Without urgent action, the World Bank estimates that 100 million more people could be pushed into poverty by 2030. They also estimate that as more and more vulnerable people flee regions most at risk, an estimated 140 million people could become climate migrants.

When it comes to climate action, more and more Christians are engaging. Our own Red Letter authors have taken on a range of related topics that you can read about here. Last week, Young Evangelicals for Climate Action issued a call for students to join 16 year old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and students across the world striking for climate justice. This is good.

Unfortunately, this kind of conviction represents the exception to the evangelical norm. According to a 2015 survey from the Pew Research Center, evangelicals were the least likely religious group to believe the earth is warming due to human activity. Only 28 percent of evangelicals accepted the scientific consensus compared to 50 percent of the general U.S. population.

This is baffling. The Bible claims that God made humans and placed them in the garden God created and told them to “to work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15). So why are those Christians who claim the most fidelity to the Bible — evangelical Christians — the least responsive to the conditions of the earth they are called to steward?

Beyond creation care and our responsibility to steward the earth, there is the matter of Christian mission to the most vulnerable. The Bible says the gospel is God’s message for the poor (Luke 4), yet the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people, many of whom live off smallholder farms and fisheries, are critically at risk by the impact of climate change on their sources of food and income. So why is it that those whose very name —evangelical — means “preachers of good news to the poor,” don’t believe the bad news about climate change or the threat it poses to the poor they are called to serve?

It’s not like the Bible is silent when it comes to human-induced global calamities. Romans chapter 8 talks about a creation that has been groaning under the consequences of human action and one that waits in eager expectation for the children of God to show up (Romans 8:19). Yet, evangelicals can’t seem to hear the groaning creation or see the children striking for their futures that now seem condemned by present inaction.

This indifference to responsible environmental action is too bad, because Romans also points to a future full of hope for the earth. Romans declares that creation will be liberated from its human-induced decay. This is Christian teaching.

Biblical eschatology — those teachings about how things end — should cause Christians to be the most hopeful climate activists on the planet, because they believe God’s promise of an earth they have helped to liberate (Romans 8:21). This is not, however, the eschatology that animates the popular evangelical vision. I suspect that today’s evangelical church goer is more influenced by the distorted theologies of Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye than the hopeful vision of the Apostle Paul.

In the 1970s, Hal Lindsey’s famous book, The Late Great Planet Earth, clumsily applied end-time prophecies in the Bible to the Cold War and Middle East politics current at the time, fanning the apocalyptic fears of an already paranoid American populace. The Second Coming of Christ was held to be imminent and the rapture of the church promised before the coming Great Tribulation. The practical outworking of this reductionist and unorthodox theology has been called “evacuation theology” — or the earth is going to be destroyed and good Christians should ready themselves to be raptured away to heaven. Forget the environment. Why take responsibility for a soon-to-be-destroyed earth?

More recently, Tim LaHaye brought his version of evacuation theology to the masses, selling more than 80 million copies of his distorted reading of the book of Revelation through his Left Behind series. Left Behind’s fabricated struggle between a pious remnant of faithful Christians and a globalist anti-Christ cabal may have been entertaining, but it did nothing to cultivate responsible Christian living in the face of real environmental concerns. Forget climate change. Why care for an earth that, along with billions of damned humans, will be left behind?

Is it these dramatic misreadings of the Bible that have formed the practical eschatology of mainstream Evangelicalism? Whatever the cause, when it comes to science-informed action and conscientious care for the earth, it is evangelicals who are being left behind.

For clarity and conviction on climate justice we have to look elsewhere. Last week, it was a 16-year-old Swedish girl who spoke the truth like a biblical prophet:

My name is Greta Thunberg. I have not come to offer prepared remarks at this hearing. I am instead attaching my testimony. It is the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C [SR1.5] which was released on October 8, 2018. I am submitting this report as my testimony because I don’t want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to the scientists. And I want you to unite behind the science. And then I want you to take action.

At the time he wrote the book of Revelation, John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” was suffering in prison. In the genre of a highly stylized and cryptic text, he offered a vision of the final hope Christians should expect in Christ. Despite the merciless power of Rome aligned then against the followers of Jesus, John saw a day coming when the liberating power of heaven would crash into the chaos and suffering of earth. He wrote his graphic letter to inspire hope against the despair of his day.

Christians today should put aside the Christian fictions of Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye and pick up the biblical vision of an earth renewed under the stewardship of God’s children. John “saw the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God” (Revelations 21:2), which he wrote to inspire faithful living. The Bible teaches that heaven is coming to earth. Evangelicals need to get clear about this biblical mandate, otherwise it is they who will be left behind.

How is that so many working-class evangelicals are so willing to look past income inequality? Are evangelicals only Bible literalists when it comes to homosexuality but not when it comes to money? Only seven passages mention homosexuality. Why do they get so much adrenaline while so many biblical rants about the rich get ignored?

