I often hear seminary students and churchgoers repeat this refrain: “If we take a stand about a concern of justice or an issue perceived as ‘too political,’ then we will alienate people who hold opposing perspectives and, thus, will no longer be a truly ‘welcoming’ community to everyone.” For these people, being a welcoming community to all has somehow come to mean never taking a stand that would create disagreement or division.
But actually following Jesus means choosing the side of the most vulnerable, taking a stand in the face of injustice, and being in solidarity with specific people facing particular risks. It means living with the possibility of rejection, and even division. See texts like Luke 12:49-56 and Matthew 10:16-42.
Discipleship—actually being a disciple of the crucified Jesus—means being invited deeper into risk and saying “yes” more often than shying away. Like the original disciples, we, too, will sometimes retreat in timidity before coming around. We can see ourselves in the male disciples’ retreat from Jesus in the thick of Holy Week’s drama toward the cross.
Not Deciding is Deciding
But when you decide not to decide over a matter of justice, you’ve already taken the side of whoever is powerful enough to enact their will in the situation–usually the side of the oppressor. Doing this includes “going along to get along,” even if that means capitulating to injustice.
You’ll keep quiet because someone else in the pew beside you might think you’re getting “too political.” You want to “make room for all views” to be embraced. But this only creates a tepid welcome into a community that cannot stand for anything.
Other times, our resistance to talking about anything “too political” may stem from a protective stance that shields us from encountering realities in the world around us that puncture our sense of comfort and safety. But the church has had enough custodians of comfort. The faith of Jesus is a faith of risk that summons us into courageous solidarity with the vulnerable.
Discipleship is not a Solo Act
Fortunately, Jesus didn’t call solo disciples. He called people into communities to learn and follow his ways.
One of the things we must learn together is courage, which isn’t something we are born with. We learn, practice and cultivate it with others in community.
If you can’t think of a thing that would ever lead you into risk, into embodied acts of solidarity, into the pursuit of justice and wellbeing for those vulnerable to injustice and violence, then this is an opportunity for your faith to grow. It’s a chance for your faith community to listen to the voices, witness the lives, and compassionately engage the feelings of precarity around you.
No faith community can do everything, and it’s not always easy to agree on what work is theirs to do. But when a community decides to avoid anything controversial, political, or potentially divisive, it stops practicing the faith of Jesus.
For some congregations, the call may be toward coalitional justice work in the present onslaught against immigrants—whether documented or not—in the U.S. For others, it may be toward LGBTQ+ justice advocacy in a political landscape that is targeting queer and trans people for erasure.
It may be intervening in the dismantling of rural health care, protecting the ecological web of life against profit-driven decimation, or mounting a response to the unraveling of local social structures that provide care for the vulnerable in your community, from food pantries to Meals On Wheels to disability services.
Justice is Political
All these things are political.
They all may provoke disagreement over what is right or wrong, good or bad about what governments are doing at local, state and federal levels. Yet each of them affects life for those in your communities.
You must decide what side you’re on regarding decisions with life-and-death implications.
These are the kinds of concerns of injustice and well-being that animated the faith of Jesus, which he described in clear, prophetic terms at the outset of his ministry. And, by the way, people tried to drive him over a cliff for it. See Luke 4:16-30.
How can you stand with the most vulnerable, speak out against injustice, and build relationships of solidarity with those at risk—while still keeping everyone happy, comfortable, and united around a polite, “all-perspectives-welcome-no-matter-what” version of faith? You can’t.
I wish there were a trick I could teach you. Discerning your way into the choices you must make, the stands you need to take, and the actions toward justice toward which you are summoned will mean some disagreement and even division.
This is the nature of a Jesus-centered faith. Nothing Jesus said or did ever hid this reality from us.
Risking Discomfort Together
If there’s something you’re willing to risk your comfort for, a concern of justice and well-being that you know is summoning you into relationships of solidarity and acts of compassion and justice, but you feel hesitant, uncertain, and afraid, then find the people in your congregation or other communities who feel that same passion and sense of call. Practice courage with them.
You were never meant to do this alone. Courage is built in community.
We must be more concerned about whether the church is enacting the ways of Jesus than we are about maintaining the pacifying unity of a congregation that never stands for anything. Teaching the right doctrine about Jesus to the detriment of actually following him negates the way of faith.
As early as the letter of James in the New Testament, purporting to follow Jesus without actively pursuing the well-being of society’s most vulnerable was heresy. It was against the ways of Jesus.
In his words, “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:17). And the exemplar of these “works” for James is the classic biblical mandate to stand with the most vulnerable in society, those the biblical writers most often name “orphans and widows” (1:27).
If you’re someone who left church because you couldn’t stomach sitting through week after week of sermons about Jesus with no indication of any effort to follow the ways of Jesus, I get it. I’m sorry.
I lament the churches striving for peace, justice and the well-being of humans and the earth were too few and far between to find, or we simply didn’t tell our story well enough publicly for you to find us. We’re still around if you want to join in.
If you’re still sitting in the pews week after week, experiencing the languishing disconnect between the gospel that is preached and the gospel that is lived, hearing a milquetoast version of Christianity with not enough spiritual nourishment to keep a church mouse alive, please find your people. You weren’t meant to live the faith this way.
The people you need are likely in your pews. They don’t know you’re feeling the same thing they are. Together, you can call others alongside you to put faith into action.
If the people you need to find are not in your church, then they’re in your neighborhood, or they’re members of the immigration coalition in the city down the highway, or they’re part of the LGBTQ+ organization in town, or in a denominational organization doing the work your congregation just can’t seem to do yet.
You weren’t meant to do this alone. There’s a community of courageous faith waiting for you. Your voice, courage and willingness to risk may be just what is needed to help get it started.
And if you’re in a church that is helping you to facilitate your sense of call toward ministry after the ways of Jesus, one that is choosing the side of the most vulnerable, taking a stand in the face of injustice and being in solidarity with specific people who are facing particular risks, then you already know what I’m talking about.
I’m grateful to be in this with you, to learn from you, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you in the trail Jesus has blazed before us with all the risk that entails, now more than ever.
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Cody J. Sanders, PhD, is a Baptist minister serving as associate professor of congregational and community care leadership at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Previously a parish pastor and higher education chaplain at Harvard and MIT, he is the author of several books on religion, ministry, and LGBTQ+ concerns.
