Last week, you may have seen an audio recording leaked of a local Kansas GOP party chairman advocating for a multifaceted plan to turn Kansas into a shining beacon of conservatism for the rest of the country. Now, Kansas is hardly new at being an experiment for a national far-right agenda (See: Brownback Tax Plan).
This next experiment, though, may prove to not only wreck our state budget — but also our state’s conscience.
For years, as a pastor, I have seen this ploy taking shape in pulpits across the state. Now, as a state legislator, I see long-held plans coming to fruition in Kansas’s chief lawmaking body. From banning mental health care for our trans children to state-sanctioned discrimination of all transgender Kansans, a litany of bills were pushed this year to completely erase members of the LGBTQ community from public life.
The proponents of these bills? Conservative political think-tanks centered on the idea of “religious freedom.” Apparently, that freedom doesn’t extend to everyone.
What these national partisan organizations won’t tell you is that each one of these bills is polled, message-tested and primed to elicit a reaction from a specific subset of voters. This is not some noble quest to make Kansas a more moral, Christ-like state. It is a calculated, political tactic to divide people, win elections and tighten their grip on power.
Unfortunately, too many churches have bought into this scheme.
Rather than act as a refuge for the downtrodden, some sectors of American Christianity have adopted the role of morality police, supposedly on God’s behalf. The problem is, their ideological crusade is based on their own worldly goals — not on the will of God.
AS CHRISTIANS we may fail to live up to the most rigorous standards of our faith, but to manipulate the criteria and attack others out of some personal need to be seen as righteous is the very definition of sin.
The churches have plenty of good they can do without engaging in verbal (and legislative) attacks on the most vulnerable among us. Christian authoritarianism is overreach of the worst sort: It pretends to be God; it ignores that God has other children who may not think, look, or act like you; and that God’s kingdom is bigger than any of us.
It’s time for churches who do not agree with what’s being done to stand up and defend the Gospel against purveyors of hate.
If these views were merely the day-dreaming of extreme activists, it could be brushed off as a fringe fever-dream. But, the sad fact is the majority of legislators have subscribed to this form of pseudo-religious manipulation.
Crusading against those who are different from them has become standard practice for our Republican-dominated House and Senate. I have grave concerns not only for the future of our state but also the safety of those marginalized by the Legislature.
We don’t have to look too far back into history to see what happens when we put a target on people’s backs for political expediency. Today, it’s the LGBTQ community. Tomorrow, it could be yours.
We are at a crossroads as a state and as a country: Whether we will govern with fear and ignorance or love and kindness. For the sake of all of us, I hope it’s the latter.
About the author: Tobias Schlingensiepen is the senior minister of First Congregational Church in Topeka and represents the 55th District in the Kansas House of Representatives.
