It started out as a joke ... Part I
The dystopian world created by white Christian boys in church, an excerpt from DWJ
Hi Readers,
As promised, over the next three Tuesdays in July, I’m sharing with you an excerpt from Disciples of White Jesus: The Radicalization of American Boyhood.
I first heard this story from the Midwestern pastor who told it to me the summer before I started researching and writing Disciples. In fact, it was this story, and the conversation we shared, that helped to convince me of the importance of writing this very book.
It’s a painful and powerful story, one that’s hard to read. But it’s also one that in its telling, I believe, can help us write a new and kinder future for white, Christian boys and men - and importantly, for us all.
Here’s Part I of the excerpt, with the rest to follow the next two weeks:
First, they came for the Koreans.
I had been telling a rural, Midwestern pastor about my work and research into young, white Christian boys and men. This pastor too was a parent of boys and had spent more than a decade in a rural Midwestern church, where the pastor was beloved in town and known for speaking boldly and prophetically about divisive social issues.
As I told this rural, Midwestern pastor about my study of young, white Christian men and boys, the pastor got a far-off look in their eyes. The pastor was remembering a story.
It happened about fifteen years earlier, in the pastor’s previous congregation, in another small Midwestern town. The boys were now, as the pastor told the story, in their late twenties and early thirties, beginning to have children and families of their own. But they were young teens when this story took place. The pastor remembered them as good, kind boys. They were faithful church attendees and hard workers. They were respectful and engaged in the study of the Bible, particularly in this Wednesday class, known as “Confirmation,” where they spent time with the pastor learning the basics of their faith, in preparation for the rite of Confirmation, which would be celebrated in front of the entire congregation.
These were boys we’d all be proud to call our sons. They were captains of the sports teams and leaders in the school band. They helped local farmers bale hay and operate equipment, working late in the night on their families’ or neighbors’ or local friends’ fields. They opened doors for women and said “please” and “thank you.” These weren’t the boys we worried about, the ones who slunk around in the corners of doorways smoking cigarettes or surreptitiously sipping liquor, staying out late and ditching class. These were the “good boys.”
The pastor had first been a youth pastor, working with kids and teens for almost ten years before pursuing additional theological education and becoming an ordained pastor. They were one of those people who just had a knack for asking the right questions and keeping kids on task, getting them to open up and share stories and “be themselves,” in a way that teenagers often aren’t with adults, especially authority figures. So the pastor knew and loved these kids, including the aforementioned boys.
“I couldn’t believe the words that came out of their mouths,” the pastor told me, remembering, shaking their head.
The pastor was teaching a lesson about creation, a basic one really. It was supposed to be a fun exercise, a throwaway thing that serves as a kind of icebreaker, before the kids all opened their Bibles to read and learn and laugh together as they had on Wednesday after Wednesday after Wednesday for generations, in a town where the school sports coaches still ended Wednesday practices early so that kids could get to church.
“We did this exercise,” the pastor said. “I asked them: ‘If you were God, what would you include that God didn’t? What kind of world would you create?’”
Stay tuned and subscribe to get next week’s continuation of this story in your inbox.
P.S. …
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