Godless!

What if the word “godless” wasn’t a curse—but a catalyst? When love, justice, and honesty are branded as threats, who really gets to decide what’s sacred? From quiet family exiles to courtroom crusades, this reflection cuts through the noise and asks: Is a faith built on fear still faith at all? Journey through history, hypocrisy, and healing—and discover what grows when judgment is laid down and love is lifted up.

Has anyone ever given you their unsolicited opinion of you and you were shocked because you didn’t recall asking them for it? 

You’ve been there… 

I was once informed very seriously and without warning…. apparently I could, in fact, be delivered from “the homosexual demon,” if I would only confess my sins to God.. 

Yes, folks… imagine living your whole life without that crucial bit of knowledge.

My response… “but If that demon pays the rent, does the laundry, and replies to my text messages … I might hold onto him a little bit longer.”

And this happened since I’ve been ordained. Since then, I’ve been accused of being a dangerous influence, a false teacher, and a part of that godless church on South Peoria Avenue.

Godless. That’s the label.

You’ve probably felt it, too. That look someone gives you when you mention where you go to church or who you love. That awkward silence after you say what you really think.
Maybe it was at a family dinner or on a Zoom call. Not a slammed door, just a quiet, polite exile. You ever feel like your existence changed the temperature in the room? 

That’s how you know you’re an outsider. Yes, my friend, you need Jesus!

Say, you’re queer and unashamed? Godless.
Say, Black Lives Matter? Godless.
Say, maybe we should feed people before we fund more prisons? Definitely godless.
Say, science is real and the planet’s on fire? Well. Light the torches, they’ve found a heretic…

But who are the ones doing all this accusing? Folks quoting scripture while voting to end programs for the poor? Wearing gold crosses while promoting cruelty in God’s name? Hoarding wealth and exploiting and calling it a virtue?

And this isn’t new. We’ve been calling goodness godless and calling hate holy…. for generations. 

There was a time in this country, not that long ago,
when church pews were full on Sunday morning…
and lynching trees were full by Sunday afternoon.

People all dressed in their Sunday best,
hands folded in prayer,
hymns on their lips
and hate… in their hearts.

But to understand how faith got twisted into a tool of control and terror, we’ve got to go back…way back. Not just to Jesus—but to what happened after…

Now… Jesus was a man with dusty feet and a fire in his heart. A healer. A teacher. A radical who loved the poor and challenged the powerful. A truth teller. He flipped tables in temples. He broke rules to heal on the Sabbath. He chose the leper over the law. He didn’t build an empire—he fed the hungry. Sounds a little WOKE to me… 

But centuries later, something changed. 

Roman Emperor Constantine looked at this wild, grassroots movement of Christians—these misfits who followed the teachings of a crucified rebel—and he saw something else: power.

So he legalized it. Then organized it. And then made it serve the empire.

The church, once a refuge for the persecuted, became the seat…. of persecution.
The cross, once a symbol of resistance, became a badge of the empire. 

Since then, religion—particularly Christianity—has too often been more interested in control than compassion. In orthodoxy over love. In obedience over justice.

We see it now… In school boards. In courtrooms. In senates and in pulpits. We see religion being used not to liberate, but to legislate.Not to serve, but to dominate.

But know this….
When religion aligns itself with power, it risks losing its soul…. and becoming ineffective…..

And too often, religion has chosen power over people.

But that’s not the whole story.

I’m not anti -religion…..
There are…… churches and religious communities doing the work of love and justice like feeding the hungry and fighting for justice. There are pastors, priests, and parishioners resisting empire from the inside.

But still—honesty demands we name what’s been done in the name of God… and what must never be done again. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch hunts, the forced conversions, and massacres and abuses that followed any resistance to power.

If this is the holy legacy—crusades, conversions, and control—then what exactly are we calling godly?

I needed to know. So I went looking—not just scrolling past headlines or soundbites, but diving in. Forums. Sermons. Comment threads.

First post I saw was a pastor holding up a meme: a rainbow flag overlaid with storm clouds. Caption? “God sends warnings before He sends judgment. Just sayin’.”

Scroll.

A woman in a Facebook prayer group writes, “If we didn’t ban Bibles from our schools, maybe we wouldn’t need them so much in our prisons.” 37 likes. Hearts. Praying hands. Never mind that Bibles were never banned.

Click again.

A TikTok stitch of a drag queen reading to kids. The response? A man in camouflage quoting Leviticus between rifle rounds at a shooting range. “This is how we protect our children,” he says.

Beneath the surface wasn’t just misguided theology—it was rage on a feedback loop. Slurs disguised as scriptures. Science mocked with patriotic flair. And then the echo: “God said it. I reposted it. Amen. That settles it.”

It didn’t matter if the world was shifting—more voices, more visibility, more complexity. That wasn’t seen as progress. It was painted as war. 

