The World Needs United Methodists to Stop Navel-Gazing

Four recent books outline crucial challenges that call for faith-based responses

by

A United Methodist Insight Column

Many American Christians are reluctant to mix politics and religion, not recognizing that "politics" encompasses far more than which of two imperfect parties wins the next election. Careful reading of the gospels, understanding the political contexts in which they were written, makes it clear that Jesus recognized the political as well as the spiritual implications of his teachings.

Two thousand years after Jesus tried to teach Jews how to live subversively under Roman occupation, Christians in America now face the frightening prospect of an authoritarian movement that welds corrupted theology with an insatiable drive to gain and hold political power at any cost. Much like German Christians such as Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer who stood against the rise of Nazism with their "Barmen Declaration," astute Christian authors are sounding a call for critiquing the current political system against gospel tenets, and for resisting the hijacking of both Christian faith and American freedom by tyrannical forces.

Four recently published books give intellectual support for flinging faith-based resistance into the systems of a world disordered by politics, prejudice and peril. Sadly, only one of these books is written by a United Methodist, a fact I attribute to the reality that United Methodists have been so pre-occupied with the denomination's splintering that few leaders have the mental and emotional energy to pursue deep thought about the world's crises.

It's clearly time for United Methodists to lift up their heads and look at what's happening in the world around them. Here are the books that will give all United Methodists both the context of these days and ways to meet their challenges.

Our Hearts Were Strangely Lukewarm: The American Methodist Church and the Struggle with White Supremacy by John Elford. (Wipf & Stock, Paperback, 170 pp, ISBN 978-1667-6754-4). Pastor emeritus of progressive University UMC in Austin, Texas, Elford pulls no punches in his forthright account of how American Methodists frequently aided and abetted white supremacy in the United States. Thanks to extensive research, he breaks down how Methodists – even those ostensible abolitionists in the northern branch of the church – frequently endorsed racist policies and practices since the church was founded in 1784. Each chapter concludes with questions for reflection, making the book well-suited for adult Sunday school and small-group study. Elford's last two chapters on the contemporary struggle against white supremacy lay out a road map for dealing more effectively with racism both within and beyond the UMC.

American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church by Andrew Whitehead (Brazos Press, hardcover, 240 pp, ISBN-13 978-1587435768). Associate professor of sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), Whitehead has been studying the rise of Christian nationalism for several years. Like Elford, Whitehead raises difficult questions for American Christians, such as "if America is built on Christian principles, why did it treat Native Americans so badly, enslave Africans, and treat immigrants and refugees with disdain and violence?" (to paraphrase several reflections). Whitehead stresses that if Christians are to follow Jesus faithfully, we must disentangle Christian identity from American partisanship, lest we find ourselves in a religious dictatorship that betrays both our faith and the democratic principles on which America was founded.

The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future by Robert P. Jones (Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 400 pp, ISBN-13 978-1668009512). Founder and chairman of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), Jones took his research farther back than other authors to the 15th century Doctrine of Discovery, a papal decree that gave white Europeans the "right" to conquer and claim "unpeopled" lands in the Americas and Caribbean region. Jones focuses on three little-known campaigns against Native Americans to show how the insidious doctrine links the genocide of those incidents to such horrors as the murder of Emmet Till and the deaths of 300 people during the attack on "Black Wall Street" in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Jones argues persuasively that America's "original sin" was not the enslavement of Africans that officially began in the 17th century, but its earliest encounters with natives as soon as Europeans set foot upon the "undiscovered" shores.

Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies: A Call to Christian Faithfulness in a Time of Political Crisis by David P. Gushee (Eerdmans, hardcover 235 pp, ISBN: 978-0-8028-8293-6). Baptist ethicist Gushee has become a major voice for clear-headed, open-hearted Christian morality in the past decade. His articles and interviews have shown him to be a careful thinker and a principled disciple of Jesus Christ. A Facebook supporter quoted from the new book: "Christians need to be reminded to fight for the liberty of conscience of everyone, not just us. Removing state coercion in religion had the salutary benefit of 'weaken[ing] a major cause of secularism,' which is negative reaction to state-sponsored religious oppression." In other words, Gushee proposes with vigor and authenticity that religious freedom for Christians must embrace religious freedom for all faiths, contrary to the right-wing proponents of "Judeo-Christian" politics (which don't follow any true tenets of Judaism or Christianity).

Taken together, these four books could comprise an entire year's worth of study for any Sunday school class, small group or individual Christian. Their topics are both urgent and important, as the United States struggles to preserve its fragile democracy that in turn serves – at least for now – as a bulwark against tyranny upheld by corrupted religion.

Veteran award-winning religion journalist Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, a journal she founded in 2011 as a media channel to amplify news and views of marginalized and under-served United Methodists. This content may be reproduced elsewhere with credit to Insight and a link to its original posting.