A Letter to My Evangelical Family

I have worked on a letter to my extreme Evangelical family for the past year — 6 months of mulling and 6 months of writing and rewriting (and rewriting and rewriting and procrastinating and…) Last night at midnight, I finally sent it.

Here is the text of the letter. I hope it might be useful to any of you composing your own such letters to Evangelical friends and family. I don’t think I’ve worked as hard on a piece of writing since my dissertation….

Oh and if you’re wondering why I made reference to “arminianism, Calvinism, antinomianism, legalism, hypostatism, this ism, that ism…,” it’s because my relative has a degree from Bob Jones University and preaches about these things.

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November 24, 2019

Dear Fam,

Hi, I hope you have been doing well. Sorry I have not been in close touch. Know that I love you. I am writing today to try and reach out and share some thoughts.

The world is watching Evangelical support of a president and his enablers who are behind a steady stream of violent horrors against the vulnerable here and abroad, and has concluded that you are utterly beyond help. But I can’t accept that. While over the past few years I have done all I can to educate others about what I see as the evil of Evangelicalism, I have never taken it up with you, my family, directly. And that is cowardice. Especially after this past Yom Kippur, when we as Jews are enjoined to make right our relationships, I know that I have not done all I could.

As the saying goes, “Speak not because you can change them, but because by not speaking you’ll change yourself.”

Remaining silent with you, my family, makes me feel like I have been remiss in speaking out against the white nationalist violence, synagogue shootings and defacings, gun murders, caging of children, and increasingly shameless assaults on Muslims, immigrants, and people of color that Trump has openly encouraged with the blessing and endorsement of Evangelicals.. I don’t want to tell my grandchildren that I was too afraid, in our present crisis, to speak up to my own family, no matter how scary this is.

I am doing this even though I know that the words of someone like me — nothing but an “outsider” and a “non-believer” — are meaningless to you.

(Can I just point out that it’s a cult that tells its members it alone possesses the Truth and that all others are benighted and “lost”?)

However, the vibrant Ex-vangelical community gives me hope that even those inside the cult can still be reached, and as I said, I can only try.

A Christian pastor I read last year (sorry I forgot his name) wrote that the Devil has managed to enter Evangelical hearts and walk right in to your homes and your churches, right though the front door, while you were staring at the pages of a book and quietly listening to your authority figures. The Devil came in cloaked as goodness, in debates about ever more angels-dancing-on-heads-of-pins distinctions of arminianism, Calvinism, antinomianism, legalism, hypostatism, this ism, that ism… while you totally abandon actual weak, needy, and vulnerable humans right here next to you.

You won’t believe me, I suppose, but perhaps you’ll believe recent history. The Christian church did the same thing in Germany before WWII. Then too fear of “difference” and sense of persecution made frightened Christians agree to politicians promising to make Germany safe for the “Christian way of life” by caging and destroying Others. And there too, Christians’ fear and their willingness to shut their eyes to the world around them led them to stand by, and even support, the gas chambers and the Holocaust.

I image you will say: “our church would never do…. X or Y.”

You will say, “we don’t support X and Y, don’t endorse X and Y, would never X and Y…”

You may even say, “we didn’t vote for X and Y…”

But fam: that’s splitting hairs and rationalization. Trump has a team of enablers.

My editor V., who is from Germany, told me once that the Germans have a name for the “good people” who supported Hitler not because they hated Jews but because they wanted to preserve Christian traditions … “We call them Nazis,” she said. And she shared a German saying: “if you see 10 good people sitting at a table with one Nazi, you are looking at a table of 11 Nazis.”

If you make common cause with evil, you are accountable for its outcomes. And the Evangelical church has made common cause with violent racists and neo-Nazis. And all the world sees it. You claim to be witness to the word of God? You are witness to self-interest and fear. Evangelicalism stands revealed as operating without virtue, without integrity, without moral compass, venal and grasping.

I’ve been composing this letter in my mind for over a year, but the day I actually started writing it, this image below crossed my Facebook page.

I imagine you will say, “Oh we are not THOSE Evangelicals! We are THIS OTHER KIND of Evangelical.”

But no. You are the people sitting at the table with the Nazis.

Trump and his enablers have mobilized your fear of difference and your sense of persecution (as if white middle class Christians are persecuted in America!) in the cause of their evil. And so, it has found church, school, and home-school doors wide open.

How ironic! And how tragic. And terrifying. Terrifying for me because I am a gay person, and a Jew, with biracial children, so I and my family are now directly endangered. Our synagogue needs armed guards now. Does your church? What a silly question. Fam — the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter was an Evangelical! While your words say “love,” your actions show the opposite. Even while you yourselves (J. and L.) are descended from Pittsburgh Jews!

I know, of course, how abortion serves as the catch all rationalization for Evangelical politics — your leaders have been very smart about ensuring that. An Alabama pastor named Dave Barnhart helped me understand that logic:

“The unborn’ are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor… They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.”

And, ok, maybe you don’t care about any of us. Then care about yourselves? Because, people are staring at the Evangelical church with horror and revulsion. They call you “Gundamentalists,” “Evilgelicals,” “Christofascists,” and worse. Especially as leader after leader is exposed as a sexual harasser, secretly gay-while-preaching-homophobia-from-the-pulpit, or a fraud. (How are your own pastors on the sexual harassment front, btw? I hope you have checked.)

And while lots of us are aware that you view being misunderstood and reviled as a mark of martyrdom and proof of your great faithfulness to God and separation from the world… I’m sorry to be the one to have to say it, but… no. The world doesn’t revile your belief system for its holiness, but for the truly shocking lack of it exposed in the last four years. It’s true, you once had moral authority! Even I felt that! But now Trump has remade you in his image. You are not witness to God’s word but to fear, violence, corruption, political expediency, hypocrisy, delusionality, and self-dealing. So if nothing moves you but self-interest, that’s fine! Just please, open your eyes. Your fear is ironically hastening the very thing you fear. The young can’t flee your churches fast enough.

I imagine this letter is going to feel hurtful to you, and I’m sorry. It has been incredibly painful to write. I have procrastinated sending it for months. I hope you can see its plea comes from great love, care, and concern. From wanting better for you and believing it’s possible. And from hope against hope that you can still be reached.

Thank you for reading. I love you.

Karen