The Value and Cost of Clarity

I keep having versions of the same conversation.

Someone tells me The Table Church has become too exclusive, too quick to judge, too unwilling to embrace people who disagree. We say we celebrate diversity, but we've created a progressive echo chamber where conservatives wouldn't feel welcome. We've built, they say, a kind of progressive fundamentalism—rigid, intolerant, and ultimately no different from the religious fundamentalism we claim to have left behind.

At a personal level, I'm told that comparing the MAGA movement to fascism alienates people who might otherwise be open to conversation. That calling out Christian nationalism as heresy pushes away the very people who need to hear a different message. That I should be more winsome, more gracious, more willing to meet people where they are.

I think we're having too many conversations at once, conflating distinct questions, and in the process, making it impossible to think clearly about any of them.

Four Different Questions

Let's untangle the threads. There are actually four separate questions getting mashed together:

First: What beliefs are non-negotiable for community safety? In other words, it's the classic paradox of tolerance question. If you want to create a community where all are welcome, then you have to talk about institutional boundaries. Who gets to lead, teach, and shape the community?

Second: How should we communicate those boundaries? Here, we're asking about tone, strategy, and whether prophetic truth-telling requires being an asshole.

Third: What happens to people who show up with harmful beliefs? This is the pastoral question. What is the path from ignorance to understanding, from harm to repair?

Fourth: What, as Christians, are our individual responsibilities in having relationships with those who disagree with us? And what should the nature and quality of those relationships be?

These are related but distinct questions. Confusing them leads to the possibility that no one actually grows or changes their mind and, instead, people just get hurt. Let's take them one at a time.

The Middle Ground Is Quicksand

Question 1: What beliefs are non-negotiable for community safety?

What I've learned from watching communities try to be "welcoming to all perspectives" is that it doesn't work. Not because people aren't trying hard enough, but because of how power actually functions.

Rebecca Solnit puts it plainly:

"The truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists. And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people."

When you say "all are welcome," you're making a choice about whose comfort matters most. That choice always favors people who already have power.

Consider what happened at The Table some years ago. Two men asked the lead pastor to perform their wedding. The pastor refused—the same pastor who had gay elders, gay preachers, a thriving LGBTQ affinity group. His refusal sent shockwaves through the queer community in the congregation. The church that was supposed to be safe suddenly wasn't.

Centrism does exactly what happened in that moment. It accommodates the feelings of those with power (in our case, a straight pastor protecting their future career prospects) at the expense of those without it (two men who couldn't get married in their own church by their own pastor).

The pattern repeats everywhere:

• Maybe a woman shouldn't be the lead pastor; it might turn off potential male attendees
• Let's not become fully affirming; we might lose our straight donors
• Affirmative action is unfair to high-achieving white students

In every case, the injustices against marginalized people are treated as less important than the comfort of those who already hold power.

Adam Bates explains the mechanism:

"You can say 'all are welcome,' but if wolves and sheep are both welcome then you're only going to get wolves. The smart sheep will go somewhere else and the naive sheep will be eaten and processed."

Or, as the bartender in the famous Reddit story put it:

"You have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend... and then you realize, oh shit, we've become a Nazi bar now."

Centrism isn't neutrality. Centrism is a choice to accommodate supremacy.

What Institutions Owe Vulnerable People

Churches—and any institution that vulnerable people depend on—have different obligations than your personal dinner table. The Table Church exists, in part, as a refuge for people who've been harmed by other religious communities. That reality creates specific responsibilities.

Given the choice between creating a church where someone can work out their uncertain feelings about LGBTQ rights and creating a church where queer people can actually breathe, we choose the queer people. Not because the questioning person is evil, but because there are already hundreds of churches in Washington D.C. where straight people can work through their theology without fear. There are maybe a dozen where queer people can show up fully themselves.

The same logic applies to racism, to women's leadership, to any question of human dignity. When one group's "sincere questions" require another group to constantly defend their right to exist, that's not creating diversity—that's creating a hostile environment.

We're not saying everyone must agree about everything. Hardly. Once human dignity is non-negotiable, then you can have the actually interesting debates about economic systems, governance structures, theological minutiae, different expressions of queerness, competing visions of justice. The diversity gets better once we stop debating whether certain people deserve rights.

But some beliefs do disqualify you from leadership. You can attend. You can participate. But you don't get to teach, preach, or shape the community's direction while holding positions that deny others' full humanity.

Question 2: The Communication Question—Prophets Aren't Polite

"But couldn't you be nicer about it?"

