The God Who Riots Read online

  Praise for The God Who Riots: Taking Back the Radical Jesus

  “Damon Garcia is a narrative theologian who has spent the past few years listening to the people protesting for liberation in the United States. His insights into scripture are profound and desperately needed. In a time of enormous social upheaval, we need voices like Garcia who are prepared to embrace a world where the formerly poor and powerless lead the way to a more just world. This is a must-read for any pastor or minister who hopes to hear the message of the unheard in our society.”

  —D. L. Mayfield, author of The Myth of the American Dream and Unruly Saint: Dorothy Day’s Radical Vision and Its Challenge for Our Times

  “The God of Christians has been many different things to many people. Often used to justify injustice and abuse, this God has left a sour taste in the mouths of the most marginalized amongst us. But there is also The God Who Riots, the God who Damon speaks in this book, a God who invites us to disrupt systems and create heaven on earth.”

  —Jo Luehmann, host of The Living Room with Jo Luehmann and author of the Decolonizing Traditional Christianity devotional

  “Following Jesus is costly, and our work today is to count the cost of what it really means to follow a Brown Palestinian Jew. Living in Babylon and resisting the acceleration of the empire religion of white ChristoFascism, we must seek to get our hands dirty with the everyday and riot alongside God who cares first for the underside of history.”

  —Robyn Henderson-Espinoza, PhD, author of Body Becoming and Activist Theology

  “In an age of capitalism crises and encroaching climate catastrophe, the work of a genuinely liberatory theology has never been more urgent. Damon Garcia’s work provides a much-needed vision of the real good news that lies at the heart of the gospel.”

  —Jon Greenaway, writer and academic, @thelitcritguy

  “Damon equips us with the kind of theological paradigm needed to sustain an authentic faith in these times. His words are relevant and accessible to the privileged, the marginalized, and everyone in between. His offering is truly a welcome addition to the canon of liberation theology.”

  —Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt, author of A Brown Girl’s Epiphany

  “Damon Garcia shares the real radical message of Jesus—a message where love and liberation are as bright as a burning prison. Wherever you are on your faith journey—whether you’re new to Christianity, deconstructing, or a lifelong Christian—this book is for those who want to follow the true radical Jesus.”

  —Mason Mennenga, YouTuber and podcast host of A People’s Theology

  “With the skill and enthusiasm of your favorite teacher from high school, Garcia takes weighty and serious topics and makes them accessible, learnable, and immediate. If you’ve wanted to learn about the liberation, decolonization, and abolitionist streams of Christian faith but didn’t know where to start, let The God Who Riots invite you in and accompany you toward a radical faith.”

  —Kevin Nye, author of Grace Can Lead Us Home: A Christian Call to End Homelessness

  “Often, Christians imagine Jesus as an apolitical figure. But drawing from both Christian scripture and tradition, Garcia introduces us to Christ from a different angle—Jesus isn’t leading us toward otherworldly salvation, but instead struggles with us for our liberation from all manner of oppression.”

  —Matt Bernico, The Magnificast

  THE GOD WHO RIOTS

  THE GOD WHO RIOTS

  Taking Back the Radical Jesus

  Damon Garcia

  Broadleaf Books

  Minneapolis

  THE GOD WHO RIOTS

  Taking Back the Radical Jesus

  Copyright © 2022 Damon Garcia. Printed by Broadleaf Books, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email [email protected] or write to Permissions, Broadleaf Books, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

  Scripture quotations marked NRSV are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  Scripture quotations without a translation indicated are the author’s own translation.

  Cover image: serts/iStock

  Cover design: Faceout Studios

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-8037-4

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-8038-1

  To the Hallway (2012–2014)

  Our conversations about faith and life were the beginning of the joyful and difficult journey that led me to this book.

  Contents

  Introduction

  1. Saved from What?

  2. An Alternative to Your Dehumanization

  3. White Christianity All the Way Down

  4. Taking and Reshaping Jesus

  5. Revelations and Reparations

  6. Abolition Come, on Earth as It Is in Heaven

  7. The Obedient, Unrighteous Son

  8. A Riot at the Temple

  9. Jesus, the Outside Agitator

  Conclusion

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Introduction

  I’ve always suspected that Jesus was way more radical than the Christians I grew up around could comprehend.

  A few years ago, I met with the associate pastors at my church and nervously confessed to them that I didn’t feel comfortable inviting other young adults to service on Sundays. I was the youth and young adults minister, so it was literally my job to bring young people into that church, but it became a burden.

