Bringing Protest & Disruption To Church:

[Aquila]

Politically progressive and moderate Christians are starting to consider bringing protest, publicity, and disruption to right-wing churches.

Take the Politics of Disruption to Church
https://sojo.net/articles/take-polit...ruption-church

Excerpts:

By now, most of us have learned that 81 percent of white evangelicals who cast their vote did so for Trump. And the same is true of 60 percent of the white Catholics who voted. And, lest mainliners feel off the hook, 58 percent of Protestants, in general, voted for Trump. It is easy to see the ways in which current social injustices reflect the commitments of conservative white Christianity.

However, this isn’t another effort in the continuing criticism of conservative Christianity; we need to challenge progressive Christianity.

And...

If we want to confound and disrupt the narratives of oppression, we need to raise our angry voices in the pews as well as the streets.

I literally mean we should disrupt our churches. Just as Black Lives Matter has employed a politics of disruption to raise the national alarm about racist policing. Just as the water protectors at Standing Rock have created a human barrier against pipeline construction. So too, should we disrupt and confound any and every congregation that fuels militarism, economic exploitation, sexism, racism, Islamophobia, or transphobia.

While such an approach is uncomfortable and risky, it is hardly novel. We worship a man who marched into the Temple during its most busy week, disrupted its market place, and proceeded to occupy it for a week while telling stories that overtly undermined the authority of the priests and scribes and exposes their complicity with Rome.

Jesus was so offensive that “the chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him.” Jesus, like all the prophets before him, disrupted the injustices of their day by going to the center of myth making. They went to the Temple, the palaces, and the places of sacred meaning. And with bold words and deeds, they disrupted.

And it was, I believe, effective. Conventional wisdom tells us that interstate shut downs or Temple disruptions only “hurt the message.” But Paul Engler, director for the Center for Working Poor in Los Angeles, suggests that divisive tactics like those employed by Black Lives Matter and other groups force people to form an opinion about issues even if they disapproved of the tactics being used. He and his brother Mark write, in their book This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century:

"Time and again, patterns of polarization appear in democratic movements in the United States and abroad. Looking back from the safe removal of history, it can be easy to imagine that landmark social and political causes of the past--whether they involved ending slavery, securing the franchise for women, or establishing standards of workplace safety--were popular and widely celebrated. But the truth is that, in their time, these issues generated tremendous controversy. In promoting them, activists had to make the difficult decision to invite division and acrimony before they achieved their most impressive results." [Source: This is an Uprising, page 208]

We need to do likewise — even if it offends our sensibilities and challenges our desires for unity. It isn't enough to simply offer an alternative Christianity; we must disrupt the way a distorted gospel fuels imperialism.

It is time that we don the prophetic mantle within our churches and engage tactics of disruption so that Christians no longer feel comfortable going about business as usual. So that the vast and moderate middle is forced to contend with the issues and no longer remain complicit with the ways that Christianity has been used to justify oppression.

The strong delusion that has caused so many to align themselves with Donald Trump (in spite of his glaring fascism and hypocrisy) is fueling a movement that is preparing to confront right-wing Christianity.

Has the radical "conservatism" in our churches gone too far to the right?