by Rev. Eric Folkerth

Let’s talk about the Texas cheerleaders shot in an HEB parking lot and the formation of the “Global Methodist Church,” shall we?

Because, believe it or not, it seems to me there is an underlying societal illness behind them both.

That illness is a society-wide tendency to turn our innate “hostile imagination” into a physical manifestation of “Otherizing an enemy” through the bodies of our neighbors, friends, and even those in the pews next to us…to become convinced that they are “enemies” and not our “friends.”

If you have read my writing consistently over time, I’ve decried “Otherizing” as one of the greatest of all our society’s ills.

To be crystal clear, no, I am *absolutely not saying* that those leaving for the “GMC” are “ill.”

Nor am I saying that the fool who shot Texas cheerleaders in an HEB parking lot is ill either.

But those “good guys with a gun,” *and* the debates within the United Methodist Church are teaching us a horrifically similar lesson and revealing another outbreak of the society-wide virus known as “Otherizing.”

Let’s look at the cheerleader shooting.

I mean, come on, it’s the perfect amalgam of “Texas values” all in one place. It MUST be a message, right?

“Open Carry…”
“Texas Cheerleaders…”
AND “HEB?!”
You can’t make this stuff up.
“God bless Texas.”

But also, what a metaphor for how messed up things are. “Cheerleaders” mistakenly entering the wrong car, shot at by some fool with an open carry gun; becoming the FOURTH highly publicized incident of such behavior in a week. The other three are more horrific, of course. Let’s review all four, briefly…

Have you ever walked up to the wrong door of a house?

I bet you have. I did it once when I was four years old. I walked into the wrong apartment door in Southern California when our family briefly lived there. I was hunting my mother who was, as it turns out, sitting out by the pool. I saw a strange woman cooking in the kitchen. She did not have a gun. There was no “open carry” then. So I just ran back out of the apartment, crying, and back into the arms of my mother.

Ralph Yarl was not as lucky. He was shot just for walking up to the wrong house…gunned down by a man who was “standing his ground” or “protecting his castle” or whatever foolishness you want to call it. He was gunned down under the same bogus theory we broadly call “a good guy with a gun.”

Have you ever pulled into a driveway to turn around? I bet you have. Even in the era of WAZE I still miss turns and I hear her voice pestering me to “make a u-turn.” Thank God I have never once been shot at for doing this.

But Kaylin Gillis was. And now she’s dead. Again, at the hands of some pretend “good guy with a gun,” who somehow imagined he was protecting his “castle?”

Has your basketball ever wandered into a neighbor’s yard? I bet it has. On my commute to Kessler Park, I pass *two* active basketball courts every day. (One: a private home in East Kessler. The other: our own Roberts Forest at KPUMC). Perhaps dozens of times per game the ball will roll off the court and potentially onto somebody else’s property. Thank God no one has been shot.

But this week, a North Carolina man and his six-year-old son *were* shot when their basketball errantly rolled onto a neighbor’s property.

Have you ever walked up to the wrong car in a parking lot? Dear God in heaven, I do this about every other month. I drive a white SUV (Toyota) that looks almost exactly like every other smallish white SUV in every parking lot. I’m in a hurry. Or I’m back in some parking lot where I’ve been before but can’t remember…. “Did I park *here* or *there*?” One time I specifically recall walking up to a Lexus SUV and repeatedly yanking the door handle hard, frustrated that it was not auto-unlocking as I assumed it should.
(Lexus’ and Toyotas look very similar….). Thank God nobody shot at me while I was doing that.

But, as you know, here in Texas some fool shot at a cheerleader who mistakenly got in his car.

Again…guns…cheerleaders…HEB…It’s a metaphor for all us Texans, friends. We gotta pay attention to this.

To fully understand the spiritual sickness, we must LOOK DEEPER than the headlines…

All these stories share a common core. They are about how society teaches us to “Otherize” one another…to believe that everyone and everything is a potential threat...

