Church of the All-Loving God

We have a problem. It’s a theological problem, but it’s more than that—much more than that.

On the one hand, we talk openly about an all-loving God. This is the One to Whom we refer when quoting: “For God so loved the world that he sent the only Son.” We also cite from John’s epistles that “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” We read and quote Jesus’ words in John’s gospel, “This is my command, that you love one another as I have loved you.” We hear Jesus say, “No one has greater love that this: that he lay down his life for his friends.” The we hear Paul writing about God loving us while we were yet God’s enemies, for that was when Christ died for us.

So, yes, we proclaim rather clearly that God is love. We also proclaim rather clearly that we are to love one another according to the standard of love Jesus set before us. “Have this mindset in you which is also in Christ Jesus, … who emptied himself… and became obedient unto death on a cross.” That’s a pretty high bar for measuring love. God’s command in Christ Jesus is that we take that as the model for our love, both in its breadth and in its depth.

Then we take a look at the same church laying claim to and preaching these things.

I was born during the Sunday school hour, my birth proclaimed and celebrated at church in every Sunday school class. My birth made its way into Dad’s sermon that evening. Two months later, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered. Five years earlier 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed, resulting in the deaths of four young girls. That church had been founded as the first colored Baptist church in Birmingham, because its congregants were not welcome to worship alongside white parishioners. Two years later, my parents were appointed as missionaries by the Southern Baptist Convention. That denomination who loved and reared me from infancy was birthed over allowing slave owners not to be excluded from being appointed as missionaries. I never heard the church address any of that publicly.

Oh, I was loved and cherished, but then I was the son of a white pastor who became a foreign missionary, the closest thing Baptists had to heroes back in that day. I was given preferential treatment by SBC churches and institutions because of who my parents were. When I volunteered to serve as a missionary myself, I was given even greater red-carpet treatment. When I invited a schoolmate from Senegal to go with me to church, however, I recognized just how differently I was looked upon than Abraham, due to the color of his skin. The deacons were planning to meet him at the church door to usher him down the street to another church, “Where he would be more comfortable.”

To top it off, we had just started collecting for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for Foreign Missions. While the church was supporting missionaries like my parents and those working in Senegal, they would not allow someone from Senegal to worship in the same building where they raised money to fund sending missionaries with the gospel message of God’s love. It was alright to love people like that from a distance across the oceans, but allowing them into the same sanctuary in which we worshiped was somehow not acceptable. Love did not factor into those decisions.

I left that church before long, taking a position as minister of music and Sunday school teacher at another church. There, I was told by my Sunday school class that it was alright to work with someone of a different skin color, but it was not acceptable to allow them into one’s home and eat together. Apparently, love for some of one’s neighbors stopped at the 5 o’clock whistle, not extending into one’s home life.

When I asked the academic vice president at my Baptist college why the cost of tuition had increased from $96/hr to $226/hr within the three years I was there, he told me they were “having too many students apply.” It was a way to weed out the students they did not want. In my naiveté, I did not immediately realize that was code for limiting the number of Black students coming to campus. Looking back, I realized the only black students in my classes were national merit scholars with full-ride scholarships or athletes playing football. Others were being priced-out. It was alright to love those people in other countries. It was even acceptable to have a few foreign students of color, but it was not acceptable to have people of color from the US studying alongside us white kids at this Christian college.

When I got to seminary, I began seeing how some churches were proud of hosting ethnic congregations in their facilities, but relegated them to a secondary class. Their services could not be held at the same time the white congregation was on the church campus. The church might proudly proclaim they were doing missions by hosting a Filipino, Latino, Chinese, Laotian, or Haitian church on their grounds, but these ethnic congregations understood it was more a case of their being tolerated as long as there was no conflict with the Anglo church. Apparently, it was alright to share physical plant resources with some of those other people, as long as Anglo Christians were not inconvenienced in any way. I encountered some mission teams while we were in Mexico coming with an attitude of looking down on these poor people whose lives they would radically change in the 7 days they were in the country. The national population just needed this limited exposure to their ministrations to suddenly become something different and worthy to become something akin to equals. Apparently, it was acceptable to take God’s love to these people, but they needed to be transformed before they might become worthy of the love of God we First World Christians had experienced.

