vitalwholeness

This statement was developed by the leadership team of the Christian Nationalism Series hosted by the Seekers Class of the Missouri United Methodist Church, Columbia, Missouri. It is offered in the form of a Credo, affirmations which stand in contrast to the ideology and theology of Christian Nationalists. I hope that it serves as a reflection piece and provides a clear statement for uncertain times.

Addressing Christian Nationalism: A Different Christian Perspective

Theological Vision

We believe that God is the creator of the whole cosmos and that love of God requires us to respect, preserve, and protect all Creation.

We believe that God is the creator of all humanity and that we should strive to welcome, understand, and empathize with all people.

We believe that God loves and is at work among the people of our nation just as God loves and is at work among the people of other nations. God does not extend preferential or superior status to our nation among the many nations.

The Moral Center

We believe there is a moral center, one which we find in our Christian faith and others find in different religions or no religion.

We believe that the life and teachings of Jesus should be the standard by which we evaluate the narratives and practices of all movements that claim to be Christian.

We believe that our Christian calling is to love not hatred, kindness not cruelty, mercy not judgement, and equality not domination.

We believe that we are all parts of the same body and that seeking the common good is a virtuous goal in life. The true test of a Christian moral ethic is the way that resources are distributed not only to the powerful, but to the vulnerable in society.

We believe that fear, anger, and harsh partisanship should not be seen as inevitable and that the best way forward involves listening, compromise, and making decisions with integrity.

Relationship between Church and State

We believe in the separation of church and state. The founders framed the Constitution in such a way that freedom of religious practice and non-establishment of any one religion were protected; the separation of church and state insures the freedom of all citizens, religious or not.

We believe that Christian faith and citizenship are not the same thing, but that they both provide freedom and require responsibility, each in their own way.

We choose to be American Christians rather than Christian Americans. We do not live in a Christian Nation. We live in a nation where we are free to be Christians and free to decide what that looks like.

We believe in the value of a multicultural democracy where we are free to practice our faith and our neighbors are free to practice theirs in their own way.

We believe that loyalty to one’s nation and devotion to one’s God may coexist, but because they are distinct, they should not be conflated. When they do come into conflict, our loyalty to God must be first and patriotism to nation second.

We believe that integrity of belief can only flourish with intellectual freedom and that no one can be forced into an authentic faith. That freedom is protected by open education, a free press, avoidance of censorship, and the absence of religious coercion.  

We believe that theocracy is antithetical to a pluralistic democracy in which citizens make their own moral decisions based on their own values. We should avoid the establishment of a one-party system that codifies one religion’s doctrine in civil law and policy.

The Just Society

We believe that fostering a good and just public life requires respect of fellow citizens, upholding the ideals of democracy, welcoming the stranger and the immigrant, and living peacefully.

We believe that the ideals of a democratic society are protected when all people are free to participate in the discourse of shared governance and where all citizens can vote without interference or intimidation.

We believe that a democratic society is more effective, more responsive, and more inclusive when all social institutions are based upon honest, transparent, and factual discourse.

We believe that our social institutions should provide opportunity, safety, freedom, equity, and justice to all people.

We believe that government is necessary to legislate laws to govern human interaction, to build a stable and unified community with people from different cultural traditions, and to address problems that a market economy fails to solve. 

We believe that our founding documents were remarkable yet imperfect and they must be continually reformed. We are called to engage in that ongoing work.

We believe that freedom of speech is a right and a gift, something that must be used with passion and also responsible care, to expand love and call out hate, to bring together and not divide.

We believe that movements that rely on violence to secure their ideological goals are anti-Christian. We denounce theologies and ideologies that claim God-directed violence and justify those claims with apocalyptic end-time scenarios.

Once is Never Enough

I’ve heard it said more than once,

from more than one mouth or pen,

that once is never enough,

which is a truism true enough,

If you are talking chocolate shakes,

walks in the springing forest,

Mozart’s 40^th Symphony,

winding the clock before coffee,

or laying satisfied and spent

in the late afternoon.

