My biggest issue with San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick has always been that he kisses his own biceps after big plays and revels in moments of self-adulation. But my view of him has changed, and for the better.

Kaepernick, who is effectively trying out for his position on the team again during preseason games, risked both his job and millions in endorsements by choosing to sit down and bow his head in silent protest during the playing of the National Anthem. Ever since, a firestorm of chatter and controversy has swirled around him about whether his protest was un-American, un-Christian(!?), or a sign of poor taste and an error in judgement, opting for the wrong time and place to protest police brutality against the African-American community.

On his choice to wage such a protest at all, it should be noted that he has been a prominent voice on this issue off the field for some time. And as for the timing of his silent statement, I resonated with the point made by a commentator on CNN when asked about it:

When is a convenient time for a protest?

 

After all, if it’s contained, quiet and not disruptive, it doesn’t achieve it’s aim to shake up the social conversation and rattle our collective consciousness. Kaepernick protested when he did and in the manner he chose precisely so we would be talking about it. He risked millions, his own reputation and his long term career prospects, all to make a point in a silent, nonviolent way. He knew what he was doing, and what was at risk. He felt it was that important. And if you claim to be an advocate for free speech, remember that this includes standing up for the rights of others to speak about things and in ways you don’t like too.

But all of this misses the point.

I’m reminded of the infamous sermon offered by Tony Campolo, in which (and I’m paraphrasing) he noted that millions of people will go to bed hungry every night, and yet nobody gives a shit. And, putting a finer point on it, he noted that folks were likely more disturbed by the fact that he had just said “shit” in church than about millions of children going to bed hungry.

Similarly, if we’re more troubled by Kaepernick sitting in quiet protest than we are about police brutality against African-Americans, it’s high time for some personal reflection of our own.

After decades of “bridge building” between the LGBTQ community and those who identify as Evangelicals in opposition to full LGBTQ inclusion,  Tony Campolo spoke out in favor of both full inclusion of same-sex couples in the church and marriage equality. “It has taken countless hours of prayer, study, conversation and emotional turmoil” he wrote on his blog June 8, 2015, “to bring me to the place where I am finally ready to call for the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the Church.”

Campolo explains why it’s taken him this long to go public with this position. For one,  he has spent so many years trying to strengthen healthy discourse between the two often disparate groups. Tony is unparalleled in his ability to help people of differing views feel heard and affirmed. But he also admits that he has been unsure of what he believes about proactively affirming full inclusion of LGBTQ people in church, as well as supporting marriage equality.

So what changed?

Anyone who knows Tony well also knows his wife, Peggy, and what an instrumental part of their joint ministry she is. As he notes, she has been essential to his own spiritual and theological formation. She also is know to be a vocal advocate for LGBTQ inclusion and equality. It’s always fun to watch the two of them spar when the subject is raised, all in a spirit of love. But over time, the relationships Peggy has invited Tony into have changed his heart.

Yes, Tony knows scripture, perhaps better than anyone else I know. He’s a theologian-bar-none, and he preaches the doors off of nearly anyone alive today. He’s written scads of books, thought and prayed for hours on all matters biblical, theological, spiritual and related to social justice. No public statements of his comes off the cuff and without prayerful discernment.

But what has moved him to act and speak out on behalf of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters were face-to-face connections, shared stories, broken bread and the compassion that emerges from such relationships. It’s inevitable, but only if we put ourselves in a place to allow it to happen. He writes:

One reason I am changing my position on this issue is that, through Peggy, I have come to know so many gay Christian couples whose relationships work in much the same way as our own. Our friendships with these couples have helped me understand how important it is for the exclusion and disapproval of their unions by the Christian community to end. We in the Church should actively support such families. Furthermore, we should be doing all we can to reach, comfort and include all those precious children of God who have been wrongly led to believe that they are mistakes or just not good enough for God, simply because they are not straight.

Ultimately, marriage equality and being both open and affirming of people of all sexual/gender identities and orientations in our larger Christian community are not issues: they are people. They’re human beings, stories, families, relationships, children, struggles and joyful discoveries. They are school lunches, utility bills, career moves, birthdays weddings and funerals. They’re self doubt, a search for meaning, belonging and, often times, a desire to be connected with something bigger and more enduring than ourselves.

