The invitation

Hi. I’m Marisa, aka “Father Marisa” to some. If you’re suspicious of church and creepy motives, then you’re exactly who I want to collaborate with.

My story: unlikely pastor

Here’s why I’ll hope you’ll consider collaborating with me and the people I’ve been dreaming with. I’ve spent the last twenty years trying to understand how Christianity went so wrong. I was in college when 9/11 happened and was horrified at the speed at which Christian concepts were mobilized in support of the absolute annihilation of entire nations. So I studied the legacies of the Puritans on American government and culture. After I burned out on activism the first time, I went to grad school. I studied American Religious History, and I wrote my doctoral thesis on the American uses of torture, from WWII to the War on Terror. A lot of it has to do with nationalist Christianity.

Despite all that, I could never let go of the experiences of God I’ve had, or the conviction that the stories about Jesus - the Good News - actually were supposed to be good, not horrific. I left church. I came back, despite myself. Whatever criticism you have of Christianity: I agree. We have not been the people God hoped we would be. I was ordained in the Episcopal Church the night before Trump was inaugurated. Our congregation was full of undocumented folks. We turned my ordination service into a massive affirmation that no matter what happened, no matter who came for us, we belonged to God and each other and nothing could ever change that.

In 2017, I was trying to be a good little parish priest and do my morning prayers and every time I sat down there was only one thing that would go through my mind: What is Christianity after white supremacy? That is, if we removed all the nationalist baggage, the colonial and imperial projects, the domination and subjugation of anything and anyone considered feminine or otherwise insufficiently male and European - if we took all that out, what would be left? I am still convinced the answer is not “nothing.”

In 2019, I went to Mexico, and for reasons I still don’t quite understand I ended up in a temazcal - a sweat lodge - with an Aztec shaman. During the ceremony, a message came to me with intense clarity: “Cristianidad esta enferma. Christendom is sick. Christianity needs medicine.” Draw your own conclusions, I’m just telling you what happened.

Time for change: where might you fit in? What’s your story?

I still think about these things all the time. There is no evidence from scripture or other sources that Jesus ever converted a single person. Not to his own religion, Judaism, and not to any religion he invented. He was only interested in helping people know they were just as close to the Creator as anyone else. Samaritan, Judean, Greek - he didn’t care. To those people who had been pushed to the sidelines of their own communities, or who had found no hope in their own ethnic religions, or who, because of war or occupation, found themselves far from the sacred places and practices that they cherished, Jesus offered himself as a path. He never intended global conquest of both land and souls.

What if a church was just honest about all this? What if a church asked how we could help you on your path, rather than insisting you act just like us? Like the ancient Near East of Jesus’ time, our own community is a cosmopolitan crossroads of many cultures. More and more of us are nurturing our spirits through a variety of practices that draw from multiple traditions. What if we celebrated this instead of denouncing it? What if this were cause for inspiration, rather than defensiveness? What if we welcomed people - without needing to change them? That’s what Jesus did.

I believe the next Reformation is when those of us who have found life in the Jesus story commit to salvaging what is good, useful, and true from our two thousand years of tradition, and leave aside the rest. What that looks like is yet to be worked out, though it is happening, little by little, in local experiments like this one.

If any of this resonates with you, if you even want to hope that maybe something could be different, maybe there’s something in gathering with others that can still feel alive and full of love and new life, let’s talk. What happens next is not up to me, but to us. What remains of Christianity after white supremacy and all the -isms is what we do, together, with curiosity and generosity. We get to decide what we will try. We get to decide what is needed and worth an experiment. Together. Because we were never meant to go it alone. I hope we can try something. It just starts with a conversation.

All the blessings of the green earth be with you,

Marisa