Fresno faith leaders call out Christian nationalism tour for promoting divisiveness | Opinion

This weekend, our country marks three years since people stormed the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., driven by hate of their neighbor and fed with lies from people with power.

Although more than two dozen people from California have been charged with participating in the violent mob, in many ways, the Jan. 6, 2021 riot was an event that happened to other people in a far away place, not a problem for our community.

Yet it is our problem. It is our responsibility to respond to the lies with truth; to the hate with love. As faith leaders from diverse backgrounds across the San Joaquin Valley, we are called to embrace and remember the past in order not to repeat its errors. Indeed, civil rights activist and humanitarian Angela Davis once said, “We live in a society of imposed forgetfulness, a society that depends on public amnesia.”

Just last month, our Valley was visited by purveyors of whitewashed nostalgia and the architects of the 2021 violence. The ReAwaken America Tour, which has been traversing the country for the past two years, made its final 2023 stop in Tulare. While the tour received little attention, seemingly making it easy to dismiss, we cannot.

Thousands of people — our neighbors — attended the tour and, if organizers are to be believed, millions of people watched online as baseless accusations casting political opponents as “Luciferian” and “godless” were wrapped up with Christmas carols, communal prayer and the insistence that theirs is God’s side.

Opinion

The tour, which operates on the mechanism of Christian nationalism, intends to pull our nation backward into deeper levels of oppression, dominance and destruction. It was a shameful two-day spewing of extremist, antisemitic, anti-democracy, and violence-condoning rhetoric in the guise of loyalty to God and nation. Organizers try to entice pastors with 50 percent discounts on tickets, plying them with fear and lies to take back to their congregations after the tour has left town.

Their hope is that the pastors will return to the pulpit with their message of misery and terror, their distortion and disfiguration of the gospel to spread their falsehoods and Christian nationalism to entice collective amnesia and prop up their power.

Christian nationalism espouses the belief that the government must do whatever is necessary to preserve the United States’ identity as a Christian nation. It replaces democracy with theocracy. Faithful America, a national grassroots community of Christians who have been speaking out against the tour, reminds us, “where unholy Christian nationalism teaches misinformation, violence, and discrimination, the Gospels teach truth, peace, and love.”

The call of the faith community is the call to justice, through our practice, labors and love. The prophetic nature of communities led by faith is twofold: We imagine more just and humane futures inclusive of all creation while we also bear witness to the God of history and commit to remembering the tragedies and triumphs of our past as co-laborer with the divine in forging a newer and highest humanity.

As people of faith, it is essential we reject the illusion of power at the expense of our neighbor that is perpetuated by the likes of Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Clay Clark and others from the ReAwaken America Tour, even if it doesn’t get headlines or happens in another community.

For, if we are not living out the parable of the Good Samaritan or the words of the Sermon on the Mount, then we are not living as a Christian. If we are not loving our neighbor, whoever that neighbor may be — gay or straight, Muslim or Jew, refugee or citizen — then we are not living our faith. If we are not providing for the lost and the neglected, the oppressed and the marginalized, then we are not living out our faith. If words spoken — whether from a stage or in a pulpit — inspire violence or hate, then it is not Gospel.

One of our favorite prayers in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer speaks these words: “Take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love.” This is our hope for our country. This is our prayer for our community. This is how we aspire to live.

We serve a God who isn’t asleep, who is still awake, and is a force of justice in our world. We want to remember and hold the good and the bad, moments of love and moments of despair, that have brought us to this time, and be faithful and honoring to God.

The Rev. Simon Biasell is pastor of First Congregational Church of Fresno; the Rev. Tim Kutzmark, minister of Unitarian Universalist Church of Fresno; the Rev. Suzy Ward, priest in charge, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church; and Marcel Woodruff, an alumnus of Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary.