Eric Folkerth

I am sitting in a pew, inside “Mission Espada” Church, at the very end of the San Antonio River Trail, and I am weeping uncontrollably. The salt of my tears is mingling with salt of my sweat; and my entire body is shaking with every heaving breath.

It feels as if it will never stop.
It feels as if there is no depth to my sadness and grief.

It is ten years ago, this August, and I’d like to tell you the story of those heaving tears. This is a story that, until now, I’ve told no one but Dennise and my therapy group.

But not only does it feel cathartic to me to tell this story, it feels it could be strangely relevant to our national moment now. Maybe to how you are feeling, right now.

Earlier this year, I made a pledge to myself to tell my own stories related to the journey of the United Methodist Church during this past decade, especially as it pertains to the “full inclusion” of the LGBTQ community.

Those tears —on that day, in that church, ten years ago— are directly related to that journey. That’s the story I’ve been waiting ten years to tell you.

But even as I sat to write down this essay, God has given me an additional thought. That perhaps many of you are having “Espada Moments,” right now, —moments of heaving tears and hopelessness— as it pertains to our nation and its future.

So, the writing of this essay has expanded it’s scope. And after telling the story, I’m going to offer a vaguely hopeful (at least to me…) thought that perhaps our nation’s future might still work out like the UMC’s has.

Because I have had a theory for some years now: That the Methodist movement tends to “rhyme” with the historical moment of the nation.1 What happened in the church has mirrored what happened in the nation….and vice versa.

But first, back to that original “Espada Moment” for me…

For the unaware, “The Alamo” is but one “mission” established by the Spanish that still stands in current-day San Antonio, Texas. There is a trail of mission churches/ruins that extends South, down the spine of the San Antonio River, and right through the heart of the city.

Some years ago, a hike/bike trail was carved, alongside the river bed. It’s short, seven mile span, and an easy and beautiful trek back through hundreds of years of history. It’s easy to imagine the river as it was in the late 1600s; almost one hundred years before any human ever uttered the words “United States of America,” and almost 150 before anyone said “The Great State of Texas.”

I always try to take my bike with me, when I am visiting San Antonio; and, if time allows, I always try to ride that mission trail.

On the day I am describing it’s a near perfect cycling day. At least in my mind… high in the mid-90s. (Yes, I am crazy…)

I’ve just ridden my bike down the trail, starting at the Alamo. Thus, I have started in the beating heart of a bustling and vibrant American city, and moved back through the layers of history, until “Mission Espada,” founded in 1690. For me, riding this trail causes both world history to slowly unwind…also, well, me…to do the same.

Things simplify. Thoughts fall away. Layers of my own mind unclutter, with every mission I pass, as I travel further back through time.

Espada, as the oldest extant church on that trail, has a weather-worn, cobbled, rock exterior; with a dark, heavy, wooden door. I arrive on my bike, look around I around furtively, and see—as I’ve hoped— that no one else is there.

This was exactly what I’d wanted. My head is telling me I just need a few moments in silence, to clear my head of a little stress from the week, and to pray some prayers that have been on my mind.

Inside, there are dozens of of votive candles, already lit off the side vestibule. There is prerecording choir music, playing softly. It sit down in one of the back pews, those rough hewn timbers lining the roof.

It’s such a rustic and beautiful setting.

It is here that, much to my surprise, I find myself overtaken with a depth of grief I am not prepared for.

Maybe it’s partly dehydration.
Maybe it’s partly “set and setting.”

But it’s so deep, this can’t possible be all of it. It is deeply cathartic, and shockingly powerful.

This is the moment where I felt, most deeply, my own despair for the future of the United Methodist Church. And, a moment I felt deep despair and loss for my own personal life, too.

In that moment, everything I knew seemed to be crashing toward an end…and end I could not see beyond. An end that included the very real possibility that I might be defrocked as a United Methodist pastor. That I might, very soon, be out of a job; and that all the work I’d done for years might be for naught.

I know. It’s all different now. You know the end of our story, if you’re a United Methodist. You know it all works out well for us. And for me too, personally.

