When Simon posed the “Are we still a Christian?” question on his Substack page my brain fired in dozens of directions at once and I stopped what I was doing so I could write a reply. I had already considered this question late last year as I spent time trying to understand the relationship between American evangelicals and Donald Trump, and the resulting blogs were posted here:
Have my thoughts developed since? Yes.
Do I agree with Simon? We’ll come to that in due course.
*
Full disclosure: I’m not a fan of labels. I stopped using the title ‘Reverend’ when a group of school governors began apologising to me every time they swore. It was clearly an impediment. ‘Evangelical’ was the next to go for a whole host of reasons that can be summed up thus: both Liberals and Conservatives have called themselves ‘evangelical’ at different moments in history for a laudable reason – they had discerned that the wider church was unconcerned that those outside the faith weren’t being attracted to it. My more recent observation is that the form of evangelicalism that attracted me has become the very thing it set out not to be. A toxic brand.
*
Simon’s excellent post rightly identifies two problems: an obsession with ‘personal’ sin and a simplistic package called ‘salvation’ bear little resemblance to the message of Jesus. Vital theological truths are reduced to a simple transactional formula that rarely produces converts who grow and mature. I also agree with Simon that the Church, as it was designed post-Constantine, had been neutered and appropriated by the same class of people Jesus opposed. The only disagreement I have with Simon up to this point is his dismissal of John’s Gospel as ‘trippy’. John’s Gospel is a work of genius – for reasons I am currently exploring in my own Substack blog.
Simon is also right that it is significant that Jesus did not reject his Jewish heritage. I love his suggestion that “the teaching of Jesus [was] a kind of ‘gene therapy’ for Judaism”. You can’t be a prophet from outside an institution. But Jesus’ followers weren’t schooled as prophets. Rather they were apprenticed and sent out to be ambassadors for the Jesus who was roundly rejected by those who wished to retain their hold on the religious institution. To quote Simon again: “the body politic of Judaism read Jesus as a deadly virus, and activated itself to stamp out the disease”.
Whilst these early followers of Jesus were permitted to attend places of Jewish worship, those who were seeking to model themselves on Jesus’ distinctive teachings called themselves ‘followers of The Way’ with every intention of becoming a new stream within Judaism. They were first named those of The Way in Acts 9, and again by Paul in Acts 22 and 24, which suggests to me that the term ‘Christian’ hadn’t yet been coined. In Acts 24 Paul also refers to them as a Jewish sect twice, which affirms my point.
The title ‘Christian’ may even have been given to followers of Jesus by others – we read in Acts 11 that “the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch”. Today branding is everything, but Jesus never suggested a label he wanted his followers to adopt. The assumption in the early days was that his disciples would carry on worshipping in the Temple and their synagogues, which of course was exactly what happened. They were Jews, and had no need to define themselves differently. Those followers were eventually rejected by the synagogues they attended in the years following Jesus’ death and were forced to start anew.
There were also Gentiles who wanted to follow Jesus which soon became a point of tension. Most of Paul’s letters were written to address the divisive question whether a convert should become a Jew first, and then a fully-fledged follower of Jesus. Paul insisted this was not necessary, but Peter and others thought differently. Paul won the argument and the break between Judaism and The Way was now permanent.
All this really means is that what we call ourselves doesn’t matter. Except that to some people it does. Simon rightly mentions that Christian can be a way of referring to the existence of ‘little Christs’ and, if this was the way the term was understood today, I would not be writing this post.
*
To quote myself in a previous blog post:
“If you are bold enough to allow someone to be a mentor and a guide it seems to me that a minimum requirement is to take what they say and do seriously. The very word ‘Christian’ implies someone is in the camp of ‘Christ’, and yet most of us take the majority of our theology from [misunderstanding] Paul.
Thinking again, maybe Christianity is named rightly since ‘Christ’ is not a surname but a title. It means ‘Messiah’ or ‘Saviour’. So maybe in calling ourselves Christians we are just being honest: yes to being Messiahed, but no to the call to follow Jesus.”
*
Which brings me to my point of departure from the conclusion reached by my good friend who writes of his own ambition to one day be seen by others as a ‘Little Christ’. From this day forward I refuse to use the label ‘Christian’, and maybe for the same reason Simon retains it.
People use labels for many reasons, one of which is to place people or things in groups. Early followers of Jesus gave a different name to themselves whilst they saw themselves as a subset of a larger group of people. When I was a church leader the word meant something significant. Although I am still part of an established Christian denomination I now consider myself free to take a different path.
If you are a follower of Jesus, I don’t care what you call me. But if you are not, I don’t want any label I use to give you a reason for not looking more closely at my life. Nearly everyone I am connected to has, at best, an ambivalent relationship with organised religion. Many of these friends have told me harrowing stories of being disappointed, rejected or abused by Christian churches. The numerous stories of clerical abuse of power and status by individuals in Christian churches of all kinds have filled the news for so long that they seem to have outweighed the many more instances of food banks, excellent community projects and youth work which still go on in villages, towns and cities all across our land.
It is my judgement that, to my friends at least, the label that no longer seems to define me represents all the things they no longer trust. The label no longer defines me, and this fact has induced feelings of cognitive dissonance for quite some time. The latest came just last week when texts written by two prominent world leaders (both known to be self-confessed ‘born again’ Christians) were on display for the world to see:
Pete Hegseth: Godspeed to our warriors
J. D Vance: I will say a prayer for Victory
NOT IN MY NAME.
*
So, in solidarity with those who have been, and are still being, damaged by people in positions of power who define themselves as Christians I no longer wish to use the label. The label ‘Christian’ has become toxic in my opinion.
I am imperfect in so many ways. I am weak, and maybe this decision is simple cowardice. I prefer to think it is the complete opposite. I am trying to live my life according to what I believe to be godly wisdom embodied by Jesus, and Jesus chose to build bridges with people whom the religion of his day were unconcerned about. To my mind the term ‘Christian’ now implies all the wrong things, and has come to represent almost nothing I currently live for. It has become a cultural denotation, the common understanding of which has little to do with the Jesus of the gospels.
Simon wishes to become a Little Christ. I want my life to look like Jesus. There is absolutely no difference between the two sentences and, because we are friends, we are on a journey to achieving our goal together. And for that reason I am thankful.