Cultural shift? No, spiritual attack.
Change? No, satanic agenda…

Because for some, the need isn’t clarity—it’s a culprit.

So when a trans woman teaches math…
When a Black or brown immigrant applies for the job…
When a queer teen stops hiding…
When a DEI professor names injustice…
When an artist paints Jesus with dark skin…
When a writer asks, “What if the Bible got it wrong?”

They don’t just see disagreement.
They see the devil.
And just like that—godless.

This is how a Bible becomes a weapon.
How “love thy neighbor” becomes “battle your enemy.”
How violence gets baptized in the NAME of Jesus.

***********

I’ve been a member of a Braver Angels group for a while now. They’re a national movement aiming to reconnect Americans across the political spectrum and restore faith in our democratic republic—not by agreeing on everything, but by learning to disagree without dehumanizing one another. 

So the other night, we were in a discussion, when someone mentioned how deeply people on the right literally hate those on the left. I chimed in and shared that, as a person of color and a member of the Q+ community, I’ve long known what it feels like to be merely tolerated in some spaces. 

But lately, I’ve started to feel what it’s like to be hated—not always directly, but through the attacks on people who look and love like me. 

Some of you are feeling it too.
You’ve watched the laws change—and felt your safety shrink.
You’ve seen the headlines and felt a knot in your chest—because it’s not just news.
It’s personal. Some of you have watched a friend withdraw, a family member turn cold, a colleague suddenly become careful around you. Not because you changed—but because the climate did.

And here’s what I’ve learned: If one’s theology needs a villain to function, it’s not faith—it’s fear … with a halo.

The danger of building belief on fear…. is that it always demands enemies, not transformation but enemies. But I ain’t nobody’s enemy…… not even my own!

I was reminded of a story about the early 20th-century evangelist, Rev. Dr. Harry Ironside.

He was once challenged to a public debate by Arthur Morrow Lewis, a well-known agnostic lecturer. The topic of the debate: Agnosticism versus Christianity.

“Now,” Dr. Ironside replied—in front of a crowd, “I accept your invitation—on one condition.

“You must bring one man, once an outcast, bound by sin, who heard you or some other infidel lecture on agnosticism… and because of it, turned his life around. Became free. Became good. All through unbelief.

“And one woman( he went on to say)—once lost to decency and virtue—who heard agnosticism preached, and from that day forward, hated impurity and chose holiness. All through disbelief in the Bible.”

He paused, then added:

“If you bring your two, I will bring one hundred—men and women who once were lost, but found new life in Jesus Christ.”

And—so the story goes—the crowd erupted in applause! As the agnostic turned… and walked away…

It’s a clever story, often repeated in sermons as a kind of victory lap. If you look at it, you notice that Rev. Ironside’s spiel was not designed to invite dialogue, but rather to silence it. You’ve probably heard versions of this before. The kind of argument that isn’t looking for understanding—just applause.

Here, Ironside glorifies conversion stories while completely overlooking the harm, the trauma, and the exclusion that organized religion has caused in our world.

They’ll spotlight the “saved,” but they won’t tell you about the ones who were left to save themselves. And those are the stories I’ve been listening to since I left mainline religion.

What I have learned from conversations with my non-theists, Agnostic, and Humanist siblings is that they don’t reject love, or justice, or wonder, or even spirit. They reject, however, the version of God who punishes curiosity.

They don’t reject Jesus per say, they are like Ghandi who said,  “I like your Christ, I just don’t like your Christians.” 

They have a problem with a God who blesses power but not the powerless.
Who is more present in a football game than in the refugee camp or the drag show.

They don’t hate God. They grieve what’s been done in God’s name.
And frankly, so do I.

So, can I go back and FIX this story…and tell the one the non-theist… might’ve told the right Rev. Dr. Ironside.

“Oh, you want testimonies? You want changed lives? Fine. Let me tell you about mine. I didn’t need a threat of hell to stop hurting people. I didn’t need ancient scrolls to love my neighbor. I didn’t need a preacher to tell me it’s wrong to exploit the vulnerable or steal or lie or cheat.

You want to talk about transformation? Let’s talk about the woman who stopped hating herself when she left the church. Let’s talk about the queer kid who started living instead of planning their suicide. Let’s talk about the ex-Mormon, ex-Muslim, ex-evangelical who finally breathed free when they stopped believing they were broken.

You say Agnosti-cism can’t change lives? It doesn’t need to change lives—it just stops shaming them for being human.

So, Rev, you keep your hundred saved souls. I’ll take one honest human being who chooses love without being threatened into it.

And if we really want to know who’s who, didn’t Jesus say
In Matthew 7:16, “You will know them by their fruit.”

Not their hashtags.
Not their statements of belief.
Not their Sunday smiles.
But by what their lives actually produce.

it’s the fruit!

