Article
America
Creed
Justice
6 min read

Is it okay to be mean as long as you are mean and right?

Here's what a mean street preacher really taught me.

Nathan is a speaker and writer on topics related to faith, life and God. He lives near Seattle, Washington. His writing is featured frequently in The Seattle Times. nathanbetts.com

Behind a passer by a street peacher holds up a large yellow sign with a message on it.
Street preachers on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
LaTerrian McIntosh on Unsplash.

A few months ago, my cousin was visiting my hometown of Seattle for work. We planned to meet one evening for a Mariners baseball game during her visit. I suggested that we meet near the wonderful Ken Griffey Jr. statue near the stadium gates. What I hadn’t realized was that this was the precise spot a street evangelist had also decided to station himself in order to share (mostly shout) his message of judgement and destruction the same evening. Kind of like a pre-game verbal hors d'oeuvres. I arrived at the meeting point a few minutes before my cousin, giving me ample time to hear the preacher preach.  

Now, I grew up in church, and, in fact, am myself a speaker and writer on topics involving faith and God. In other words, I’ve had over 40 years to experience the church’s, umm, “quirks”. I’d like to think that very little coming from the mouths of faith preachers could shock me. Alas, I was wrong. 

As I began to listen to the preacher, lines like “weeping and gnashing of teeth” scorched through the preacher’s megaphone. Yep, nothing new there. The preacher used the word “judgment” a lot. Actually, impressively a lot. I’ve never before heard the words “God” and “judgment” used in conjunction more times within a two-minute span. There was a raging intensity to the sermon, but still in the range of normal for street preaching. 

Then, my cousin texted me that she was outside the ballpark but might have gotten the location wrong. I realized she and I were at two different locations. While I texted my cousin back, I tuned out the preacher’s message. That is until I heard him shout through his megaphone, “He hates you.” I stopped texting. I looked up at the preacher. Did he just say that God the Almighty hated all of us outside the ballpark? Families, little boys and girls, and elderly? Did God hate all of us lining up for the game? It was “bark at the park” night so even the dogs were casualties in the preacher’s line of fire. If nothing else was gleaned from the man’s message, it seemed, we were all to understand that God hates us. 

Minutes later, when my cousin and I finally found each other, I told her that she had had the good fortune of missing out on the street preacher informing her that God hates her. She replied, “Oh, I have plenty of others who tell me that!”  

Sadly, many of us have received that negative message from different sources in our world and too often from people sharing some association with God.  

In America, as election season comes to the boil, I’ve noticed (and maybe you have too) the not-so-subtle attitude that it’s okay to say mean things about another person as long as that person is on “the other side”. A verbal dig here, an eyeroll there, name-calling and slanderous nick-naming the enemy for the sake of ridicule have become all too common, if not a soft virtue in political discourse. It has become hard to discern where the moral line is, or if such a thing still exists within political dialogue.  

Conversations like the following happen so frequently following a political debate or interview, they’ve become cliché: “I almost cannot believe he said that!” Response: “Well, yes, that was pretty bad. But he’s right, isn’t he?” Translation: it’s okay to be mean as long as you are mean and right.  

Evangelicalism has gained a hard edge with little resemblance of the good news from which it has its very name.

The meaning of the word ‘evangelical’ here in America is a complex thing, to be sure. But perhaps one of the reasons it is understood as a political word more than a religious one is because the combative and rude nature of discourse seen in politics has become increasingly acceptable even in Christian settings. As a friend of mine said to me years ago, “It feels as though Christians have turned rudeness into a spiritual gift.”  

The thing is, you probably don’t know the preacher I heard in downtown Seattle, but you’ve probably heard or know a person who makes Christian claims in the same kind of rude ways.  The result is that evangelicalism has gained a hard edge with little resemblance of the good news from which it has its very name.  

I’ve had the privilege of speaking to audiences on topics of faith and God for around 20 years now and I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve met who feel unlovable, already hated, and unforgivable for the decisions they’ve made in life.  

So when I hear a preacher shouting a message through a bullhorn in the name of God and I hear not words of hope, peace, grace, love, and forgiveness, but strictly judgement and burning, I fail to see how this God can be the one who came to earth out of love for people in the person of Jesus Christ.  

It’s true that the Bible does depict God enacting justice and judgement. But equally true is that the Bible not only displays, but out-and-out defines God as being love. My concern with the street preacher’s message is that although he might have communicated the justice of God (albeit in a warped way that would make old-time revivalists look tame), his message left little room for hearing about and feeling the love of God.  

If there is anything we need to hear today, it is the message that God, in his very nature, is love. One particular writer of antiquity, and a close friend of Jesus Christ, once penned a letter to first century churches. In attempting to explain what God is like and what people of faith should be like he wrote: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”   

For those of us who have never been to a church, we only need to watch or attend an American football game to see a sign with the words John 3:16. That reference, taken from one of Christ’s biographies states that, “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.”  

This is a message we need to hear. It’s something we need to let into our bones—that those of us who feel beyond the reach of love, are in fact loved by God.  

In a strange way, I can’t help but admire the guts those street preachers have, banging out an unpopular message to strangers in crowds. The problem lies in the fact that often their message, so boldly proclaimed, is God’s disappointment, disapproval, or outright hate for people. 

Because this is the truth and too important to miss: God doesn’t hate you. He loves you. He always has and he always will. 

Article
Creed
Nationalism
Politics
6 min read

Love is not an executive order: what Christian Nationalism gets wrong

Fear has never been a motivator of wise, just, and righteous action.

Barnabas Aspray is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at St Mary’s Seminary and University.