Working evangelical followers of a homeless revolutionary Messiah whose message was always for the poor and often against the rich have somehow become the biggest voting block for a new American aristocracy. Do evangelicals see who is really winning in this economy?

Under Donald Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, taxes on capital gains and dividends — key sources of income for the wealthy — were reduced. Private equity managers paid a 20 percent maximum tax rate, nearly half that of other working Americans. Corporate tax rates were slashed from 35% to 21% while 75% of Americans paid the same or more in taxes in 2018.

Worse still, under Trump’s 2017 tax law, the number of corporations paying NO federal tax doubled in 2018. That means you, me, and the average working American bore America’s tax burden while mega companies like Amazon, Delta, Chevron, IBM, General Motors, Molson Coors, Eli Lilly and 53 other corporate giants paid nothing. Zilch. Nada.

Surely even the most die-hard Trump supporter is not okay with this.

I understand why politicians do nothing about The Great Corporate Tax Heist now underway. Since the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court ruling determined that, minus paying taxes, corporations are in every other way identical to natural persons, politicians can receive unlimited financial support from corporations. The naked willingness of politicians to serve corporate interests makes sense.

What I don’t understand is how evangelical Christians are so easily turned against the common good. Why should working people bear the burden of a tax structure that exacts payment from their wages with ruthless efficiency but gives insanely rich corporations the legal means to pay nothing? Why do those who don’t own stocks, who don’t have decent jobs, who drive on crumbling roads, whose public schools are neglected, and whose public infrastructure is approaching Third World standards — why don’t they fight back?

Maybe because Americans have been taught to believe that the only alternative to rapacious free market capitalism is the failed socialism of the USSR, Cuba, and Venezuela. Maybe too many Americans believe that to organize our health system to serve all Americans the way we do water, gas, electricity, and other utilities would lead to the seizure of private property and state control of the means of production. Common-sense appeals for universal health care, investment in public education, and a tax policy that expects the rich to pay their fair share for the public good equals Soviet gulags.

A recent conversation I had over dinner with a retired energy executive made shockingly clear the truth about what’s really happening to Trump voters:

Me: How do you feel about the U.S. economy?

Retired oil man: Great! It’s roaring. Trump has unleashed the animal spirit of capitalism back into the economy.

Me, stunned: Uh, wow. How?

He: Cutting taxes. Removing regulations. Freeing capital from government restraint.

Me again: Seems the benefits are going to the wealthy and powerful. What about wage earners from, say, rural Southern Ohio where I’m from?

He, with brutal honesty: It’s not for them.

Me, practically choking: But they voted for him! Are you saying the economy is not for the people who voted for Trump?

He: Yes. It’s not for them. They’re a lost generation.

Painful but true. Despite the positive employment figures frequently cited by the president, this economy is not for everyone. It’s not for the many Americans who hold “negative wealth” and have debt exceeding the value of their assets. It’s not for 40% of Americans who can’t cover a $400 emergency expense. And with white median wealth 41 times greater than median Black wealth, the economy isn’t for Black folks either.

This economy is for the richest 5% of Americans who own two-thirds of America’s wealth. It’s for the richest 1% who own more than half of all the stocks. It’s for the mega corporations that don’t have to pay taxes. This economy is for Donald Trump who made $434 million dollars last year.

America is undergoing a massive redistribution of wealth upwards to the top of the income ladder, and white working-class evangelicals are helping make it happen by continuing to support Donald Trump. Not since the days just prior to the Great Depression have concentrations of wealth among the mega rich been so extreme.

How are evangelicals who take the Bible seriously so easily gaslighted by scare tactics about socialism? Marx’s famous slogan, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” sounds a lot like the Exodus ethic that “the one who gathered much did not have too much and the one who gathered little did not have too little” (Exodus 16:18), doesn’t it? The economic policy of the Law of Moses was not “the invisible hand” of the free market but the Year of Jubilee, the forgiveness of debts and the redistribution of property every 50 years (Leviticus 25). Not even Bernie Sanders is calling for the end of private property like the first Christian community did, holding everything in common and giving to anyone who had need (Acts 2:44,45).

Just because socialism stole from the Bible doesn’t mean Christians shouldn’t take biblical economic justice seriously.

The Bible is full of scathing critiques of economic arrangements that favor the rich at the expense of the poor. The economy is an issue that should lead conservative and progressive evangelicals to common ground. The Great Corporate Tax Heist affects us all.