They’re like anyone else in these ways, and many more. They are us.

All it usually takes is a willingness to sit down, listen, share and change in whatever ways love and compassion may work within us. It worked for Jesus. It worked for Tony. It’s good enough for me. What about you?

I’m starting to think that Che Guevara and the Jesus of the Gospel according to Mark have an awful lot in common.

I should explain, first, that I’m in the first month of My Jesus Project, a year-long effort to more deeply live into the life, teaching and example of Jesus through prayer, study and action. Each month, I explore a new dimension of Jesus with a mentor; this month is Jesus the Radical with Christian Anarchist Mark Van Steenwyk. Maybe I should blame all of these radical thoughts on the younger Mark, not the elder.

But in my 43 years of being exposed to the Bible, never have I seen the Jesus of Mark’s gospel in the way I’m starting to see him now.

There are two recurring themes throughout the first several chapters in Mark: crowds and healing. The crowds following Jesus represent his growing power and influence (a growing threat to the occupying authorities of the Roman Republic), and though there are many general accounts of healing, the ones explicitly detailed in Mark all point to some act of political or religious defiance in the midst of the miraculous act of compassionate healing.

He’s either claiming the authority to forgive sins in front of religious leaders, healing on the sabbath, coming in contact with “unclean” women (the bleeding woman in chapter five) without undergoing a cleansing mikvah  ritual immediately afterward, or he’s touching dead bodies (also in chapter 5) without cleansing himself as well. So far, throughout the first half of Mark, every account of healing or forgiveness stands in direct defiance of some political or religious rule.

All human laws bow at the feet of the authority of God, which is not a rule of law, but rather a subversive, paradigm-shifting “from the bottom, up” rule of love and compassion for others, first and foremost. Period.

And then, in chapter five again, Mark seems almost to be speaking in code to his Jewish brothers and sisters. When he confronts the demon-possessed man in the graveyard – a madman who no one has been able to confine – and he asks the name of the evil spirits within him, the response is, “We are Legion.” Not coincidentally, the original word translated as “Legion” is the same word the Jewish people used to describe the Roman occupying forces (another evil presence they had yet to find a way to control or contain). And Jesus, the liberator, casts Legion out of the man and into a herd of gentile pigs, which were considered to be utterly unclean by Jewish culture. In addition to being considered dirty, there’s an implication that even the pigs can’t stand Legion.

So ultimately, Legion destroys itself under the weight of its own evil.

In each of these stories, Jesus is the messiah who liberates God’s people: from oppression, from the rule of law that systematically wreaks violence on the marginalized, from religious leadership and ideology that exert power over their faithful to force them into conformity. So what does the kingdom of God look like in this case?

It’s messy, down in the stink and dirt of life, where the greatest need for – and therefore the possibility of – liberating, earth-rupturing grace is born. And sometimes it looks like a herd of crazed pigs running off a cliff.

What’s both terrifying and exciting is that the liberating grace doesn’t necessarily reside in the miraculous acts of Jesus. It doesn’t take supernatural powers to have the courage, vision, conviction and compassion to confront evil in all its forms in the world and to help free one another from the power we give it over us. That’s exciting because it means, like Jesus says, we can continue the work he started.

And that’s also precisely why it’s terrifying.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows that Christianity is in decline in the western world by all accounts. From progressive mainline churches to evangelical mega-churches, most institutional religious bodies are experiencing precipitous drops in attendance and giving. Meanwhile, the Christian voice in the civil and political conversations is also giving way to other perspectives, be they Jewish, Muslim or secular humanist. It’s no longer a dark mark on one’s social character to say they don’t go to church, or even that they’re not a Christian.

For many leaders within organized Christian circles, this is all a call to arms, a warning shot across the proverbial bow to wake us up from our slumber and engage the impinging culture war with renewed commitment.

But as I suggest in my new book, “postChristian: What’s Left? Can we fix it? Do we care?” It’s actually good news. Granted, it may not slow the decline and closure of churches anytime soon, and we Christians will likely continue to lose some degree of political clout, but I argue that this isn’t the point. It never was. and in fact, our numerical, political and even financial success in recent generations has taken us far off track.

