It’s not normal for books that I read to be the subject of conversation before I read them. When I shared on social media that I was reading Jonny Rashid’s Jesus Takes a Side, reaction was swift. “Isn’t it amazing that Jesus is always on your side?” (Umm…not really, because if I truly thought Jesus was on the other side, I’d be changing camps to side with Jesus…something I’ve actually done a few different times in my faith journey.) In an increasingly polarized world, many Christians are calling for an end to politicization and for there to be a third way that unites both sides. Rashid takes exception to that, writing clearly about how Jesus never sacrificed care for the marginalized for the sake of unity. I recently caught up with Jonny to talk about Jesus Takes a Side.
The Conversation | Jonny Rashid
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Josh Olds: What do you mean when you say Jesus takes a side?
Jonny Rashid: I mean, Jesus takes the side of the oppressed and when it comes to making political commitments, we should align with uplifting and liberating the oppressed, and giving them as much a life and dignity as we can in our collective battle against death, which is what Jesus opposes. So where death exists, oppression exists; and where life flourishes, liberation exists, Jesus wants everybody to be liberated. And so we look at the least liberated and imagine Jesus working with them, relating to them, loving them.
Josh Olds: When I first got this book, it was the title that sold me on it, because it is so different than what we hear in a lot of Christian conversation. If you come out and you just say “Jesus takes a side,” then everyone sort of reacts against that. Do you feel like that there are people who are just like, “Hey, we shouldn’t take sides. We got to stay in the middle.” Or especially now, do you feel like people would read this and say, “You know, Jesus takes sides and that’s the conservative evangelical Republican side”?
Jonny Rashid: What we see in what was called the Moral Majority, what’s become the far right, we do see a lot of political commitments among those groups, but, they don’t really say they take a side, what they say is that they’re right. What they say is that God is on their side. What they say is, “We are in the right position,” as opposed to Jesus taking the side really meaning Jesus sides with the oppressed. So I don’t hear from the religious right, from the far right, that Jesus makes political commitments. Instead, what I hear is a sort of Christian supremacy, that this is the right way to do things. Not doing that is going to ruin our families, it’s going to destroy our kids, this is why we have to do it, they engage in a culture war in a different way than I am. Because what I’m talking about is actual explicit political commitments, as opposed to self-righteous ones, you know, ones that that protect me, my personal and religious interests, but rather ones that uplift the most vulnerable. So I do see a difference there. But I understand that a lot of people resist political commitments because they see the Republican Party being co-opted, or the Republican Party co-opting evangelicals…And so the instinct is to say, No, we’re not political, because being political is bad. In my viewpoint, it isn’t being political that’s wrong. It’s being allied with forces of deaths such as racism, such as homophobia, sexism, patriarchy, greed, environmental degradation. These are the things that are wrong, not politics.
The Book | Jesus Takes a Side
Jesus sides with the oppressed. Will you?
In a world divided by left and right, red and blue, many Christians have upheld a “third way” approach in pursuit of moderation, harmony, and unity.