Instead of parroting talking points that defend an economic system designed to keep them out, working-class white evangelicals should join progressives in seeking economic justice and social equality. Those denied a living wage, adequate schools, and decent healthcare are all in the same boat. We read the same Bible, we hear the same warning,

“Listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted and moths have eaten your clothes. …You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.” – James 5:1-5

For more than 40 years, abortion has been used as a political strategy by the Republican Party. Co-opted leaders like Jerry Falwell Sr., James Dobson, Francis Schaeffer, Ralph Reed, and Pat Robertson have reduced the painful, personal, and multifaceted social factors and ethical questions surrounding abortion to a simplistic good and evil binary, making abortion a partisan cause around which social and political power could be built.

And they have been extraordinarily successful in building power. No cultural wedge issue has been more effective in politicizing Evangelicals and turning them into dedicated Republican voters. No issue has been more instrumental in enmeshing Evangelicals into the mechanics of Republican politics. And nothing has been more detrimental to the Evangelical witness or to the cause of the gospel than the political capture of Evangelicalism by the Republican Party.

People of good conscience wrestle with the ethics of abortion. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, for example, does not believe abortion is equal to murder. Some Presbyterians concede that they don’t know when life begins. Others are convinced that Genesis 2:7, “the Lord God formed humans from the dust of the ground and breathed into their nostrils the breath of life” is the definitive biblical statement. Of course, most conservative Evangelicals believe that life begins at conception. Along with the history of oppression and the impact of economic and social factors, theological concerns are part of the context in which churches are called to offer women pastoral care. Debate is not the problem.

READ: Could Draconian Abortion Bans Reverse Roe — and Unite Christians in Opposition?

What has cost Evangelicals their integrity and undermined their credibility is the coercive manner in which they have chosen to fight. Evangelicals have pursued a political battle to legislate control over women’s bodies. In this, they have abandoned the gospel of Jesus in favor of the gospel of Caesar. They have chosen state power and in the process have lent moral credibility, religious legitimacy, and ultimately real political power, to the American imperial project.

And what is the price of this accumulation of political power?

To anyone outside its misguided worldview, white Evangelicalism (and “white” is the correct qualifier because these categories do not apply to much of non-white Evangelicalism) has become the religion of the Republican Party, of big money corporate interests, of patriotic militarism, and of anti-immigrant Christian nationalism. The moral absolutism used to fight abortion has been applied to other cultural issues so that Evangelicalism has come to be known as pro-gun, pro-death penalty, and anti-LGBTQ, perfectly in step with the hard right turn America has taken over the past generation. The final result of this politicization of moral and cultural issues is that Evangelicalism has become an imperial religion, an essential part of the structure of justification for American Empire.

The trouble with imperial religion is that it is contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh, in their new commentary, Romans Disarmed, stress that the gospel Paul preached to Rome was explicitly one of solidarity with those marginalized by empire. For slaves and Jews and “barbarians” and women and the sexually exploited and for the fledgling Christian communities who insisted that “Jesus is Lord” not Caesar, the gospel was God’s power of liberation (Romans 1:16). And Paul makes it explicit this gospel is first for the Jew… that is, it privileges those Rome had marginalized. Paul insists further that this gospel is “the justice of God from first to last,” because “the just will live by faith” (Romans 1:17) — not by coercion, not by domination, not by the violence of empire.

Paul was not ashamed of the gospel despite its counter imperial claims, because it was God’s good news for the weak and for those who had nowhere else to turn. For women facing perhaps one of life’s toughest choices, a gospel that denies safe, legal access to abortion is not good news. It is a means of control over their bodies. It is a shameful distortion of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The United Nations has linked abortion restrictions to torture, arguing that such restrictions compel women to seek unsafe abortions — a leading cause of maternal deaths around the globe. I’m ashamed of a gospel that forces women to carry pregnancies against their will.

READ: Women’s Voices — Rather Than Empty Slogans — Must Drive Abortion Debates

The day after Gov. Ivey signed House Bill 314, or the “Human Life Protection Act,” she refused to sign a reprieve for Michael Brandon Samra, clearing the way for his execution by lethal injection. I am ashamed of a gospel that is pro-death penalty but claims to be pro-life.

I’m ashamed of the gospel preached by anti-abortion advocates who function as political proxies for the Republican Party. I’m ashamed of a gospel that claims to be pro-life but defends and justifies an empire built on predatory capitalism, a gospel that privileges the rich at the expense of the poor and of the planet itself.

But I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus. In it, the good news of God’s justice is present for pregnant people, including for one of life’s many choices. I only wish the Evangelical church would trade in their legislative mission for state control over women’s bodies for the gospel of Jesus — the power of God for the liberation of all who believe, first for those who need it the most and for everyone who chooses faith over force.

The lesson of Belshazzar is that co-opting the things of God for the purpose of arrogant power is dangerous business. God showed up in a puzzling display of divine judgement — a great hand appeared and began to write on the wall.

On Monday night (August 27), the White House hosted something like a state dinner to honor the leadership of American evangelicals. Many cabinet members were present, along with the president, the first lady and dozens of members of the group of informal evangelical advisers who enjoy unique access to President Trump.