Once may never seem enough.

But some contestants deserve the title

of never bearing even one repetition,

because unrepeatable is what makes them

what they are and remain.

Never again is their stubborn declaration,

unmatched by weakening do-overs.

They stand unrivaled, wearing the garland,

always outstretching the competition.

But there is another list

of the once-onlys, the rarities,

floating over and above time,

that are not determined in any way

by perspective, wanting, or waiting.

These are the one-time-by-design,

most distinguished things

made so by being none other than once:

The azure, crystalline clarity

marking everything that came before

and would after, this great divide.

Getting born into this body

the one time, mind you,

and then getting out of it, too,

the cry the first time

the whisper the second,

both one time, because any more

would not only be impossible,

but withdraw wonder by degrees.  

Some parts of this one story

deserve to stand alone,

unrepeated, unparalleled, unedited.

Here is to you, the once only thing,

which stays that way,

can’t not be that way,

revealing every fearsome limit,

among winsome love,

and deepest admiration.

(Timothy Carson, February 2024)

During the month of February, a deep discount is offered on purchases of Leaning into the Liminal: A Guide for Counselors and Companions (The Liminality Press, 2024). This book is designed as a guide for those in the counseling arts, including therapists, counselors, chaplains, spiritual directors, religious leaders, and coaches. By clicking the link you may order a deeply discounted launch version. Get yours or one for that counselor friend today!

Click here to order your discounted copy!

Leaning into the Liminal: A Guide for Counselors and Companions

Carson, Timothy L

Buy Now

As the dog walked me in the early morning dark, I started listening to the sounds of our feet on the ground. Even though I try to walk lightly and quietly, my age and weight makes silence a near impossibility. The repetitive scuff and scrape of my sandals on earth took me back to other scuffing and scraping in the dark.

In the distant past of my young adulthood I spent a summer in Bangladesh, visiting the work of an NGO and shadowing their staff. I travelled everywhere by any means – walking, bus, the back of a motor cycle, rickshaw, river boats, crossing over rice paddy rickety bridges. And I ended up in a combination of locations difficult to describe. Small villages, leper hospitals, disaster recovery programs, tiny retreat centers, literacy programs in the shanty slums.

Our base camp was Dhaka, the capital city. Like so many others, we lived in a walled house inside the city. You can hear the flurry of activity on the street outside those walls at all hours. By 2 or 3am it gets quiet.

More than once, as I lay dreaming in the pre-dawn dark, I heard the scuff and scrape of a silent procession on the street. It was like a muted percussion section. This was the sound of the sandaled feet of Bangladeshi women walking to work in the shirt factories.

Factory work was one of the few plentiful jobs in the city. They always needed cheap labor. Bangladeshi women could provide that for pauper wages. Their hours were long, the conditions dirty and cramped, and every so often a factory would collapse on them. The owners never protected them or improved those conditions. Inspectors were routinely paid off. But that wasn’t the most important factor that kept the wages deplorable and the conditions marginal.

Large multinational corporations like Walmart came in with shirt contracts that the owners couldn’t say no to. The offers were rock bottom, making it almost impossible for the manufacturers to make a profit, improve their buildings, and pay their labor force. These contracts insured low costs for people like me, when I look for a shirt at Walmart or some other multinational chain. My cheap shirts require cheap labor and poor conditions elsewhere. As the end of the supply chain, my demands for low prices make that what it is.

The scuff and scrape of feet comprise a symphony of sorts. It is the unending song of those who must walk for their lives, inside their inhumane cities, or across miles of terraine to escape the spectre of despair. Every time I hear the sound of my feet in the dark, I remember them.

I also imagine the sound of feet and hooves of another young family escaping the disaster that loomed over them. So vulnerable were they, what with the young child in their care. They fled under the cover of night, escaping harm on the way to safety, from Galilee, down south through Gaza, across the border into Egypt, where the migrant family would wait, try to survive, and hope for better days to come.

Scuff-scrape, scuff-scrape, scuff-scrape.