What Religious Persecution in America Really Looks Like

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sues Austin church for ministry to the unhoused community

Christians in the West, specifically white evangelical Christians in America, have a tendency to cry “persecution” in ways similar to how the boy in the famous story cried “wolf.”

We’ve all seen comments like these:

• Starbucks takes away Christmas cups — “This is persecution!”

• God’s Not Dead 4 flops in the theaters — “Jesus said the world is going to hate us!”

• Someone says Happy Holidays — “I am being discriminated against because of my faith!”

But getting upset because some Christian preferences are not being prioritized as much as they previously were is not the same thing as persecution.

Ironically, many of the Christians who love to fabricate persecution for personal enrichment are the ones actually doing the persecuting. This was the case earlier this week when Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, announced a lawsuit against Sunrise Community Church in Austin, Texas, because of their ministry to unhoused people in the city.

Chron reporter Eric Killelea writes:

“This isn't the first time Paxton has tried to shut down church ministries and nonprofits that seemingly don't agree with his religious and political beliefs. ProPublica and The Texas Tribune earlier this year found more than a dozen instances in which Paxton's office ‘has aggressively used the state's powerful consumer protection laws to investigate organizations whose work conflicts in some ways with his political views or the views of his conservative base.’”

There are obviously serious First Amendment and religious freedom issues here. As someone who has significant religious and political differences with Ken Paxton, I (Zach) am genuinely concerned about the targeting of Texas churches and clergy who dissent from Paxton’s right-wing views.

For those of us who have followed the intersection of politics and homelessnes closely over the past several years, a concerning pattern has emerged: the criminalization of people in this position. This legislation is the natural outcome of a longheld and deeply flawed Christian understanding of homelessness, one that dehumanizes people who are already encountering tremendous hardship.

The attack on Sunrise Community Church is reason for all of us, regardless of our geographic location, to reconsider the politics and theology of homelessness.

We can’t understand this trend without considering the larger context of criminalization directly targeting those experiencing homelessness:

• A lobbying group called the Cicero Institute (also based out of Travis County, the county which includes Austin) is responsible for writing and campaigning for anti-camping and similar laws across the country. And they keep winning.

• In the last few years alone, churches and pastors in Ohio, Arizona, Texas, California, Oregon, and Pennsylvania have all found themselves in legal trouble for serving unhoused people, as zoning laws have been leveraged to prevent housing and feeding people on church property and in public spaces. In some cases, churches are winning. In others, they’re losing.

• The Supreme Court ruled last summer that municipalities across the country can criminalize homelessness without limitation. In the specific case they heard from Grants Pass, Oregon, unhoused people were fined for having a blanket outside in freezing weather, even when every shelter was full.

Under the highest law of the land, it is now permissible to fine people without means for keeping warm in freezing temperatures. Think about that. And with bad actors like Ken Paxton and the Cicero Institute, this is becoming the norm.

Although this approach to criminalizing homelessness is making a popular resurgence, it’s not new; it has always found a home amongst a particular group of Christians. Prominent Evangelicals in the homelessness sector like Robert Marbut (former homelessness czar for Presidents Bush and Trump) and John Ashmen (former President CEO of Citygate Network, an association of more than 300 Gospel Rescue Missions) continually suggest that feeding people “enables” homelessness, and that criminalization is an important tool to make unhoused people “feel some sort of pain from living this lifestyle.”

Because of this toxic theology, many Christians who entered into service-oriented ministries and nonprofits with compassion and hope become disillusioned into embracing a methodology of punishment, blame, and harm.

BUT.

Countless Christian organizations like Sunrise Community Church are telling a different story:

• They understand that homelessness is a complex problem that stems from systemic failures at the macro and micro level, and that people do not choose to become homeless (or stay that way).

• They meet the immediate needs of people without judgment or precondition while also advocating for the needed changes to prevent the prevalence of homelessness.

• They see Jesus in the eye of every person experiencing homelessness, and respond accordingly with humility, sacrifice, and passion.

And, like Jesus, workers in these ministries find themselves increasingly persecuted, often by their religious peers- those committed to maintaining a particular false vision of the world that secures their place in the social hierarchy.

We must rally around those experiencing homelessness and the organizations committed to serving them in order to protect these vulnerable neighbors from the rising wave of derision, punishment, and harm– especially when it comes from our fellow people of faith.

We must choose a side, and we will always put our money on the side where the hungry are fed, the hurting are comforted, and the poor are seen as members of the kingdom. Jesus will always be on that side, too.

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I first heard about what was happening at Sunrise Community Church because my friend Zach Lambert was posting on social media about it. I texted him as soon as I saw and asked if he wanted to write something together, and he told me “absolutely”... because he was already working on something and I could join in. Zach’s pastoral attentiveness and love for his Austin community is something I’ve always admired. If you’re not already subscribed to Zach and Amy’s Substack, you should definitely get on it. I’m looking forward to pre-ordering his forthcoming first book, “Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing”, which releases next Fall!