Militias, the Church, and Christians
I’ve been told that I am obviously not a Christian because I watch movies. Because I believe women can be pastors. Because I don’t take Mass in a Catholic church. Because I’ve read Brian McLaren and N.T. Wright. Because I voted for Obama. Because I am not a Calvinist. I’ve had friends who have been told that they are obviously not Christians because they have tattoos, because they are Gay, and because they don’t go to church every Sunday.
Given the fine tradition in the church of adding such litmus tests to the Gospel, I found it fascinating to hear from diverse sources last week that the Hutaree militia (a self-described Christian group) obviously could not be Christian. I find the group disgusting and disturbed, but the question of if they are Christians haunted me. I understand the tendency to get defensive and want to distance ourselves from groups like this. No Christian wants people like these to define us to the world. But at the same time I’m hesitant to proclaim from on high that they obviously aren’t Christian.
These were people who had a literalistic dogma based faith. They believed their faith rested on their belief in and confession of a certain list of doctrines, especially Dispensational views of the end times. They believed in the literal interpretation of scripture. They believed that their lives should be committed to moral living and opposed to sin. As they state on their website, “We, the Hutaree, are prepared to defend all those who belong to Christ and save those who aren’t. We will still spread the word, and fight to keep it, up to the time of the great coming.” To that end they hated the government, especially our current government, and decided that violence was the best way to uphold their moral convictions. Sure, I think they are messed up, but my issue is, if I say that they are not Christians, then I have to say the same regarding other so-called Christians who believed in similar ways (like anyone who participated in the religiously violent American Revolution or English Civil War). In fact, if this group isn’t Christian, then most American Christians today can be written off as “obviously not Christian.”
On one hand, I don’t think following Jesus really has much to do at all with affirming a set doctrine, a literal interpretation of scripture, a public confession of Jesus, a life of culturally defined morality, and church sanctioned violence. But that is the message that you will hear in countless churches on any given Sunday. Seriously, how far removed are armed guards in churches and pro-military rallies in churches from the ideals of this militia? They all use violence to impose their worldview upon others. Which Jesus explicitly forbid his followers to do. Jarred McKenna at the God’s Politics’ blog affirms the dichotomy of Jesus and violence when he refers to the association of the term “Christian” with “militia” as shameful, and wonders how Christianity ever came to be associated with something so anti-Jesus. The Hutaree group may have promoted a somewhat culturally taboo form of that violence, but other Christians will defend the “God-ordained” need for and their right to violence regularly. I truly don’t see much of Jesus in this civil religion of most U.S. churches today, but even so, I am uneasy saying they just aren’t real Christians.
But it’s a tough call. If a Christian is a person who follows Christ, I assume that implies that person follows the disciplines Jesus demands of his followers. Jesus himself tells us the only people who are his true followers are those who when “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” (Matt 25). And in Isaiah (1 and 58) we even read that God detests our worship gatherings, ignores our acts of piety, wearies of our songs and rituals, and turns his head from our prayers unless we are seeking justice, treating our workers rightly, giving shelter to the immigrant and homeless, and helping the oppressed. By these biblical standards I think I could count on one hand the number of people I know who can actually be called Christian. In fact many Christians I know actively work against things like helping immigrants, providing healthcare to the sick, and making sure all people have food to eat (or they are advised to run away from churches that do such things).
As Brian McLaren points out in reference to this militia incident, a faith that promotes violence and ignores Jesus misses the point. Jesus instead “provides us a living alternative to the confining [violent] narrative in which our world and our religions live, move, and have their being too much of the time” Too many of our churches have succumbed to the siren calls of this world – replacing following Jesus with sets of doctrines, cultural rules, nationalism, and sanctified violence. This militia group simply took that proclivity to its natural end. That sort of religion has nothing to do with being a Christ-follower. But at the same time, as McLaren points out, Jesus looks at those who do violence (to others and to him) and says “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).
So I can only be left with grace. When even the most pietistic and committed “Christians” don’t actually look like Christ-followers, it seems like all we can really have is grace. Grace is bigger than our pointing fingers. And it extends far beyond out trivial additions to the Gospel. For if there is no grace for this messed-up system we call the church, then God help us all.
julieclawson(at)gmail(dot)com 
I don't think it's up to us to put a name on someone else's faith. We like to do that. So we do … all the time. Some are more fond of this than others. Some really, really like creating tight categories of faith and shoving people into the niches they've created for everyone else. But I'm not really sure that's our job. At least when it comes to where other people stand before Jesus.