It’s the latest puzzling contradiction raised by evangelicals working in the service of a president whose character and so many of his policies stand in direct contradiction to the words of Jesus.

As evangelicals not invited to the party — and not likely to be anytime soon — we are astonished that none of these leaders seem to have brought before the president and his cabinet the justice issues so pressing in our day.

Speaking to David Brody on the Christian Broadcasting Network prior to the dinner, Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Dallas, declared the real reason for the event, saying the White House is “cognizant of the fact that the midterms are coming up. And they’re facing the possibility of a Democrat Congress that, if they take control of the legislature, are going to either impeach this president from office or at least paralyze him while he’s in office. … He knows he’s got to have his evangelical base behind him.”

Jeffress isn’t even hiding the partisan political role he is actively playing. Instead of showing up on God’s terms, he’s all about the midterms!

READ: Lies from the Pit of Hell: The Dangerous Theology of Rev. Jeffress

What is the cost of this wholesale evangelical sellout? Among other concerns is the plight of persecuted Christians and other religious minorities around the world, who have been all but abandoned by the president’s near shutdown of the long-standing U.S. refugee resettlement program.

The numbers are stark. Over the past decade, according to the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center, the U.S. welcomed more than 280,000 persecuted Christians to enjoy religious freedom and rebuild their lives. Some 42,000 Christians found refuge here in 2016 alone.

Since coming into office, the Trump administration has dramatically slashed the number of refugees entering the U.S. through a combination of executive orders, historically low ceilings on refugee admissions and intentional slowdowns of processing overseas.

Christians have been harmed alongside Muslims and others. With just one month left in the current fiscal year, the U.S. is on track to receive fewer than 14,700 Christian refugees and fewer than 22,000 total.

Many of those admitted in recent years have been persecuted particularly for their Christian faith, fleeing brutal governments that have no respect for religious liberty in countries such as Myanmar, Iran and North Korea and terrorist groups like the so-called Islamic State and al-Qaida in Iraq and Syria. Were these fellow Christians mentioned at the White House?

Resettlement of persecuted Christians from Iran and Iraq — which together accounted for about 60,000 Christian refugees over the past decade — are down by roughly 99 percent: Just 46 Christian refugees have been allowed to arrive this fiscal year from these two countries, among those where advocacy group Open Doors says that Christians face the “most extreme” persecution in the world.

Other religious minorities have been kept out as well: just one Jewish refugee has been allowed in from Iran (compared to more than 70 in 2016), and only five Yazidis from Iraq (compared to hundreds in 2016). Any mention of these needy people of faith Monday night?

We’re not only concerned about the plight of Christians or other religious minorities: We’re equally troubled by the decline in resettlement of Muslim refugees, whose arrival numbers are down to fewer than 3,000 thus far this fiscal year, on track for a decline of more than 90 percent compared to two years ago. As Christians, we believe that Muslims are among the “neighbors” whom Jesus explicitly commands his followers to love.

After all, when Jesus responded to the clarifying question “who is my neighbor?” he told the story of a man — the Good Samaritan — who provided help to someone of a different religious tradition who was in desperate need. Where was the advocacy for our Muslim friends?

To be honest, we’re not surprised that most of the president’s evangelical supporters are not lobbying on behalf of Muslim refugees. Some of them were calling for a Muslim ban before Donald Trump did. Fully three-quarters of white evangelicals supported the president’s initial executive order barring refugees and Muslims from entering the country.

But we had hoped that the White House’s guests would show concern about the plight of fellow Christians, as even the president seemed to be as he entered office: In an interview recorded the day he signed his first executive order barring refugees, Trump said he would be doing more to help persecuted Christians fleeing Syria. “We are going to help them,” the president pledged in a CBN interview. “They’ve been horribly treated. Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough to get into the United States?”

It’s true that the share of Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S. in fiscal 2016 was small, but at least 120 Syrian Christians were admitted that year. In the past eight months, only nine Syrian Christian refugees have been able to come to the U.S., on track for an annual decline of about 90 percent. Were the traumas of Syria spoken of on Monday evening?

READ: Heeding Evidence & Wisdom for Immigration Justice

There are evangelical Christians concerned about this dynamic. A letter released earlier this month by the leaders of several influential evangelical organizations, including the National Association of Evangelicals, the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, World Relief, and the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, urged the administration to consider an annual ceiling of at least 75,000 refugees for the upcoming year, consistent with historical norms. We were proud to add our names to the letter.

We wonder if the invited evangelical “advisers,” while mingling with the president and his cabinet, considered these numbers worth mentioning. We genuinely hoped that these leaders would advocate for them behind the scenes, even if few have spoken publicly. Did they take these concerns to the president in secret?

If Trump further reduces the refugee numbers next month as expected, we’ll know the true price of a White House dinner.