  The year was 2017. My peers were talking about Trump’s travel ban on Muslim countries, immigration, police brutality, white supremacy, and trans rights. Throughout the year there were also Black Lives Matter protests, women’s marches, and teacher strikes. And yet, every Sunday morning we ignored all that.

  The associate pastors listened to me as I explained this, and responded, “I don’t think there’s as many people thinking about all that stuff as you think there are.”

  I left that church about a month later. But leaving that church didn’t feel like I was leaving Jesus. It felt like I was following Jesus into something bigger.

  I had come to realize that it was wrong to remain neutral on so many points of injustice. We claimed to be a community that followed Jesus, but I don’t know what kind of Jesus this was. The Jesus of the Bible empowered people to confront injustice, not avoid it.

  My favorite Jesus story is a scene a few days before Jesus is crucified where he enters the temple’s outer courts and shuts the place down. Jesus flips over the tables of those selling sacrificial animals and pours out their coins on the ground. With a whip he drives out the people and animals and won’t allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He then uses the place to teach and accuses the priests of turning a house of prayer into a den of robbers.

  A den of robbers is not where people are robbed. A den of robbers is where robbers hide, expecting to be safe. Jesus uses this temple demonstration to accuse the religious authorities of hiding behind their religion to avoid confronting the injustice going on outside of the temple. Today, we all know Christians who hide behind their religion to avoid confronting injustice, so this demonstration is more relevant than ever.

  Again and again, the God of the Bible chooses the side of the oppressed. Jesus embodies this decisiveness. Jesus said the spirit of the Lord anointed him “to let the oppressed go free.”1 This is the purpose of Jesus’s ministry. The language of choosing
sides is uncomfortable in our highly divisive times. Often we are trying to escape “us vs. them” stories. In our attempt to combat our divisiveness, we often prioritize harmony over justice. However, this only prolongs the injustice that is at the root of our divisions.

  Religious organizations’ priority for harmony over justice has led to various critiques of religion over the centuries. It’s why Karl Marx called religion the opium of the masses, imagining flowers over our chains. It’s why we may love spirituality but get really uncomfortable around people who seem to over-spiritualize things. It’s why we roll our eyes at people who claim that the solution to suffering is simply a change of perspective, while ignoring the oppression that continues no matter how we perceive it.

  Justice requires us to choose sides. Even love requires us to choose sides. And choosing the side of the oppressed requires us to fight for what the oppressed fight for. People need others to share their struggle.

  This is the objective of the incarnation. God is embodied in Jesus, a poor and powerless child, who grows up to build a movement in solidarity with the poor and powerless unto his death. Through Jesus, God chooses sides. It is only through the poor and powerless that salvation becomes available to everyone. Supporting the poor and powerless in their struggle to free themselves is how we all get free.

  In the spirit of this incarnational sensibility, the American Christian socialist Eugene Debs famously said,

  I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.2

  Choosing the side of the underclass is a deep impulse throughout Christian history, but it’s never been the most popular expression of Christianity in the world. In my search for a more liberative Christianity I discovered liberation theology, which is a major influence on my faith today. Liberation theology was formulated in Latin America in the 1960s out of a commitment to “the preferential option for the poor.” The sentiment behind this slogan was that God always chooses the side of the poor in their struggle for freedom from oppression, so the church should too. The only reason liberation theology had to develop as a distinct interpretive lens is because of the history of the church choosing the side of the rich and powerful again and again until it was impossible to imagine or recognize a mainstream Christianity that chooses the side of the poor and powerless.

  In spite of Christianity’s corrupt history, there has always persisted a stream within Christianity that chooses the side of the poor and powerless. One of my heroes, St. Francis of Assisi, started an order of friars called the Lesser Brothers, who were committed to poverty and charity. His motivation was to serve every need of the poorest people in society to the extent that the Brothers had fewer material resources than those they served. They tapped into that incarnational sensibility and viscerally understood the significance of Jesus saying, “Whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me.”3 He did this during the Crusades, in the same country as the pope.

  We can either use our faith to empower us to transform the world or use our faith to justify the world as it is. Our faith often operates as one form or the other, even if we are not aware of it. Both of these forms of faith live within us, always at tension. And both of these forms of faith have shaped our history, always at tension.

  This book is about that tension.

  Many of us are more familiar with the ways Christianity has been used to suppress change, which is why many of us have a complicated relationship with religion. You are not alone. This is my story too. And my faith opened up in new ways when I discovered the stream of Christianity that empowers the work of liberation, even when it requires fighting injustice within the Christian tradition itself.