As it pertains to guns: “if you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
And as it pertains to people: every stranger looks like a “dangerous other.”

As a CNN story on the basketball shooting horrifically puts it, these shootings are the results of human beings making “ordinary blunders.”
Because…that’s what we human beings do.

Ringing the wrong doorbell, making a u-turn, retrieving an errant basketball, getting in the wrong car….these can hardly be considered “mistakes.”

They’re just “ordinary blunders.” And nobody should ever be shot for them.

But this is where we are, dear friends. This is where we are.

It used to be that our “enemies” were externalized communities that lived “over there.” (Germans, Japanese, Russians, Vietnamese, Muslims) It was never the case that ANY of these historical groups were 100% made up of “pure enemy.” But because they were at a distance, our “Otherizing,” didn’t seem to have much social cost….so long as they stayed on some distant shore.
(Note: It 100% ALWAYS had a cost…the perception there is none was/is as costly was a myth…)

I absolutely ascribe to Sam Keen’s suggestion that each human being has a “hostile imagination” inside of us that dates back to our “tribal” past. Brain science is teaching —about “implicit bias”— in ways that conform this theory suggested by Keen decades ago.

And if we do not adequately know or understand this truth about our being, that “hostile imagination” in each of us can be manipulated to “Otherize” entire groups of other human beings. In our Christian faith-language: “Otherizing is the heart of human original human sin.”

Keen suggests that nation-states have to work hard to teach their citizens to kill. Keen suggests killing en masse does NOT come naturally to the human animal, but has to be taught. And it’s taught by turning “the Other” into “the Enemy.”

And so for centuries, and for prior millennia, we “fought” with foreign adversaries, “over there.”

But we never just “Otherized” abroad. We also “Otherized” at home.

Americans were “stamped from the beginning” with law and social practice that turned People of Color into the “Other” and the “Enemy.” We dehumanized generations of African-Americans. Our allegedly beloved Texas Rangers gunned down Mexican-Americans and even their German supporters. During Jim Crow, we redlined communities of color into “over there-neighborhoods.”
(In Dallas, “Little Mexico,” “Stringtown” and “Tenth Street,” “West Dallas,” and many more…)

Flash forward and the racially restrictive covenants, the legally enforced segregation of our neighborhoods are thankfully now gone.

In large part, the foreign enemies are now gone.
(Hint: neither our geopolitical adversaries abroad, nor the affects of Jim Crow at home, are “gone.” But we seem to pretend both are…)

 BUT! “The Hostile Imagination” remains inside every human soul!!!

EVERY HUMAN SOUL.

That is why it’s our “original sin.”

And so, with no identified foreign adversaries, with the old racial hierarchies on the verge of crumbling domestically, preachers and politicians have spent the last 40 years teaching us how to “TURN ON EACH OTHER.”

 “Fear…the immigrant.”
“Fear…People of Color.”
“Fear…Trans people.”
“Fear…the LGBTQ community.”
“Fear…the vaccine.”
“Fear…the stranger…”

“The enemy” is no longer far away.
“The enemy” could be the person next door, in front of you at the grocery store, or sitting in the pew across the aisle at church.

This is what makes our current brand of “Otherizing” so horrifically insidious. Because it’s aiding and abetting the devolution of our communities themselves, and teaching us that it’s “every man for himself.”

Into this very cultural soup, steps the break up of the United Methodist Church. Despite what we Methodists like to believe about ourselves, we don’t *lead* culture change, nor have we ever. But, in every generation, we tend to *mirror* what’s happening IN the culture.

 We talked about this, just last night, at Kessler Park UMC. We’ve been unpacking the horrific legacy of racism in America, and last night we looked at how Methodist theology and practice has “aided and abetted” the racial “Otherizing” of people throughout history. This resulted in the 1840s split of American Methodists into “Northern” and “Southern” branches.(1)

This historical split mirrored the culture of its day, of course, as the *nation* would also very soon split into North and South.

