While so many were able to take their No Kings protest to the streets yesterday, I was helping with the second of three sessions of a lunch & learn series my church has organized where we’re unpacking parts of Project 2025. It’s a challenging undertaking, not because we’re trying to become experts on the document and not just because we disagree with it, but because…
- Knowledge acquisition can sometimes feel like it’s the goal. I don’t want it to be the goal but, rather, the beginning of a journey. For many of us, the fact that we’re even having these sessions is huge. I try to let that win be a win while still looking ahead to what is more.
- Being able to say, “Here’s what this is and it’s not what we are” is helpful. And also, “I’m not that” isn’t always as impactful as “Here’s what I am and here’s why that’s meaningful,” which takes longer to get to.
- In the rejection of a way of being, it could be said that there’s an “othering” taking place. While it’s not an “othering” that says the proponents of Project 2025 are lesser humans, in a culture that doesn’t often leave room for disagreement (unless it’s in our favor), it has been difficult to say or hear versions of “Here’s what this is and it’s not what we are” because I can already hear the “othering” accusation. It’s as if unless we know we’ll all disagree, we can’t disagree.
- Someone will always accuse a church of being political which is based on the idea that it’s not the role of the church to talk about the impact of politics on humanity and on the idea that to talk about politics is to take partisan sides and we should not do that because we don’t want anyone claiming that their party speaks for Jesus. (But we’re okay talking about politics and taking sides after the atrocities are seemingly over.)
- Having a lunch & learn feels ivory-tower-distant at a time when a more public protest posture appears more worthy.
I would like to feel less afraid to protest in public. I feel barely brave enough to share my ideas in written form. I’m a product of so much restrictive thinking and the actual restrictions of time plus energy make it harder for me to set aside more time to sort out my thoughts. My protest feels weak. But for now, it’s enough for me that I end with these words…
Creating a space in which Project 2025 is disagreed with should be the work of the church, at minimum. And even though it feels like a light form of protest, it’s a worthwhile step in the long walk toward clarity and a future that’s less likely to be filled with blind assumptions that something created by influential Christians is automatically biblically sound.