  This book is written from a Christian perspective, and is mostly about Christianity, not because I believe Christianity is superior to other religions, or that Christians have special access to God that non-Christians don’t have. Rather, since I grew up in Christianity, it is my responsibility to reclaim my own religious tradition to empower myself toward liberation. It is the responsibility of people of other religious traditions to reclaim theirs in their own way.

  The Christian faith begins with Jesus as the point of entry to God. Jesus uniquely shows us what God is like. And it is through Jesus’s riotous demonstration in the temple that we experience the God who riots. This God is manifest in all kinds of places we may not expect. And as I look at modern-day riots, protests, strikes, and all other forms of direct action toward liberation, I am compelled to bear witness to the God who riots, continuing to empower people in the work of liberation.

  This God chooses sides in our struggle. In response to injustice, this God riots alongside us, within us, and through us.

  1

  Saved from What?

  Jesus was arrested and executed because of the trouble he was stirring up in Jerusalem.

  The story of Jesus shutting down the temple describes a planned demonstration and a riot, complete with property destruction, looting, and social unrest. This usually isn’t the first image that comes to mind when people think about Jesus. Many of my friends, both Christian and non-Christian, didn’t even know this story was in the Bible. Some of my other friends, both Christian and non-Christian, share my love for this story. I’ve heard people say they don’t support Christianity but have a soft spot for Jesus, and this story is one of the main reasons they do.

  A reason we find this story so compelling is because we are typically familiar with religious people—especially Christians—being resistant to change. And yet in this story, one of the most famous religious figures in history is fighting for change. Jesus witnesses injustice and moves against it. Every movement against injustice throughout the last century has been met with suppression from those who resist change, and that suppression has often come from Christians. We’ve seen this in the fight for women’s liberation, Black liberation, gay liberation, and onward. Jesus wants change. And he’s executed for it.

  How We Change

  Religion has empowered people to fight for a new world, and religion has also justified the institutions of the current world. Religion has served these two roles throughout history. Religion can also empower us to change as individuals, or it can hinder us from changing.

  Every time I’ve gone through a significant change in my life, my Christian faith was a part of the process. My faith has always contained this tension. Part of my faith empowered me to change, while another part held me back from changing.

  There’s a story I relate to a lot in Acts 10 about the apostle Peter going through this kind of conflict in the midst of change. Peter fell into a trance while deep in prayer and saw a vision of “something like a large sheet” coming down from heaven, filled with “all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air.” Peter then heard a voice say, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” Peter, being faithful to traditional Jewish dietary laws, responded, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.”

  The amusing part of this story is Peter telling God he can’t eat anything unclean because God told him he can’t. Peter has a God-given opportunity for change, but before he can embrace it, he has to confront his conception of God that refuses to change.

  The voice from heaven then tells Peter, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Peter awoke from his trance, and while he was trying to figure out the meaning of this vision, he was invited to talk about Jesus to non-Jews for the first time.

  Then he got it.

  Peter grew up seeing everyone outside his people group as unclean, and in this moment, God called them all clean. In order to embrace this new way of seeing the world, Peter had to embrace a new conception of God. His previous conception
of God helped him get to where he was. Now it was time to let it go.

  This is how growth works. A new way of life becomes desirable when you experience the constraints of your current way of life. Then the conditions of a new way of life emerge as a solution to the problems caused by the constraints of your current way of life. While you would prefer to peacefully transition to your new way of life, this process is always met with conflict. This conflict comes from the part of you that has previously benefited from the conditions of your current way of life.

  And yet, there are other parts of you that have experienced the constraints of your current way of life and cause you to become unhealthy—emotionally unhealthy, or perhaps physically unhealthy. The process of transitioning to a new way of life begins with your dissatisfaction. Initially you try to ignore the dissatisfied part of yourself because the part that benefits from your current way of life has a louder voice within you. That voice gets quieter and quieter as you become more and more dissatisfied, and the dissatisfied voice becomes louder within you.

  Inevitably, the dissatisfied part of yourself wins this conflict, and you develop a new way of life. This process is never a singular moment toward a final state of maturity. This process happens again and again throughout your life, beginning again when you inevitably experience the constraints of your new way of life.

  Getting Saved

  My faith has always empowered me to listen to the dissatisfied voice within me. I’ve always believed this is what the Christian life is supposed to look like. Embracing change always seemed more Christian than resisting change, even when I was a young child.

  One Wednesday night during my childhood I was attending a kids’ church service, and I saw another kid I recognized from my elementary school named Richard. Richard had been mean to my friends and me, so I was shocked to see him at church. From my childish perspective I assumed the nice kids at school were probably Christian, and the mean kids were probably the furthest thing from it.