If by “works out well,” we choose to set aside the bitterly divisive denominational split, the lies told by the departing GMC members, the hundreds of church communities ripped asunder.

It’s all worked out well, as we look back NOW…well on the other side of our ten-year denominational divorce.

But journey back —as if you are on a literary river trail, back through time, before anyone knew any of this.

I was in San Antonio for two reasons. First, Dennise had a law convention there, at a swanky Riverfront hotel. It’s a yearly Family Law convention, and…man…do they know how to party. Her Dad had come down to stay with us a few days. That had been nice too.

They both went home, and I stayed for something else called “Gather At The River.” A convention of progressive United Methodists, designed as part a family gathering, and part preparation for the 2016 General Conference.

I was mostly eager for the latter goal.

For decades, progressive United Methodists had gotten spiritually and legislatively clobbered at each successive General Conference. We’d come home from those gatherings, wounded ourselves, to even more hurt and more angry members.

Many members would leave. I would imagine we lost hundreds of members over the seventeen years span I was at Northaven UMC. These were deeply spiritual and psychically centered souls who simply could not, or just didn’t want to, make the choice to “fight” for a denomination to recognize their personhood.

I never once tried to argue any of them out of leaving.
Leaving, I always said, was a perfectly acceptable moral and spiritual choice.

Staying, I always said, meant understanding (as much as any of us could) how this struggle might damage your soul and spirit.

No…it was not for everyone. We talked about that.

We debated whether it was even worth for any of us. And, somehow, every four years, we kept going.

And so, General Conference’s gut punches land on our torsos, every four years. We’d lick our wounds, and go home to sanctuaries full of the wounded, the confused, the righteously angry.

It was exhausting.

By the Fall of 2015, it was easy to imagine there were only a few more “moves” left. Just weeks before, Same Sex Marriage had become legal. So, as I drove to San Antonio, I suppose I had some naive hope that the progressive UMC would focus on celebrating that.

I mean, it had been a big deal, here in Texas. Two of our members became the first legally married couple in all of Texas. That nationwide joy, it seemed to me, could be a hope to build on…a little ember to remind Methodists that things really were changing, and we Methodists should get on board with what God was doing in God’s world.

I had seen legal, same sex marriage coming on the legal-horizon the year before, and I had urged our church to pray and study as to whether or not they’d want to host them at Northaven. I think the answer was somewhat self-obviously, yes. But, in the typical Northaven-way, we studied the issue for more than a year, before voting in early 2016 to do so.

I knew this in the depths of my being: If Northaven voted to do weddings that I would, indeed, perform them.

And I also knew this: I would not seek coverage or a “friendly complaint” to cover myself and my future ministry. (More on what that is, in a moment…)

If we were to do weddings, it was going to be a witness, a statement…to the love of Jesus. The uncertainty of potentially sacrificing my career? That was, actually, part of the point.

So, as I traveled to “Gather at The River,” I had a selfish thought, I didn’t share with anyone: “Maybe we’ll be so organized that the Discipline will change…and maybe then, I won’t be defrocked.”

This was a naive and selfish fantasy I held inside my own head, and spoke to no one.

The problem was: anybody who graduated from third grade math class could count the votes. It was obvious the General Conference votes weren’t there. I was ridiculously delusional.

Very likely…almost certainly….nothing positive would change. And so, instead of a strategic gathering to create some serious legislative momentum, folks at “Gather At the River” engaged in conversation about disruption and protest, and holy witness.

If the system wasn’t going to change, the logic went, all that remained was witness to the injustice.

It was hard to argue with this, of course. Because the pain was deep, and generational. These were folks who’d showed up, year after year, faithfully believing they had calls to ministry, and that God compelled them to push to reduce the harm done to previous LGBTQ lives….only to see their dreams dashed…and…the polity turn even MORE rightward.

That was the ultimate gut punch.

Not only were things not going in a “progressive direction,” but every four years it seemed the conservatives figured out a way to turn some new, little screw…just a little tighter. Things weren’t just not getting better. Things were, slowly, getting worse.

