While my invitation to join this national campaign was about 5 minutes long, the police who were present (numbering about 15) were allowed to speak for as long as they wanted. And they took every minute of it. There were a lot of things spoken during their time, but I noticed some repeated themes.

One was that we need to be afraid of younger people in our communities because they have access to weapons and they are doing tremendous harm. Adopting this view of young people means we view young people with suspicion and distrust; an outside force intending harm. Thus, our natural inclination is to hunker down and protect ourselves.

Taking a posture of self-protection gives way to the next theme conveyed which was that the church has all of the answers the youth are looking for. Several leaders of the police pointed to their own lives as examples that when youth go to church, as they did, they do not participate in harming other people. The church is where youth should be. Of course, this evoked LOTS of amens.

So, the final theme? The answer to drugs and violence in the streets is obvious – we just need to get young people into the church! Voia! Everything will be solved! Not only does this make sense, this feels so good to those of us who are in vocational ministry. This is music to our ears. Yes! Just get them into our domain, our sphere of influence, the place where we are in control, and we can take it from there!

Here is the problem though. This is a 20th Century missiology for a 21st Century audience. This approach (sometimes) worked in the 1940s and 50s when the church was often the spiritual and social hub of smaller, rural communities. However, as the US became urbanized from the 50s and 60s on, the church simply became less important in peoples’ lives. Further, as the church either refused to lead on important social and political issues or even took the side of injustice such as promoting segregation and a war based on lies, the church became increasingly irrelevant.

For all mainline denominations and evangelical churches too, people are not only leaving the church in droves, people are leaving Christianity entirely. Denominations and evangelical churches have proven themselves inept at finding creative ways to better communicate their message of redemption or to innovatively find new societal positions to occupy that carry any meaningful roles.

Reflecting on this meeting recently, I would argue that the police are also increasingly becoming irrelevant. DC police are struggling to recruit new members to their force even though they regularly are applauded by politicians and faith leaders alike. More and more communities are developing volunteer associations to meet community needs and local communities are turning to their own leadership to settle disputes through conflict-mediation because they are recognizing that involving the police most often leads to more violence and a lack of resolution.

Further, for both churches and local police, their reputations have taken hard hits in recent years. Years of police brutality have finally gained public attention and uncovered widespread church trauma and sexual abuse by church leaders and the denominations that shielded them from accountability have rightly shown their respective mottos of “protect and serve” and “Jesus loves you” to be too full of hypocrisy to be believed.

When institutions find themselves increasingly irrelevant, they often find safe haven in banding together and protecting one another. Irrelevance attracts irrelevance. And while that may work for those whose identity is defined by one of those irrelevant institutions, it does not do much for addressing important issues before us like a broken, retributive criminal justice system not designed to meet the needs of those who use drugs. And the first thing we should realize is that not all people who use drugs abuse drugs so to criminalize all drugs and all people who use drugs only deepens poverty and marginalization.

Simply put, institutions struggling for relevance are not who we should turn to to find innovative solutions to long-standing problems. And the best part of this is that in turning to other sources for needed solutions, such as impacted community members, struggling institutions can find new meaning and relevance in partnering and following the lead of truly innovative thinkers and actors.

Rather than prop up old, dying institutions, it is time for the church to look for creative answers and partners. The answer is not to get people into the church. The answer is to get the church into the street; listening, following, serving, and seeing all people not with suspicion, but rather, as made in the image of God. Renewal – and relevance – lies within.

In Michael Katz’s book, The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare, Katz historically locates the first time the categories of “deserving” and “undeserving” poor in the mid-nineteenth century. It was not a coincidence that this was at the same time as the rise of the industrial revolution when there was an increasing chasm between the rich and the poor in the United States. 

