genuine law in Texas. A law with no teeth, but a law nonetheless.

The Texas Law that requires The Ten Commandments in every public classroom is truly the most pretentious law I have ever witnessed being made while living here. It is just smoke and mirrors. There is no substance to the law without private donations from the public for the required posters. In other words ZERO state funds are being spent on the pastors because…that would be illegal under the US Constitution. The money has to come from private donations. Insert head slap.

The reality on the ground here in the great state of Texas is that local school districts have been bleeding cash under Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick’s leadership. The passage of school vouchers – a legit law that gives tax dollars for private education, has made it even worse. Across the board Texas public schools are operating on thin ice. The organization I’ve posted here is raising funds for the project but their task is monumental. Texas is a huge state. Added to that, the law requires that before a district can hang a single poster, the district has to have one for each and every classroom. Seriously. Our local district stretches across 200 square miles, has 49 campuses and 42,000 students! Thus far, not a Ten Commandments poster in sight. It’s this way with most Texas ISD’s. the law is a joke.

This law is Texas machismo on full display. Projected as a major accomplishment, it is almost entirely nothing at all. Projected as bold, Christian leadership, it is really just whimpy legislation designed to be contentious. It is designed to look like Texas won the ideological war between the separation of church and state when in reality it will always be fighting it. Again, this law is entirely unable to be enforced until a district has all of the posters in hand purchased by private citizens and donated to the district. Thus far there are only a small number who do have them on display and the law suits against the ones who have tried to put them up have sprung up so quickly that superintendents are taking them down until the lawsuits are worked through in the courts. This, my friends is Texas politics and I for one am ready for something else.

Texas Ten Commandments Law

A Heartfelt Plea to Christians

/ Jane Wedekind / Leave a comment

I have often said that nothing has validated my departure from Conservative Christianity more than the rise of this one man to our nation’s highest office. It remains true to this very day because nothing has revealed to me what I was actually a part of for all of those years when I thought I was following Jesus and seeking to become like him. There is nothing like Jesus or his disciples in what I am witnessing in our highest offices here in America. There is nothing like Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. I see no reflections of Hannah, Esther or Ruth and especially the Virgin Mary in it either.

We are instead living at a time when Christ following human beings have become so insecure in their own selves that to exist they must have a man to worship in government, someone to bow down to in order to feel safe in the world. As Christians gathered in the Oval Offices yesterday uttering prayers while knowing the cameras are running and that the video will be seen by millions, we should all be weeping. Religious or not, we should. all. be. weeping. Actions like this reflect nothing of the Christianity that the followers of Jesus knew.

In my thirties I spent a lot of time studying and applying to my life lessons learned in a Christian discipleship program. It was designed around the writings of Peter and can be summed up in these verses.

Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, 6 and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, 7 and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. 2 Peter 5:5-7

To say that I took this curriculum seriously would be a bit of an understatement. It was my life. It permeated everything that I did.

faith

moral excellence

knowledge

self-control

perseverance

godliness

I look at this list and can only say that I am beyond grateful for the maturity that this curriculum, said to be one to work toward my personal formation of becoming like Jesus, the Christ in my own life, did for me. In the greatest twist of irony, though, it was the maturity developed by a lifelong pursuit of these things that led me away from the Evangelical church and to a life that reflects simply being a good human being. I live my faith in Christ – very different from any kind of Four Spiritual Laws version – in the shadows now. I am so done with the theatrics of Evangelical religion and really wish we all were.

I have no credentials to ask y’all this but I will anyway. If you are still in a Conservative, Christian, Evangelical in a body of believers, please for the love of all that is holy, stop worshipping the religion and its political arm especially. Stop imagining its divine destiny of prosperity and control of others belongs to you. It does not. Stop imagining that the school boards are for Christians to take over. Stop running for offices you have no idea how to carry out with integrity in any arena! The nations of the world have not been given to you to control but to love and to serve. Humble yourself and see that you really are not all that special in the grand scheme of things – that is narcissism 101 and that is not for the followers of God. You are simply one human among billions!! Return to your self. Return to your God in the secret of your own prayer closet and listen. Leave this toxic place and go home. Grow up. Assert yourself to reclaim your life because if you do not, if we do not, we are all going to lose it for us and for our children.

The Bible calls this repentance. It is way past time for it to take us over.

If Religion Isn’t Personal, What is It?

/ Jane Wedekind / Leave a comment

I have lived a life strongly influenced by religion. My parent’s were members of a Lutheran church in a small town in the panhandle of Nebraska because it was the religion my mom’s immigrant grandparents brought with them from Germany. We didn’t attend often but my mom made sure we went to Sunday School on occasion and always to Vacation Bible School in the summer. In my teens I was searching for a way to be a good person and came upon a group of students led by a Southern Baptist group of adults claiming to be interdenominational. Evangelicals in the late 70’s were very good at sales strategies and claiming to be interdenominational or nondenominational was one of them. If I would have been invited to a Baptist bonfire I wouldn’t have gone. It’s that simple. I did go and there heard the message that most of Christianity in modern America had turned religion into something that we were born into rather than something vital that we chose to live our live from. I was taught that in order to be a true Christian I would need to pray a prayer and ask Jesus into my heart. I didn’t buy the product that night but by the end of the year, I was eager to understand exactly what these people had that I did not.