Returning to South Carolina while we were finishing our application process for a career missions appointment, I was working with the Spanish-speaking community in the county. As I spoke with various individuals, I began hearing their stories of mistreatment, oppression, and denigration by some of the same white people who were members of the churches in the area. They felt their presence was tolerated as long as they worked for the benefit of the white population and were willing to accept lesser pay, lesser benefits, and less respect for their humanity. Apparently, loving one’s neighbor did not really apply to immigrant communities we could easily look down on for being different.

Working in Brazil as missionaries, I began talking with my seminary students about ministering to all kinds of people as God put them in our path. Some began witnessing to prostitutes who worked their path from the seminary to the dorms at the Baptist school. When two of the women determined to give their lives to the gospel of Christ, these seminarian took them to church. The church refused them entry, because “they might corrupt our youth.” Apparently, it was acceptable to preach to prostitutes, but it was not acceptable to allow them into our church fellowship.

We began working with the Traditionalist Gaucho community around us. We discovered that the churches around us were very conflicted about participants in this social renewal movement. They had all sorts of associations of what reportedly went on in their cultural centers that they equated to the excesses of the carnival celebrations in Brazil. It was acceptable for me to come minister among the members of established churches, with neighbors, or others I met on the street. When I started wearing the attire of the traditionalist community and going to their centers and events, that was a bridge too far for many. Sure, God loved them, too, but it was in no way acceptable for me as a Christian and a missionary to become part of that community to offer God’s gift of love and acceptance to them freely.

On returning to the US, I encountered ministry among the Spanish-speaking community around me in which our local churches were involved. One Sunday, my church allowed a sister church to use their baptistry for a baptismal service. They gave members of the other church keys to the building and no one shared any concerns. When the Hispanic mission was sought a place in which to hold a baptismal service for their new members, church leaders suddenly had all sorts of concerns about who would watch over the facilities to protect them from any misdeeds by this other congregation. Sharing our facilities with people who looked like and spoke like us was one thing. When it had to do with people we did not know and who spoke a different language, had different customs, and did not look like us, suddenly treating them as we would our friends was not quite acceptable.

I invited a black youth minister to come speak at the church for 5 minutes one Sunday, on the people around us that we do not see. I introduced him as I invited him forward to address the congregation. After the service, I had to answer questions by half the congregation about who this was I had brought to the church. When I met with leadership for a meeting that night, I shared how this man had been uncomfortable accepting my invitation to come, for fear of how he would be treated. They told me they had had an open-door policy for two decades, so there was no reason for him to be concerned. When I asked how he would know of that policy, there was dead silence. By the next Sunday, members were coming up to me telling me how they had seen Scotty that week. Well, of course they had. He was the dairy manager at the grocery where every one of the shopped. Apparently, passing a policy of openness was alright, but when that policy came to be used, there was a lot of angst over to whom that policy of openness applied.

When a black family purchased some land across the street from the church, one of the church leaders proposed buying the rest of the property extending to the nearby highway. It would seem it might be alright for one or two black individuals to visit the church under close supervision. Allowing black persons to move onto nearby property, however, was deeply concerning. Apparently, the gospel of inclusion and welcome of all persons did not quite apply to allowing certain populations to get too close to us.

At another church in central Virginia, we encountered a lesbian couple at our children’s dance studio, their daughter enrolled in their class. We invited them to church, telling them we would welcome them with open arms. They did not believe our invitation. We got home and began to wonder if the congregation would actually accept them and make them comfortably welcome. I was not sure, anymore. I had experienced far too many moments when the church did not live up to its call to love everyone according to the measure of God’s love. Part of me is thankful they did not show up to that church, because I am still not sure how they would have been treated.

