Bad theology produces suffering. Good theology produces flourishing.

Bad theology produces Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS). Alice Walker is a queer black woman who grew up in a homophobic, racist, misogynistic culture. But her faith empowered her to declare, “I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way.”

Alice Walker’s statement is an act of healing for herself and others. She was wounded by unholy forces that told her she was not enough, that she was inherently distorted because she was Black, female, and a lesbian. But she reclaimed her identity as a blessing, then shared that blessing with others, helping them to reclaim their own identities.

Tragically, many of the psychic wounds that people receive are from bad theology promulgated in churches. Bad theology threatens believers with this-worldly condemnation and next-worldly damnation, causing “religious trauma syndrome” (RTS)—fear, anxiety, hatred, and self-loathing.

This debilitating spirituality is produced by religious ideologies of control. High-control church leaders who want parishioners to be puppets teach that God is a puppeteer and that the leaders are the strings. To disobey is to malfunction. Fearful that freedom will cause people to stray from the straight and narrow path, authoritarian churches erect high walls along that path so parishioners can’t peek over the top and see other options for life.

Children should be nurtured not condemned. I had a friend in seminary who grew up in rural Texas in the 1980s. In the fifth grade he was at an all-male sleepover party with friends, and they all started looking at pictures of women in underwear in a Sears catalog. They went a few pages past the women’s section into the men’s section, which my friend was much more interested in. He noticed that no one else was interested in the pictures of men in underwear and realized that he was gay. His family went to a fundamentalist Baptist church, and the people there were (otherwise) very nice, but they taught that being gay was sick and sinful, so he thought that he was sick and sinful. He kept his orientation a secret, in shame.

I have another friend who was told as a child, by otherwise very nice people, that Jesus was coming back soon and would take all the Christians (Bible believing, born again) to heaven and send everyone else to hell. He went to bed every night in terror, praying for his non-Christian and semi-Christian friends.

And so it continues. Beautiful children are told that they are sinful in the eyes of God. Adolescents are made to feel guilty for the natural sexual drives developing within. Women are told that their gender is responsible for the fall of all “mankind,” being morally blamed even as they are linguistically excluded. Suffering church members are asked what they did to offend God to warrant this punishment. Patients on their deathbeds are questioned about their wrongdoings and offered expiation so they won’t go to hell. Bad theology obsesses over sin, guilt, purity, and damnation, turning an already difficult life into fully accomplished hell by anticipation.

Good theology produces flourishing. Faith reveals that women, men, trans, nonbinary, Black, Brown, White, Asian, able, disabled, rich, poor, middle-class persons and more are all equal. They are equally created by God, infinitely loved by God, and universally called to lives of meaning, purpose, and joy. Recognizing this truth, churches must model egalitarianism—equality in thought and practice—to the world.

Egalitarian community makes use of all members’ talents and places them in service of the common good. In contrast, patriarchal and heterosexist communities waste the talents of many members by denying them full access to leadership positions, limiting both personal and institutional flourishing.

As egalitarian, churches are also universalist—universally valuing all persons, inside and outside the church, especially those persons devalued by society. This universalism is the mission of the church. Since all are children of God and inseparable from one another, ethics becomes universalist—all are treated equally (Matthew 5:43–48). Since Abba is the divine mother who births all creation (Job 38:29; Isaiah 66 ; etc.), and no mother rejects her sinful child, salvation is universal (1 Timothy 2:3–4).

In a lethally tribal world, universalism provides the church with a healing mission—resistance to fear, anger, and hatred through the ministry of faith, hope, and love. Assigning the church this mission, Jesus states that his followers should be kind to all, even as God makes it rain on the just and unjust (Matthew 5:45). Thus, the church does not prefer Christians to non-Christians, or men to women, or rich to poor. We are all permeated by implicit biases and tribal identities, but joining a church begins a journey of resistance to these traditional loyalties. Through this journey, we learn to value all persons, of every nationality, race, religion, class, orientation, and gender.

In allegiance to the cosmic God rather than our tribal god, the church replaces natural loyalties with a universal family. Jesus states, “Who is my mother? Who are my kin?” Then, pointing to the disciples, Jesus said, “This is my family. Whoever does the will of Abba God in heaven is my sibling and parent” (Matthew 12:48–50).

Following Jesus produces counter-cultural communities. Egalitarian, universalist churches practice social resurrection, defying accepted norms in witness to the universal God. In the late 1960s, Anne Moody and other civil rights activists tried to racially integrate southern churches. On the Sunday of one such action, White churches met the Black activists with armed policemen, paddy wagons, and dogs. A few Whites protested, saying that the Blacks should be let in, but they were outnumbered.

Having been rejected from several White churches, Anne and her friend went to pick up two activists who were trying to integrate an Episcopal church. When they got there, the friends were nowhere to be seen, so Anne got nervous. But after circling the church a few times, the thought occurred to her: “What if they got in?” Anne and her friend walked up the steps to the church, which were miraculously free of armed policemen and dogs. They entered the church, where worship had already started. Two ushers approached them, asking, “May we help you?” “Yes,” Anne said, “We would like to worship with you today.” “Will you sign the guest list, please, and we will show you to your seats,” said the White ushers. Anne and her friend were seated with the other two Black activists, and four Black women worshiped in an all-White church. Anne remembers, “When the services were over the minister invited us to visit again. He said it as if he meant it, and I began to have a little hope.”

That was a White church in a White supremacist culture hosting four Black women. Some churches immerse themselves in the gospel but absorb it no better than a rock absorbs water. Other churches immerse themselves in the gospel and absorb it like a sponge, recognizing that Abba loves all, that Jesus represents the agapic love of God, and that Sophia counsels love without boundaries. These churches practice the gospel to transform society, thereby revealing the universalism of God, rejecting the exclusivism of their society, and implementing Revelation’s vision of the saved community, which is a community of difference: “After that, I saw before me an immense crowd without number, from every nation, tribe, people, and language. They stood in front of the throne and the Lamb, dressed in long white robes and holding palm branches. And they cried out in a loud voice, ‘Salvation is of our God, who sits on the throne, and of the Lamb!’” (Revelation 7 ).

The Gospels relate Jesus’s radical inclusivity in his story of the prodigal son (inclusion of the sinful), his choice of a Samaritan as hero-protagonist (inclusion of the religious outsider), his decision to dine with Simon the leper (inclusion of the scripturally excluded), his decision to dine with Zacchaeus the tax collector (inclusion of the hated powerful), his decision to converse with the Canaanite woman (inclusion of the marginalized female), and his protection of the woman framed for adultery (inclusion of the socially expendable). In the imitation of Christ, inspired by the Spirit, we are given the vocation of enacting the Sustainer’s imagination. This activity is our meaning and purpose. Without it we are lost. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 221-224)

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For further reading, please see:

Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of Growing Up Poor and Black in the Rural South. New York: Random House, 2011.

Walker, Alice. The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker. New York: New Press, 2010.