Christianity Is For Losers

My latest column for Aleteia. It begins:

“I wouldn’t go to church with my plumber.” The speaker, dressed in a dark two-piece suit, with the aggressive pin-stripes favored by some businessmen, went to a traditionalist Episcopal parish out on Long Island where the average income sails far over the average American’s. I laughed, because I’d heard that line said as part of a joke, and then saw that he was serious. It was an awkward moment.

I understand snobbery. Everyone does, because almost everyone is a snob about something. I don’t understand saying this out loud. A Christian might feel this way, being formed by a social world that thinks skilled laborers inferior to bankers and investors, but those who feel that way should know how they sound when they say so.

Jesus died for the plumber, and if Jesus died for him, you can sit next to him. And like it. Annoyingly, the same thing applies for some of us to sitting next to the man in the pin-striped suit.