Following are several ways in which this current shake-up is the best thing for us, and actually promises to liberate the Gospel and its adherents from some of the false idols we’ve often come to worship, mistaking them for God:

Humility is necessary. Having become the dominant voice in the room, so to speak, for so long, Christianity has fallen victim to its own hubris in some respects. We’ve assumed that our way of thinking is the ‘default’ for everyone, and that we automatically know what is best for others. We’ve talked more than we’ve listened. We’ve changed others, while not being as willing to be changed. In short: we’ve become too comfortable with an imperialist attitude toward our faith. But Jesus consistently challenged such top-down power plays, and in as much as we’re to imitate the Christ-illuminated path to realizing God’s kingdom vision for the world, we’re well advised to do the same. More over, we’re to approach it with the humility of a servant, rather than with the bravado and arrogance of a dictator.

Friction is good. Back in the “old days” of the Hebrew Bible before Jesus came along, there was a spiritual practice of discernment among religious scholars and leaders called midrash. This approach to scripture presumed that everyone would reveal or resonate with a different dimension or meaning of any given text, and that, by debating or even arguing about it, God’s deeper, more complex and nuanced wisdom would emerge. The wisdom, then, came from the points of conflict, and the potential for the coexistence of multiple truths. It was never assumed that all present would agree on one, single and absolute interpretation.

And yet, we’ve come to lean on a ‘The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it’ way of approaching scripture, suggesting that there even is such a thing as literal interpretation of scripture. But such absolute approaches to the Bible and our daily living out of our faith actually stifles the spirit’s movement within and among us, rather than forcing all into some uniform mold dictated by God for us to fall into.

We’re worshipping religion, not God. It’s hard, when we’ve been endowed with these amazing buildings, these historic legacies and these time-honored traditions, not to mistake them for the thing we’re supposed to really focus on. To paraphrase the recent TV show, ‘Halt and Catch Fire, ’ religion isn’t the thing; it’s the thing that gets us to the thing.

Organized religion, and all that comes with it, is a means to an end. It’s intent is to facilitate community, spiritual growth, mutual accountability, worship of God and transformation of the world around us. But so much of our energy in recent decades has gone into propping up aging, hollowed out institutions and preserving empty rituals for the sake of themselves that we’ve turned them into the golden calf, taking precedent over God and the Gospel at the center of our hearts. We’ve fallen victim to mistaken assumption that we have to resurrect dying religious infrastructures in order to reveal God to ourselves and others. But in doing so, we’ve run the risk of losing connection with God’s call all together.

We need to know who we are independent of Church. I’ve suggested in my “postChristian” book that Christianity is undergoing both an identity crisis and a credibility crisis. One the one hand, we have to re-imagine who we are without being propped up by the religious systems into which we’ve invested so much of ourselves, our resources, and therefore, much of our egos and identities. So when those fade or weaken, what does this mean about us as people, or as Christians? We can’t rely on tradition to tell us who we are; rather, we have to listen with fresh ears and an open heart for God’s call to something new. To what, we’re not entirely sure.

Christianity has a PR problem. As for the credibility crisis noted above, it’s simple as simple as this. The world beyond our doors doesn’t tend to take issue with God or even Jesus; it’s Christians they can’t stand. As Gandhi famously said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” And so it goes today. In a survey of hundreds of Christians and non-Christians alike my wife, Amy, and I did a few years back, the words principally associated with God included “loving, ” “forgiving” and “merciful.” However, the words most commonly associated with Christians – even by other Christians! – were ‘judgmental’ and ‘hypocrites.’

If we’re to be the body of Christ in the world, and in so much as Jesus is the embodiment of the God of our understanding, then we have some work to do.

I read an article on Huffington Post today about a new survey by a nonpartisan organization called YouGov of self-identified Christians. Asked how they believe Jesus would vote on various hot current topics, here’s a run-down of the results:

1. Jesus would not support gay marriage.
2. Jesus would oppose legal abortion.
3. Jesus would support universal healthcare.
4. Jesus would not support the death penalty for murderers.
5. Jesus would not support stricter gun laws.
6. Jesus would not support high taxes on the wealthy.
7. Jesus would support reducing carbon emissions.

Like me, you probably nodded in affirmation of a couple of these and sighed or rolled your eyes in exasperation at others. Suffice it to say that this Jesus, as described by the opinion poll, at least, doesn’t fit many, if any, of our expectations about what WE think Jesus would value.