At the end of the biblical story, Daniel, the faithful servant of God, was summoned to decipher the writing on the wall:

Oh King, your days are numbered
You’ve been weighed and found wanting
Your kingdom will be divided and given to your enemies

If we take the lessons of the biblical prophet Daniel seriously, what came true for King Belshazzar threatens this president too.

This article originally appeared at RNS.

For all the ways you have blessed us, may you also be blessed by Greg Fromholz’s newly released short film about the #LynchburgRevival. It truly captures what the Red Letter Christians movement is all about. Thank you for your continued support and contributions which make our work possible.

“Just found out about your movement through an article in the NY Times. What a blessing to know there are others out there who share my thoughts and beliefs! God bless you, and may He let your voice be heard all over the country!” — LM (Southern Ocean County, NJ)

 

“I just learned about your existence today. In a word, I have a complicated relationship with Christianity. I am a former minister (Dallas Theological Seminary graduate) turned atheist and now attorney. Though I left my faith, I still cherish those red letters. Keep up the work you are doing. You have more impact than you know.” — Anonymous

 

“I’m a little old lady on Social Security. I wish it were more, and that I could do it monthly. But I’ve just read of your work which gives voice to what I have been saying for the past year plus. What ever happened to ‘What would Jesus do?’ Much better than the greed, corruption, and hatred that surrounds us now. PLEASE keep up your good work!” — Gail Heinsohn (New Lebanon, NY)

 

“I was just reading an article on Shane. I am surprised to hear of his approach to the gospel of Christ and the Red Letter Christians. This movement is exactly what God told me about. For many years I have searched from church to church for the place I belong. None seemed to carry the path that God told me to walk. Until today. God bless Shane and any other folks out there practicing the humanity of Christ. It is refreshing and gives hope to see and hear about a man who sews his own clothes and lives among the poor in the streets. I have always said that when Jesus returns it will not be on the steps of a news station, or within the pews of a church…but from within the gutters of the streets where those who need his love will receive it. Thank you, Shane. Keep up the gospel. Amen.” — Nathan Panell (Sacramento, CA)

 

“We no longer attend church. We are alone here, save for Jesus Christ, in our beliefs. And truth be told, it has been so bad, I have been so buffered, seen the hatred in so many ‘Christian’ eyes toward those who need food stamps or Medicaid that there have been moments that I have wondered if my faith has been misplaced all these years.

How much of a blessing it was, then, to read that article. I am blessed to know that there are others who feel the same way who are quietly praying and voting and working. I am blessed to be reminded that He will make a way in His time, and when the stage is set He will use me in conjunction with others to do His good work and to minister to the sick and the lost and the poor. I am blessed to say with confidence that my God is mighty and loving and true and that He still moves among His people. I will pray for your ministry every day. I will tithe to your ministry starting next week. I thank God for you and your courage and faithfulness to Him.” —  Anonymous

 

“Thank you for reading and living the red letters. What would Jesus do? He would certainly not enrich the rich and impoverish the poor, would not separate families, nor instill hate! Thank you for standing up for Jesus!” — Wendy Matthews

 

“Just read about you online. I have been horrified at the support that right wing evangelicals are giving to Trump. Just wanted to say that I’m glad there are still Christians who care about the marginalized and have balls enough to go against the tide. 45 has not made America great again. I will pray for all of you.” — Barbara (Covina, CA)

 

“I have been listening to Tony & Shane’s podcast regularly for a few months now (I’ve made it up to October 2017; don’t tell me what happens next!) and while I’m reluctant to declare myself a Christian for many reasons, I am still deeply appreciative of all that you do for true justice and peace in the world and all the wisdom and guidance you impart.

I saw your post on Facebook about this being a financially critical time and I would be deeply saddened if RLC was unable to fulfill its goals. I am a full-time university student with six-figure debt and currently unemployed, so I can’t give monthly yet although I’d love to. Hope this helps! Thanks for being a ray of light and love in the world. You inspire me to be the most that I can be.” — Caitlin Fikes

Another friend in New Mexico, Father John Dear, took us to the desert near Los Alamos to teach us about peacemaking. Pointing to the nearby mountains that house the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, he began his talk with the bone chilling words, “welcome to the end of the world.”

These are, in fact, the two fundamental revival-related questions that motivate us: Do worlds end? And is a new world possible?

When Shane Claiborne presented the revival idea to the gathering, it resonated. Yes, we agreed, let’s go old school! Let’s preach Jesus in the public square. Let’s confront toxic Evangelicalism on its own terms by preaching the Bible. And let’s have great music and powerful testimonies and give altar calls for folks to give their lives to Jesus and the work of justice, where we can all repent of warmaking, consumerism, racism, and our treatment of sexual and gender minorities and immigrants. Yes! Let’s hold a revival.