Coming to North Carolina, I served a Latino congregation within the larger body of an Anglo church. I was told by the senior pastor that my role was to bridge the two congregations as much as possible, such that both considered the other as an extension of each other. I began working with that guidance in mind. Unfortunately, the pastor had not shared this vision with the rest of the church staff. While I was busy building bridges of connection between the two congregations, a couple of the staff were up in arms that I was somehow trampling on their territory. It was alright that some of my congregants serve as children’s Sunday school teachers or if youth participated in the youth choir. Any hint of involving the Anglo congregation within the life of the Latino congregation, however, was off limits. Apparently, God’s love within the church could only flow in one direction and only as long as the Anglo congregation did not feel the least bit uncomfortable.

I encountered story after story of oppression directed toward the immigrant community around me. In South Carolina, it was especially centered around the peach orchards, where immigrant workers were rather much treated as slaves with little to no access to leaving the orchard, living in subpar housing, and outsiders kept from visiting them on the land. In Virginia, it was in sawmills, on tobacco farms, at poultry processing plants, and at construction sites. One construction worker was told he’d be fired if the left the worksite as he reported feeling unwell. He walked to the bus stop where he passed out from heat stroke. On arriving at the hospital, the company tried to claim he did not work for them, though his pay-stub said otherwise. I could share stories like these with members of the churches, but the love of God did not seem to compel them to challenge any of the abuse rampant all around them.

When the federal government began pushing discriminatory and punitive policies towards immigrant communities in the wake of 9/11, all I heard from churches and Christians in the US was that we needed to protect our borders and enforce our laws. I did not hear anything like, “Remember, you were strangers in Egypt,” or “There shall be one law for the immigrant and native born alike,” or “Do not oppress the immigrant who sojourns among you.” I barely heard a few voices giving recognition to the fact that Jesus was also a refugee in flight down into Egypt with his family. Rather than hearing any consistent message of love and grace to immigrants and refugees around us, I hear loud cries from people claiming Christ as Lord that immigrants and refugees needed to go home and stop taking our jobs. Where did the message of God’s love for all go?

At another congregation, it was apparent that the most neglected community around us was located in the homeless camps in the woods just across the railroad tracks. One member of the group actually lived in the church facilities, playing the part of a security presence at the church facilities. As ministry among this community grew, we ended up opening the church’s gym as an inclement weather shelter. The city decided to shut that down, as we were not permitted to be a full-time shelter. Good church members on the city council could not be bothered to recognize that we were not operating as a full-time shelter. It was alright to feed this community along with other neighbors once a week in our gym, but allowing them to find refuge from muddy conditions, lightning storms, or a hurricane passing through was somehow not acceptable, despite Jesus’ commands to offer food, shelter, water, and clothing to those who needed it.

Elsewhere, I was contacted about using our fellowship hall by an outside group for a story hour event in association with the county’s first pride festival. I gave preliminary permission, pending follow-up conversation and running it by the church’s leadership. Before I had a chance to call a meeting, advertising for the event went out, and church members were being bombarded with calls from the larger community about something they knew nothing about. By then, I had spoken to three of the leaders about what was going on, but there was a lot of pressure from the community not to allow the event over unwarranted fears of what would be occurring.

Not only would following our Safe Sanctuaries policy have stopped anything unacceptable from happening in the facilities, the group putting on the event had its own very strict guidelines for how a story hour could be conducted. Apparently, however, following guidelines of open communication, being truthful, and being welcoming of communities we might not understand was a few steps too far to take in displaying God’s love. The fear and anxiety of the community had the power to override the church’s gospel mandate to be God’s love to all persons. All of those complaining claimed to be Christians and indignant that a church would allow something they did not understand. The decision of whether to move forward was taken off our hands, and I was instructed to work with the group to locate a different facility where they might hold the story hour. Love was all well and good, as long as those being loved meet all of our standards.

