Jemar Tisby on the ReThinking Church initiative, which inspired the Credible Witness podcast.
I remember this really admirable feistiness among all of us—to share a faith and proclaim a faith that looked a lot more like Jesus than it did like the American Empire, or to put a finer point on it, white Christian nationalism.
Jemar Tisby
What stands out to me most about that group gathering is how often we emphasized: this isn’t about leaving Jesus. This is about following Jesus.
This isn’t about leaving the church universal behind. It’s about cultivating a sense of the true church. And I remember this really admirable feistiness among all of us—to share a faith and proclaim a faith that looked a lot more like Jesus than it did like the American Empire, or to put a finer point on it, white Christian nationalism.
This isn’t about leaving Jesus. This is about following Jesus.
That was critical at that point, as it is today, because so many people were leaving the church. There’s this evangelical movement going on. There are all these memoirs and books and podcasts about church hurt, sexual abuse, racism, anti-this, anti-that. And people saying, I’m done with Christianity. I’m done with the church.
And we were gathering to say: We absolutely get that. And we are as fired up and angry about these things as you are—but we’re still on board with Jesus.
And Jesus has always been us and hasn’t left us. So we wanted to have—very appropriately—a credible witness in the midst of all of this and say: That’s not the Christianity of Christ that you’re seeing in the headlines—that is hurting people and abusing people. There is another way. And that’s what we wanted to display.
So there was that sense of solidarity. That sense of community. The sense that we could be wholly ourselves in terms of our faith and also our extremely diverse experiences, and even burdens and priorities when it came to justice issues. But it was all welcome at that table.
It was a very well-curated table that, unfortunately, has become all too rare.