In 1821, when Massachusetts Speaker of the House Josiah Quincy gave a report on the “poor laws” he suggested that the poor be divided into “two classes . . . the impotent poor; in which denomination are included all who are wholly incapable of work, through old age, infancy, sickness or corporeal ability . . . [and in the second category] the able poor . . . all who are capable of work, of some nature, or other; but differing in the degree of their capacity, and in the kind of work in which they are capable.” (p. 12)

Unfortunately, like so many dehumanizing policies enacted into law, this unholy separation has its roots in Christian theology. Though the vast majority of passages in Scripture make no distinction between “deserving” and “undeserving” poor (the exceptions being in the Wisdom literature, which, not ironically, was written during the height of Israel’s power), many current missional approaches in local churches today are often based on viewing the problem of poverty or oppression as the problems of the poor and oppressed themselves. When the problem is not injustice, but rather, the level of morality of the poor themselves, then creating a segmentation of who is eligible for help makes sense. 

The problem is, of course, our reason is not based on even a cursory interpretation of Scripture. Thus, precious little attention is given to discussing the biblical roots of poverty and oppression and with scant attention paid, it is no wonder that there is little corresponding missional activity addressing systemic injustice. We help those we deem to be “deserving” and we judge those deemed to be “undeserving” to be outside our ability or interest to aid. And we falsely claim faithful stewardship of our resources for the reasons why we do not care for the undeserving poor. 

A more honest assessment of why we do not help the “undeserving” poor is a failure to properly exegete the Bible. 

And while the church has done precious little work in contextualizing our missional approach to addressing the roots of injustice and oppression, the work of contextualizing the categorization of deserving and undeserving is done daily, almost without thinking. Consider, for example: 

• DREAMers, or migrants brought to the United States as children, are deemed “good” immigrants because they were brought to the US through “no choice of their own,” which is a common refrain that carries with it the implication that migrants who travel to this country who are older are to be blamed for their migration even though most who sojourn here do so as a result of economic and environmental devastations (many of which are directly related to US foreign, economic, or environmental policies),
• Even though there is widespread agreement that our prison population – which is the largest in the world – is far too large and far too many people are imprisoned for either crimes they did not commit or are incarcerated for far too long for minor offenses, there is, at present, only bipartisan agreement on what is called “compassionate release,” which is designated only for deathly-sick and elderly prisoners. The elderly and sick are the “good” prisoners while hundreds of thousands of others are dismissed from consideration for being released, even though they have served sentences for years beyond what can reasonably be justified. 

On and on it goes. Rather than viewing all people as created in the image of God and doing whatever we can to ensure peoples’ dignity and rights are protected, the church has allowed and even perpetuated the blessing of categorizing people into groups of worth whereby some are deemed beyond help. To claim God’s unconditional love and grace while at the same time placing rigid conditions on people living on the margins is to render our claims null and void for in as much as we have done it to the least of these, we have done it to Jesus. 

If every follower of Jesus applied God’s unconditional love for all of Creation to our various forms of missional engagement, Speaker McCarthy’s gambit to attach work requirements to people already experiencing marginalization would be dead on arrival. But it is not only a viable proposal, it is likely.

There are and will continue to be political debates about President Biden’s decision to pull US troops out of Afghanistan at this particular point in time, but what is shocking is how little reflection there is on why we invaded Afghanistan in the first place, either by our political and military leaders or even among leaders in the church. It is intriguing to hear so many people question the timing of pulling out of Afghanistan when I know so few of these same folks who questioned our initial invasion. The truth is we will only continue to invade countries, stay for decades, and then act shocked when we suddenly leave those countries in a complete mess unless we first reflect on why we were there in the first place and what is driving us to determine what is best for other nations. 

With Afghanistan, we were originally told we were going in to get Osama bin Laden because he attacked the U.S. on 9/11. That sounded reasonable, though it was a full 9 years later under a completely different administration when bin Laden was assassinated. And since 2011, when bin Laden was killed and the Al Qaeda networks were largely disrupted, we were told U.S. troops were needed to remain in order to build up a stable and strong Afghanistan. Now, in all of ten days, all of those years of creating a stable and strong Afghanistan were dashed. I can’t say I am surprised. 

