The Politics of Jesus Saved Me

I had to be saved by a new perspective of Jesus who wasn’t a Republican.

Jesus saved me.

Well, I guess that needs some clarification.  Jesus didn’t save me from damnation and eternity in Hell, or from sin, or from the misery I wouldn’t know I had by not believing. No, Jesus saved me in a different way. Jesus saved me from the belief that he, God, and Christianity were somehow married to the Republican Party.

Growing up, my faith was not challenging, threatening, or dangerous, and thus uninteresting. My all-white suburban congregation talked about how much God loves them, decorated the Christmas tree during the holidays, and sang happy songs.  We had a smiling, friendly preacher (think Joel Osteen), yet the dominant social systems remained intact. There was no preaching on changing social structures, combating an oppressive economic system, or marching in protests. Never had I heard the word “justice” used in a social—thus prophetic—context.  It was a charitable church, but not a fighting one; a friendly church, but a comfortable one.  So I grew up with the idea that faith, morality, and Jesus were something you only really thought about on Sundays.  (And when I say, “thought,” I mean it, because thinking and belief was the only thing required.  “Doing” was somehow absent from the equation.)  It was so uninspired that my sister and I would play hooky on Sunday school and my mother would have to bribe us with donuts to make us go.

Yet, I was the progeny of some of the most liberal people on the planet.  My mother, a self-proclaimed “Women’s Lib,” Teacher’s Union member, and “recovering Catholic,” grew up with two FDR Democratic parents who both lived through the Great Depression.  My father is an avid conservationist health nut.

However, I also grew up outside of Detroit.  Nearly all my neighbors worked for an auto company and I saw the drastic effect of closed down factories in Michigan.  I understood from an early age how corporate greed and top-down policy affected areas like mine who desperately needed fiscal and communal support.  I saw the differences in living conditions for auto executives and the rest, living in an empty shell of Detroit.

When I was in high school, I rekindled my desire to find myself in the world, and attended Young Life, the youth ministries organization for teenagers.  I went to their camps, bible studies, and retreats and more or less became a Christian. I still held on to my liberal tenants because I was oblivious to other ways of “being” a Christian. This kind of Christianity was fun, and it was all I knew. 

My first few years of college were more problematic. I read liberation theologies while attending Campus Crusade for Christ, and was starting to notice contradictions. Gustavo Gutierrez spoke of our responsibility to live out our faith in this world, where praxis is the method of liberation from oppression.  James Cone related his personal experience as a black person to a Liberator God: one that cares about not only our personal sufferings but also the systemic root of oppression and its evil.  This is not what I heard at Campus Crusade meetings. Our leaders told us to cultivate a personal relationship with Christ. Their concern was to believe enough to get into heaven.

Approaching at this time was the 2004 Presidential Election.  More and more we discussed politics and how, as Christians, we should vote. As these discussions brought us to each other’s political leanings, I realized I was the only Democrat in the group. I remained in Campus Crusade to show my face and prove you could be a Democrat and Christian, but even I hardly believed it. I ended up dropping out and, if Jesus was really part of the Republican ticket, I was not going to use a Christian label anymore.  So I didn’t.  And when Bush was re-elected I distanced myself from that kind of faith even more.

But, my search and struggle for meaning wasn’t over. I still had those liberation theologians in my head, all those Bible verses when Jesus talks about the poor.  So, I kept searching. And I eventually did realize it was okay to love Jesus and be a Democrat, because the values their policies advocate—social programs to help poor people; checks on corruption, greed and power—are the same ones Jesus preached.  We could create the Kingdom of God here on earth, he said.

So, I had to be saved by a new perspective of Jesus who wasn’t a Republican. I also discovered that my faith—in God and in humanity—are simultaneously necessary for the pursuit of the Kingdom.  For me, this is the nature of faith—something so inherently political, social, economic, and personal that God cannot be separated from any part of it.