unsafe: the american default?

The need for designated safe zones for groups of people in our society speaks to how unsafe our society actually is. We have to specify that public schools are "drug free", designate spaces for women to be safe on college campuses, and put up neighborhood watch signs to deter crime. If you were born between the 50's and 70's you may remember yellow signs on the exterior of buildings designating fallout shelter sites just in case the USSR decided to bomb us. Growing up in the Washington, DC suburbs most people I knew were aware of these special safe zones and where the closest were – just in case.

The only reason we need to designate different areas in our society as safe is because the default for the society itself is unsafe. The land of the free and home of the brave is also a violent place especially as you enter areas where populations increase. People on the left often blame guns and people on the right often blame welfare.

All of this is mere smoke and mirrors hiding one of the greatest epidemics in our society – violence. The US homicide rate is about 5.6 homicides per 100,000 persons which is higher than other Western European countries and Canada. The press that school shootings and church shootings have received heightens our awareness of violence. The reason is that these are already designated safe zones where these crimes should not occur. Obviously urban crime gets less press since that happens in areas not designated safe and so are by default unsafe.

Homicides aside, there are other safe zones. College campuses designate safe zones for queer students. University of Iowa and USC are examples of this now common activity. Where segregation used to happen for violent and dehumanizing purposes, it now happens to keep minorities safe from default conditions of violence and dehumanization that happen as a default condition of our society.

By default condition, I am really talking about what is normative or normal. It is normal to treat some people as though they as though they are abnormal, deficient, grotesque, or harmful to what is "normal." Immigrants, released prisoners, parolees, the poor, queers, disabled, women (still), Muslims, the elderly, etc. are all people who require places sequestered from what is "normal" in the American economically governed society in order to keep business flowing and keep things "normal" which means white, Protestant, and male.

Given the level of segregation this society must maintain for some people groups to be safe, one would think that a church would be a place that would eschew such social boundaries in order to create a different kind of community where all are welcome regardless of their social status. After all Jesus said ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ And Paul would later say, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."

Yet this is just not the case. A church is a social organization that will carry all of the same burdens of social distinction as evidenced everywhere else. Because of this it will be a place where queers, immigrants, people of color, women, released convicts, addicts, the poor, etc. cannot be guaranteed that a church is a safe place for them to find social connectedness in a society that has by default disconnected them. This is not just about making a church something of a spiritual hospital to invite sin sick souls to come for healing. This sort of thing becomes window dressing for social conformity. "To join us, be like us." The kind of radical social situation that the Gospel demands is where the grace of Christ invites difference to co-exist in a community of mercy and forgiveness. It is to allow people to be different and yet united as one. Christian community is where the one and the many cannot exist without each other. Such is life together co-existing with the Triune God. When we require social conformity, we lose the unique calling as a community founded by a different set of norms and become the very society that the church is charged to transform to be like Christ.

The problem is not that many churches feel the need to advertise that they are safe for the people Jesus invites to partake in the Kingdom of God understanding that many are not safe, but demand conformity to a set of social rules. The problem is that the need exists at all. It means that the default condition of our churches is that they are not safe places for people who are not "normal." To this end, churches are as unsafe and tacitly violent as the rest of society. That is not a witness to the Kingdom of God. The default should be safety for all to come to Jesus rather than the violence of a fallen sense of social conformity. What is the default social structure of your church?

Related posts:

1. mourning the death of american exceptionalism
2. the thirteenth step
3. finding my bliss
4. god is revealed where god is hidden
5. go where god is, not where you believe god ought to be.