It’s an ancient biblical tradition to respond to crises by seeking revival. When Solomon’s Israel began its slide away from covenantal fidelity toward imperial religion (as we are today), the prophet implored Israel to humble themselves and pray and seek God’s face and turn from spiritual unfaithfulness and social injustice. He promised that if they would do so, God would hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land (2 Chronicles 7:14).

In exile, threatened and seduced by Babylonian imperial power and promises of security and prosperity — as so many are threatened and seduced today — the Psalmist prayed, “God, you restored the fortunes of Jacob in the past. You forgave the iniquity of your people and covered all their sins. Do it again, Lord! Put away your displeasure and revive us again!” (Psalm 85.1-7).

The focus of RLC’s #Lynchburg Revival is Jesus and justice, and we are partnering with local Christians who’s love for their city is guiding our preparations. We aren’t targeting any person or institution. We are not championing one political party over another. Our beef goes way beyond a single person or institution or party.

As Walter Brueggemann, a patron of the Lynchburg revival, teaches us, the crisis of American Christianity has almost nothing to do with being liberal or conservative and almost everything to do with trading our Christian identity “for a common, generic, U.S. identity that is part patriotism, part consumerism, part violence, and part affluence.”

READ: Ground Zero: Why We Need the Lynchburg Revival

Lynchburg, in many ways, reflects America’s national spiritual and social crisis. Twenty-four percent of the people in Lynchburg live in poverty, including 33% of the children. Racism is deep and structured even if, as with the rest of America, it remains unacknowledged by most white folks.

Progressives in Lynchburg struggle, like many progressives do, to take the Bible seriously — and there are many church-wounded. Yet Lynchburg’s progressives show the same deep desire to believe that dead things can live again, that resurrection is real, and that new life is possible.

Evangelicals in Lynchburg, like those in Wheaton and Colorado Springs and Orange County, are hyper-cautious of the “liberal social gospel,” and any confrontation with the Evangelical status quo causes deep anxiety. Yet conservatives, too, are eager for a more socially active faith that serves the poor and marginal, and some are moving toward a more inclusive and affirming posture toward gay Christians. Many are concerned about racial inequality, gun violence, and the death penalty. Most want to uncouple Jesus from political divisions.

Revivalism is a very American way of responding to social crisis. Charles Finney preached in a context of deep division not unlike ours. The revivals of the Second Great Awakening called for conversion to Jesus that went beyond personal piety and the promise of heaven. People responded to altar calls that served as recruiting rallies for the Abolitionist Movement at a time when, according to 1859 records of Lynchburg city resolutions, abolitionists were viewed as an “interference… violative of the pledged fate of the country and promotive only of evil”.

We are holding a revival, because America is wealthy and powerful and self-interested and scammed — and its Christians are too sectioned off and divided and co-opted to respond. Our blessings are not forever or for us alone. Social transformation is the purpose of power.

We are holding a revival in order to remember that judgment is real and that “righteousness and justice are the foundation of God’s throne” (Psalm 97:2).

READ: A Revival On Its Knees

Do world’s end? The land that is now Lynchburg was for millennia the home of the Monacan Indians. When John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, met Chief Amoroleck of the Monacans in 1608, he asked why he had fired arrows in hostility when Smith and his company came only in love. Amoroleck said he had heard that Smith’s people came from under the world to take their world from them. It turns out, of course, that Amoroleck was right. Worlds do come to an end.

Given that our vision for revival began in New Mexico, with ominous words of nuclear apocalypse, there is a surprising tie to Lynchburg that adds urgency to America’s need for a renewed Christianity that takes the words of Jesus seriously.

The largest employer in Lynchburg, after Liberty University, is BWXT Technologies. BWXT is the corporation that sold the uranium to the Manhattan Project that was used for the nuclear bombs tested at Los Alamos and dropped on Japan in 1945. In 2005, BWXT was awarded the defense contract to manage Los Alamos. It turns out, the end of the world is managed from Lynchburg, Va.

Meanwhile, the most well-resourced and powerful church in the history of Christian missions — the white Evangelical Christianity that empowers our current politics — has no ear for prophetic witness. It does not read Isaiah or understand the prophet’s warning that all compromised religion that colludes with coercive power ends powerless, impotent, “eunuchs in the court of the king of Babylon” (Isaiah 39:7).

Worlds do in fact end. The question remains, is a new world possible? We believe so. We are praying for one.

Lynchburg is just the beginning.

DG: Why is relationship and covenant essential to biblical faith and what role do they play in resistance to empire?

WB: It seems to me that the pivot point of the Bible is the covenant at Sinai which is anticipated with the covenant with Abraham. According to the text, the holiness of God makes promises and demands of the human community and that linkage which then comes to fruition in Jesus of Nazareth who is truly God and truly human is what scripture is all about. It is about the mystery that this bonded loyalty between heaven and earth is the truth of our existence. And that bonding at Sinai then becomes the model for “all creatures of our God and king,” human and non-human, to be bonded in tenacious loyalty to each other. And money, power, privilege, entitlement of empire, all mean to interrupt or distort that bonding.

