Five Years On: I’ll Never Forget What the Church Did (and Didn’t Do) That Summer

Ceremony at my hospital in 2021, honoring healthcare workers and those who lost their lives to Covid. Of the 8000+ origami butterflies, pink represents healthcare workers and blue represents all those who died of Covid.

Our current headlines bring me back to the anxiety of 2020.

I work on the frontlines. I can’t forget what I saw. I won’t.

The American church surrendering to Tr*mpism and nationalism: all of its horrific consequences. I’ll never get over it.

When far-right ideology coiled inextricably with the evangelical church, what may have started as tweets and rhetoric gained claws and fangs—and one of the resulting casualties is the successful destruction of healthcare's response to the pandemic. And this, I can never forget. I was there. We saw the unraveling.

I am still convinced the American evangelical church could have ended the pandemic in a single summer and cut hate crimes by half, if they had stood fully in their morality and integrity.

They did not.

If even half the American church cared to push back against the chaos we are seeing in our country, to truly care for the Constitution as much as they claim, I am convinced we would see real tangible contribution instead of vapid condemnation and the catering to fanbase and the enabling of authoritarian harm.

They will not.

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I was on the frontlines during the delta variant in 2021.

I will never forget visiting death upon death, as conspiracy theorists fueled by far right evangelicalism refused to mask or vax, abused healthcare workers, accusing us of causing the pandemic, told us we were doing nothing, demanded solutions they refused.

The applause for healthcare workers in 2020 became violence in 2021.

I am still not over the American church of 2020 forfeiting compassion for conspiracy and ignoring solidarity with Black lives and POC—but instead yelling “election fraud” and clutching the pearl of “My freedom.” I am not over the church withholding comfort for pandemic anxiety, instead hijacking the pulpit for diatribes, anti-science disinformation, Tr*mpist apologia, anti-woke panic, and co-signing “Chinavirus” directly influencing hundreds of anti-Asian hate crimes.

I’m not over it—and it’s not over.

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When my then one year old daughter got Covid in January of 2021, I was told “kids die everyday,” “it's just God and nature,” and that it was my fault. Most of these comments were from evangelicals with “husband/father” in their profiles. The self-proclaimed pro-life.

I was told by the church that Covid was a distraction, but also a hoax, but also a form of control, all while nearly 15 million died from Covid in 2020-2021, which includes 845,049 Americans.

The church looked to Tr*mp as their pastor and medical advisor. He could have easily branded M*GA masks and sold them as protection from surveillance. The “businessman” would not. He instead cut off international medical communities and recommended unsafe treatments and repeated, “It's going to go away” (in 2020 alone he said this on: 2/10, 316, 3/11, 4/29, 517, 6/15, 6/23, 85, 9/10, 10/10, to name a few, as tens of thousands died).

The golden calf in a red tie became pseudo doctor, scientist, prophet, harbinger, cult leader.

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I cannot overlook the hypocrisy of the American church and how they continue to sour the fiefdom of Christianity that repeatedly harms immigrants, refugees, the elderly, the sick, trans individuals, the imprisoned, Black, Asian, Indigenous, Latine, Jewish, and Muslim communities. It continues to perpetuate harm against Palestine, Sudan, Lebanon, Congo, Haiti, and too many more.

I cannot overlook the hypocrisy of “pro-life” at birth, but disinterest in their mothers and in babies born into the world,

and pro-life for death row inmates who have been proven innocent of their crimes,

and pro-life for those with mental health afflictions, those with addictions, who need subsidized treatment,

and pro-life for every de*d child k*lled in a school by a weapon that seems designed solely for that very purpose

and pro-life for American citizens illegally disappeared overnight—too similar to how Jesus was disappeared and erased by mock trial.

I cannot overlook how far-right extremism and anti-woke brainwash became so pervasive that Russell Moore, editor of Christianity Today, embarrassingly opined that congregants kept getting upset at pastors quoting the Sermon on the Mount and phrases like “turn the other cheek,” accusing them of making “liberal talking points” and being “weak.”

In other words, evangelicals became so anti-woke that Jesus was crushed under the mob, again.