More recently, I have been encountering people speaking for the church while working to protest what they consider to be immoral or against God’s will. Interestingly, the Bible is not very clear at all that the issues they are protesting are central to God’s purposes. Furthermore, we never see Jesus with picket signs protesting in Jerusalem. Instead of such, we find him healing and teaching the crowds and giving much less importance to their sin that he gave to displays of God’s great love and grace for all. I’ve seen some counter-protesters outside of drag events. They outnumber by far the protesters who come. Who I rarely see among them, however, are people who are representing God’s love. When I’m there, I stand out like a sore thumb.

Becoming part of the community that enjoys drag and celebrates people who do not fit the standard modes of sexual attraction and gender conformity, is eye-opening. There is a lot more visible love within that community than witnessed on the street outside by protesters making false accusations, posting lies on social media, and misrepresenting what is going on even as they are fully aware of the lies, angst, and hate they are fomenting. It would seem the church does not care to at least hold these public protesters to a higher standard as they drag the name of Christianity through the mud.

Kind of accidentally, I became part of this community being protested. It has nothing to do with my own sexual orientation or gender identity. Rather, it has to do with my call to follow Christ Jesus wherever I am led. After serving as a human barrier between protesters and the queer community, I went in to see a family-friendly drag show that was being protested. I was introduced as a pastor, but one of the good kind. Every time I have been present, attention has been called to me being there as something out of the ordinary and beyond expectations. More recently, I was introduced as pastor to drag queens.

I had not done anything I would consider noteworthy. All I had done was to follow the words the church had taught me over the years. I put in practice the example of Jesus who ate with those the religious community called, “prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners.” No, I did not call them that any more than Jesus did. He called them friends, so I related to them in the same way.

Well, the protesters are offended by my presence among the community within the drag shows. On the other hand, because I have been present and supportive, not only have I been called their pastor, individuals have sought my wife and I out to seek pastoral care from us. I’ve been asked to interpret the Bible for some. We were asked to get someone a Bible they could read. We were asked for prayer support. We’ve been told that any time I want to have a worship service at a drag event, it will be attended.

We took a church leader with us last time around. She brought her sister. They had a great time. They also witnessed how the community not only recognized our presence, but celebrated it and once more introduced as special among clergy.

I expect to have some other clergy come join us in the near future. The problem is that we are some of the very few who are willing to speak up. However weight much my presence carries, I am but one pastor speaking differently from the many, many, many voices of condemnation they continue to hear from people claiming to represent the church. Those voices have compounded the various ways trauma has impacted this community.

There is a wave of Christians who are coming to understand how poorly we have represented Christ Jesus and God’s love for all persons. The issue I see is that this shift is coming about all too slowly and has not really addressed the trauma the church has inflicted on so many communities across the years. We have failed to love people of color after the patter of Christ. We have failed to love immigrant communities as people loved by God. We have failed to love those we have allowed our society to continue to oppress and abuse. We have failed to love and even listen to communities who have been telling us they simply want to live without abuse.

There are plenty of other issues where the church has repeatedly failed to demonstrate God’s love we claim for ourselves. Cities pass ordinances to criminalize homelessness. We continue to treat people struggling against a substance use disorder with shame. We continue to ignore how our incarceration system has little connection to justice or even humanity, much less the love of Christ. We remain all too silent when the lives of people of color are deemed less worthy than white and especially wealthy individuals. We continue to push to keep social problems hidden from our sight, and thus out of mind. We continue to turn a deaf ear to the cries of people who cannot afford to access needed healthcare.

When will we get our theology right? When will we truly accept and trust God’s love for all people? When will we finally allow that same love to flow through us into every corner of our communities, including those we have hidden away from public view? When will we begin to correct our practice of God’s love that takes into account the myriad ways we have failed to speak adequately for Christ Jesus?

— ©Copyright 2023, Christopher B. Harbin 

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