I don’t know whether I’m being very articulate or not…

DG: Ha, yes, very! So Exodus is “the pivot point” when God and God’s people covenant together. What does this covenanting with God have to do with how we relate to others?

WB: When they asked Jesus for a great commandment he said you can’t have just one, you get two so that love of God and love of neighbor are intimately connected.

My favorite text about this is in Jeremiah 22 where the prophet is contrasting the wicked king Jehoiakim with his good father Josiah. He says about the father Josiah, “he cared for the poor and the needy, is this not what it means to know me?” Jeremiah does not say, “If you care for the poor and the needy, you will get to know me.” He does not say, “If you get to know me, you will want to care for the poor and the needy.” It is the act of caring for the poor and the needy that IS knowledge of God. And it seems to me that ties the two great commandments intimately together with each other. And what we try to do is separate those commandments.

So pious people are tempted to want to love God and forget neighbor and secularists sometimes love neighbor but want nothing to do with loving God. And the wonder of evangelical faith is that they cannot be separated. Which I suppose is echoed in the epistle of John — if you do not love the brother, sister, neighbor or immigrant whom you have seen, how can you love God whom you have not seen?

DG: Given that relationships are so vital, I wish evangelicals would welcome their queer and gay and lesbian brothers and sisters because they too need this covenant fidelity, both in marriage and in church.

OG: Do you think there is a particular reason why Christians fixate on homosexuality? I just saw an article that asked, “Is homosexuality really the greatest sin?” And I feel like that’s the way Christians make it out to be.

WB: I have a theory about all this adrenaline about homosexuality and that it is not about homosexuality. It is about the old privileged world coming to an end. And you cannot any longer blame black people. You can’t blame women. You can’t blame any of those who want a part of the pie. So it is still morally safe to put all of this angry adrenaline on gays. But I think it is a misplaced anger that has to do with the loss of the old world. And it feels like high moral ground to take your stand on, that’s what I think.

OG: That makes a lot of sense. I think our generation has more experience with people who identify as LGBTQ.

WB: Your whole generation says, “Well, what’s the problem?” But when I think of how long it took me to get to accepting this new social reality, it’s not surprising. If you have no contact, or at least no awareness of contact… my generation didn’t have that contact because so few people were ‘out.’

DG: So the evangelical anxiety about inclusion and affirmation relates to our struggle with empire and the changes that threaten our privileged place in it. Thanks, Walter!

Donald Trump assumed office as he pursued it, with attacks on the weak and marginal. Executive orders banning travelers from majority Muslim countries and holds on America’s successful refugee program threaten to deny the victims of the very wars and disruptions that Americans helped to create. By stacking his cabinet with a plutocracy of billionaires, Trump set his agenda against the poor. By supporting dictators like Duterte and Putin, families of “the disappeared” in the Philippines and the Ukrainian victims of Russian aggression have found no friend in Trump’s America.

What are we to make of all this? And if this picture of Donald Trump is fair, what does it say about white evangelicals who gave at least 81 percent of their votes to put him in office? And what are we to make of the fact that leading evangelical spokespersons — such as Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Jr., and the pastor of the famous First Baptist Church in Dallas — have lent strong support for Donald Trump’s presidency? What does it mean that in the Oval Office, evangelical leaders laid hands of blessing and commission on this president?

READ: Why Evangelicals Voted for Donald Trump…and Continue to Support Him

The above provide ample evidence of the all-out attack by Trump and white evangelicals on the Evangel, the Gospel, and the biblical message of liberating salvation promised in the Hebrew scriptures to the world’s poor. They are also reasons why some evangelicals in America are looking for a new label that expresses their biblical faith without the distorting compromise or toxicity. More and more of us who still hold to evangelical theologies no longer want to call ourselves evangelical and have adopted, instead, the name Red Letter Christians.

Those who want to disparage this new movement have often countered that by emphasizing the red letters (i.e. the words of Jesus highlighted with red letters in many Bibles) we have discarded or minimized the black letters of the Bible. Nothing could be further from the truth! We affirm that all scripture is given under the inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, faith, and practice. What we Red Letter Christians do insist, however, is that orthodox Christian theology has always found in the words and life of Jesus the lens for understanding and interpreting the Bible more fully.

We suspect that there’s a deeper motivation that seeks to deemphasize the words of Jesus. His call to discipleship demands activism on behalf of the weak, a life-ethic of action beyond mere intellectual assent to theological propositions. Many of our fellow Christians have failed to pay proper attention to the red letters of the Bible because the teachings of Jesus have proven to be very hard to follow.