Related: Stop Comparing Your Christianity to My Christianity!

It reminds me of the well-known saying about how God created us in God’s image, and ever since then, we’ve gone to great lengths to return that favor. As I talk about at some length in my upcoming book, postChristian: What’s Left? Can We Fix It? Do We Care? We have not only created false constructs of God and Jesus in our minds and in our churches; we’ve come to worship them as if they are the one, true divinity.

And yet, throughout scripture, Jesus is forever throwing ideological curve balls that don’t conform to an us/them, yes/no sort of binary.

That said, there’s evidence in scripture to support whichever position we’ve already taken, and to coerce others into believing that Jesus, as the Bible clearly states, is on our side:

• Libertarians would cite Jesus’ challenges to empire as a clear advocate for reducing the role of government in our lives.
• Progressives would emphasize his vocal and active care for the poor and marginalized as a basis for him voting democrat.
• Conservatives would note his warnings about pure thoughts and his apparent example of chastity when claiming him as a republican.
• Christian anarchists would highlight his refusal to engage systems of government all together to achieve his ministry, and draw a distinction between oppressive systems of democracy and Jesus’ persistent calls away from violence.

We’d all love to claim Jesus for our team, but in doing so, we can safely assume that Jesus actually would wriggle free from such limitations. While it would be comforting to validate ourselves by claiming Jesus as a Baptist, Disciple, Catholic or something else, what we’re effectively trying to do is keep from changing ourselves. We want to rest in the certainty that we’re all right how we already are, with no real need to grow or do things differently.

Also by Christian: Five Reasons Churches Need to Come Out on LGBTQ Rights

But the reality is that if we allowed this Jesus to look deeply into our hearts, to know our motivations, our insecurities, our desires and shortcomings, we know that we have work to do. We democrats, we republicans, we human beings.

Jesus isn’t a free agent to be courted and recruited to our team. That’s not the kind of person worth modeling one’s life after. And yet we preoccupy ourselves with such haggling and partisanship because it serves as a relatively pleasant distraction from the real transformative, reconciling work at hand that is yet to be done.

Our entire family, including my wife, Rev. Amy Piatt, and my two kids, took part in the Portland Gay Pride parade this weekend. We stood on a float in the rain and waved to thousands of people lining the streets, from the park blocks to the riverfront. It truly was a joyful day, but of course, not everyone is comfortable with the idea of the church officially being represented in the parade.

Why not just take part as individuals? Why bring such a polarizing issue into the spotlight, especially one that might make many people uncomfortable?

Here are five reasons we, as Christian institutions, need to take public stands on behalf of our Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer sisters and brothers:

Much of the pain, and therefore, suspicion and resentment, lies at the institutional level. It’s one thing for a person who identifies as a Christian to take the risk of putting themselves out there to say they support or affirm someone’s God-given orientation or identity. It’s entirely another when a church body does so. As long as the efforts to reconcile the brokenness between the Christian community and the LGBTQ community remain at the individual level, the history of marginalization and judgment lingers like an ever-present shadow.

Related: Is the Gay Thing Worth Splitting a Church? Definitely Not, and Definitely Yes.

The Churches’ window of opportunity to be on the right side of history is closing. At the risk of sounding opportunistic, too many Christians found themselves on the rather embarrassing end of the debate about slavery, desegregation, and even women’s rights and in some cases still today. Nearly anyone with a compassionate heart and some sense of history would look back on those movements as something for which Christian churches should have been champions on the forefront. Yes, some were, but certainly not enough. And honestly, if we continue to advocate for some people being treated as “less than” others in any way, how can we claim the Gospel as our mandate with any credibility?   We’re seeing history change before our eyes with regard to same-sex rights; shall we be remembered, once again, as one of the few holdouts clinging to the social equivalent of a flat-earth mentality?

People need to know where their sanctuaries are. Despite much progress toward equality for LGBTQ persons, there still is an inherent fear, or at least anxiety, about where one will be tolerated, if not openly welcomed. By taking such a public position, churches assure those seeking refuge from a lifetime of judgment or condemnation that there is a place for them.