So, at that 2015 San Antonio convention, some wild ideas got thrown around, by the angriest voices. These included (and I am not making this up…) throwing water on the computers of the General Conference delegates.

I cannot say this loudly enough…this kooky idea…never happened. It was widely denounced.

I am only sharing it with you here to illustrate the pervasive sense of desperation in that moment. When you even briefly entertain such a thought, you are in a very desperate time indeed.

So, yes, there would be legislation proposed.
Everyone would go through those motions.
But, also no, nobody thought anything was going to change.

There was talk of “safe conferences,” such as the West. Where queer clergy might move, or place their orders, should things get really bad.

I came away absolutely crushed and despondent.
Even if we were going to lose, shouldn’t we fight in some organized way?
Even worse, it meant that for a pastor like me, in a church like ours, in the middle of the country…there was no help or assistance…at all.

For us in Texas, there would be no “cover” of a “safe conference.” I’m not trying to minimize the very real pain they felt in The West, but the whole concept of a safe conference is, in it own way, “privileged.”

We didn’t, and it was clear we wouldn’t, have that privilege in Texas.

My Bishop would later bluntly tell me this, after I’d told him I was to perform my first same sex wedding:

“They’re coming for your orders.”

He was not joking.
He was not happy.
He too was confident I might soon be kicked out.

One relatively creative idea that emerged was the so called “friendly complaint.”

In our United Methodist system, if you commit an alleged infraction of church law, the first filed “complaint” against you is the one that holds authority.

So, if it’s somebody you know to be hostile, look out.
But, what if it’s somebody generally friendly instead?

Perhaps there was a way to still follow the rules, and yet resolve complaints, short of total defrocking or banishment. This was how the theory went.

But by the time I took my Espada ride, months before I’d perform my first wedding, I had already decided I would not do this. I mean, the whole point of doing a wedding was as a pastoral act for our own members, or a social justice witness to our Biblical values.

We progressives actually did not believe Same Sex Marriage was against our polity. And I very clearly believed this. I’d written long essays on why I was confident that doing Same Sex Wedding was actually being faithful to the mission field God had called me to and consistent tip the highest level of Methodist Church law.

All that said, this “friendly complaint” movement would become incredibly important on the road to change. Eventually, dozens of pastors would start doing weddings and seek a “friendly” complaints to “cover themselves.”

To be clear: by the time I was sitting in Espada, I had decided in my soul to not do this. I would do weddings…and let the chips fall where they may.

And now, at the end of Gather at The River, it was also clear there would be no organized group to push back and help us do anything more than name the injustice.
This is not “nothing,” I know.)

The truth is, far too many had been far too wounded. The best we could was to celebrate the relative theological freedom of United Methodists on the coasts.

Just lift those up as our places of hope.
But, in Texas…you’re probably on your own.

For the confused outsider who may be reading this, this is because United Methodism is structured somewhat regionally, and those regional areas tend reflect the general political view of the area too.

The South was deeply evangelical and conservative.
The West was deeply liberal in theological and social views.
The Middle of the country trended conservative….but was more purple-ish.
But, in big cities, like Dallas, God was moving hearts, and producing ever larger numbers of progressive churches and people.

But, Texas was still Texas.

In that time, were any queer clergy to come out in Texas?
Were a straight clergy to perform a same sex wedding?
The assumption was: You’d likely be defrocked.

That’s the last/best evidence we had, anyway.

This is the assumption I had and was given by anyone I talked to about it, including (as I’ve already noted…) my own Bishop at the time.

The last best visible evidence any of us had as to that outcome was my friend, Rev. Frank Schaefer. Frank was a United Methodist pastor who, in 2013, was “defrocked” for performing a same sex marriage for his son.

Frank came to our church as a speaker to tell his story of love…love for his son…love for Jesus…a love that compelled him to ‘break the rules” to be faithful.

Bishop Melvin Talbert also came to speak at our church. Bishop Talbert had also performed a same sex wedding, also in violation of “the rules.”

And he urged us all to become “Biblically Obedient” and do the same.

