Pub Theology 10/6/25 -- Separating church and hate
Peter Trumbore • October 6, 2025
First a disclaimer: Despite appearances to the contrary, this is neither a book review nor an endorsement of the new book by actor, comedian, and political commentator John Fugelsang titled "Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds." From the title you get the general idea of where the author is going with this.
Fugelsang's story is a compelling one. He was raised in a large politically, ethnically, religiously, and racially diverse family as a progressive Roman Catholic by a mother who was a former nun and a father who was a former Franciscan monk. As he puts it in the introduction to his book, "I am here because two people broke a promise to God." What he wrestles with in this book is how to come to terms with, and then fight back against, what he views as the hijacking of Christianity and the abandonment of the faith that Jesus taught by religious and political leaders who have perverted the religion in the pursuit of their own power and selfish interests.
In the introduction, Fugelsang writes: "This is a book about what Christianity started out as, what it became, and why it's still worth fighting for. ... The extreme right uses Jesus' name as camouflage. This is a guide to camouflage removal."
In building our conversation this week around this book, I acknowledge from the start that none of us have (probably) read it. My copy is on its way thanks to The House of Bezos. In the meantime, you can read Fugelsang's introduction by clicking on this link. You can also watch Fugelsang's appearance on The Daily Show by following this link. But I think we can still have a quality discussion around some of what he raises. First, before we talk about the message, let's talk about the messenger. Fugelsang admits that he is no member of the clergy, nor scholar, nor theologian. So what qualifies him to write this book and level the critiques he makes? In short, does the messenger matter? Some quotes from the book will also serve as spurs to our conversation.
- “I generally trust people who are seeking the truth; I tend to be wary of those who claim they’ve found it.”
- “I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” (Quoting Susan B. Anthony)
- “In focusing on what cannot be proven, many Christians fall into the trap of a Christianity that’s more about defending the supernatural than embodying the moral teachings of Jesus. It’s not the miracles driving people away from religion, it’s the Christians who don’t live by Jesus’s words about how we’re supposed to treat each other.”
- “[R]emember—if your church isn’t telling you to love your enemies but keeps telling you who your enemies are, you’re not really in a church.”
- “And that’s the point. We’re called to follow Christ, not the Bible. In fact, please understand this: the Bible does not tell us to follow the Bible. The Bible tells us to follow Christ. But Biblical Christians follow the Bible. They do not, in fact, attempt to follow Christ.”
- “Not only are Christians supposed to prioritize following Jesus’s words above the other parts of the Bible, that’s also quite literally why this religion got its name.”
- “These were the fundamentalists, the power-hungry grifters who took advantage of the fact that most people don’t know the Bible all that well. They were charlatans, frauds, hypocrites, and villains. And they made for great TV.”
- “Spiritual people use religion to become better people. Fundamentalists use religion to pretend they’re better than other people.”
- “And I was taught—relentlessly—that Christianity was about the things Jesus prioritized: Service to others. Forgiveness. Caring for the poor, the sick, the stranger, the prisoner. Fighting injustice with nonviolence, like Dr. King and Gandhi. Standing up for the less fortunate, like Dorothy Day and Catholic Charities. Love. Empathy. Compassion.”
Obviously, no collection of cherry-picked quotations can capture the totality of Fugelsang's argument. But it can be our jumping off point for discussion. Join us tomorrow evening, Tuesday Oct. 7, starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.
Some years ago I was having a conversation with a student when she noticed the Jesus action figure on the bookshelf behind my desk. What, doesn't everyone have a Jesus action figure in their office? Anyway, this led to a conversation about churches and church traditions. She had grown up in the Pentecostal church and asked me what I thought of the practice of speaking in tongues. I told her it wasn't part of my church tradition, but that I understood it as one of the gifts of the spirit that Paul identifies in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, though I admitted my own skepticism that the way speaking in tongues is typically practiced was actually divinely inspired. And I followed up with a question of my own. I asked whether in her church she had ever encountered someone with the gift of the interpretation of tongues, another on Paul's list. She said she hadn't, though she didn't attach any real significance to that. I was reminded of this conversation in church on Sunday when one of our readings was that very section of Paul's letter. In it he identifies the variety of gifts that the spirit may impart, emphasizing that for all of the differences in gifts, they all come from or flow through the same spirit. Here's Paul's list: utterance of wisdom through the spirit; utterance of knowledge according to the spirit; faith; gifts of healing; the working of powerful deeds; prophecy; discernment of spirits; various kinds of tongues; and the interpretation of tongues. I reading up for this topic, I came across a piece written by a Pentecostal writer who says that when he finds himself in periods of spiritual crisis he prays in tongues for wisdom from God. I honestly have no idea what that means in practice. Perhaps I've not sufficiently opened myself up to receive the Holy Spirit. Or maybe I just don't get it. I suspect I'm not the only one baffled here. So let's talk about it in our conversation this evening. What do you make of Paul's list of the gifts of the spirit? Do you take their meaning literally, or is this more metaphorical and rhetorical? Have you ever experienced any of these gifts firsthand, either in yourself or witnessed in others? If you were coming up with such a list today, what would be on it? Join us for the discussion this evening starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion. The weather is beautiful, so we may be out on the patio. Look for us there. And a reminder, this is our last meeting before we take our break for the summer. We'll swing back into action in September.
