"We preach the gospel and keep politics out of the pulpit."

Even on the surface level, I've never understood this line because the majority of stories within the gospels is about a man who talks endlessly about ending the systemic oppression of people by the state and stops at nothing to convey the totality of worth and value each and every person inherently possesses.

The reality is that the people who want to keep politics out of the pulpit are the privileged few who benefit from the very systems used to oppress others. To be unaware of your privilege — your systematic privilege — in this day and age, is willful ignorance that is complicit with the very oppression that Jesus raged against.

If you, as a pastor, are not willing to discuss politics — literally, how you see the world — then you need to step down. If you did not know that politics transcend party affiliation and governmental ideology, then you need to step down. You are not qualified to lead. You are not part of the problem. You are the problem.

You are the reason that a racist bigot possesses an 87% approval rating from the evangelical community. Your silence is complicit. Politics are not binary. Repudiation against the bigoted, xenophobic, racism of Donald Trump does not mean support for democratic ideologies. If you didn't know that, that's not ignorance; it's stupidity.

The reason it feels this way is because George Floyd was not inadvertently manslaughtered. He was lynched. In front of our fucking eyes, he was lynched. He was lynched by systematic failures borne from this country's original sin that we are still fighting against hundreds of years later. He was lynched.

And if you're not willing to, like Jesus, talk about the systematic oppression of people by the state, then you are not fit to lead. You are not fit to lead. You are not part of the problem — you are the problem. Step down.