When Were You Radicalized?

It always starts the same. A benign comment about a Facebook post, a podcast episode, or an article I wrote. But then it gets serious. A slew of questions about politics, progressive theology, or pacifism springs forth. Indignation is in their eyes, a fearful tone in their voices. I watch their facial expressions contort and smirk, betraying a hidden bewilderment at my audacity to question conventional Christianity. Their bodies draw back in disgust at my ideas, afraid that if they linger too long or stand too close, they might be infected by a faith that is just honestly taking things a little too far. 

It’s tragically comedic to watch my family and friends “social distance” from my spirituality. They talk about me, worried I’ve gotten off track because my spiritual journey took a left turn and tumbled headlong out of the boundaries of milquetoast religion and into the fringes of faith. In a text exchange about spirituality with one of my college buddies this week, he abruptly ended the conversation by saying, “You’re weird. I’m out.” And underneath it all lies a latent, if not voiced, question, “When were you radicalized?”

I was radicalized by a penniless, brown, undocumented, itinerant, victim of state-sanctioned violence. I was radicalized by the gospel of Mark, an austere story stripped of all the high Christology and Gnostic ideology, revealing Christianity in its simplest, most revolutionary form: a grassroots movement focused on civil disobedience, social justice, political liberation, peace, and anti-imperialism. I was radicalized by a re-reading of the Hebrew prophets, who gave voice to a God that sides with the poor and oppressed. I was radicalized by Mary the mother, whose song of magnificent defiance still threatens the powers that be. I was radicalized by ancient and modern mystics who refuse rationalistic religion. 

I was radicalized by Rev. Kevin Huddleston who gave me a book that changed my life. I was radicalized by Stanley Hauerwas and Phillip Kennesson, who taught me nonviolence and enemy love, forever cementing the belief that Christians can never, under any circumstance resort to violence. I was radicalized by Milligan University professor Bert Allen who undid my narrow-mindedness and taught me to love and accept everyone, especially my LGBTQIA+ friends. I was radicalized by the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who continues to remind me that “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” 

I was radicalized by Hagia Sophia, who revealed to me the divine feminine, introducing me to God the birthing mother and God the compassionate caregiver. I was radicalized by Richard Rohr, who introduced a third way of seeing the world beyond the rigid dualities of good or bad, left or right, conservative or liberal. I was radicalized by the Black Lives Matter movement, which forced me to come to terms with an entire political and social system built on white supremacy and black disenfranchisement. I was radicalized by missionary Lesslie Newbigin, who taught me that “the place of the church is not in the seats of the establishment but in the camps and marching columns of the protestors.” I was radicalized by Catholic worker Dorothy Day and her condemnation of the “filthy, rotten system” that we participate in and benefit from. I was radicalized by Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann’s idea that unfettered capitalism is stimulated by the unquenching desire of covetousness. 

I was radicalized by the Episcopal Church, which taught me that love trumps the soundest of doctrines. I was radicalized by Rev. Brendan E. Williams, who showed me Christianity isn’t about having the right beliefs but rather a transformed life, that the universal way of Jesus is the way of death and rebirth—the path of transformation from an old way of being and into a new way of seeing. I was radicalized by Marcus Borg, who showed me compassion, not purity, is what Jesus desires most. I was radicalized by my wife and her unconditional love, grace, and dogged determination to refuse to allow me to be my worst self. I was radicalized by Brent and Juanita Nidifer, who showed me what true friendship really means, how to see the sacred in all things, and to embrace mystery in the mundane.  

In 1924, poet and author D.H. Lawrence wrote, “The adventure has gone out of Christianity,” and I would add the radical bite has, too. We’ve inherited a faith that looks nothing like its founder. Jesus was poor, we are rich. He was peaceful, we are violent. He was an outsider, we are the in-crowd. He was persecuted, we do the persecuting. He rejected the seduction of political power, we sleep with Caesar. Conventional Christianity has become patently uninteresting. In an upcoming episode of Holy Heretics podcast, Rev. Williams states:

Christianity has become castrated, a totally domesticated version of a once-radical way of wisdom. When we look at early Christianity and the Gospels...it’s radical. It totally upends the world as we know it. So compare and contrast that with what most people experience of Christianity today. And maybe that neutered Sunday-brunch-and-bingo affair is enjoyable for some people, but it’s certainly not transformative on the level that religion should be.

Spiritual radicalization starts with metanoia: “a complete turn in our way of being in the world.” It is the slow and often painful process of reorienting your life around an axis of love. Just beware, your friends and family may not understand. They will question your motives and might even stigmatize you as a heretic. Sometimes the most oppressive, controlling, and domineering forces in life are close friends and family. No matter how strong the pressures are to conform, to fit in, to retreat back into status-quo religion, resist. And remember, you are not alone. There is a great cloud of spiritual misfits and radicals waiting to welcome you into a new tribe, a new community, a new way of life. 

But I’ll admit, it’s hard. I feel lonely most of the time. 

Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to spiritual stagnation, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to radical discipleship, and few find it. And most of us who do are weirdos.