Things I have actually heard church folks say — which communicate the opposite of committing themselves and their churches to creating a safe, welcoming, and healing space in a world in which many folks experience hostility against themselves:1. Not my problem.
2. None of my business — it's a family matter, we can't get involved.
3. We don't take sides.
4. Churches are above politics — we preach only Christ.
5. Our job's to bring everyone to the table, not take sides.
6. Taking sides and becoming political will be divisive.
Meanwhile, while churches pretend that they aren't being political (what a pretense, when a majority of white Christians in the U.S. elected Donald Trump!), that they can't take sides, that it's not their business. real people are really being beaten up in the real world in which church folks live.
Wouldn't you like to have been a fly on the wall when Hitler was coming to power and church folks tried this "apolitical" centrist shtick of pretending that "both sides have a point," and that "our obligation is to bring both sides together at the table"? This shtick is all about self-protection and pretending that the imperatives of the gospel do not mean what they say when they tell us we'll be judged on how we deal with the least among us, etc.
