This Zach Malm BlueSky post might strike some of you as an offensive appropriation of women’s actual pain right now.
But I there’s a deep theological/social point being made that is worth unpacking.

I don’t know Zach…but this little post sent me down a rabbit hole of things that Jesus’ Church really needs to hear, right now.

The MAGA-GOP really is saying “my choice” to the autonomy of actual women.
But theologically they also say “my choice” to “the Body of Christ.”
The two are, horrifically, interconnected.

One is the actions of actual human men toward human women, demanding an ownership of actual women’s bodily autonomy.
The other is a prior “theological ownership” over Jesus….demanding the control of the Body of Christ.

This kind of “ownership” narrative, of course, has roots in White Supremacy in the White Church.
For it to flourish, it needs the acquiescence of a Church that won’t fight back, but instead blesses a nationalistic Christian witness. A theology that denies Jesus’ true message of equality.

It’s slaveholders who once said “my choice” to their enslaved persons, and created a “Slave Bible” that stripped out all freedom narratives.
It’s misogynistic theologians, creating false hierarchies of human reasoning and human worth that (conveniently) subjugate Women by always placing “Men” just lower than “God.”
It’s homophobic theology that willingly and intentionally misreads “the clobber passages” to suit their desire to control our dear Queer friends.
It’s xenophobic theology that reads right past God’s demand that we “treat the immigrant as the foreign born…” (Because: “You were once an immigrant.”)



The final, damaging harm of this theology (in all the above forms, and many more) is that it actively gives permission to anyone who wants to hate others.


It gives humans “moral license” to act on these beliefs in the form of actual hate toward actual human beings in the actual real world; all the while, somehow convincing themselves of their moral rightness…not because they are worshipping a God who made them in God’s image, but because they love the narcissistic god they have created in their own.

Which gets me back to a story Rev. Roy Moore tells about preaches who nervously started calling him during the time of Trump. To me, it’s the perfect illustration of what I am saying.

Roy Moore says preachers (mostly Baptist) who had all preached on “The Sermon On the Mount,” started calling him. Specfically, ones who’d preached on Jesus’ line “Blessed Are the Peacemakers.”

In once instance, a church member came up to a preacher after this sermon and demanded to know:
“Preacher…where did you get that liberal talking point about ‘Blessed Are the Peacemakers’?!””

To which, the preacher gently replied, “These are the actual words of Jesus.”

To which the member then replied, “Well…that just won’t work any more.”

You see?

 There it is.
A church that says “This just doesn’t work any more” is Christian Nationalism saying to Jesus: 

“Too bad, Jesus, your body, my choice.”

My point this morning is: The blatant disregard of autonomy inside the phrase, “Your body, my choice,” didn’t just fall out of the sky.


It comes from those who CREATE it: A Christian Nationalist faith that is doing the same thing to Jesus that they also intend to do the poor, queer folks, black people, immigrants.



And therefore…
It’s not an accident that the offensive messages sent to Black people about slavery came right on Election Day.


It’s not an accident that real-world women friends of mine are RIGHT NOW being harassed online by trolling men saying SHOCKING things to them.
None of this is an ACCIDENT. 

All of this the plan of MAGA to turn us against each other. To inspire fear in anyone who would support these marginalized groups.



In coming months, I plan to push back hard with a concept Ezra Klein helped gave me, years ago: “All politics is identity politics.”

When we describe certain politics as “Woke,” we (all of us) conveniently fail to name all the “identities.”
We only name the ones lifted up by the Political Left.

What we as a culture allow to slip by is:
MAGA is also an identity.

Whiteness is an identity.

Christian Nationalism is an identity.



No one on “Team MAGA” has erased their identities.

Quite the opposite.

In point of fact, they lean-in hard to identities they believe, ahem, Trump all others.

We are about to enter the Christmas season, where the theology of Incarnation is centered (at least, in some churches).

I have long been convinced that our world needs a more fulsome embrace of “Incarnational Theology” (Connected to Christmas) and a clear rejection of “Atonement Theology” (Connected to Easter).

Jesus’ incarnation message challenge us to see God in all humans…in all the richness of our all human identities…not as we want them to be, but as they are. It’s a radical “spiritual wokeness” that demands “incarnationally seeing” God in all human beings, “just as they are.”

Atonement theologies, IMHO, help perpetuate, and even bless, theologies of hidden violence that then manifest in actual violence in the actual world.

Theologian Rebecca Ann Parker noted this years ago, in a dense few sentences that says it better than I can. She begins by talking of Jesus’ actual method of death (state violence) and how it becomes reframed by atonement theologies, over the centuries:

“Atonement theology takes an act of state violence and redefines it as intimate violence, a private spiritual transaction between God the Father and God the Son. Atonement theology then says this intimate violence saves life. This redefinition replaces state violence with intimate violence and makes intimate violence holy and salvific. Intimate violence ends sin. Behind the holy mask of intimate violence, state violence disappears.”



There’s a lot there to unpack there. But what she’s saying is: This is a deeply sick synergy.



My sense? The harm flows both ways…

Ever since Constantine, power hungry humans have sought the theological blessing of the Church, and used that blessing in Imperial plans to oppress people.
But! The Church (at least, many parts of it) happily grants that blessing! The Church lends its theology of atonement TO the state…as a spiritual blessing for actual human violence in the real world.

The “holy mask” of atonement theology helps hide how it gives “moral license” for violence in the world.
As I like to say, it’s “Constantine’s greatest trick,” and it’s still being used today.

Let me end by saying it in my own words:

Jesus came to END the cult of sacrifice, by rejecting it. (His resurrection is that rejection).
Jesus rejects both the religous/theological cult (from Jewish tradition) AND the imperial/state cult (in his day, human crucifixion).

Jesus’ entire earthly mission was to reject this with a powerful demand that Incarnational theology places on every human being… to see every human identity…every human being…as little pieces of God. To see other “tribes” as part of ours. To see “enemies” as our neighbors.

It’s all about a new way of seeing that demands a new way of treating everyone, as if they are little bits of God (which, they are…).

But both the early church (even in the Bible itself) and certainly all Empires that later coopted it (including our own), rejected this expansive view of God, this challenging view of humanity, and iinstead pushed theologies of atonement they saw as useful.

“Your body, my choice” —applied to actual women, and to Jesus— is a horrible extension of all of this in our modern world. And Jesus’ Church really needs to come to terms with this, right now.

And I am deeply afraid that we’re about to see a lot more of all of this.

Be safe, everyone.

Safe as you can “in such a time as this.
”

Many of us stand as allies with you, and support your continuing fight for your bodily autonomy against those who seek to erase you.
And we will stand alongside you in any fight that is yet to come.

God says: You are loved, just as you are.
And nobody owns your God-given body, but you.