Late in the spring a leader in the group challenged the students gathered to go to a seminar in Dallas in the coming summer. When this leader explained the seminar to my mom he said that the teacher explained the Bible in everyday language for people so that they could grow in the faith. That August I boarded a church van with the Baptist youth going from the church and one other non Baptist from the group. I had never done anything socially with kids like they were. At the time I smoked and partied a bit with a group of my own friends from the restaurant I worked at. I never imagined that when I left that day I would return as a completely different person.

The seminar was a week long with evening talks Monday through Thursday and then all day Friday and Saturday. The speaker focused on teaching our world’s problems were the result of basic conflicts within us that came as we grew up. Using his expertise from studying the Bible, he taught like he a trusted older brother who wanted his siblings to know the beautiful life that God had for them and that all they needed to do was to lean in and participate in it. I was drawn into it like a moth to a porch light in summer. He taught things from the Bible that were genuinely relevant to me at 16.

  • self esteem as God’s beloved child
  • assurance that God is real and understanding how to have a secure belonging to him.
  • how to have healthy relationships with parents, friends, future romantic partners
  • how to possess genuine goodness and the importance of a clear conscience
  • how to understand the role of suffering for personal growth and maturity
  • how to commit to Bible study and scripture meditation

Like a dry sponge each word was like a drip of pure water that as it fell on me, I soaked it up slowly and with deep thought. With the days free to play in our Baptist host family’s pool, my days were also spent getting to know my new friends. I had never been exposed to kids that had grown up in religious homes like they had. I remember the distinct feeling that finally I had found the way to become a genuinely good person. I returned from that week in Dallas a changed person and as a result devoted my life to the Evangelical faith and its understanding of life. I stayed faithful to that life for twenty eight years. So faithful that there is absolutely no way to live my life now without reference the realities that shaped me for those years. I still live by default by many of the principles and practices I acquired as a result of my religious faith during that time. What I believe happened to me was this. I outgrew the Evangelical paradigm and once you do that, you are incapable of ever returning to it.

Let me give you just one example of how impossible it is to put the genie back into the bottle. One practice of Evangelicals is that of evangelism. It is where those in the faith present in as concise of a version as they can, the plan they believe is God’s plan for eternal life in heaven or salvation. In order to do this, they get very creative and attach their presentation to another event that is meaningful to the people they are trying to reach. Let me share an example.

When I was living in Minnesota several years later, I responded to a request for volunteers to teach reading to refugees in the Twin Cities. One Saturday my husband and I went down to Minneapolis for what they called literacy training. As the first training ended, I told him that we needed to leave because this was not in fact, literacy training at all, but what I believed to be an unethical way to require vulnerable people from war torn countries to adopt the Evangelical gospel. The entirety of the training was designed to use opportunities under the guise of teaching someone to read English, to share how Jesus was the one way, one truth and one life to these people. It was also to subversively tell traumatized people that they were in this situation because their Muslim God wasn’t the real one. As a professional trained in reading and literacy instruction, I was honestly livid when we left. Seriously, once you see this, you cannot unsee it.

As we drove home both my husband and I experienced the grief of having participated in many campaigns to win souls that were just like this. We basically repented on the spot. We called it what it was, acknowledge how manipulative and deceitful it was and vowed never to be a part of anything like that again. It was just one more lesson in a long line of them that made me realize for most people, religion is a club and not a place for transformation like I had always thought it was. This is why we are equally opposed to the idea that we are a Christian Nation as they define it. We are living in an age where Evangelical Christian Nationalism threatens to completely take over the country in a way that has little or nothing to do with the Jesus they claim to know. You cannot make others believe something. You cannot force religion on anyone anymore than you can force someone to learn something. If you are committed to doing that, you will lose both spiritual and intellectual sight like the elderly with serious cataracts. You will become the very godless people you are trying to control.

Christian Nationalism in my opinion is the ultimate con game that has come into play because the average person is terrified of the work it takes to see oneself fully and change. It is much easier to embrace strategies and formulas to convince others of your righteousness than it is to see your pride, arrogance and selfishness. Religion is meant to be a portal to this work not a way to avoid it. I know people with deep faith who are practicing Muslims, Hindus, Jewish and Buddhist as well as full on atheists who are mature, moral and kind other centered people. If we are real and honest, we all know that eternal life is actually a hope and not a certainty. The cheap rah rah of today’s Evangelical genuinely won’t provide what it takes to get through the genuine fires of life, it just will not. Christian Nationalism is the most dangerous detour Evangelicals could ever have taken or will take.

I say this believing that it is nothing but pharisaical. In the same way the Pharisees would wear their scriptures on their heads and boast of their morality, the plethora of Christians boasting in Christian Nationalism principles while using Grindr when they attend a Turning Point Convention or CPAC is the epitome of crazy. I know that there are plenty of Evangelicals doing good things and many doing some self discovery and experiencing personal growth. BUT there are way more just hyped up and hyper focused on the problems in our culture as the fault of the other instead of looking in the mirror. I drive by a Southern Baptist Mega Church almost daily and see their sermon topics on the marquee. The day I see “Southern Baptist Sexual Abuse Crisis Response, Sunday at 9 and 11” will be the day I will swallow hard and visit. Right now as this SBC sexual abuse scandal sits in the shadows, I will invest my time elsewhere.

In summary, if religion isn’t personal and transformative, it is seriously just noise. And if religion is designed to manipulate and control others, it’s not of the divine in any shape or form.

End of Rant… for today 🙂 and please…said with love as much as I know how to say it.