We are, on the other hand, given permission to observe and comment upon the fruit that people bear in their lives. And when it comes to what people are doing in terms of harming others, or making plans to harm others and/or inciting people to harm others, why then I think we do have a reason to comment rather harshly. Not upon their faith, but upon their reason.
And that, of course, leads to some very reasonable questions about how does a person's faith inform their life? In the case of the Hutaree we can observe that their faith walk is leading them down a path of destruction and violence … i.e. the fruit is not life, but death. I wouldn't say they're not Christian, but I do have to wonder what Bible they're reading.
Well said! thanks for being a courageous 'Christian'.
Fascinating!
Your reticence to 'judge' something while well placed, I wonder to what extent Jesus' command to deal with the plank in our own eye is precisely to enable us to better see (and therefore judge) the speck in our brother's eye.
I do think we are called to admonish and rebuke brothers and sisters who do not appear to be living lives in line with scripture. Jesus expectation is that we submit ourselves to rigorous standards also.
We do tend to strive to become like the Christ we worship, and it is uncomfortable to be in the same room with people whose Jesus seems really, importantly wrong. As you point out, we have a strong tendency to get those people out of the room as quickly as possible.
So I admire the thought of refusing to kick the militia-christians out of the room.
But what does an activist do about this? What does that thought mean? How do we prophetically live into this grace?
I'm only writing this because I am NOT an activist, I am someone who tends to just have beautiful thoughts and then live on unchanged by them. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear "Part Two" on this one.
Hutatree folks are as much Christians as I am a Christian. In fact, it could be argued that the Hutatree exist because of Christians like me.
I think what a lot of people don't want to talk about is that the forces that form the violence of groups like this has a lot to do with the same forces that from the violence in our urban centers. Poverty, poor diet, lack of opportunity, marginalization by society and culture, I would argue (and I'm shamelessly stealing this from Will Campbell who wrote about it in the 60s/70s), are just as much at the root of this kind of violence as it is the root of gang violence.
The difference is that we (and by that I mean primarily whites) like to help out in urban centers because it affirms our subtle racism of superiority and feeds our savior complexes rather than with rural poor whites because we don't want to be associated with those kinds of people. To help them, we fear (or I fear), is to view them as human and to run the risk of being called a racist ourselves.
At my school a couple of months ago, Daniel Dennett, one of the "new atheists," had a debate with emergent theologian/philosopher Philip Clayton. Dennett was preaching the now-familiar line that moderate or "benign" religious people were dangerous to society because they provided cover for religious extremists. He said he never sees moderate Christians calling out the extremists or telling the world that these people do not speak for Christianity.
And that really irked me, to hear him say that. I wanted to stand up and tell him about all the condemnations of Pat Robertson & Glenn Beck that I had heard in the pulpit and seen on Christian blogs. I wanted to say that the conservative extremists do not represent the heart of Christ, as I follow him.
But reading your post makes me rethink the issue. I've been relegated to the other side of the "True Christian" line by others before, as you point out, for being a gay-rights supporter or a nonliteralist or anything in between. How can I draw a line in the sand myself and say that those other people aren't REALLY Christian like I am?
But I still want to stand up to Dennett and the other skeptics; I still want to affirm the Kingdom of nonviolence in the public sphere. So how do we still reject the Hutarees' abuses of Christianity, without denying them the right to the name?
Margaret – I hear that a lot from atheists. They want moderate or progressive Christians to say the scary voices like Robertson or Beck have nothing to do with Christianity. While I will disagree with those who I think are twisting the faith, I can't arbitrarily say that people I don't like are not believers. How can I be the one to say that they are outside of God's love? Or that Jesus didn't die for them?
And I understand the idea that the fruits of a person's life will be evidence of Christ living in them, but even that gets tricky. As I pointed out in the post, the fruits that the Bible says are important have very little to do with the fruits the typical church acknowledges. Some churchs will say if a person doesn't cuss, doesn't cheat on their spouse, does a daily devotion, sings in worship time, and praises Jesus for everything from their health to the parking spot they got – then they are showing evidence of Jesus in their lives even if they care for the hungry, or seek justice for the oppressed. And as I mentioned too, I've been told before that if I have ever watched a movie or parked in a parking lot where there is a store that sells liquor then I am obviously living in sin and not a Christian. Who gets to determine what these fruits are that matter is a slippery issue.