 So…. what are we to make of this *current* split? It’s not so geographically “clean.” There is no “North and South.”
(Although there’s credible evidence that most churches leaving are in the Old South, and mostly White…)

 What’s happening is that the conflict is now down to the neighborhood and the local church. The conflict is literally tearing congregations in two!
Families in two.
Neighbors in two.

We are, of course, grateful that this conflict has not in large measure been visible at Kessler Park UMC.

But....see the similarities? Like the fear of immigrants, POC, and the LGBTQ community in our neighborhoods, in many churches are are hearing that the “adversary” in this church split is no longer “over there.” But, sitting in the pew next to us.

Just like the neighbor who rings the wrong doorbell, or opens the wrong car door.

 GMC-leaning preachers are lying about the theology of UMC preachers, just as politicians are trying to tell us that “Drag Brunch” is “grooming” our kids.

 GMC-leaning preachers are lying, saying that the UMC will soon send “gay preachers” to poor, unsuspecting rural churches (Um…do you know how few gay preachers there are?!)…at the same time politicians are telling us poor immigrants from Mexico are to blame for our Fentanyl crisis.

 Through changes to civil law, ordinary citizens are being deputized by state governments to “turn in” those who break restrictive abortion or voting laws, with the promise of effect “bounty payments.”
(That’s what White citizens used to be offered to turn in “runaway slaves.”)

 And? All this comes with the promise of being armed with guns, so they can “stand their ground,” as newly minted citizen vigilantes.

 Friends: CAN WE NOT SEE THIS TEARS THE SEAMS OF CIVIL SOCIETY APART?!

 Our focus is diverted to OUR NEIGHBORS…innocent human just minding their own business….or making “ordinary blunders”…and away from how these very laws, and the theology that undergirds it, are tearing us apart.

 Friends, I am going to be completely transparent: I have no idea how to fully fix this. I only know that I must call us back, again and again, to the core teachings of Jesus.

I know it must somehow involve re-stitching communities together. I know it must somehow involve calling out lies and mistruths when we see them, and it involves people holding their leadership accountable for lies and mistruths. I know it must involve building back TRUST between neighbors.

 I can only tell you what Jesus teaches me to preach:

 That we who call ourselves Christian are called to love those who the world teaches us are our “enemies.”

 Jesus says “PRAY for those who persecute you,” not shoot them.

And guess what? In many cases NOBODY IS PERSECUTING YOU!

 They’re just your neighbors of different races, economic status, sexual orientation, going about their every-day lives, just like you.

 Jesus speaks directly to the “hostile imagination” deep in each of our human hearts through his most core teachings.

Jesus reminds us that “your neighbor is the one you assume is your enemy…”
(Parable of the Good Samaritan…Jesus’ first sermon in Nazareth)

 It’s not about “right belief,” but “right daily practice.” It’s about a daily awareness that the “hostile imagination” cuts through every beating human heart.

 The only way out is a spiritual awareness that intentionally chooses to turn away from our innate “Otherizing” tendency, to built trust among communities.

 All of us human beings will make “ordinary blunders.”

 The teachings of Jesus —to love, not fear, those who are different than us, and who live next to us— can be a way to ensure that nobody gets shot because of them.

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 (1) Important note: In actual fact, the split was into the “ME Church,” and “ME Church, South.” See? As a Southerner my whole life, I’ve heard “elders talk about the “ME Church, North.” But, there WAS NO “ME Church, North.” There was just the “ME Church;” just like there was just “The United States,” fighting against insurrectionist enemies called “The Confederacy,” who were supported by the “ME Church, South.”

Again, Methodists mirror the culture, not lead it…devolving from the anti-slavery values of John Wesley, and into a clearly balkanized “Northern” and Southern” church. Those “Northern” and “Southern” Whites would indeed reunify the two halves of the church …but it would take them until 1939 to do so….almost 100 full years after they first split. I wonder to myself: How long will the churches splitting now take to decide to reunify, somewhere down the road of history?