A protester wearing a Union Jack flag and hat and holding a cross, points while a man looks on.
Far right protesters, Portsmouth.
Tim Sheerman-Chase, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The term “Christian nationalism” means different things to different people. John Stackhouse defines nationalism as “love of one’s nation, identification with it, and special concern for its well-being” and sees nothing wrong with it from a Christian point of view. But this is not the normal way the term is used today. Rather, it means an ideology that seeks political power in order to merge Christian identity with national identity. In other words, it means Christians seeking to impose Christian values on all citizens of a nation by the force of law. 

That’s not as bad as it may sound at first glance. Everyone thinks some values should be imposed for society to function – for example, human rights, private property, democracy. In one sense, there’s nothing unusual about Christians wanting their values to become law. Everyone – Muslim, Secular, pluralist – wants the law to reflect their values. How could anyone have values and not want their nation’s laws and policies to reflect them? 

But for Christians, there’s a catch. “Christian values” include not forcing people to live Christian lifestyles who do not identify as Christian. Christian values are founded on the teaching and example of Jesus, and he was never coercive. He aimed at people’s hearts, seeking willing rather than coerced obedience. His goal was that people should follow him and live by his teachings because they wanted to more than anything else in the world, not because they would be imprisoned or disadvantaged if they don’t. The gospel is an invitation to the most rewarding and fulfilling life imaginable, not an executive order to be obeyed out of fear. 

Jesus explicitly taught that Christian politics should be different to anything else the world has ever seen: 

“The rulers of the nations lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.”  

With these words (recorded in the gospel of Matthew), Jesus set a political agenda for his followers radically different to that of every other movement, religion, institution, or nation. Where others have always used power to dominate, control, and coerce obedience, Christians are to use power to serve those under them and to pursue their flourishing. With his own life Jesus showed what this looks like. The Jews expected the messiah to be a great military leader who would rally an army under his banner, shake off the Roman oppression, establish Israel as a nation, and rule it with absolute power and authority. Instead, rather than commit any violence, he submitted to death at the hands of the Roman oppressors. 

Jesus did not mean that his followers should not seek power and influence in the world, or that they should lie down and let themselves be trampled on like a doormat. The “Christian difference” is not to be non-political, withdrawn from all engagement in worldly affairs as if God did not care what happens in the world. No: the Christian difference is twofold: (1) never to seize or maintain power through violence, coercion, lies, manipulation, or any means that supposedly justifies the ends, and (2) to use power (when we are freely and willingly given it) in service to everyone regardless of their belief or lifestyle, especially the powerless. 

A truly “Christian” nation would never try to coerce Christian behaviour from anyone. 

Christians have not always done politics this way. In the centuries since Jesus walked the earth, they have often succumbed to the temptation to do politics like the rest of the world: grasping at authority and holding onto it by any means necessary, using it to benefit ourselves and our agenda in ways that harm and oppress others. The treatment of Jews in the late medieval period is a sobering example. Jews were forced to live in ghettos and wear conical hats. They were forbidden to hold public office, to build synagogues higher than any church, or to walk in the street on Sundays. Eventually they were forcibly expelled from several European states in order to leave no impediment to the fashioning of a truly “Christian nation,” i.e., a nation with only Christians living in it. 

Today, many Christians in Western nations are engaging in efforts to fight back against world views they believe are encroaching on them – secularism, Islam, and liberalism. They want to reassert Christianity as the dominant cultural force. It seems to me that these efforts are largely motivated by fear, brought about by the decline of Christian influence. There is a strong urge to self-preservation when one feels oneself increasingly marginalized. They feel that if they don’t regain power, then all the values and lifestyle that held dear will be swept away. They must protect themselves and seek to preserve Christian values by whatever means available. They must take back control, using financial, political, and cultural capital to regain governance and re-establish Christian laws in ‘our land’. 

Yet fear has never been a motivator of wise, just, and righteous action. Fear draws our attention away from the poor and needy towards our own plight. Fear makes us strike back with a self-protective instinct. When we are afraid, we feel justified in putting our own needs and priorities first. Violent behaviour is labelled “self-defence,” cutting aid budgets is labelled prudence, and refusing admission to refugees who have lost everything and are fleeing persecution is seen as the only sane course of action in a world of finite resources. Fear drives us to seek our own advantage, something Jesus never did. Perhaps Jesus knew that fear can be the greatest force to prevent us from living a Christlike life of service. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that “do not be afraid” is the most frequent command in the Bible. 

For Christians, like me, there are better motivators for political action: things like wisdom, justice, and peace. (Dare I say love? Or is that too controversial?) But the best motivation of all is the desire to follow Jesus’ teachings and example not only once we have obtained power, but in how we seek it and how we hold onto it. 

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea of a “Christian” nation, if that means a nation that acts towards people – both citizens and non-citizens – the way Jesus did (and supposing the nation was not constituted by violence in the first place – but that is another story). A truly “Christian” nation would never try to coerce Christian behaviour from anyone. It would respect people’s freedom to live and believe what they chose, and would give equal opportunities, equal benefits, and equal rights to Christians, Muslims, atheists, and Jews alike. It would use its power to serve all people, especially the most vulnerable and least able to look after themselves. It would welcome and protect any foreigner who fled there to save their life or freedom, having lost everything at home.  

Such a nation would not be characterised by fear of losing its power. It would not seek to preserve its influence by blocking non-Christians from citizenship or positions of government. If the tide turned against it, it would humbly relinquish power rather than do anything coercive to hold on to it, just as Jesus humbly went to the cross rather than use violence against his oppressors. 

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