Trading Jesus for Justice

My mother read my last blog and had a bone to pick with me. “What do you mean you traded Jesus for Justice? That doesn’t sound like you.” I had to reassure her that wasn’t the whole story. Just a chapter. Well, many chapters until I brought Jesus together with Justice through my Quaker Friends in West Branch, Iowa. More of that restoration story in another blog. 

I was introduced to racial and economic injustice when I took a year off from college and served as a missionary with the Southern Baptist Convention in Detroit. We worked with unhoused folks and with kids from the local housing projects in Detroit’s Cass Corridor.

I was visiting one of the kid’s homes and chatting with his grandma. This Black woman spoke of a love for God that was light years beyond my understanding. Yet, here she was unsure how to feed her grandchildren while living in one of the roughest parts of the city. As a missionary, I was given a car, a room in the White suburbs, and could buy McDonald’s on my way home without thinking about it. This imbalance of basic necessities didn’t seem right to me. Why had I never heard about this before?

When I returned to Seattle after Detroit to finish my degree at University of Washington, I had decided if I was going to truly save souls for Christ I needed to be around non-Christians. I quickly had to choose a major since I was coming in as a junior. I chose social work. I figured it was the secular version of missions work, which is what I was called to.

My first class project was community services for gays and lesbians. I stood up and said, “As a straight Christian man, I am glad to say there are many services available for gays and lesbians in the Seattle area.” I’m sure there were snickers in the class, but I didn’t notice. What I did notice was how the Church was being used to oppress gays and lesbians and anyone who didn’t fit the gender or sexual norms that society held so precious. Again, oppression of God’s people didn’t sit right with me, especially when my church was behind it.

One of the other wedges that came up between me and the Church was the position of the pastor. Who was this sole man delivering God’s message for God’s people every Sunday? Why were these men held up as special when they were just people like you and me?

Being the son of Southern Baptist ministers meant I saw the humanity in these men. I also saw the women who were silenced in their ministry. Oppression of women didn’t sit right with me. Especially in church leadership. And they keep doing it: Southern Baptists vote to advance a formal ban on churches with women pastors.

I was mad at God for letting the Church run the way it has been run, putting so many people in harm’s way. I stepped away and took a journey into the justice movements of sexuality, race, and economics because of the harm that inequity I saw it was doing to people. I took this work to heart and committed my life to spreading the word of the harms of oppression and the possibilities of liberation of people.

Don't worry, Mom. Eventually, I found my way back to Jesus, the Church, and Christianity. I'm saving that story for another day.

Out in the park on a lovely afternoon with Lily. Spring 2026.