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.
Over the bent world broods
With mid-May upon us, and summer on the doorstep, we are well and truly into spring, typically seen as a season of renewal. A couple of things have brought this to my mind this week. And not just the flowers growing up and around and through the old animal skulls that we artistically left in the chaos garden behind the house when we moved in two springs ago. For context, these used to hang on the wall in the garage at our old house. First, in typical New York Times fashion, their podcast The Daily last week ran a piece on what was claimed to be Americans' "revisiting of religion," and "putting secularism on hold." I listened to the thing, and what it seems to be based on is anecdotal evidence drawn from conversations that the writer of their Belongings newsletter has had with friends, acquaintances, and her family members over the last year or two of her writing the newsletter. Classic New York Times! But still something to contemplate, especially her argument that this turn back to religion is being driven by people's desire for community, connection, and meaning in their lives. Second, and in an echo of our topic of discussion last week, The Washington Post last week ran a piece by a religion professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington proposing that the government's release of new previously classified material on UFOs was offering support and recognition of a new religion, belief in UFOs. The author writes: "UFO belief is not a religion in the traditional sense. There are no centralized leaders: no popes, no universally recognized doctrines, no sacred text and no institution capable of enforcing orthodoxy. Yet it increasingly performs many of the functions historically attributed to religion. It organizes communities of belief, creates narratives of revelation, offers cosmological meaning and establishes interpretive frameworks through which people understand mysterious experiences and humanity’s place in the universe." A key idea here is that UFO religion is profoundly anti-institutional, built on a foundation of distrust of government, mainstream media, academia, and organized religion. But again, driven by people seeking community, connection, and meaning. Finally, over the weekend there was a White House-sponsored all-day prayer event on the National Mall in Washington D.C. aimed at "rededicating" America as "One Nation under God." Of course it was a decidedly Christian and evangelical version of God that was the focus. Still, thousands showed up and participated. More people looking for and apparently finding some kind of connection, community, and meaning. And a form of renewal at least in the eyes of the organizers and participants in the event. We're going to talk about the idea of renewal in our conversation this week. Are we in a time of spiritual or religious renewal in this country, as the above examples suggest? What would such a thing look like? Would we know it if we saw it? And is it renewal at all, or something different? Join us for the discussion starting at 7pm Tuesday, May 19 at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.
The Feast of the Ascension
Just last week, the federal government released their latest set of "disclosures" concerning UFOs, or, as the government now calls them, "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena," (UAPs). Or what we used to call flying saucers and little green men, The collection of photos and reports was met with what could best be described as an underwhelming response. Writing in The Atlantic, astrophysicist Adam Frank put it this way: "Spaceships. That’s all I’m asking for. Just one actual stinking spaceship. I’d also take an actual alien body—I’ve been told that the government has some of them as well. Instead, the first “alien files,” released yesterday, appear to be the same old, same old: stories, but no hard evidence—certainly not of the kind I’d want to see as a scientist, or that could truly advance the debate about UFOs and their alien connection. ... I am disappointed." If you read that like I did, then I suspect you too have echoes of the story of Doubting Thomas ringing in your ears. We hear the story of Thomas right after Easter. It recounts the disciple's unwillingness to accept the fact of the resurrection unless he can see and touch the evidence for himself. Thomas needed to see the marks and put his fingers in the wounds before he'd believe that Christ had risen from the dead. This raises the obvious question of what counts as evidence, whether we're talking about the truth of the existence of UFOs and extraterrestrial intelligence, or any other phenomenon we accept as true without ever having seen or experienced for ourselves. Take earthquakes, for example. I know they exist but I've never seen or felt one in real life. Or Bigfoot. I know Bigfoot is real even though I've never laid eyes on the critter. OK, maybe not Bigfoot. And maybe not the supposed "mummified aliens" that were displayed several years ago on the floor of the Mexican congress. One of them is shown in the photo above. Let's just say that in this case seeing was not necessarily believing, as this report from Reuters attests. The latest set of disclosures on UFOs has also been met with more than a healthy dose of skepticism. The Associated Press reports that the latest releases leave the task of interpreting the meaning of the photos and the reports to the public themselves. For the astrophysicist Frank, that's not good enough: "A real disclosure would look very different, because only one thing matters: hard evidence." So let's talk about this question of evidence in our conversation this week. What would it take for you to believe in the reality of UFOs, or, for that matter, anything else that lives outside the realm of your own personal experience? What counts as evidence for you, whether the question is about UFOs, or Bigfoot, or the resurrection for that matter? Join us for the discussion starting at 7pm. Due to the water main failure's impact on Lake Orion, we will meet this week at Sullivan's Public House in downtown Oxford. Parking is easiest behind the restaurant. We will probably be seated upstairs, so if you don't see us when you arrive, look for us there.
This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our service is at 9:30 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream.
A Primer on the Book of Common Prayer