Love My Neighbor

Is America a Christian Nation?

Which Christianity?

Brandan Robertson: Using Religion for Hate

Constitutional Foundation

--Constitution 1st Amendment | Establishment Clause: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion
--Constitution 1st Amendment | Free Exercise Clause: No prohibition of free exercise of religion
--Constitution Article 6 | Religious Test Clause: No religious test shall ever be required

Founders' Comments

--Thomas Jefferson: Wall of separation between church and state

--James Madison: Civil government functions successfully by total separation of church from state
--John Adams | Article 11 Treaty of Tripoli: US Government not founded on the Christian religion

--Roger Williams: Wall or hedge of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world

James Talarico Responds to Bill to Post 10 Commandments in Classroom (1)
James Talarico Responds to Bill to Post 10 Commandments in Classroom (2)
Talaricio vs Boebert: Separation of Church and State

Message to Christian Trumpers

Christopher Macken: Evangelicals

Constitutional Intent

“Every new and successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."
-James Madison

“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”
-John F. Kennedy

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”
-Thomas Jefferson

“We establish no religion in this country. Church and state are, and must remain, separate.”
-Ronald Reagan

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."

-James Madison
 

“The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
-John Adams

James Talarico: Christian Nationalists Twist Religion

The Sin of Denying Someone's Joy

Right-Wing Extremists Threaten LGBTQ-Affirming Religious Communities

"Some people are so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good."
-Oliver Wendell Holmes

"It's funny, isn't it? You can preach a judgmental, vengeful, angry god, and nobody will mind. But, if you start preaching a god that is too accepting, too loving, too forgiving, too merciful, too kind, then you're in trouble."
-Bishop Gene Robinson

Questioning Church Culture

For a long time, I thought the problem was that I had believed the wrong things.
 

I had spent years inside evangelical Christianity learning how to get the answers right. I knew the theology, defended the doctrines, preached the sermons, built the programs, and helped grow the church. By every measure that mattered in that world, I was successful. Very successful.
 

I was a megachurch pastor at the largest church in North America. I appeared on TBN and at the Crystal Cathedral. I spoke at church-growth conferences. I knew the green rooms, backstage conversations, packed auditoriums, and the peculiar intoxication of standing beneath bright lights while thousands of people looked toward you as though you knew something important about God and life.
In Christian celebrity culture, I had arrived.

What took me years to understand was that my deepest problem was not simply what I believed. It was what those beliefs, and the religious system built around them, were teaching me to value. I believed in what I was doing. I wasn't knowingly deceiving anyone. I preached evangelical Christianity because I thought it was true. I defended it, systematized it, and organized my life around it.
 

West Wing: Confronting the Conservative Talk Show Host

Priest Confronts Trump

Love Thy Neighbor

Is America a Christian Nation?

Rev Dr Howard-John Wesley: Which Christianity?

But eventually a question began haunting me that theology could not answer for me: Was any of this actually making us more human? Not more Christian. Not more committed. Not more knowledgeable about the Bible. Not more involved in church. More human.

Were we becoming more loving, honest, compassionate, psychologically whole, capable of uncertainty, comfortable in our own skin, present to one another, and able to inhabit reality as it actually is?
I couldn't avoid the answer forever.

Eventually I walked away from ministry, and later from Christianity itself. When I did, much of the world I had built disappeared with it. Identity. Status. Community. Purpose. Certainty. I had to discover who I was when there was no pulpit, title, theological system, or religious institution telling me. Only with distance could I begin to see what I had been unable to see from inside.

Christian Nationalists

Far Right Christian Nationalist Theocracy

Warning to Christian Nationalists

Here’s where I went wrong. Over and over again...
--I put church over community.
--Orthodoxy over love.
--Christianity over Jesus.
--Certainty over curiosity.
--Teaching over conversation.
--Polished over real.
--Explanations over empathy.
--Answers over questions.
--Membership over friendship.
--Prayer over action.
--Dogma over inner truth.
--Services over self-care.
--Style over substance.
--Appearance over authenticity.
--Theology over psychology.
--Religiosity over spirituality.
--Numbers over faces.
--Holiness over humanity.
--Accountability over acceptance.
--Evangelism over solidarity.
--Discipleship over therapy.
--Heaven over earth.
--Meetings over relationships.
--Reputation over risk.
--Patriarchy over equality.
--Faith over critical thinking.
--Charisma over integrity.
--Superiority over humility.
--Charisma over compassion.
--The afterlife over this life.

Religious Right Gets It Wrong

Pat Robertson's Lies About the LGBTQ Community Helped Shape Today's Republican Party
John Pavlovitz: The Sin of Homophobic and Transphobic Christians

Cody Deese: Discernment and Accountability

What is Sharia Law?

I don't write that list as an indictment from someone who stood outside Christianity pointing at everything wrong with it. I helped create what I am criticizing. In the corner of Christendom I inhabited, success could be measured with a calculator. Growth became evidence of God's blessing. Bigger crowds meant greater impact. Novelty and charisma fueled the machine, and when your livelihood, identity, reputation, and sense of divine calling were all entangled with keeping that machine running, it became remarkably difficult to ask whether the machine itself was taking you somewhere worth going.