The way Jesus ignored racial, gender, religious and socioeconomic boundaries threatens our well-insured, well-resourced, and well-secured lives. What Jesus tells us about what we should do with our money is challenging to those of us who have accumulated an excess of it. What He says about loving our enemies challenges our easy inclinations to support war. Many of us have difficulty with what He says about embracing marginal people when it comes to fully affirming our LGBTQ neighbors.

The inevitable moral and political collapse of the American right is prevented, in large part, by compromised Evangelicalism and the congregations it misleads into voting against the teachings of Jesus in the red letters. Theologies that require mental assent but leave our ethics and our politics untouched have left Evangelicalism serving as the court religion for the Republican Party. Theologies heavy on Paul but detached from their roots in Jesus and the Hebrew scriptures have inoculated discipleship from the radical lifestyle prescribed by Jesus in those red letters.

Has the time come for you to join us and to commit to taking the red letters of the Bible seriously and adopt its difficult lifestyle? Is your church feeding your complacency? Do you need to take your faith to the streets? Who do you need to stand up for? Is there a march you need to attend? Do you need to give your money away? Are you ready to face the enemies of the righteous? Are you ready for the persecution that Jesus promised?

And this!!! – are you willing to support us financially? Jesus says in those red letters, “where your treasure is there will your heart be also.” This movement needs your help and support. Join the Red Letter revolution today!

I do not take this act of civil disobedience lightly. My arrest was a liturgical act, an expression of worship and covenantal solidarity with Christ and his vulnerable ones. But I confess that it was my own need that provoked this activism. Yet, it need not come to that for everyone.

My mother, who lives in Ohio, depends on Medicaid as she enters her 7th year requiring 100% care. And while visiting her and my aunt there last month, she declared, totally unprovoked, that Medicaid was a “gift from God” as she faced costs for the rehabilitation she required. Yet with the extremist measures under consideration in Congress, Medicaid in Ohio is at risk.

I served in evangelical institutions for 27 years, enjoying the benefits of exceptional healthcare all the while. After I lost my job at World Vision, I opted for the COBRA plan they offered, and I paid $25,000 out of pocket to keep my family covered for one year. That amazing insurance, the kind I’ve known my entire adult life, comes to an end on July 31st.

As I face the frightening prospect of America’s ‘survival of the fittest’ status among wealthy nations, Jesus’ words of “I was sick and you came to me” are everything to me. They mean that Jesus stands in covenantal solidarity with those left alone with the burdensome inevitability of physical frailty. I place an extraordinary amount of hope in this for both me and for millions of others.

Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate to their health and well-being, including medical care. Thus all nations of “the rich countries club,” based on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), provide universal health care for their citizens. All, except for the United States.

Wealthy nations, against all the hyped rhetoric of the American right, have found a way to eliminate burdensome private insurance bureaucracies and regulate drug and medical pricing in order to keep the costs of medical services down. Through these single-payer systems, wealthy nations are able to meet the health care demand of their citizens mostly through tax revenues. Wealthy nations, minus one, that is.

Why is the United States, the wealthiest of the wealthy nations, the sole exception? Why is it that we aren’t even talking about universal coverage but only how many millions we will strip of coverage?

Republican pundits often cite anecdotes about the excessive wait times universal health systems impose on individuals requiring specialized services. Or the fact that 63,000 Canadians of means sought healthcare in the U.S. last year. But these tired rebuffs ignore the fact that, for all their weaknesses, single-payer systems enable wealthy nations to secure the basic health needs for the entire population of their citizens. Minorities are covered. The unemployed are included. The old, the infirm, the poor, everyone is included in the common concern for adequate healthcare.

And the anecdotes against universal healthcare ignore the stories of millions of Americans who struggle to survive without healthcare or fear losing it.

Before I faced the needs of my mother, my aunt and myself, I viewed the health care debate with the not-so-benign indifference typical of the well-insured. And while there is no romance in entering the sacred community of the vulnerable, doing so has changed my perspective. I wonder how many otherwise concerned folks stay quiet in their well-covered security? It’s hard to make activists out of the comfortable.

That is why Red Letter Christians remains committed to protecting and securing health care for all. We’re honored to go to jail and stand in shoulder to shoulder with countless faith leaders, partners, and moral activists in this struggle. Together, we’re not only praying for those whose lives are at risk, but we’re taking action to protect them.

Now is the time to forge political and moral power. Join Red Letter Christians, Faith in Public Life, and other people of faith tomorrow at the Capitol to send a powerful message to our U.S. Senators: Don’t take away our health care!

Check out the details below on tomorrow’s action. RSVP now to join this effort.

WHEN

Thursday, July 27th @ 10:30 a.m.

WHERE

Capitol Grounds
Corner of Constitution and 1st St NE
Washington, DC 20016

RSVP today to join this prophetic display of moral resistance in the Senate gallery tomorrow at 10:30 a.m.