I. God’s Den of Thieves

God’s house has been no special harbor from the suffering and evil humans bring to each other.

Well, that’s actually not true. The Church has often provided shelter to powerful and guilty men from a wide spectrum of moral character — as long as their willing to confess certain truths. But I fear that Jesus’ own “least of these” have never authentically been a priority for Christianity, except nominally of course.  While the sexual crimes of Catholic priests have served as a disturbing cultural meme for decades now, the era of #meToo exposes us to what should have been obvious: the ways Christians torture themselves sexually were always doomed to bring about great pain and heinous violence, whether in Roman Catholic or Southern Baptist communities.

Christ’s body has failed to provide safety —much less salvation— for millions of Christ’s own. Worse, it turns out we have quite frequently abetted and cloaked such destructive abuses of power.

The shocking crimes of racism that have consistently plagued civilization for the last four or five centuries have all taken place on the Church’s watch. Puritans brought African slaves to America, German Christians helped Hitler (there’s even a direct line of antisemitism from Luther to 20th c. Germany), Baptists in the United States invented Southern Baptist as a denomination because they were slave owners. It seems that we can still agree with MLK that Sunday is the most divided day of the week.

All the sins of the Church don’t need to be recounted here. Most Christians are willing to admit that the Church has had its indiscretions. The handy emergence of denominations —which themselves splinter off into multiple types of “non-denominations”— allows Christians to feel distanced from what they see as inferior types of Christianity. To them, I cannot do better than to quote Samuel Coleridge: “He who begins by loving Christianity more than Truth, will proceed by loving his sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.”

There is no pure form of Christianity, it has been dividing itself since the beginning, always trying to renew or reinvent what is so obviously broken. Whatever revolution was began in Jesus’ name quickly betrayed itself, reinvented itself. 

Christians, you sustain an institution that has failed to live up to its name from damn near its very beginning. Jesus’ movement has been made to limp through ages depending on civil power and blind faith. You are complicit in the sins of your leaders. Your tithes compensate thieves, your faith gives perverts power over your weak. Celebrities like Louie C.K., R. Kelly and Bill Cosby are secular mirrors of this same problem. The clout we bestow upon people we feel represent the best of our communities always comes with sexual dimensions. For the majority of us, these feelings and attractions can be exercised in a healthy manner, but not all of us. While I don’t think the actions of Ryan Adams and others have been defensible, we also have to deal with the reality that the Harvey Weinsteins of the world are our creation.

If you are not investigating those to whom you give such great power, you are most assuredly covering up and solidifying that power.

It is Christ’s body that has committed rape, torture and destruction of the bodies of countless children. Not to forget the full-grown bodies of adult women, which have been religiously patrolled and dominated openly since the second century. Few are spared sexual self-alienation, shame and guilt. Indeed, Christian delusions about human sexuality is forging new fractions even now, as LGBTQ friendly Christians don’t want to be confused with “straights only” Christians and vice versa. This is not a symptom of bad Christians or broken churches: this is Christianity, this is the Church.

How many bodies will it violate, through how many centuries will it be allowed to protect the devils it employs?

So, again, God’s house has been no special harbor from evil. 

The Church is a place where evil hides and calls itself by other names.