Maybe. But why would you want to?

Isaiah walked around naked for three years as a prophetic sign. Ezekiel cooked his food over dung. Hosea married a prostitute. Jesus called the religious leaders "whitewashed tombs" and "a brood of vipers." He made a whip and drove people out of the temple. He told a woman her request was like throwing food to dogs before (eventually) granting it. He said things that got him nearly thrown off a cliff and ultimately crucified.

In Luke 6, Jesus is anything but moderate: "Happy are you who are poor... But how terrible for you who are rich." He keeps going with the hungry and the full, those who weep and those who laugh. Then he says, "How terrible for you when everyone speaks well of you."

In other words, if you're not offending anyone, that's a bad sign.

I'm not advocating for cruelty. But I am questioning our obsession with inoffensiveness.

The civil rights movement wasn't won through civil discourse. It was won through sit-ins, boycotts, marches, and demonstrations that made white moderates deeply uncomfortable. Martin Luther King Jr. explained why in his Letter from Birmingham Jail: tension isn't the problem; it's the solution.

Tension forces people to confront what they've been ignoring.

He wrote:

"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice."

That discomfort you feel when I compare Christian nationalism to fascism? That's not a strategic mistake. That's the tension that makes change possible.

What We're Not Doing

Let me be clear about what I'm not saying:

We're not saying you must agree with us about everything. There's plenty of room for disagreement about tactics, priorities, theological interpretation, political strategy.

We're not saying you're irredeemable if you're still figuring things out. Growth takes time. People change. I've changed.

We're not saying tone never matters. Strategy matters. Context matters. Sometimes a gentle word opens doors that a prophetic denunciation would close.

We're not saying you should cut off every relationship with people you disagree with.

But I am saying: human dignity is non-negotiable, and some beliefs do disqualify you from leadership in a community that exists to protect vulnerable people.

Question 3: How People Change

"But doesn't that make you just another fundamentalist? Just as rigid, just as unwilling to listen?"

Here's the difference: fundamentalism is about purity and doctrine. What we're describing is about power and harm.

Progressive fundamentalism—when it exists—is about policing language, punishing imperfect expressions, demanding ideological purity as performance. It's exhausting and counterproductive.

What we're advocating for is different: clear boundaries about who holds power in the community, coupled with genuine openness to people changing their minds.

The Table's history actually demonstrates our approach. People came to the church with non-affirming theology. They built relationships with LGBTQ members. They watched queer people lead, preach, serve. They changed their minds—not because someone debated them, but because they encountered full humanity in people they'd been taught to exclude.

That's different from "let's have a civil conversation about whether you deserve rights."

The path looks like what follows:

1. Come as you are, with whatever beliefs you hold
2. Encounter people whose humanity challenges those beliefs
3. Choose whether to change
4. If you choose change, grow into fuller participation and eventually leadership
5. If you choose not to change, remain welcome but not in positions of authority

We're not conducting a purge. We're recognizing that leadership shapes culture, and culture determines safety. You don't have to be perfect to be here. But you do have to be on a trajectory toward justice to lead.

Question 4: Personal Relationships and Individual Responsibility

The institutional boundaries we've been discussing don't map directly onto personal relationships. Your church can and should have clear lines about who teaches and leads. Your dinner table operates differently.

Some people maintain relationships with family members or old friends who hold harmful beliefs. Sometimes you stay in relationship because you have leverage—you're the person they might actually listen to. Sometimes you stay because cutting someone off would cause more harm than good, especially to others who depend on that relationship. Sometimes you stay because the person is genuinely trying to change, even if slowly.

Other times, you leave. You recognize the relationship is extractive, that you're being asked to constantly justify your existence or the existence of people you love. You realize the emotional cost is too high, or that your presence is being used to give cover to their harmful positions.

Both choices can be faithful. Both can be strategic. The key is understanding what you're actually doing and why.

What I'm confident doesn't work is pretending the disagreement doesn't matter. Acting as though you can have genuine intimacy with someone while avoiding the questions that most shape how you see the world. Treating politics as a hobby rather than a matter of who gets to live with dignity.

Here's the test: Are you in relationship with someone because you genuinely believe you can be a catalyst for their transformation? Or are you in relationship because you're afraid of the discomfort of leaving?

If it's the former, are you actually seeing movement? Is the person engaging with their own assumptions, or are you just providing them with a progressive friend they can point to as evidence they're not that bad?