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The church could have pushed to end gen*cide, to further education, support mental health, and respected our healthcare workers and scientists.

But they largely pushed what they were against, to play on the bigoted fears of congregants and construct a dogmatic tower sealed by dog whistle buzzwords and supremacist passwords, an isolated penthouse that only preserved insiders and drew swords at perceived outsiders, offering hope in exchange for self-erasure and annihilating those “not like me.”

Twenty years ago I had only found God because of a small church that I visited that continually welcomed me. It wasn't because of any academic argument or apologetic. It was because I found God in the people.

I shudder to think now: What if I was searching today, the same atheist that I was twenty years ago, and I walked into an American church? What are the chances I would find God in the church now?

The problem is that I can no longer tell the difference between a conservative politician and an American Christian. We were told we came from sh*tholes, and from islands made of garbage, and from a land of spies. And the message from either the pulpit or from FOX News was the same. Jesus was not welcome, and I was not either.

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No, I do not believe that every evangelical is malicious.

Only that many of them are deceived. I don't for a second consider myself superior. My grief is that in their view, I am considered less.

I do see the appeal of Tr*mpism. I see how so many people, such as my father and so much of my family, were looking for a different sort of politician, one less polished, more plain, one seemingly “of” the people. That's a real need.

I see how Democrats and so much of liberalism has failed us. I see how Tr*mpism appears to look down-to-earth, blue collar, populist, against the grain, evoking golden age, the good old days, good old boys, draining the swamp, overthrow deep state, keep us from *them,* send *them* back, we need a purity test—and this appeals to a primal reptilian fear, to keep our streets and backyards safe, and I can almost understand.

We were sold safety, but at the cost of those who wouldn't buy what was being sold.

Here it is: If your politics are built on dehumanization, then that does not allow anyone to disagree at all. We cannot agree to disagree if my right to disagree has been revoked by un-humanizing. And if your disagreement leads to violent insurrections on a national stage and bursts of insurrections across the street from deceived and fearful neighbors who see everyone *else* as a threat—this is not rhetoric, but it is the very riots you had claimed to fear from the “other side.”

And the natural end result of far-right evangelicalism is not merely disagreement. But it is dangerous. Harmful. Fatal.

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I heard recently comedian Josh Johnson, speaking on abuse by the church, say,

“Nothing that is said by anyone in the church has filled the void that the church has created.”

And, “This is supposed to be a place where you lay down every burden, not pick up extra.” And, “What is the truth taught by a liar?”

Josh Johnson, October 22nd 2024

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Still—I am grateful to the remnant who cared for these wounded.

For the healthcare workers, therapists, and clergy over the last four years who have placed compassion over conspiracy.

For those of us whose faith moved us to the rubble, to open hands, to each other.

But for me, the wound is still deep. I grieve the vision of what I knew the church could be and hardly was. I grieve knowing maybe this was how many churches really were. I grieve the many leaders who I admired and who were deceived. I grieve both my optimism and complicity.

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I am a hospital chaplain who sees death and dying around the clock. I have been at hundreds if not thousands of deathbeds.

So my faith and theology have little room for internet-level discourse. Even less for far-right vitriol. My patients and I see the TV overhead and can only laugh, sigh, shake our heads.

The American church is distant to me and my patients; the rhetoric lives outside real life, outside reality. On its face, it is absurd, having conversations that do not matter, but they matter only because of the harm they cause. I see it for what it really is. I know that many of us do, too.

I only want what matters in the end.

What will sustain you and me, to have built a life that matters?

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I must say again:

If your theology doesn't work for the suffering, it doesn't work at all. If it doesn't matter at the end, it doesn't matter now.

The posturing, hatred, exclusion, semantics, debating, hierarchy: none of that was it.

If your theology doesn't see the back row, it will not see us into anything better.

I see now a steeple but to me this only means dogma, not a place for the people.

My vote, my heart and hands and bare feet, will always be back for the back row.

Where Christ is.

Under rubble, in the dirt, with the hurt.

— J.S.

To see ourselves as we want to be, we must see history as it really is.