I am a Christian...

I go to church fairly regularly (more so now that I found a church which meets at 11 AM), I am into biblical studies not only because it is interesting, but also because the Bible is the foundational text for the church, I love singing hymns, I believe that no one comes to the Father but through Jesus (though I like Amy-Jill Levine's take on it), etc. However, of late, I have a harder and harder time identifying as such and at first I thought it was because I am no longer in seminary, an explicitly Christian context, but that was not it. I work at a faith based organization (for the next few weeks at least). Then I thought, perhaps it is because I am doing "real" work (as if graduate school isn't real work). That was getting closer, but was not quite it. Finally, a few days ago, it struck home. The far right is winning, but not in the way they think.

I have been falling into the trap of letting the loud far right define "Christian." These are the Christians (all men) who go on Hannity and bitch about how Obama insisting that church affiliated organizations (e.g. schools and hospitals, not the churches themselves) must provide insurance with offers complete healthcare for women (read: birth control) is the same thing as Nazism (you keep using that word), yet are silent when a pastor advocates putting people in freaking concentration camps. Or they trumpet the cause of Israel while perpetuating anti-Semitic theology. Or they are the people who claim that there is no war on women (that it was manufactured by Democrats and the liberal media), but rewrite the Violence Against Women Act so that it protects only certain women and certain crimes. Or they are the types who rant and rave about freedom, but are pretty quick to deny it to others. (Yes I recognize that I just associated the Christian Right with the GOP, but unfortunately it is a fact that the far right, both political and theological, has co-opted the GOP.)

This gets to the heart of the matter for me. Like they did with the GOP in the last several elections (both state and federal), the far right is pushing out moderate and progressive voices from the church ("church" in a very wide sense). Or at least it feels that way. To be sure there is not a mass exodus from the church, but there is evidence to suggest that an exodus is starting.

On the one hand, I understand just throwing up your hands and saying "I am done with all of this." It gets tiring when you feel like you have to defend your faith because the dominant definition (and right or wrong) of "Christian" is "judgmental, bigoted, sheltered, hypocrite, insincere, and uncaring," or that homophobia is a hallmark of Christianity. If that is what it means to be a Christian, I want to have nothing to do with it. And I am far from the only one.

Yet, at the same time, it is precisely because of my faith that I am pro-gay rights, pro-women's rights, anti-racist, anti-imperialist, that I am committed to Jewish-Christian dialogue and reconciliation. That I proclaim Jesus as Lord means that I cannot participate in war, that I cannot deny civil rights to my LGBTQ siblings (siblings in the metaphorical sense) or deny full health care coverage to women. My faith is the reason that I am passionately for freedom of (and from) religion. My faith is the reason that I love education and I am in complete support of open and free inquiry (and free/affordable access to the findings of that inquiry), it is because of my faith that I am "pro-science." I care for the environment because I believe that God created the heavens and the earth (though not at the cost of accepting the theory of evolution). I hold to these things not in spite of my faith, but because of my faith.

This does create moments of cognitive dissonance (but who does not "suffer" from that?). My stance on nonviolence makes me against abortion (I do think it is murder), yet I support the work of Planned Parenthood, including providing abortion services. (The real way to reduce abortion is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies through sex education and access to birth control.) Or even stranger (at least on the surface), I am in total support of the existence of Israel (though I think the modern nation state is not the biblical Israel), yet I am also in support of the rights of the Palestinians and a critic of Israeli policies regarding the Palestinians.

I think what frustrates me the most is that the way conservative Christianity has co-opted the language of faith. They are the ones who (get to?) use words like "faithful" and "biblical" and "Jesus the Savior" and "God the Creator." They are usually portrayed as the ones who act out of "faith" or "religion" while the progressive elements act out of a desire for "tolerance," "civil rights," or "equity." However, this is not necessarily true. I believe in a biblical (there is no such thing as the biblical anything) justice; justice that is concerned for the least of these, that teaches love thy neighbor and love the Lord, that holds us accountable for failing in these things, that holds us especially accountable if we knowingly violate these things, a justice which places human dignity before profits or personal wealth or being practical. I have had enough of the Right defining what it means to be a Christian. It is time for progressive Christians to stand up and reclaim the vocabulary of faith. When speaking about social justice, we must use "biblical" (though with far more humility that the right does), we must speak of God's will for humanity. I am not advocating for "praying in the streets" (Matthew 6.5), but I am advocating reclaiming the language of "faith" from the far Right. They are not the spokesmen and women of Christianity, and it is time that we stop letting them be so.

UPDATE, 5/31/2012: Case and freaking point. Seriously. WTF?!