And I’m not here to debate “good fruit vs. bad fruit.” That’s too clean. Too convenient.

Baby, I’ve prayed in hospital rooms and by gravesides, in sanctuaries and at picket lines. I’ve seen more of God in drag shows and protest marches than in some pulpits. So if the fruit of your faith isn’t love, or joy, or peace—if it doesn’t grow patience, kindness, or gentleness—then I have to ask: what exactly are you growing?

What the tree gives away becomes the proof of what it is. And some of us trees… are not even safe spaces to shelter from the sun.

So, if standing up for the marginalized, speaking truth to power, and embodying compassion makes us godless in the eyes of some, then let’s wear it as a badge of honor. 

So go ahead— 

Call me godless if I object when our government takes resources from the poor and destitute to build bombs to kill… 

Call me godless if I won’t stay silent while queer people are shamed in churches, and migrants are hunted in courtrooms.

Call me godless if I can’t reconcile divine justice with the suffering of innocents—whether in Gaza, or in cages at our border.

Call me godless if I think your ‘thoughts and prayers’ stink…. because they never reach the victims of police violence, school shootings, or stolen land.

Call me godless if I won’t pretend that “pro-life” means anything, while they gut healthcare, end contraceptive care, and cut food stamps.

Call me an outsider, a doubter, a heretic if you must—but if standing with the vulnerable is godless, then I’ll take the title.

***********

But my friends, after all that; after the protest; after the declarations. 

After all the fruitless wars over belief,
something in me still burns, still hopes.

After the righteous rage— we still need to turn.

We must find a way to move beyond arguing about who’s godly or godless. At some point, belief has to become more than a battleground—it has to become a bridge. Because what the world needs now isn’t louder beliefs—it’s deeper love. I want us to live in a way that makes people wonder … where all this love came from.

Because I’ve seen what happens when judgment pauses long enough for one heart to meet another. It happened one Sunday in the driveway of a stranger, who was packing up her life.

Years ago, I was just beginning to tiptoe back into church. Burned by past experiences, I wasn’t looking for salvation—I was looking for somewhere I could breathe.I found it in a message of radical love from Bishop Carlton Pearson. 

He had started preaching what was, to many, unthinkable: that there was no hell. That all people—all people—are SAFE and included in the Divine’s embrace. The message was too much for some. The church began to unravel. People left in droves. And in the midst of that unraveling, Dee and I were just arriving—drawn in by music that moved the soul, by a word that didn’t hurt us, but healed.

One Sunday, on the way from church, we stopped by a garage sale. 

There, we met a woman selling her possessions, ready to leave town… she was just done with Tulsa! She commented on our joyful disposition, and asked us why we were feeling so free. So we talked about our new church and how excited we were to hear a healing message of hope for all. 

She in turn told us that she was leaving the city because her church had been overtaken by Satan. She was heartbroken. Angry.

She didn’t know it just yet. And neither did we, but we were talking about the very same church, the same minister, the same gospel of inclusion.

We just talked. Like people. Not labels. Not categories. No “us” and “them.”

And when she realized we were part of the very congregation she was fleeing—something changed in her eyes. Not conversion. Not argument. Just… curiosity. Humanity…. I don’t think she saw Satan in us.

I never found out her full story, and I don’t remember her name,
And maybe she left. Or maybe she didn’t.
But that moment—that holy pause between strangers—taught me something:
We don’t have to convince someone to see the world like us.
Sometimes the most radical thing we can do… is see them.
and for them to know that they have been seen.

Sometimes God doesn’t speak from a pulpit or a page.
Sometimes grace shows up on a stranger’s lawn, in the middle of a moving sale, in a conversation no one expected.

IN that quiet moment—no debate, no scripture—just two people who almost missed each other… something sacred happened. A space between strangers, who for a moment, forget to be enemies.

You can.. be prophetic and still be kind.
You can speak with fire and still offer warmth.
We can rage against the machine, and then turn around and hand someone a cup of water.

We need both. We need truth—and tenderness.
We need healing that doesn’t harm with its intentions.

I close with the words that bind us—not by dogma, but by choice. By hope.

“Love… is the spirit of this church, and service is its law. This is our great covenant: to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another.”

To seek the truth in love. That’s the work. That’s the invitation. That’s the real altar call.

To love beyond belief. To welcome the doubters, the dreamers, the disillusioned. To feed the hungry—even when we’re hungry too. 

To be godless, maybe. But never love-less.

And maybe—maybe in a world that’s busy building walls and branding people godless—we will be the ones who choose to stay soft. To stay brave. To stay together. To live like love still matters.

Because in the end, love is the only thing sacred enough to transcend our divisions.

And whatever you call us—Atheist, heretic, believer, or doubter— that’s the fruit we’re called to bear.

Amen.