A Christmas message to the evangelical church — and the rest of us

I had some rough Christmases as a kid. But when my family moved back in with my grandparents there was one Christmas that seemed magical. I was in the third grade at the time, and I got to have that moment of coming downstairs to see two bikes under the tree — one for my brother and the other for me. I couldn’t even ride a bike at the time, but the possibility was overwhelmingly exciting.  

Those were the days when kids got on their bikes and rode off alone. We lived in Plainfield, New Jersey, which wasn’t necessarily the safest area. I didn’t care. That bike was the symbol of freedom and possibility. I often went off on my own into the middle of town, looking for snacks but with little understanding of how traffic lights worked. One afternoon the inevitable happened: I was hit by a car and thrown from my bike. Someone called an ambulance but I refused to go for fear of getting in trouble, and ran away with blood dripping down my leg, dragging my bike and its bent wheel. I never even told that story to anyone in my family until I was well into my 30s.  

But here’s the point I’m reaching for: That bike was the freedom to make my own choices and explore my limits, even if that meant getting hurt. I would say that even though society has progressed in many ways since that Christmas, we don’t have the same freedom to explore, discover and get hurt. 

The Christmas season is understood as a time of giving, but within the Christian faith and especially the evangelical church, it seems to be about raising millions of dollars. Pastor Robert Jeffress wants his followers to give millions. The American Center for Law and Justice, a right-wing nonprofit, wants millions as well, to fight all the evils they claim are destroying America.  

Evangelical leaders want to spend those millions on attacking women as murderers for simply taking control of their reproductive rights, and on fighting the great scourge of the family-destroying rainbow flag. Evangelicals have managed to weaponize the Christian faith and turn it into a military-style operation. One thing is certain: Those millions won’t go to the poor and the downtrodden of America. They will likely be spent on designer suits, fueling up the private jets and funding media outlets that cater to (or prey on) evangelicals and fundamentalists. And of course that money will also go toward electing Donald Trump.  

Here’s what evangelical leaders do not understand about their congregations, or about those suffering outside of their churches.  The fellowship of evangelical believers has become remarkably diverse, including a great number of migrant families from Asia and Central America. More than half of all evangelical women have had an abortion. Evangelical families are divorcing at a higher rate than do families outside the church. These are people who working hard and continue losing in most aspects of their lives, yet all the evangelical leaders can do, it seems, is raise more millions for culture-war politics and fighting liberal causes.  

To bring it back to my Christmas story, most people within the evangelical fellowship just want a new bike, one that will give them the opportunity to fail, fall, get up and succeed, and explore the limits of their talents and hard work. Currently, America is failing to provide those metaphorical bikes, and evangelical leaders seem completely uninterested in doing anything to help their own people, let alone those outside the church.

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I’d like to propose four simple Christmas lessons for the evangelical church, along with a few New Year’s resolutions, that might put them back on the path toward a more genuine version of Christianity.

1. Family values: Care about families struggling to pay their bills. Stop persecuting LGBTQ people; Jesus never proclaimed you should do anything of the sort.
2. Life and liberty: Fight to protect women from hate crimes, and stand up for equal pay. Stop attacking women for simply trying to control their own bodies.
3. Healing the sick: Fight for health insurance for all. Jesus healed the sick and the destitute.
4. Welcoming the foreigner: Any Christian who embraces the idea that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America should be ashamed. As a poor, homeless migrant himself, Jesus preached clear lessons on this subject.

Lastly, it’s unforgivable for evangelical pastors to manipulate their followers into giving them millions. In the entire ministry of Jesus, neither he nor the disciples who followed him ever once asked for money to support their cause. Paul, the writer of most of the New Testament after the Gospels, supported himself as a tent maker. Jesus was a wandering carpenter without any formal education. He never flew in a private jet or even rode on a camel, as far as we know. He walked, as did Paul, Peter, John and anyone else of great significance found within the Bible,  

Christian leaders should stand with the poor and the downtrodden and should look for every possibility to provide every American with that opportunity I got to explore freedom, failure, success and independence. Everyone deserves that hopeful feeling of a child receiving a bike on Christmas morning, even if he cannot ride it yet.