Fighting in the Christian Resistance
My sister is a minister. I’m barely churched. We’re both dismayed at what evangelicals are doing to our religion.
Every Thursday morning in her small Rust Belt town, my sister, a Presbyterian minister, brings her knitting to McDonald’s, orders an egg white sandwich, and places a sign on the melaminetopped table: Free Prayers.
She hears it all — over pancakes doused in syrup poured from plastic pods, over paper cups of coffee with black lids warning, “Caution. I’m hot.” The fear of losing healthcare. The anxiety about jobs and finances. The worry for the future of our country. Though voters in the conservative region favored Republicans in the 2016 election, the practical and emotional concerns they now voice point to the Trump presidency as a spiritual crisis, writ large.
My sister, who was anti- Trump early on, doesn’t judge; she merely listens. Then, when the person is fully unburdened, she prays for her. Or with him. She tends to her “McMinistry” ( what else?) in addition to her regular duties overseeing weekly services, the Sunday school and a choir. She views her McDonald’s drop- ins as outreach. The Lord sets a large table. The location isn’t necessarily specified.
We are two sides of the same coin, my sister and I, related by blood and united in faith. We both often dress in head- totoe black — she by professional dictate, me by choice. In addition to parents and baptism in the Presbyterian Church, we share a deepening dismay at the corruption of the Christian message by evangelical fundamentalists — the kind of people who are still supporting Roy Moore in Alabama and who came out in droves to put Trump in the White House. Each in her own way, we are doing what we can to push back. At the moral center of what you might call our Christian Resistance are the teachings of Jesus: The stranger is welcome, the vulnerable are protected, the marginalized are drawn to center and love is love.
But if our goals are the same, our methods are different. I am a member of the so- called creative class ( a. k. a. the chronically underemployed), and so far from ordained I’m barely churched. For years, I viewed Christianity as a cultural artifact bound for obsolescence. Then, dogged by depression and the lurking notion that I’d ceded the faith to negative forces, I drifted back. I bought myself some church Spanx, put on a Sunday dress like our mom taught us, and went in search of a socially liberal spiritual home. Now my form of outreach is spending part of each day online, reminding people that the right- wing face of my faith is hardly representative of us all — a one- woman #NotAllChristians campaign.
Where my sister, a visible leader in her community, holds off on partisan pontificating in the interest of congregational unity, I am unfettered. She focuses her messaging on the Scripture’s guidance rather than on criticizing the president who draws us so far from its light. I can be in- your- face, offering my Bible- based critique of current events and reminding people that if faith doesn’t guide your politics, whatever is it for? I’m all for subtle scriptural counsel, but I have the latitude to give voice to what she must not: Trump’s hypocrisy and moral malignancy are an ominous threat to America.
My sister and I are pretty weary from fighting the good fight. Me, from the never- ending job of sentry in the true Christianity call- out culture, my sister from holding her political cards close to her vest while doling out kindness and hope. The fear and frustration of the times have wreaked havoc on our nerves and our waistlines — we’re both besieged by the Trump 20. When she can, she makes the six- hour drive to my house for a Saturday break. I brew a pot of English breakfast and park her on the sofa with her knitting needles for a sisterly stitchand- bitch. Then we go back to our respective strengths: She models patience and restraint. What I lack in gravitas, I make up for in lip.
Some of us scream from the barricades ( or at least fume on Twitter). Others walk a quieter line. There’s more than one road in this movement, more than one way back to a place of justice, peace and goodness in America.
I’ll meet you there.