We’re commanded to go to those in need of God’s grace. Sure, it’s all well and good to take an official stand as a congregation or denomination from a boardroom or in a set of bylaws no one will ever read. But saying we’re affirming of LGBTQ rights takes very little risk on our part. If someone has taken the bold step to be open and forthright about their identity or orientation in the public sphere, the least we can do is act in kind. Yes, it’s vulnerable and a little bit scary to go as a group of Christians to a pride parade. Someone might reject us. Someone might unload their pent-up pain or anger toward Christianity on us. Much like they’ve had people do to them, no doubt, being part of the LGBTQ tribe. Jesus didn’t sit back at the temple and wait for people to cue up and ask for his grace; He went out into the world, noticed where the needs were around him and addressed them, head-on. Why, as followers of the path Christ illuminated for us, should we expect our work to be any different.

Also by Christian: Why Should the Church Care About Marriage?

Love is without condition. Period.  Perhaps you’re still wrestling with the “gay issue” because of your understanding of scripture. As long as you’re at least wrestling, I applaud that. It means you care. But if you use such reservations about an issue to withhold radical, boundary-smashing love and grace from any of God’s children, you’re denying the humanity at the heart of the Greatest Commandment while navel-gazing and calling it Bible study. Your LGBTQ brothers and sisters are worthy of your love and grace, and God’s love and grace, as much as those you find it so easy to love. But Jesus is clear that we should not be content with loving the one’s we’re already comfortable loving. The very people who you struggle to open your heart to are the ones to whom you are commanded to give yourself fully. With all your soul, strength and mind. And if we can’t stand shoulder-to-shoulder on such principles as this, what in the hell are we worth as Church universal?

Photo Credit: blackboard1965 / Shutterstock.com

Never before has a major Christian denomination sued state government in the United States over their marriage laws. At least until today, that is.

This morning, representatives of the national body of the United Church of Christ filed a lawsuit against the state of North Carolina for violation of their right to religious freedom under the First Amendment. In short, the state has threatened ministers with jail, probation and/or community service for conducting wedding ceremonies for couples that cannot present a state issued marriage license.

The issue arose because UCC pastors – a denomination known for being open and affirming of the rights and equality of members of the LGBT community – have been conducting weddings for same-sex couples despite the fact that the state of North Carolina refuses to offer them a marriage license.

“It is unfortunate, ” said the Rev. Geoffrey A. Black, general minister and president of the UCC, “that, even today, laws are designed to treat gay and lesbian people unequally. In its efforts to restrict gay marriage, the State of North Carolina has restricted one of the essential freedoms of our ministers and of all Americans.”

Related: Duck Hunting, Defrocking a Minister, and other Gay Tidings

“The United Church of Christ believes in advocating for justice, ” says the Rev. Dr. J. Bennett Guess, a national officer of the denomination and an openly gay man,  according to the UCC’s denominational website, “We believe that the UCC is called to be a prophetic church. God calls the church to speak truth to power. We are standing up for the freedom of religion, and to protect the rights of our ministers to do their jobs in faith.”

The UCC has been a vocal advocate for marriage equality as a denomination officially since 2005, when they passed a marriage equality resolution. According to the UCC website, the resolution states that, as a church, they support “equal marriage rights for couples regardless of gender and declares that government should not interfere with couples regardless of gender who choose to marry and share fully and equally in the rights, responsibilities and commitment of legally recognized marriage.”

The UCC, the lead plaintiff in this case, has been on the forefront of the fight for gay rights for some decades, having ordained an openly gay man as a UCC minister as early as 1972.

The UCC is a mainline Protestant denomination of more than 5, 100 churches and nearly 1 million members from across the United States. According to a press release posted on the UCC website, “The UCC is joined by pastors and couples who are seeking to get married in the state of North Carolina (three couples and three pastors are affiliated with the United Church of Christ).

At issue is Amendment One, approved by the voters in North Carolina, “which limited a domestic legal union to a covenant between a man and woman, ” says the release. “Under state laws consistent with Amendment One, it is a Class 1 misdemeanor for a minister to perform a marriage ceremony for a couple that hasn’t obtained a license, and such a license may not be issued to same-gender couples.”

Also by Christian: Ten Things Christians Should Say More Often

“The United Church of Christ (UCC) argues that North Carolina marriage laws limit ministers’ choices, ” says the denomination’s post on their “I DO Support Marriage Equality page, “violate the principle of ‘free exercise of religion’ upon which the church is built, and restrict the freedoms of religion and expressive association guaranteed in the First Amendment.”