So I'm fine debating what it means to follow Christ, and "judging" others for ignoring what Jesus actually preached. Discipleship (developing discipline) must be done in community as we together as the body work out what it means to follow Christ in our context. But debating and developing those ideas is not the same as saying that a person is outside the love of Christ.
At the same time it is hard to be in community with certain groups. People like Glenn Beck are untouchable. Groups like the Hutaree are like David said a very culturally different and impoverished group that are often wary of outsiders. And many of us have been kicked out of faith communities for daring to simply ask these very questions. When it is others pointing the finger at us saying "you are not a christian – either become like me or get out of my sight" it is very hard to have a meaningful conversation. I don't have the answers here, and I really really struggle every time I try to build bridges and then get told I am "not biblical" or a "sinner" because I think differently.
Great thoughts, Julie.
I have been chewing on this for some time now as well, but from a different angle (I was thinking about resurrection and my friends who deny a physical one). But the same applies. As a Christian universalist who believes all will be saved because of (not in spite of) Jesus Christ, I am often labeled as someone who thinks anything goes and that I call everyone "Christians." Not so. To be a Christian, just like being a Buddhist or a Jew or an Atheist, means one subscribes to a certain way of being in the world and with that way of being comes a certain set of beliefs, by definition. A person is free to call themselves a Christian (or an elephant, if they so choose) but if that person denies, say, that Jesus is Lord than they are no more a Christian than they are an elephant. That doesn't mean they aren't loved by God nor does it mean that they will not be reconciled in the end because of Christ, it just means that they aren't a Christian. But like you say, if being a Christian is to be faithful to the way of Jesus, most of us probably are not – or we slip in and out of that way of being.
In the first few centuries of the church we did not have Hutaree but we had people calling themselves Christians yet they denied that God came in the flesh. People were quick to make the distinction and say, "No, this is not Christian but something else."
I wonder if the same applies here. I wonder if we can't say, "Yes, God loves them and so should we, but the way they are being in not Christ-like – it's not Christian."
The question today remains the same as it was 2000 years ago: How will they know we are yours? They will know you are mine by your love for one another.
The disciples offered to take up arms to defend Jesus maybe more than once or twice. Jesus had to remind them that his kingdom is not about military power. We may be misguided at times, but Jesus always has a clear course, not by power, not by might but by his Spirit. Yes, we love one another but we also have a responsibility to admonish and correct with all patience. I admit there are times like these when I am not so patient. Good post, Julie.
It boils down to the difference between being in-Christ and following-Christ. How we follow Christ is culturally defined and we can comment and encourage others in what we see as most appropriate. Being in-Christ is far beyond us, and rest solely on grace. It is when we confuse the two that we run into problems. Most people use the term Christian to mean – "being in-Christ and following him in the same way I do." The term then becomes so relative as to be meaningless – and it becomes too easy to point the finger saying who is in and out. I guess that it our right, as with the early church calling labeling certain groups heretics (non-Christians). But as many as suggesting now, the early church might have been too quick to judge – causing more pain and strife than Christian unity and love.
Thank you for this reminder that discipleship pushes us into uncomfortable places and for advocating for a redemptive response. I think you've hit on the only path toward hope–not isolating this group. Well said.
Julie~
Brave post, and well said! I really resonated with your use of the sheep and goats allegory. In fact your use of it gave me holy goose-bumps!
For me, there is a key to all this in that small, but multi-faceted tale.
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that there are more than several ways to interpret this story. The simplest is to read it and try to plug ourselves (or worse- plug other people) into one or the other category. And that’s the exact mindset I think Jesus’ is warning us against with this story…
One of the points that the Holy Sprit has been leading to me lately is this: in that story, both the goats and sheep were amazed when Jesus revealed to them that he had been in their presence. It is clear from the story that even the sheep were not consciously aware that their acts of charity, justice and mercy were being done to Christ. What I take from this is that when the sheep looked at people, they simply saw other sheep (because they ascribed worth to the ‘other’) and the goats (who very likely considered themselves to be sheep since this allegory is most often thought to be about the separation of Christ-followers at the end of days) saw goats (those to whom they ascribed unworthiness) and therefore callously disregarded them.
And so, a far more subtle way of looking at the story is hearing Jesus’ unspoken admonition to let *him * separate the sheep and the goats, and a warning to us to treat everyone as worthy sheep.