These were compelling stories of actual sacrifice.

And then, my own mentor and spiritual Father, Bill McElvaney, was suddenly dying of cancer. And he came to me to tell me how he too was ready to perform a same sex marriage as his last defiant witness of social justice ministry.

I did everything I could to help him make that happen before his death, all the time feeling as if this was our theological “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”

Bill was Henry Jones Sr. I was son, Indy.
And we were gonna ride off into the sunset, on one a last grand mission.

That’s exactly what he did. Bill died, confident that he’d made one last stand for God’s grace and justice. (Against his wishes, a friendly complaint was filed on his behalf)

And I had the blessing to ride shotgun, one last time.

And then….all too soon, Bill was gone.
And soon too…my own Father would also be gone.

Dad would die twelve week after those afternoon tears in Espada. And yes, OF COURSE that has something do with all those tears, too.

Dad didn’t want to talk about his pulmonary fibrosis. I did. But I respected his views. Because everybody deserves to die as they wish.

But as a pastor, I’d seen members die from this disease. It knew, more than he did or wanted to, every horrible thing that was coming for him in the coming weeks.

And so, by August of 2015, I was already in deep pre-grief for my own Father, as well.

And so, an overwhelming weight and feeling of ALL OF THIS came pouring out of me, inside that three hundred-plus year old church, on that August afternoon.

It thought I was just gonna pray for a few minutes.
Instead, I cried heaving tears of grief that seemed to never stop.

Soon after I got home, I wrote this actual journal entry about how I was feeling at the time.

This is me, in late August 2015, summing up my Espada tears, and basically, this long story I have just told you:

““Gather at the River” was a disaster. The Progressive wing of the United Methodist Church is in shambles. Liberals on the east or West Coast are in open rebellion. Gay and lesbian clergy are serving openly. Same-sex marriages are being done in churches.

Meanwhile, in the center of the country, our Bishop sends up a letter reaffirming the Discipline as is.

The insight that came to me at gather at the river is that it no longer matters to them whether or not that Discipline changes. They will continue as they are now. They are losing the desire to compromise or the ability to see why it would even be important.

That leaves the pressure on the shoulders of those in the center of the nation. I have never felt more alone or more despairing of our future as a denomination.

It feels as if I am being asked to sacrifice my own ministerial career for nothing… Without the hope of legislative change… Or any real affect toward it… It feels like my “Biblical Obedience” would be a pointless waste of time… A waste of my career.

So… I find myself in a difficult and challenging spot…

How to minister effectively in this setting?

I have been a United Methodist my whole life. Am I about to be put out of ministry? By my own choice? Or would will this have some positive consequence I cannot see now?

Because barring serious effort to change the United Methodist Book of Discipline… which are not happening now… I fail to see how my sacrificing my ministerial career would accomplish anything…

I feel as if I have no allies… No calvary… No troops behind me to back me up…

By the way, I just mistakenly wrote calvary instead of cavalry.

Freudian slip? I think not.

That’s how it feels… Like I am being led to my ministerial death… A death that seems to have no point.

I’ve been having trouble breathing for a month. Feels like asthma feels like I used to have as a child.

The bottom line for me is this… If I am to sacrifice myself here… I’d always wanted to be worth something… I wanted to have a deeper meaning and purpose and just my own actions… But I cannot see what that will be…”

(My personal journal, dated August 31, 2015)

Everything was dying.
Spiritual, and real, Fathers.
The United Methodist Church.
My sense of identity as a clergy.
Everything.

And all it all came pouring out of me, on that hot August afternoon, in Mission Espada.

INTERLUDE: So, Holy Cow, We in a Different Place Now.

I’m going to skip ahead over history that I’ll probably retell in some other ways, later in other essays. But here’s the gist of what happened….

Months after this “Espada Moment,” Northaven did vote to host same sex weddings. I ended up doing multiple weddings. As I promised myself, my wife, and the memory of Bill McElvaney, I did not arrange for a friendly complaint for any of them at the time.2

In fact, we decided to not tell anyone about any of them. This happened because it suddenly dawned on us that we’d been planning to do weddings for a year…
and “what if Eric gets suspended after the first one?”

