I am loathe to begin this whole thing with politics, but here we are.
I suppose if I am to begin with politics, I should state a few things plainly, up front, about my overall perspective on both religion and politics:
1- Religion is, inevitably, political.
While Religious Studies scholars worth their salt will tell you that “religion” as a phenomenon can mean a whole bunch of things only vaguely related that have a distinctly “you know it when you see it” vibe, as a person of faith, what “religion” means to me is a system of beliefs and practices intended to help people, individually and collectively, live “morally good” lives. It’s not mere moral philosophy, to my mind, because it encapsulates more than thinking critically about what is and isn’t morally good. It includes intentional internal and collective practices and shared stories and narratives meant to reinforce its own undergirding arguments, along with a sense of identification with the collective of other people who share that religion. I fully recognize that this mental framework is shaped overwhelmingly by Western, largely European, and Christian ideas. This should come as little surprise. I’m a white, American, Christian, and I’m speaking, presumably, mostly to other people who share some part of those identities, even if I hope to also speak to more universal, transcendent, truths.
If, at the core of a religious tradition, is a substantial amount of “how does one live a good life?” then, inevitably, one aspect of the answer a religion provides has to do with the question of how we live with one another. How do we treat one another? Who makes decisions? How do we make decisions? What do we do about power and how is it exercised? These are all political questions. For much of human history, the distinction between the political and the religious has been fuzzy precisely because they both point back to foundational questions of morality.
The summer between my freshman and sophomore year in college, I had a conversation with a middle aged man related to someone I was dating. Along with all the other general “getting to know you” questions, he asked me my major. I explained that I had initially declared a French major, but after a year in school and taking some gen eds that really lit me up, I was thinking of pursuing Religious Studies and Political Science.
“Why would you do that?” he asked. “Don’t we have separation of Church and State?”
This was a really smart guy. He was wealthy and successful, had lived more than twice as long as I had, and had the benefits of travel and book study and all kinds of experiences and the wisdom they confer. I couldn’t articulate why, intuitively, I knew that there was a deep connection, particularly within my own lived experience, in the ways that both religion and politics were in a perpetual dance. In fact, I don’t remember my response at all. I’m sure I sputtered through something to the effect of, “Did you not also live through the George W. Bush administration and notice all the ways religion informed politics?” But perhaps I didn’t even manage that, though that may capture the mood.
2- Large religions are not “one thing.” Christianity is no different.
What I mean by this is simply that there is natural variation within a given religious tradition. This is a thing that we often fail to appreciate, particularly when considering the traditions we’ve interacted with personally, but truly: the farther you zoom out when looking at a religious tradition, the more variability to consider. In her recent (and very excellent) video essay exploring the intersection of Fascism, Christian Nationalism, Zionism, and attacks on Children’s Video Star and National Treasure, Ms. Rachel, Lindsay Ellis gave a broad overview of the core tenets of the Christian faith. While I don’t disagree that for the most part it was pretty accurate, particularly for encapsulating the general understanding of your average Evangelical American Christian, there were definitely a couple of points where she said something to the effect of “every single Christian asserts this thing as I am explaining it to you,” and I, an ordained minister in one of the oldest denominations in America derived from one of the oldest reformed Christian traditions, had to resist the urge to type “NUH UH.”
Most reasonable, educated people can accept in good faith, pretty easily and without too much push-back, that there are substantial differences between, say, the Islam expressed by the Taliban and the Islam expressed by your average American Muslim. Perhaps it’s easier, when we don’t have personal experience with a particular faith, to make that distinction. Certainly, it’s a known phenomenon among Group Communication scholars that people tend to generalize their experiences in work groups to entire organizations. I don’t think it’s that far of a leap to imagine that we likely do so with other collectives—and when this perception is negative, it can lead to an overall prejudice that is also negative.
Now, to be clear: this is not a “not all Christians” argument. There are many reasonable criticisms of Christianity that, while they may not necessarily apply to each individual Christian, are systemic enough that I would argue it’s an obligation for Christians to account for them and consider how they can thoughtfully engage and make amends. What I’m trying to communicate is that there are, indeed, myriad varieties of Christian theology and practice in the same way that there are myriad varieties of Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and Hindu theology and practice. And those differences matter, especially when we talk about the ethical and political conclusions implied.
3- The United States of America is a country that has been shaped in part by Christianity, but that does not necessarily make it a “Christian” nation.