And critically: What is the cost to you? To the people in your life who are directly harmed by the beliefs your friend or family member holds?

I'm not going to tell you whether to stay at Thanksgiving dinner or skip it. I'm not going to tell you whether to keep trying with your uncle or write him off. Those are your decisions, made in your specific context, with your specific relationships and constraints.

But I will say: refusing to choose is still a choice. Staying neutral still communicates something.

The question isn't "Should I maintain difficult relationships?" The question is "What am I actually accomplishing by staying, and what am I sacrificing to do it?"

Be honest about the answer.

The Biblical Case for Taking Sides

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul describes the church as a body with many parts. First, he emphasizes unity: "We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, whether Jew or Greek, or slave or free."

But then he gets specific about how that unity actually works: "God has put the body together such that extra honor and care are given to those parts that have less dignity. The result is harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other."

There it is: preferential treatment. Not because poor people are better than rich people, or because marginalized folks are more virtuous. But because the scales are already tilted, and justice requires rebalancing them.

The Catholic Church calls this approach the "preferential option for the poor," and it's been part of Christian teaching for centuries. It includes "all who are marginalized in society, including children, persons with disabilities, the elderly and terminally ill, and victims of injustice and oppression."

Jesus didn't come to bridge divides or love across the aisle. He chose the side of the oppressed and invited everyone else to join him there. The Gospel is open to everyone—but it transforms you into an advocate for the marginalized.

What We Won't Sacrifice

But what about "winning"? Isn't that important? If we push everyone away, doesn't doom a human-dignity-centric agenda to failure?

Of course we want justice to prevail. Of course we want more people to have more rights, more dignity, more access to what they need to flourish. That's not the question.

The question is: what are we willing to sacrifice to get there?

The civil rights movement faced the same pressure. Water down the message. Be more patient. Don't make white people uncomfortable. Move slower so you don't alienate potential allies. Find language that's more palatable to moderates.

They refused. Not because they weren't strategic—they were incredibly strategic. But because they understood that softening the message to make it more acceptable often meant abandoning the very people they were fighting for.

Would they compromise on the goal of full equality to make white moderates comfortable? No.

Would they use tactics that created tension and discomfort? Yes.

Would they reject violence while embracing confrontation? Yes.

Would they wait patiently for white people to graciously grant them rights? Absolutely not.

The same principle applies now. We're not going to stop saying "Black lives matter" because some people hear it as an attack. We're not going to use softer language about trans rights because it makes some folks uncomfortable. We're not going to call Christian nationalism "misguided" when it's actually heretical and dangerous.

Not because we enjoy conflict. Not because we don't want people to come along. But because the truth matters more than approval, and justice matters more than comfort.

Sometimes the message that wins converts is the wrong message. Sometimes palatability comes at the cost of virtue. Sometimes making everyone feel okay about the conversation means nobody actually changes.

So yes, we want to win. But not at any cost. Not if it means abandoning the people who need us most. Not if it means trading prophetic truth for therapeutic reassurance.

Success looks like queer people getting married without the state questioning their legitimacy. Women having full bodily autonomy and equal pay without having to fight for it in court. People of color living without the constant threat of state violence or discrimination in housing, employment, and education. Poor people accessing healthcare, housing, and food as rights rather than charity. Trans people existing in public without legislators debating whether they should be allowed to use bathrooms or receive medical care. Indigenous communities having sovereignty over their own lands and futures.

And yes, that means some people leave. Some people get uncomfortable. Some people conclude we're too harsh, too divisive, too unwilling to meet them halfway.

That's not failure. That's moral clarity.

The Cost of Clarity

There's no version of what we're trying to do that doesn't cost something.

• If you're clear about boundaries, you're "too exclusive."
• If you're gentle about boundaries, you're "not doing enough."
• If you accommodate everyone, you protect no one.
• If you protect the vulnerable, you alienate the comfortable.

There's no sweet spot where everyone feels good. The middle of the road, as the saying goes, is where you find nothing but yellow lines and dead armadillos.

So we've chosen: we'd rather be accused of drawing lines too boldly than discover we've built yet another space where vulnerable people get hurt. We'd rather alienate people who can find community anywhere than fail to create sanctuary for people who have nowhere else to go.

That's not a new kind of fundamentalism. That's just choosing who to center when you can't center everyone.

And if our choice costs us relationships, influence, or credibility with people who think we're too harsh—then at least we're imitating Jesus as we do it.

The question isn't whether you'll offend someone. The question is whether you'll offend the right people for the right reasons.