I learned early on that our presence in Afghanistan was doomed to fail through a mission trip I led with some college students from Baylor University to Atlanta in the Spring of 2002. During that trip, we had dinner one evening in the home of a family who had recently arrived from Afghanistan. The son translated for his father as he told us their story.

Essentially, they were a Christian family who was persecuted for their faith by their government, fled to other countries to escape, experienced persecution in those countries as well, and eventually, after many years, were allowed to come to the United States. Because of the persecution the father experienced through beatings, he was unable to work. This created hardship for the family financially and in their marriage as the mother had to become their primary breadwinner. You could hear the pain in the father’s voice: the pain of him losing his status and especially the pain of him losing the country and culture he loved so much. 

All the while we listened, CNN was playing in the background showing U.S. helicopters and tanks and troops moving across the Afghan terrain, taking over this man’s country. It was eerie, but there was some slight solace in the Taliban government—who had persecuted this man for his faith—now being displaced by the U.S. and what was then called the Northern Alliance.

The Northern Alliance was made up of various Afghan non-Taliban factions, with the former pre-Taliban government, the Mujahadeen, being primary. So, one of us asked the man how he felt seeing the government that had persecuted him now being thrown out of power. The father told us that the government that had persecuted him was not the Taliban government, it had been the Mujahadeen government—the very same forces our country were escorting back into power. Naturally, we were absolutely stunned.

READ: With Red and Blue Fingerprints on Afghanistan Horror, a Call to Grieve

I will never forget that night. It was the words of a refugee father, an Afghan Christian, persecuted by the people the U.S. had decided to aid, that radicalized us against the Afghan invasion and later, the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq. Few were questioning the wisdom of the invasion of Afghanistan at that time just as few are doing any serious reflection today on why we were there in the first place. Few seem to be asking what are the implications of the violence we have helped perpetuate on that country and their culture. 

We invade. We occupy. We leave. Things fall apart. Rinse and repeat. 

Now, the media and U.S. political leaders are saying we should feel bad for Afghan refugees and welcome some of them into our country. They are wrong. We should certainly feel horrible (isn’t that a part of repentance?) and make space for as many of them who want to come. We owe them as much due to the recklessness and short-sightedness of our policies and actions over the last 20 years. The number of refugees could easily go into the tens of thousands. Bring them all. If this end to our occupation of Afghanistan is like any of the other historical calamities that the U.S. has caused, we will never truly live up to what we promised when we invaded: an American tradition. 

But our hospitality should not flow out of pity for the people of the country we ravaged and colonized for the past twenty years. Our hospitality must flow out of the reflection, acknowledgment of past corporate sin, lament for that sin, and honest repentance for policies that were clearly based on vindictiveness, cultural ignorance, and racism. We are all complicit. We are all guilty. We never should have invaded. We never should have occupied. 

Our refusal to learn about the history of Afghanistan and to at least know more about the Mujahadeen with whom we partnered to remove the Taliban before we took over the country was beyond detrimental. Afghanistan has a long and proud history of resisting change from outsiders, which is common among most counties to be honest. We should remember that the next time we opt for invasion and occupation. And yes, there most definitely be a next time. 

President Bush’s insistence that Afghanistan would become a U.S.-style democracy begs the question: Why do we assume other countries and cultures want what we have, which, if we are honest, is a proclaimed idea of democracy (an idea not widely experienced by most of our residents as can be seen with the plethora of anti-voting rights bills sweeping through state capitals right now). President Bush’s continued pleas even today for keeping a military presence in Afghanistan reflect his lack of understanding of how cultures change. 

It is true that faith communities throughout the United States will rise up and welcome resettled Afghani refugees, and that is a good thing. This is what faith communities do best. But our hospitality, if not matched by passionate advocacy for an accounting of the horrific and racist policies started by President Bush and continued under Presidents Obama and Trump, will be something of a hollow effort. I have never met a refugee who actually wanted to be a refugee. They fled their home countries not out of joy, but out of sheer terror, without knowing where they would end up. 

