The church then and today: the need to exclude defines us

Saturday was Sicily. We wandered in the small villages that Francis Ford Coppola inadvertently made famous by filming parts of The Godfather movie series in them.

We were making our way to a church where one of the scenes was filmed.  Along the way, we saw this arch. The guide told us that we now looked upon the remains of the Jewish synagogue. Before the 14th century, there was a thriving Jewish component to the village life here.

And then, fueled by the infamous Spanish Inquisition, pograms and persecutions began. The Roman Catholic inquisitors tortured and/or killed any Jews who would not convert.

That marked the end of any Jewish population in this beautiful place. The churches still stand; the synagogue lies in ruins.

I pulled out my camera. My part-Jewish husband said, “Let’s put a Jew in this one.”

So there he is, a tribute to the part of his family, all from Poland, some of whom also had to renounce their Judaism in order to survive. His grandmother’s maiden name is Feinstein. However, my husband’s father always thought his mother’s maiden name was Smolenski because that is how he was brought up.

Smolenski was the name of the worker on my husband’s great-grandfather’s farm. This great-grandfather was an openly Jewish man living in Poland. He raised horses for the Russian army.

At the time all of Gene’s grandparents decided to come to the US, around 1900, our nation did not permit Jews to emigrate. Our long-established stance: the preference that Jews die rather than be offered open doors.

So, suddenly, this Jewish Feinstein woman became the more “immigrant-friendly” Smolenski and was never able to practice her faith again.

The Christian church has historically stood solidly on the side of “let’s kill the Jews.” Proponents of that stance had absolute surety they were right.

Why? “The Bible told them so.”

Now, I don’t want to isolate the Roman Catholics here. The Muslim extremists are doing the same thing: Kill the infidels because “The Quran told me so.”

I’ve heard recently that even the Hindus, normally peaceful persons, have decided killing some of their neighbor Muslims is also a good idea.

Again, I am out of the country. So I don’t really know everything that is going on and am reading only a little.

But apparently, the newly formed Wesleyan Covenant Association, full of “The Bible told me so” folks, have loudly proclaimed their “We and only we are are right” orthodoxy.

You want to be one of them, one of those with whom they will stay in covenantal relationship? Then renounce your affiliation or sympathy with organizations that think those who are gay, lesbian, etc. should be offered full inclusion in the life of the church.

It’s OK for “them” to come in if they convert to a different way of thinking. Kind of like, “don’t be Jewish (gay, etc.) any more or we will kill you.” Many of us on the outside also assume this means that if a gay/lesbian/trans, etc. child is born to a covenantal member of the WCA, the WCA member will have to disavow relationship with the child. That’s what the life of “I know I am right” purity demands.

In one of the churches we visited, I saw this small, broken angel statue leaning against a side altar. It seems the perfect image of God’s weariness with people who refuse to live out of our responsibility to be blessing and wholeness, not curse and condemnation, to the world.

In my retirement journey, I find myself most of the time in the secular world, very far out of the Christian bubble where I spent almost all my adult life.

People “out here” care about the world. However, much of evangelicalism, which is the basic belief structure underlying things like the Wesleyan Covenant Association and the “let’s purify the doctrine of the UMC” Good News folk, make no sense.

An inerrant Bible that discloses some rigid, unchanging scientific fact about human sexuality and a six-day creation? Give me a break. It’s utterly ridiculous and they know it.

But the idea of grace and forgiveness? Oh yes.

The hope of blessing? Please, yes.

The understanding that humans have a responsibility to be healers of the world? Absolutely yes.

The inclusion of the wide tent of God’s love? Do people really question this?

Well, yes, many do. Those who are sure they are both right and righteous operate from a theology of exclusion. That, by the way, is the base of their unwavering support of the Despicable Donald, serial female molester and white male supremacist, for POTUS. 

They scare me profoundly. And they should scare you. Years ago, I predicted, “The Inquisition Cometh” as the far right of the UMC began to take on more power and move toward schism and the ownership of most of the UMC assets.

I was more right than I hoped to be.