For more information, visit: http://www.ucc.org/ido/

There is a seismic shift of sorts underway in the landscape of late-night television. Jay Leno has been replaced by Jimmy Fallon. Letterman will soon be replaced by Stephen Colbert. Seth Myers also is entering the late-night fray, along with the current stable of talking heads, like Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart…

Noticing a pattern here? It seems that the old saying is true that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Yes, older established talkshow hosts are being replaced as everyone vies for market share. Younger bucks are being called up for their moment in the spotlight and their opportunity to prove themselves worthy of the legacies they are inheriting. But with all of the chatter about who is taking whose seat, I have heard little, if anything, about the fact that all of these transitions are painfully safe choices.

Related: Ok, White Folks, here’s how you can really help!

Is there no room for women or people of color at the helm of these late night shows? Yes, a few networks have tried and have achieved less than stellar results. George Lopez at a relatively short-lived stint in the talkshow circuit, but his show took a dive not because he is Latino; in my personal opinion, it’s because his comedy is too predictable to be reiterated every weeknight without getting stale. Arsenio Hall is held up as another cautionary tale, but the fact is that lots of white guys have failed at it too.

There is plenty of misunderstanding around why Conan O’Brien was so quickly replaced by his predecessor at the Tonight Show. Many speculate that Jay Leno demanded his job back, while in fact, Conan’s ratings as Tonight Show host were dismal. Similarly, Jay Leno’s ratings for his new show, which aired earlier (at least for a very little while) were equally terrible. But despite those failures, both Conan and Leno have enjoyed many more years behind one late-night desk or another.

Why? Because they are a safe choice. Because they feel familiar, and apparently, because viewers continue to tolerate it. But can anyone honestly tell me that someone of the caliber of Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Wanda Sykes or Kristin Wiig could not have taken one of these shows by storm? Is the fault of viewers for being so picky about the race and gender of their beloved talking heads, or by the network decision-makers becoming increasingly conservative, so to speak, as competition for the airwaves becomes ever more intense?

Also by Christian: Why Should the Church Care About Marriage?

It’s hard to say, really. But unfortunately so-called “minority” hosts are not given the same pass that a white male is given to fail the first time around. On the part of the networks, it reflects a fear of breaking from tradition. For viewers, it may represent some degree of discomfort for those who enjoyed positions of cultural privilege for so long not to continue to dominate the conversation. What results is a staring match between culture and economics, with either afraid to blink.

The good news is that there are plenty of other platform options for people today who do not fit the mold of the traditional late-night talkshow host. But even many of those continue to be dominated mostly by white men. Yes, there are women and people of color in prominent roles all across the sitcom in daytime talk circuits. But late-night seems to remain a curiously exclusive club into which few others, if any, are still able to break.

I first got to know NPR correspondent John Burnett when he was in Portland doing a story about beer and theology. He was featuring the Beer and Hymns event that we do monthly at First Christian Church in Portland. This time around John has a two-part exposé on evangelical churches in the United States, and in particular, a few of them who have media empires that seem to be immune to the investigations and accountability that so many individuals and organizations in the United States have to the IRS and to the government.

John looked into religious TV networks like Daystar (founded by Marcus and Joni Lamb) that generates tens of millions of dollars a year and operates as a church, according to the IRS code. They sell airtime to other ministries and operate for all intents and purposes like many other media empires. At the same time, they bear few, if any, markers of what we traditionally understand as “church, ” in that they have no worship services, they do not perform weddings, funerals, baptisms and the like.

So what does it matter? Aside from claiming nonprofit status – which means the media company is exempt from paying taxes on its revenue – Churches in particular have extra layers of protection from government oversight with regard to their financial operations.

Related: Destructive Donations?

According to Burnett, in an interview he offered on our Homebrewed Christianity CultureCast, a church “doesn’t have to tell anything to anyone. Churches are the least transparent nonprofits.” He says that, though there used to be staff within the IRS in charge of auditing churches, that position was eliminated several years ago and never was replaced. As such, no church has been audited by the Internal Revenue Service during those years.

