Feeling overwhelmed? Think local, Tyler advises

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on February 18, 2025.

It can be overwhelming to consider that there won’t be a presidential election for nearly four years, or even the possibility of winning either the House or Senate away from the control of Christian nationalists for another two years. One recent CNN headline said, “Democrats confront their powerlessness as Trump flexes authority.”

The level of powerlessness at least half the population feels borders between helpless and hopeless.

To be clear, the issue here is not even a complete divide between conservatives and liberals. As I wrote two weeks ago, conservatives with a more libertarian bent should share many of our concerns about the authoritarian instincts of Trump and his Christian supremacist supporters.

But while the news on the national front may look bleak, the reality is we are not powerless, helpless or hopeless. Instead, we may simply need a reminder that the opportunities for loving our neighbors may be closer to home.

Amanda Tyler (BNG photo by Rick Pidcock)

That was the message of Amanda Tyler, executive director of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and author of How to End Christian Nationalism, in a conversation last week with Carol McEntyre, senior minister at First Baptist Church of Greenville, S.C. The auditorium was filled with members of First Baptist, along with many people from the community.

As I sat on the second row, I thought about a number of people I knew were there who hadn’t stepped foot in a church in years, some of whom due to the deep trauma that comes from spiritual abuse. In addition to progressive Baptists, the room included atheists, agnostics and even some conservative evangelicals who walked through the doors like Nicodemus in the dark of night with some nagging questions.

Despite whatever religious or political differences we had with one another, there was one common concern that brought us all through the doors of First Baptist.

We all wanted to hear what Tyler had to say about how to end Christian nationalism.

Reckoning with our own violence against neighbors

While it’s easy to focus our conversation about Christian nationalism on “those people … out there,” Tyler’s emphasis on local communities led to her recommendation of considering our own complicity in what has grown over time.

“We are in a Baptist church in the South,” she reminded us. “We are not in a Southern Baptist church. But most of the churches in this area once were Southern Baptist churches. The whole reason there is a Southern Baptist Convention is in part because of Christian nationalism. It was a choice that was made to choose the false idol of power over the gospel of love, to say as the Southern Baptist Convention said in 1863 that slavery is an institution of heaven.”

Then Tyler asked, “Have we really fully dealt with the violence that choice had, not just on our neighbors … but what it did to us, what it did to our theology, what it did to how we understand Jesus?”

Speaking out and giving space for others

Because we have been complicit in creating the dynamics of silencing women, minorities and LGBTQ people, Tyler believes we all have a responsibility to speak up.

Continue reading at Baptist News Global.