It is so easy for us to look at all kinds of peoples and groups and see goats. We do it without thinking…We get caught up in our “assessments” of wrongdoing (which is definitely a thing we are called to do) and immediately begin to *judge* (ascribe worth- which we know is taboo). Of course the next logical step after doing this is to determine what these people deserve to receive from us: be it food, clothing, visits, or an attribution of a ‘saved’ vs. ‘unsaved’ status- it makes no difference to Christ- we’ve overstepped our responsibility in the judging category and undershot our responsibility in the serving category.
Thank you, thank you, thank you…for having the grace to be able to look at behavior that is unacceptable to say the least, yet still ascribe worth to these people and see “sheep.” How brave. How rare.
You made my day!
Grace and peace~
Tracy
'Course, sheep aren't renowned for being very smart, or for being good at following their shepherd. Hence the rod and staff. Presumably, there's a right path, and all of us wander from it to greater or lesser degree – often without realizing it, because sheep are dumb. It doesn't make us any less His sheep if we wander – it's part of being sheep.
But I submit that, if sheep wander so far as to commit violence in Christ's name, they've stopped following the shepherd altogether, and decided to follow their own path.When sheep try to be wolves, they've forgotten what it means to be sheep. Are they still loved by the shepherd? Certainly. But: are they still following the shepherd, going the direction He tells them to go, heeding the tap (or even the shove) of the staff? Really, they're just not.
And when our fellow sheep have strayed that far from the path, I think it's okay, even required, for us to tell them, "Hey, you're not following the shepherd – He said to come THIS way!"
John,
Thanks for continuing my analogy- and so skillfully…You make some excellent points that I did not cover in my post, but that I agree with wholeheartedly. Not only are we wayward sheep, we are also called to be (albeit imperfect) shepherds. And your point is well made that there is a time for everyhting, including speaking out when violence is done in the name of Jesus. As we gently (and sometimes, you are right-necessarily not-so-gently…) prod and guide, we are still called to lead them by still waters, anoint their heads with oil and feed them at our table. Herein in the mystery of the enemy at the table. It is an incredible tension to live in, but loving mercy goes hand in glove with seeking justice. As we humbly try to dole out both generously, we continue to nurture and guide, keeping as many sheep by our sides as is humanly possible and then we turn our flocks over to the Great Shepherd and let him make the final call on "whos in and whos out."
Grace and peace to you.
I was just going to mention, in order to be annoying, that the Hutaree's violent, crusading ideology actually might have more in common with historic Christianity than with our current modern versions of it.
Perhaps it'd be interesting to look at ourselves as breaking with Christianity's past rather than as the standard bearers of historic, authentic Christianity.
Just thoughts.
David,
How do you mean? Which segment of "historic" Christianity do you mean? I would agree that post Constantine we have waded in Hutaree-like waters, but I wouldn't want the Crusades to define what "historic Christianity" looks like (even though it is part of our history).
Considering most of our creeds came about at the tip of the sword and the deep history of violence in Christianity, including but by no means limited to the Crusades (even the Reformation sported violence that pitted Protestants against Protestants, in addition to anti-Catholic violence). Calvinists were particularly brutal. And then there was the Inquisition and all the cleansing of Jews and/or pagan witches, etc. Also, the death of indigenous peoples here in America had a great deal to do with Christianity.
Historic Christianity is violent. We might want to blame it on its collusion with politics, etc., etc., but our history is deeply marred by blood. Every time we affirm the Nicene Creed, we are also affirming, sometimes unwittingly, the violence and bloodshed that helped to push that creed to the forefront of a religious and political powergrab by warring factions of Christianity.
Perhaps pre-Constantinan Christianity was nonviolent (I'm have my doubts as to whether this can be proved conclusively or that it was nonviolent ethically and not strategically), but the entire history of Christianity is one steeped and forged in violence.
Our modern notions of nonviolence are the unorthodox praxis compared to the history of Christianity, and arguably began, for many of us (or popularly) as much from Hinduism (Ghandi by way of MLK Jr) than from Christianity, though we have since rightfully reinterpreted them through the lens of Jesus.
Really, all I am saying is that the Hutaree might resemble the historic church (by which I mean the church of most of history) more than we do with its violence and thirst for power.
Wow! Not only do I have much food for thought from the original post but the last several comments have put my head in traction. Were it easy to love, follow, obey God would not have needed to come in the flesh. Not the most profound observation but still…
Knowing who we are by our love for one another…humm…and here I was hoping I would only have to love the poor, the imprisoned, the left out…but the self important modern day pharisees and the violent radical zealots…what was Jesus thinking, as though sinky fishermen and extravagant women weren't difficult enough.