Again, religion is inevitably political, so of course when a majority of people making decisions about how a country is to be governed belong to one broad religious tradition, the result is going to be colored by their religion. However, the very notion that a bunch of English colonists at the end of the eighteenth century would seek to found a nation explicitly to be a Christian one is simple foolishness that implicates a broad failure of our educational system to adequately educate students on the history of early modern Europe as a context in which to understand the history of the United States. These guys knew what it was like to live in a theocracy: they had been doing it their whole lives. The head of the Church of England is whoever the reigning monarch is. Currently it’s King Charles III, bless their hearts. Parliament has the authority to issue their Book of Common Prayer. (Consequently, they’re still using the 1662 edition along with a whole bunch of supplemental liturgies…a topic for another day)
The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution starts with the statement that the federal government shall not establish nor prohibit the free exercise of religion precisely because the founders knew, from lived experience and historical proximity, how absolutely devastating sectarianism can be when the force of the government is behind it. Moreover, there have always been non-Christians who have been part of the fabric of our nation: Indigenous people practicing their traditional spirituality and culture, Jews, Atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, and all others.
4- The very notion of a “Christian” nation is antithetical to the very core of what it means to be a Christian.
One of the core questions of early Christianity as depicted in the Acts of the Apostles and the writings of Paul is whether or not salvation was exclusive to a given nation, specifically, Jewish people. There was a huge amount of infighting in the early church as the Apostles, all born and raised members of the Jewish community, just like Jesus himself, wrestled with the question of whether or not non-Jewish people could be baptized and become Christians and the extent to which Christians were obligated to maintain Jewish cultural and religious practices. The result, for a variety of reasons (including political ones that were a direct result of the Roman colonial project—again, a topic for another time) was resoundingly that the Christian tradition not only welcomed people regardless of national or cultural origin, but indeed that it put a demand on Christians to treat one another as siblings of equal dignity regardless of any social distinction. This was one of St. Paul’s key teachings…whatever may divide you, as followers of Christ, you should not, indeed, cannot allow that to divide you any longer. For Christians, the only association that should matter to you is your own identity in Christ and the only nation with which you ought to identify is that of the Kingdom of God.
Now here’s the thing: That very argument has been used throughout history to justify all kinds of Christian imperial exploits, but the problem is that any argument that would suggest that Christians have an obligation to force others to become Christians through violence or to enforce their ethical conclusions upon folks who do not share their faith requires basically ignoring the person and teachings of Jesus. There is no grace or love in coercion. Indeed, the liberation Jesus offers is diametrically opposed to imperial and coercive projects of all kinds. Rather than building up for ourselves worldly nations, Christians are initiated into a Kingdom that transcends all divisions, including and especially temporal ones.
Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way (and in fewer than 1600 words!):
Wow, we’re sure living in times, huh?
This was brought on by a conversation about and my consequent viewing of, the President of the United State’s nearly hour long speech at the Museum of the Bible. Honestly, these remarks given to a room of mostly administration insiders were much as we have come to expect from this personage over the last ten years: lots of ad libs marked by a dramatic shift in language and tone, a good deal of verbal gladhanding, “funny stories” that reveal far more about the speaker’s values and worldview than the content prepared by his staff, and, of course, a time honored (and obviously effective for its intended audience) rhetorical strategy:
1-Spark emotions of fear or anger
2-Tell people who to blame (a scapegoat)
(2.5- Propose a solution that targets the scapegoat)
3- Couch it all in terms of a non-offensive moral precept while using dog whistles to signal to the far right that this is really for them (because it is)
What disturbed the person I was talking to enough that they were beginning to feel panic was the way the President was drawing a clear line between “transgenderism”/”gender ideology” and “faith”/”religion.” Beyond that, there was a clear narrative that transgender people, along with immigrants, present not merely an ideological threat, but an actual, violent threat. As people who are both Christian and transgender, this person and I experience all the ways in which, not only is our gender not antithetical to our faith, but it actually enriches our faith. As for the narrative that transgender people are somehow a violent threat, there’s no logical basis presented. Rhetorically, this threat is based on the idea that two of the 90-4000-ish mass shootings (statistics vary in part because definitions vary) in the U.S. were perpetrated by transgender people. Bear in mind that we make up approximately 1-2% of the population and some basic napkin math will dispute the supposition that we have an epidemic of transgender spree shooters. If we want to talk about the role of gender in mass shootings (again, a topic for another time) then really what we shouldn’t be talking about is transgender people (of any gender) but cisgender men and boys. But of course, the intent here isn’t to deal in honesty or a good faith argument.
The intent here is to stir up a particularly effective political base.
Christian Nationalists, particularly of the Evangelical variety, are exceptionally anti-LGBTQ+, with particular animus against transgender people. As with abortion, this hasn’t always been the case, although despite our best hopes, the oft-shared video of Pat Robertson wrestling off-the-cuff with the question of how to interact with trans folks is not actually proof of any kind of neutrality towards transgender people. Socially conservative Christians tend to orient their lives around a particularly entrenched form of patriarchy that simply cannot stand up under its own ideological weight if the idea that transgender people are a normal and natural variation of the human condition is allowed to flourish. The idea that gender (and therefore gender roles) are biologically, not socially, determined, and are therefore “natural” and immutable, undergirds so much of the patriarchal worldview that it cannot tolerate the mere existence, let alone acceptance or inclusion, of transgender people.