Participation in church programs became synonymous with following Jesus. Theologians outranked therapists. Clergy outranked ordinary human wisdom. Correct beliefs could matter more than healed people.
I made God into a multiple-choice test and congratulated myself for having the right answers.

Meanwhile, the pews were filled with people carrying anxiety, depression, loneliness, grief, shame, fractured relationships, buried trauma, and questions they were sometimes afraid to ask. We could give people sophisticated explanations of salvation while knowing remarkably little about what it meant to inhabit a human life.

Jesus is a DEI Specialist

James Talarico: Religious Diversity

Gay Priest’s Emotional Sermon Receives Standing Ovation

Religious Caller vs James O'Brien on Homosexuality and the Bible
Progressive Christian Ideas

I was one of those people. That may be the hardest part for me to admit. I couldn't see what was happening because the system gave spiritual names to the very things that prevented me from seeing it. I wasn't disconnected from myself; I was "dying to self." I wasn't avoiding difficult questions; I was "standing firm in the faith." I wasn't sacrificing my humanity to an institution; I was "committed to the mission." The language made everything coherent. Until it didn't.

Leaving that world did not instantly make me wiser. Walking away from Christianity did not automatically undo what Christianity had formed in me. Some beliefs disappeared quickly. Other habits of mind, identity, authority, certainty, and self-distrust took years to recognize. And some I am probably still discovering.

I no longer think the most important question about a religion, philosophy, spiritual path, or worldview is whether it can explain everything. I want to know what kind of human being it helps us become. Does it deepen our humanity or require us to distrust it? Does it enlarge our capacity for love or narrow the circle of people worthy of it? Does it help us face reality or provide increasingly elaborate ways of escaping it? Does it cultivate curiosity, humility, courage, compassion, and self-trust, or make those things dangerous whenever they threaten the system?

Those questions matter more to me now than the answers I once defended from a stage. I spent years believing that spiritual maturity meant becoming increasingly certain about God. These days, I think it may have much more to do with becoming increasingly capable of being human. And if something requires me to abandon my humanity in order to call myself faithful, I have learned to question the thing demanding the sacrifice.
 

[Source: Jim Palmer]
 

John Pavlovitz: The Sin of Homophobic and Transphobic Christians

Brandan Robertson: Grace Over Guns

Courageous Bishop Confronts Trump

Religious Trauma Still Haunts Millions of LGBTQ Americans

CNN: Why Evangelicals Should Care About Trump's Lies (And Other Sins)

“The first and most immediate purpose of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment rests on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion.”
-Justice Hugo Black

“Of course, the United States was not originally intended to be a Christian nation. Jefferson, Washington, Franklin and most of the founding fathers were skeptics or Deists. They specifically intended a secular government with an unbreachable wall between church and state. They even wrote into the treaty with Tripoli a clear statement that, unlike European countries, the United States is not, in any sense, a Christian nation.”
-Robert A. Wilson

“Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy.”
-Barry Goldwater (Republican Senator)

Religious Conservative Spouts Un-Constitutional Notions

PBS: America's Religious Foundation

Bishop Allen: Inspirational Message

Critique of Religious Right

Biggest Bully of LGBTQ People: Organized Religion

Protecting Religious Rights

"It is never legitimate to use the words of scripture to promote a loveless agenda."
-Rev Dr Peter Short (Moderator of United Church of Canada)

"If you're against abortion, don't get one. If you're against contraception, don't use any. If you're against same-sex relationships, don't have one. If you're against same-sex marriage, don't marry someone of the same gender. Do not impose your religious beliefs on all Americans."
-Ana Navarro-Cardenas
 

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of god, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
-Barry Goldwater (Republican Senator)
 

"The Scriptures have been misused to defend bloody crusades and inquisitions; to support slavery, apartheid, and segregation; to sanction the physical and emotional abuse of women and children; to persecute Jews and other non-Christian people of faith; to support the holocaust of Hitler's Third Reich; to oppose medical science; to condemn inter-racial marriage; to execute women as witches; to excuse the violent racism of the Ku Klux Klan; to mobilize militias, white supremacy and neo-nazi movements; and to condone intolerance and discrimination against sexual minorities. "
-Mel White

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and render unto God the things that are God's.”
-Jesus
 

Perspective on Religion

White Christian Nationalism

The Pathetic Weakness of MAGA Men

Evangelicals Made a Bad Bargain With Trump

Today’s White Christian Nationalists are Looking More and More like Nazis

Healthy Skepticism

“It is of greatest importance that humanity should now and again take out its beliefs for spring cleaning.”
-Julian Huxley

“I do not feel obligated to believe that the same god who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.”
-Galileo Galilei

“Question with boldness even the existence of a god, because, if there be one, he must surely approve of the homage to reason than to that of blind faith.”
-Thomas Jefferson

“There is more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds ever written.”
-Alfred Lord Tennyson

“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.”
-Carl Sagan