We should demand a political, economic, and spiritual accounting for how all of us created such suffering and violence in Afghanistan (and we should quickly move to Iraq while we are at it). This knowledge should lead us to lament the terrible damage we have caused, and this should then shape how we move forward. The U.S. cannot save Afghanistan. The U.S. cannot even save itself outside of honesty, lament, and repentance. And let that work begin with the House of God. 

But here is the challenge that I rarely see addressed by my friends or the mission organizations they serve with. They are often serving in countries where Christians are often persecuted, and much of the time, especially recently, persecution is resulting from a dangerous and pervasive form of nationalism. Nationalism is not always harmful. Nationalism can be unifying such as when a country does well in the Olympics or World Cup, or when a tragedy strikes and the nation largely pulls together to mutually support one another. But in the past decade or more, as a backlash to increasing globalization, a very dangerous kind of nationalism has set in; one that does not just lift up a perceived national identity, but goes further and identifies those who do not fit the very narrow defined nationality as “others” or enemies. 

We have seen this in India where, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, they have turned their backs on a secular and inclusive constitution that began their country, and have instead embraced Hindu supremacy with violent attacks against religious minorities. 

Nationalism is often seen in harsh anti-immigrant policies in such places as Hungary under the leadership of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Nationalism is also seen in the bizarre belief in the super-human qualities of being a member of that country’s nationality, such that they do not need to pay attention to science. This is seen right now in Brazil under President Jair Bolsonaro where, in the face of the uncontrolled spread of COVID, Bolsonaro has repeatedly lied about the pandemic to such an extent that some are accusing him of wanting to spread COVID for his own twisted political gain. 

READ: Missions: Is it Love or Colonization?

I have evangelical Christian missionary friends who have served or are serving in all of these places and other places as well. And, for the most part, these faithful missionaries want nothing to do with any form of political engagement since they are more focused on evangelism and discipleship. And they are – mostly – right to steer clear of direct advocacy in the countries they serve because of the damaging history of western missionaries’ political, economic, and even military intrusion into the affairs in other cultures.

However, where my friends and many other evangelical Christian missionaries go wrong is in their complete abdication of political engagement in their interactions with their mostly evangelical missionary funders back home in the States. All of the countries I mentioned – India, Brazil, Hungary, and so many more – have been heavily influenced by Trump-inspired nationalism that has spread like a plague, as dangerous as COVID. trump’s nationalism included all of which I described under the other leaders – anti-immigrant policies and hatred, a rejection of science, and a fusion of allegiance to the country which is intimately tied to cult-like allegiance to the leader. 

What is most ironic is that nationalism is not spread in a vacuum. Nationalism breeds nationalism. So, the trump-supporting, America-first, evangelical, Christian nationalist that gives money to evangelical Christian missionaries to do evangelism and discipleship in foreign lands – often out of the principle that they do not want to support missions that engage in any sort of politics – is at the same time supporting a political ideology that is doing such damage both domestically and in the foreign policy of the United States, that it is hurting the ministry of the missionary they are financially and prayerfully supporting. 

The missionary, serving nationals who are faced with persecution because of the pervasive spread of nationalism that is drastically limiting the evangelism and discipleship work they engage in safely, is in danger of becoming ineffective or even removed altogether from the country they serve and the people they love. 

Thus, what I have strongly urged my evangelical Christian missionary friends serving in other countries to do is to lovingly and strongly confront the nationalism of their supporters. I know this is challenging. Some funders, when confronted with their possible idolatry, could very well choose their idol over their call to support and spread the gospel. Funds will be lost. But unless funders are lovingly yet forcefully shown that support for nationalism at home directly impacts the effectiveness of their ministry in other countries, my missionary friends will be like the one who pushes the boulder up a giant hill, receiving help from their friends, all the while those same friends are funding excavators to add dirt to the top of the hill. The hill eventually becomes impossible to climb.