Failing the discipleship test

Oct. 10, 2024

By Rev. Rick King

Sixth in a series based on Jim Wallis’ book, “The False White Gospel”

I believe that white Christian nationalism has failed Jesus’ final test of discipleship. (Jim Wallis, “The False White Gospel,” 118)

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’

“Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’

“Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:37-46)

Jim Wallis tells about an experiment he and his classmates did in seminary, where they took an old Bible and a pair of scissors and cut out every single passage about the poor and oppressed, wealth and poverty, injustice and justice.

What they were left with was a Bible full of holes: “Our old Bible was holey, not holy,” he says. The Hebrew prophetic books such as Isaiah almost completely disappeared; one of every sixteen verses in Matthew, Mark and Luke were missing.

Matthew 25:31-46 is one such passage—what’s commonly referred to as “the parable of the sheep and the goats.”

Hard as it is to believe for those of us who grew up in the United Church of Christ, much of modern-day conservative Christianity works hard to keep faith and justice separate, because together they create discomfort for people. But this divorce of personal piety from social transformation is the norm among white Christian nationalists. It is part of this false white gospel. It’s what William Barber calls “slaveholder religion,” and what prompted Karl Marx to call religion “the opiate of the masses.”

But the passages about faith in action are what Wallis says brought him back to faith. He tells of reading Donald Kraybill’s “The Upside-Down Kingdom,” which points out how Jesus’ preaching of the kingdom of God “turns the world’s values of selfishness, consumerism, individualism, militarism, power, and domination upside down.”

At the same time, Wallis says, “White Christian nationalism has nothing good to say about the poor, and poverty is often described as a character flaw.” But throughout Christian history—from the fourth-century bishops St. Basil of Caesarea and St. Gregory of Nyssa, to 17th-century Methodists to 19th-century evangelical revivalists and the 21st-century New Monastic movement—the through-line is justice for poor people.

And why? Because, Jesus says in the Matthew passage I quoted earlier, it’s the face of Jesus that we see in the poor, and whenever we minister to the needs of the poor for food and drink, clothing, shelter, and companionship, we’re ministering to him.