Church steeple.

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Stuart Collier

By Stuart G. Collier, a Baptist minister, member of Southside Baptist Church, retired from healthcare chaplaincy and teaching, educated with MDIV and PHD from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville

Over a half-century after Flannery O'Connor spoke the memorable words that the South is hardly Christ-centered but is Christ-haunted, the words are still true. The South, self-consciously religious to the marrow, proud to be known as the Bible belt, certain that here true Christianity is found, and here, against all assaults of modernity, the faithful are conserving the faith and being a persecuted witness to Christ--here more than anywhere does Christ haunt the believer.

I lived in Alabama through my college years then spent some twenty years away. I returned in 1996 to find that, unlike Rip Van Winkle who went to sleep and awoke to find a revolution had taken place, I found myself in a place that in spirit had not changed at all.

Every indicator of backwardness we laughed about as teens in the 1960s remained the same--first place (save perhaps Mississippi or Arkansas) in the worst, last place in the best. Now the political correctness has been torn away from the South and we see the Church naked, as the prophets would say. In short-hand, all that Donald Trump stands for, all that he has done, all that he does, the horrors so many see for the world with his presidency, these are defended or dismissed and, even more telling, these are supported by the "Church of the South."

What is the great sin of the Southern Church? Rejecting the Kingdom Jesus inaugurated. Pastor Robert Jeffress of Dallas First Baptist stated it clearly: he would run from any candidate who embodies the Sermon of the Mount and for president he would, and will, vote for the meanest SOB he can find. He would not trust Jesus to be president and the commands of Jesus gathered in the Sermon on the Mount (and Luke's Sermon on the Plain) are not meant to be principles guiding government.

Here is the problem: the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' clearest statement of life in the Kingdom of God. The gospels declare that John the Baptist came preaching the Kingdom of God, that Jesus declared that in himself God's kingdom has begun, and he went throughout the land preaching the good news of the kingdom at hand, here, right now, so respond. In the Sermon on the Mount he taught the disciples to pray, "Thy kingdom come on earth like it is in heaven."

From the earliest days of slavery the Southern Church in unbroken tradition has accepted Christ but rejected his mission and purpose, teaching how to enter and live in the Kingdom of God. Thus, ethics, behavior, love, truly following the way of Jesus has been and is divorced from accepting Christ. Savior, heaven, yes--the least of these, embracing the lowly, sick (Obamacare), powerless, poor, alien, refugee, voiceless, differing, love of neighbor and enemy. Those whom Jesus said would enter the Kingdom before the rich and powerful and self-righteous, these are still rejected, still kept in their subordinate places, excluded, dismissed.

This is the hauntedness of the South. Jesus will not be separated from his Kingdom. He will not be accepted and his concerns rejected. The good gift of government is for all people, and in his governing is good news for all, and a hand of love and care for all. That is what is uncommonly good news about the Kingdom. No rich and poor there, no righteous and sinners, no hungry, no have, no have nots. Until the Southern Church embraces Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom it will continue to be haunted by the one who never stops inviting.