ON BECOMING CHURCHES OF RESISTANCE - Six Practices

While living peaceably, faithfully to the person and work of Jesus Christ

Photo by Maxim Makarov UnSplash

Can one’s local church be a resistance to authoritarian forces at work in our society without being violent, or stoking the antagonisms of political divide that perpetuate the ideological dynamics that keep Donald Trump in power? I say ‘yes’. I propose at least six practices that can make space for the Holy Spirit to work among us, in our neighborhoods, villages and beyond, to disrupt the evil and draw people to Christ, and shape justice in our midst. (I was tempted to put “and people will get saved” after each one of these practices, but I didn’t want to “trigger” some folk. All I’ll say is in these ways of being with people, Jesus will not only disrupt injustice, He will inevitably draw people to Himself). Here’s the six practices.

1. We can go be with immigrants. Let’s renew our commitment as Christians to stand with immigrants. Not hide criminals, gang members, etc. But be with the 99.5% who are not. Provide legal services. When you see fearful immigrants, let’s train our people to befriend them. Help them when you can (like get groceries when they’re scared to go out), when ICE agents come, get your phone cameras out. Lev 19:33-34. Let’s train all our believers in how to stand with immigrants.

2. Speak truth sincerely. Let’s prepare Christians to speak truth sincerely, not argue, not inflame. Make observations, and then ask questions. This is what is repeatedly referred to in New Testament as parrhesia in the Greek. This approach to truth is inter-relational. It breaks the ideological hold. We need to steadily, peacefully, learn how to speak truth out of love for the other, not disdain for the other. Eph 4:25 Also see ppp.158ff in Reckoning with Power on parrhesia in the NT.

3. Provide social services to help those in distress. Let’s say there are people put into financial distress because of a disruption of social security. Let’s say there are elderly struggling with food because of inflation. Let’s join people together inn the neighborhood to provide a meal for the elderly, and pray for them/with them, and show them they have support. We’ll get through this. Zech 7:8-10

4. Town hall meetings. I know the congressional representatives are having town halls (although some Republicans are not), but churches in towns can hold town hall meetings too. Here our goal is: how can we help each other through this time. Let us discuss the current politics in peace, expose duplicities, explain what we’re seeing. Authoritarians play on fear and isolation. They loathe assemblies that give a community a place to express truth. Let’s resist the fear by having community gatherings to hear truth and find ways to support one another as we navigate this time. See how the word ekklesia is used repeatedly in the New Testament to describe this kind of presence by the church in a village. See pp. 16-17 What is the Church?

5. Special Prayer Meetings. Famously, in the 1980’s in Leipzig, Germany, prayer meetings, led by pastor Christian Fuhrer at St. Nicholas Church, led to demonstrations that brought down the oppressive communist rule of East Germany behind the iron curtain. Of course, we don’t know or even want to predict where a prayer meeting in our church building for our country might lead. But it seems to me that putting out a sign advertising prayer for our country is a fundamental practice of a church of resistance.

6. Embodied Presence. Some might call this a demonstration. But I want to emphasize how the church gathers people in large groups to be present physically at sites of injustice, to pray, and invite the Spirit to reveal and convict. We go peacefully (the Spirit refuses to work in violence), and bear witness to, point to the injustice. Then when we speak, we speak from an embodied presence. Our words mean something deeper, gain gravitas, and take on flesh. This takes some training (as MLKjr was famous for). See pp. 160ff. in Reckoning With Power, pp. 111 ff. Faithful Presence.

This all may sound daunting. But I want to emphasize that all of our churches have different gifts. Many may be skilled at doing one or two of these over the others. Most churches will not be large enough to do all of these things. Of course some churches may be able to pull together with other churches in town and do some of these things together for a town or village. But all churches of Jesus Christ can choose one of these practices to start. Doing just one, can give a start to being a witness for resistance, and put a wrench in a societal machine that has become a looming dark evil in this land.

I like the way Bonhoeffer puts it in his famous 1933 essay “The Church and the Jewish Question” because he recognizes that the church by its very presence can and should be a resistance to the evils of the state, not through direct violence, but through its daily faithfulness in the everyday matters of life. We do all these practices as out of our everyday life together as church. And in so doing, we do not “simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice”, but we “drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” It will be the church’s faithfulness as a social presence in the days that lie ahead that shall gum up the works of the machinery of evil, and make space for Christ to work. It is in this spirit of Bonhoeffer I offer these suggestions.

If you believe this post is challenging Christian churches in the right direction, share it around? Won’t you? (button below) Let’s pray together for a hundred, maybe a thousand churches, maybe thousands and thousands of churches, to become places of resistance in America out of faithfulness to Christ. And by all means, if you have questions, concerns, about what I have posted, please engage in the comments. But let us engage sincerely. Any hurling, or “what about-ism”, will be discouraged from this substack.

See my Reckoning With Power for how to live in resistance via God’s power versus the violent powers of the world.

See my The Church of Us vs. Them for how to understand antagonisms, then violence inherent to ideology, and how we can live not on the terms of ideology, but in the reconciling presence of Jesus for the world.

I’ll be back in a few weeks to finish up my series on “Bonhoeffer- A Person for our Times - with 2 more posts to go. Subscribe for free to be notified when they hit (normally every couple of weeks).