Where are your punches landing, evangelical thought leaders?

In my writing classes this semester I’ve been learning about humor and how it functions. One concept that keeps coming up is that to execute humor effectively and ethically, it’s important to — I guess it’s called, “punch up,” meaning to make fun (if humor is the decided route to make a point) of people or situations that will not be harmed by your words because they possess more power and have plenty of margin — and often necessity — for critique. Power, like money, status, respectability, and authority, is a “buffer” for critique, and to aim “lower” on these continuums is akin to rhetorical wrestling someone in a lower weight class. Wise humorists will show this deference and care by not exploiting people who don’t have as many resources fight back to get a laugh.

Punching down, on the other hand, means the person throwing shade is using their own power to bring someone lower than they already are. This has tangible consequences in the real world — often, the consequences are carried in the bodies of those who must absorb the weight of the words of others. (What does the Bible say about the power of the tongue?)

Christians. This doesn’t just apply to humor. It’s so easy to publically say that the “truth” is that lgbtq people are living in sin and that the Most Important Issue we face is upholding the status of the hetero family.

It’s so easy to use our precious words to say that Black Lives Matter is wrong because some people are looting.

It’s so easy to expend our energy saying that women pastors are posers, and that they need to get back into the kitchen where they belong. (Hilarious. Really. What are you supposed to do, then, with a woman like me, who’d rather butcher than bake? There must be something wrong with ME?)

But I’ve seen Christian leaders voice these things — publicly, repeatedly, and remorselessly, without hesitancy.

If those things are so easy to voice, then for the love of God, (literally):

WHERE ARE ALL OF YOUR VOICES DENOUNCING WHITE SUPREMACY, HOMOPHOBIA AND MISOGYNY clearly and unequivocally and vehemently??

When the church is currently the LEAST safe place for queer people to enter, at peril of their lives. When the church is doing next to NOTHING to change a centuries-long tradition of racist practices, after being one of the biggest apologists for it in the modern day —and still is!!! When the church is a modern cesspool for abuse of women, the stifling of their voices, the villainizing of their bodies, and unsupportive of their gifts and freedom to offer them.

but Jesus is our king, you say. Not the whims of the world.

And he replies: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

Where are all of your punches landing, church??