I’m not going to dignify the CBMW’s Nashville Statement with any kind of point by point response, the whole thing is a tiresome rehash of what evangelicals have been saying about LGBT people for years. I already did a point by point breakdown of the SBC’s anti-trans resolution a few years ago, it basically covers the same things I would say here, so consider that my response to the statement itself. What I’d rather talk about is what evangelicals aren’t issuing joint statements condemning, namely, white nationalism. Their silence in the face of the rising tide of fascism and white nationalism in this country is deafening.
Nazis, literal Nazis, not just the figurative kind, have been marching in the streets of American cities. Blood has been shed in service of the god of white supremacy. Our president is a white nationalist. The country is facing a moral crisis over fascism and white supremacy. If ever there was a time for the American Church to show moral leadership, it’s now, but where are evangelical leaders? Writing yet another statement to make sure none of us forget much they believe God hates LGBT people.
When American Evangelicals believe something is a salvation issue, which they believe that being LGBT or showing support for LGBT people is, they’re quick to issue condemnation after condemnation. The lack of any kind of joint statement condemning the rise of fascist white nationalism in this country makes it perfectly clear where American Evangelicalism stands. If they believed that racism was a salvation issue, they’d be quick to issue a declaration saying so, but instead they continue to tolerate unabashed white nationalists in their midst and refuse to do church discipline against racism. Rather, they spent this weekend in Nashville writing up another condemnation of LGBT people at virtually the same time Nazis marched in the streets in Berkeley.
American Evangelicalism is morally bankrupt. That’s really all there is to say. Faced with the most important moral issue of their generation they are following the same path of complicity and capitulation to fascism and white supremacy as the German Church did 75 years ago. American Evangelicalism is complicit with the rise of fascism and white nationalism because they cared more about Supreme Court justices than they did about Justice.
It is time for collective repentance and then collective action to undo what their complicity has wrought. Until then, American Evangelicalism is a deeply immoral enterprise that must be condemned and resisted at every point.
“But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.”
Matthew 23:13-15
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