I’ll be honest, this wasn’t even something I’d thought deeply about. But…within weeks of our Same Sex Marriage vote at Northaven, we had five weddings on the schedule.

So, how do we make sure those happen?

As it turns out, these soon-to-be-married couples themselves joined in…in a kind of “Rogue One” move of resistance. No longer to protect me…but to protect the next couple in line, waiting to be married.

Were I suspended, were an interim minster installed, there was no guarantee that the next wedding would ever be allowed to take place. So, strategically, every couple asked their guests to keep the event off of social media.

This is not acceptable, of course. Nobody would ever…in a million years…ask this of any straight couple, anywhere. But these couples felt they were also a part of a small, hopeful thing. Like we were all a part of some Andor-like resistance.

And, actually, they all kind of were…God bless them all.

So, in short succession, I performed and/or helped host five same sex weddings at Northaven. Hundreds of folks attended these beautiful weddings. Beautiful couples who shared their love, and the support of their church family.

Finally.

One of those weddings ended up as a “hostile” complaint. Pictures of the wedding were posted on social media, so the event was seen by conservatives, who filed that “unfriendly” complaint.3

It was resolved through an all-day mediation, with a professional mediator. Shockingly, I kept my orders…which neither I, the Bishop, or the mediator, was certain would be the outcome at the outset.

But, this also told us something. It told us the conservatives (at least our colleagues in North Texas) no longer had the stomach for the ultimate, harshest penalties.
You could say…they blinked. Given what later happened, it was kind of like “a tell.”

Elsewhere, the conservative movement became more and more enraged at things like this. Not only were “unrepentant” pastors like me “getting away” with it…but also now the friendly complaint process allowed more and more pastors to do more and more weddings.

Yes, we did five, But dozens of North Texas pastors did dozens more!!!

The resistance…was on.

Heroic queer clergy started to be ordained, or started coming out and telling their stories with increasing frequency. Their courage was jaw dropping. And I know they are telling their stories now too….as they should.

Again, this was all done WITHIN THE SYSTEM.
Progressives and Moderates learned to work within the system and push for change. This was new. This was hopeful. This was the kind of strategic thinking progressives had always needed.

But these things enraged the opposition. And this culminated in the deeply punitive “Traditionalist Plan” of 2019, passed by the General Conference.

Despite not controlling either the hearts of the majority of American United Methodists, or the working of God’s Spirit, Traditionalists still controlled the legislature: The General Conference.

And the traditionalist plan did a few things…it demanded punitive responses to queer clergy, to same sex marriage pastors…and even to Bishops if they didn’t “prosecute” these things. It mandated “mandatory minimums” and tried to close the loopholes on those enraging “friendly complaints.”

But here was the problem for them.
Yes, they controlled the VOTES.
But, no. They did not control the hearts and minds of their people.

Almost immediately, a pushback began. Large moderate megachurches began withholding apportionment monies. Our own North Texas Board of Ministry followed the Discipline…and ordained an out lesbian. (The very first in all of the South…)

Megachurch pastors I know personally quietly told me “I done with those people…” (Meaning: the Conservatives…)

And shockingly, just a few short years later, after decades of we Progressives believing we would be the ones to be pushed out of our denomination…it was the Conservatives who blinked…who left United Methodism, and formed their own “Global Methodist Church” denomination.

To the outsider, perhaps these last moves seem as if they make no sense.
Why would they give up when they held all the power?

Because, they really didn’t. They held the SYSTEM..the church law….but they never held the power over even their own folks, much less Moderates and Progressives.

Moderates and Progressives, in the main, made an agreement to stay together….to do what we’d always wanted to do….to “live and let live,” and “walk hand in hand,” as Wesley might say.

And the Conservatives left.

Make no mistake, that leaving was ALSO very painful and divisive. That’s another story, for another time. But here we are, now, in 2025. The United Methodist Church is smaller, yet more hopeful than I’ve seen it be in years. This interlude is short. It does not at all account for the massive graveyards of harm and damage done, even to those of us who stayed.
But…we are in a different place.

