The Problem with Christian-ish

I moved to Seattle 15 years ago, and I didn’t move alone. It was the early 2000s, the height of the missional church movement. At the time, my new husband, friends and I wouldn’t have bucketed our budding interest in common purse living or co-housing to the cultural era we were living in. But it’s clear looking back that we were influenced by the zeitgeist of intentional community.

We drove a huge truck filled with the still-newlywed belongings of three couples in a caravan across the country. We’d all been living in a Rust Belt town called Muncie, Indiana, and decided to try co-housing in the Pacific Northwest. We drove on I-90 through Omaha, Denver, Jackson Hole, and Twin Falls towards a large craftsman by the Arboretum, where we’d toured on a brief trip and paid first and last month’s rent.

After gas and meals, none of us arrived with much money. Drew and I had enough for groceries, but our last $350 was locked in a savings account for a week before it could be released, some small town Indiana bank precaution. The church paid for the moving truck.

Temporary Blindness

As we drove the truck towards the I-90 floating bridge outside town, Seattle’s local independent radio station KEXP finally came on the dial. I’d streamed KEXP each morning from Muncie for years, and it felt broad and broken free to be listening in true geography.

Just before passing through the long tunnel that runs under the city and emerges downtown, Drew’s eyes were temporarily clouded. “I can’t see,” he said, panicking. I grabbed the wheel as tears streamed down his face.

It felt ominous and unreal: Paul on the road to Emmaus. As Drew’s vision returned, it had just been a minute, the truck emerged from the tunnel into downtown. Our Seattle welcome. Even then, before the decade of lukewarm faith and assimilation into a spiritual but not religious culture took root in my heart, I wondered what we had gained and what had been taken away in the leaving. A portal where something small changes and doesn’t come back.

Me at the Pacific, shortly after moving to Seattle. 

It was the start of a decade when I didn’t tell new friends I was a Christian, because I didn’t know how. John Mark Comer and Mark Sayers talk about the dynamic we experienced throughout their excellent This Cultural Moment podcast: We thought we were going to plant a community and start a house church in Seattle. But quickly, instead of us changing the city, it assimilated us. We had no sea legs.

Maybe like you, I’ve been worrying through the state of the American church. When we moved to Seattle in 2004, we couldn’t have foreseen the coming Trump administration, although the groundwork for his ascent was already being laid in politics and culture.

Now, we watch as some of us have been radicalized by conspiracy theory groups, and my God, it’s breathtakingly sad. Some of us with roots in Evangelicalism will continue to leave the Church, alienated from denominations that have become synonymous with white and Republican. But as any of us who have weathered cultural storms or long seasons of change know, the work of confession, conviction, and reformation is slow. Yet, God-willing, lives are long, and we’re here for it.

Hope Without Wavering

Some of us have distanced ourselves from the word Christian. “I love Jesus, but I can’t call myself a Christian. There’s too much cultural baggage,” some white friends say.

But disassociating with the word Christian is like closing the door before you try to walk through it.

Lately, I’ve seen some folks on social media bonding over their identities as Christian outsiders. In a recent post on the topic, a writer asked readers to raise their hand if they don’t feel at home in the church. One commenter said, “Yeah, that’s me. What do I do?” There was no satisfying answer.

This is a hard season, and it’s ok to commiserate. But in Hebrews 10, we’re reminded to hold firmly to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. If that’s true, Christians are called to move past commiseration towards hope. Hope that is held with lament. Hope that is held while confessing, working, and rebuilding.

For me, the work and rebuilding begins by re-claiming the word Christian.

If you identify as a Christian in your head, I want to gently nudge you to speak those words out loud. Even if it’s just to the air, or to a friend. Because spoken words have power, and for a lot of people in America these days, the word Christian is associated with Jesus 2020 banners at the Capitol Insurrection more than the person of Jesus.

When we only define what we’re estranged from, it’s not enough. In the end, a sort-of Christianity falls flat, and a nostalgic Christianity becomes a memory instead of a generative framework of love and restoration.

I’ve been drawn back to Psalm 118 a few times this week: Give thanks to the Lord. God’s love endures forever. Certainly, God’s love endures while we grapple with a post-Trump reality. God’s love endures as we navigate the repercussions of Christian Nationalism. God’s love endures in the global church. We may be temporarily blinded, but the tunnel has an end. The station will come back on the dial.

Our spiritual heritage is sound and compelling. It is not American or Capitalist. It is not white, Republican, or Democrat. Our faith is built on the first being last. The Christian story, which offers a reformation of the heart, doesn’t need to wait for the reformation of the Church. In fact, without the first, the second can’t come to pass.