During the investigation, says Burnett, “we found a lot of questionable spending that went on and use of donations (for purposes the public doesn’t know about) because the records are not public.” He goes on to say that a significant amount of the private donations sent in by viewers are directed to various “family interests, ” and to supposed ministry-related expenses that were “definitely questionable.”

The Lambs gave money from their church to various colleges and high schools with which their family has connections, and even to his marriage counselors and the nursing home where his father lives. In one case, Marcus Lamb made a sizable donation to an educational institution that, then, offered him an honorary doctorate in television evangelism, a degree track which does not exist.

There also were many donations that Burnett considered “legitimate, ” including donations to causes in Israel, Bangkok and Uganda. These expenses were the type publicized on the TV network, while many others like the ones noted above, are not released to the public. In fact, Daystar sought a court order to seal their business records so that NPR could not have access to them; their request was denied.

Such accounts stand in contrast to the comparatively meticulous transparency of ministries like those of Rev. Billy Graham, whose nonprofit discloses in great detail where all of their donations are used in a document made available to the public. But because of the political influence churches have in Congress, according to Burnett, this is only a voluntary action, not required by law.

Also by Christian: Pope Francis Calls Out the Church

The result: nearly $500, 000 donated to a NASCAR driver by Daystar to have their network logo placed on his car; massive book buys of Joni Lamb’s most recent book to force it up the ranks of bestseller lists; and multiple personal homes, held in the name of the church, which are valued as multi-million-dollar estates.

“There’s nothing illegal about this, ” says Burnett, “(but) if you say that you are a ministry carrying out God’s will on earth, are you good stewards of this money, and are you using it for the best and highest use? If no one is watching, and if in fact your entire board is comprised of family members and your lawyer, there’s really no one to question how you are you using the money.”

I was asked by my friend, Audrey, at the GLAD Alliance (Gay & Lesbian Alliance of Disciples) to respond to the question in the subject line above. For some, the Church is the final bastion in the culture war to preserve the notion held by some of “traditional family.”  For others, marriage is merely a civil contract, in which organized religion should have no part.

I think both are wrong.

Yes, the Church should care about marriage, but not in order to maintain a position of moral authority in the culture. It should care about marriage, whether it involves two people of the same sex or of the opposite sex. I do believe that marriage, specifically, should be separated from the state’s powers to recognize civil unions, and that there should be no legal privileges or rights tied to the ritual of marriage. It should simply be that: an act performed before God and others to make an important statement.

Marriage is covenant: First of all, at the heart of what has become the marital-corporate machine is still a simple but profound covenant – a holy promise – made between two people in love. But there’s more to covenant than that; a true covenant requires commitment from the larger community to help uphold that covenant as well. The marriage ceremony is an opportunity for all to recognize this covenant and to begin holding one another accountable for maintaining it.

Marriage is sacrament: Technically, I believe that a couple doesn’t actually need a wedding ceremony or even a state-recognized civil union to consider themselves “married.” For me, it is a promise made between one another and to God that is deeply personal. But the sacrament part of it is important too, particularly as it ties in to the point above. A sacrament literally means “an outward expression of an inward act.” So it begins with the personal bond forged by the personal covenant, but it is made sacred by the act of marrying before a gathering of peers and loved ones.

Related: The biblical definition of marriage and its relevance to marriage equality

Marriage is celebration: I love the joke about the minister who called in sick one Sunday morning and went to play golf. One hole after another, he hit holes in one. After shooting a miraculous 18 for the whole round, he was sure that God’s hand had blessed his incredible game. And then he realized that, since he had lied about what he was doing that day, he couldn’t tell a soul.

Our joys are exponentially multiplied when shared. And Church, at its best, should be a place where our joys are grown and shared, and our sorrows are borne together and made lighter. There are so few markers in our culture for important rites of passage. We tend too often to operate in relative vacuums, only connecting in transient or superficial ways. The Church provides the opportunity for people everywhere to come together for the purpose of celebrating life in its many forms. In as much as who we choose to marry is one of the most important decisions we ever make, it should be marked and celebrated as such.

As the socio-political landscape around marriage and civil unions continues to shift, there always will be a need in our society for covenant, sacrament and celebration. It’s my hope that, rather than taking particular moral positions that exclude particular groups from taking part, the Church as a whole recognizes it’s important role as servant and steward of these live-giving and truly holy moments in our lives.