At the root of patriarchy and fascism is the glorification of power and control. What makes a man a man under patriarchy is his ability to exert control over others. His dominance over others—women, children, and lesser men—is what defines him as a real man. Likewise, what animates fascists is a desire to control society at-large. The drive for control is often a psychological response to anxiety and insecurity, which is a big part of the reason why fascism tends to take root in democratic or populist systems when there is a broad level of social anxiety. When the world doesn’t make sense— when things aren’t going the way folks feel they ought to be— when people feel that they are losing their way, especially economically—the fascist promises to make things make sense. He promises victory (“winning”) and prosperity. Now, because often the root causes of societal anxiety and insecurity are complex or a direct result of policies that benefit the powerful at the expense of the ordinary, the fascist is unable to actually enact real changes that address those root causes. Instead, he has to offer some kind of placebo. Like a charlatan offering an expensive juice cleanse that doesn’t address the underlying causes of any actual medical issues but does, definitely, appear to do something the fascist does a whole lot of expensive nonsense that either doesn’t make any material difference or is intended explicitly to make only their most easily stirred up base happy while not necessarily bothering your average Jo(e).
Attacking the Scapegoat.
In 1933, Jews made up a bit under 1% of the German population. They mostly lived in urban areas, though about one in five lived in small towns. Being such a small population that had historically been fairly insular— for good reasons— made them an easy target, especially when taking into consideration the long and well-established antisemitic tradition within Christianity. This made them an ideal target for Nazis to do a whole lot of violence towards as a way of making their ideological base happy while not necessarily bothering your average Johann(a). Of course, the same infrastructure used to round up, secret away, imprison, and ultimately murder one scapegoat could just as easily be used on other undesirable people. And they did. Nazis murdered the disabled, ethnic minorities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, religious minorities, and political opponents.
Knowing all this, I absolutely understand why the person I was talking to was feeling such an urgent, palpable fear. I have felt that same fear myself. I’ve spoken to members of the transgender community and their families who have moved from one state to another to flee the kinds of anti-trans legislation that have been spreading like wildfire from one state to another as planks in the platform of one political party. I have eyes and ears and the unfortunate drive to pay attention to the news, inculcated in me by parents who were trying to raise a good citizen in a democratic republic. I got to where, for a little while, the shock and awe of everything coming down the pipe almost worked. I almost felt helpless. I began to lose sleep. The fear was simply too much.
So, when Lent came, I did what I always should have been doing as a person of faith:
I turned off my phone. I turned my heart to God. I prayed. And I read my Bible.
Here’s the thing: it’s kind of perfect, honestly, when wrestling with existential dread, to dive into the Episcopal Daily Office in Lent. Most of the Psalms are either imprecatory or prayers for aid. There’s a whole lot of “God’s justice against evildoers” and “God’s protection for the faithful” in the Hebrew Bible readings. There’s a whole lot of “Jesus understands suffering” in the Gospels and Epistles. So much of a liturgically conservative Lent has way less to do with guilt and shame and way more to do with placing your whole trust in God than one may imagine without actually observing it oneself.
I still followed the news. I still talked to folks. But the spiritual practice was helping to ground me. It was also reminding me that I, Deacon Beck, have a responsibility for what I am responsible for, no more and no less. I can’t stop powerful people who want people like me to not exist from engaging in all kinds of violence. I’m not going to convince some random guy on the internet who spends his one, precious, fleeting life doing keyword searches for “transgender” and spewing hateful nonsense against strangers that he would probably be a lot happier if he just…didn’t. But I can do what I can: I can care for the people God has given me to care for. I can highlight for people of good conscience who maybe don’t have cause to pay attention to what’s happening the way I do all the ways that people like me (and not like me but still targeted) are being harmed. I can exercise my authority as a deacon to proclaim the liberating Gospel of Jesus Christ. I can exercise my rights as a citizen to free speech, assembly, petition, and the ballot. And I can do it all while being, publicly, the one thing that lays bare the lie at the heart of that blasphemous speech:
A Transgender Christian Clergyman.
I am loathe to make all of this about my identity.
I would really love to just be “Deacon Beck, cool guy doing cool work because he’s cool and thinks Jesus is cool.” And to be clear: at the end of the day, that’s who I am. What truly defines me isn’t my gender because, ya know, Galatians 3:28, among other prooftexts. But we live in a time and a place and a context. It’s a real drag. But it’s not for nothing that we, as Christians, believe that God became incarnate through a young woman named Miriam in first century Judea and was sentenced to a humiliating, unjust execution by an agent of the Roman imperial state. That’s a particular identity. In a particular place. In a particular time. A context. Unlike God, we don’t get to choose our context for existing in this world, but we do choose how we respond to it.
I hope we choose courage. (Which demands an honest understanding of our fears, anxieties, and insecurities)
I hope we choose mercy. (Which demands we acknowledge the power we do and do not have)
I hope we choose love. (Which demands we recognize and affirm the dignity of every human being)
I hope I get to write about more interesting things.