The Lessons of Espada

So, why tell you this story?
Well, originally, my goal was just to purge this old story that still rattles around inside me. To deal with the decade-old PTSD that started welling up in me, this August.

But now, it seems to me there might be tentative, possibe, lessons for all of us now.

In 2025, like Progressive Methodists in 2015, we find ourselves in the midst of an existential struggle for some small vestige of our American system.

Like the United Methodist Church of 2019, our Federal Government of today is clearly under the unitary leadership of a “conservative movement.” It’s really a “MAGA Movement.” And like the conservative movement in our church, this political conservative movement holds the levers of power.

Like conservatives in our United Methodist struggle, these MAGA leaders today tend to lie about their intentions.

They tell shrieking horror stories about American cities being invaded by migrants. The church-corollary was: shrieking lies that gay pastors were going to come to rural town…and “convert your children to be gay.”4

Again, I would never suggest Progressives or Moderates are perfect. They absolutely are not, and this must also be said.

But the level of lying —among Conservative Methodists, and Political MAGAS— both in the pursuit of holding on to power…that absolutely “rhymes” for me, as I look at both situations.

Also, in both cases, the struggle was/is “neighbor against neighbor.”

What became very hard about this church separation was that many churches split down the middle…or 60/40 in one direction or another…

This is what’s happening in politics, right now. Where nobody seems to feel they know who they can trust. That is by design, it seems to me. A population that no longer trusts itself, or its neighbors, is a population who will believe lies such as a migrant invasion…or hoards of gay pastors descending on your helpless rural town.

What follows is a tentative list of things that an “Espada Moment” can teach our present day…small strategies that might help you, now:

1. Pray Prayers of “Giving Back” (Surrender) When You Need To
This is, truthfully, what the Tears of Espada were. They were my moment when I gave all this back to God. This was the moment when I said, “I am out of moves. I have no more power here (as if I ever had any…), and I no longer know what to do…”

2. Believe The Seeds of Hope Can Come in Hopelessness
This, again, is what I now know what at work, in that “Espada Moment.” No, I did not know it in the moment. Because, you can’t know it in that kind of moment.
And, yes, things even got worse after that.

My Dad died.
The church split deepened.
Trump got elected.
The worse…was all still yet to come…

But with the reflection of ten years, I now know that what seemed like my most hopeless time was also a moment when hope would start to grow again.

It’s just that the “fix” was well beyond my feeble powers. It would take thousands of other United Methodists…over the next five years….to have their own “Espada Moments,” and confess that they too “had no more moves.”

But God works in those kinds of hopeless moments. This is the true meaning of resurrection. New Life comes, not from “kinda” death. But from the actual deaths of our dreams, our hopes, our control….our ability to manipulate and control our lives. This is deep, spiritual truth.

God does not MAKE bad things happen…SO THAT good then springs forth.
It’s more like: Bad shit happens…and shit is a great fertilizer.

We are tossed to and fro, compelled to trust in forces well beyond us….and more than anything else TO TRUST IN OTHER PEOPLE AND IN GOD.

3. Do What You Can. And Trust Others Will Too. And Trust God Will Too.

This will become harder and harder in the coming months. Because we are all control freaks. (Especially educated progressives, are….) But we have to trust that thousands…that millions…of people are…right now…quietly turning their backs on the MAGA movement.

But, like in the UMC example, it’s unlikely that they will publicly confess their move away from an older system. They will just…change their vote. Or change their giving. Or change in quiet ways.

I really wish folks would issue public “Mea Culpas” and dramatically “change their minds.” I see no evidence that anyone will be doing this, any time soon.

The MAGA Movement knows they are losing hearts and minds. I am as confident of this right now, as I was when I saw it start to happen inside the UMC.

This is why the MAGA movement has become so incredibly harsh and punitive. They know they are losing..even as they still have the levers of power…just as Conservative Methodists knew the same, ten years ago.

4. Resistance Means: Everybody Has To Stand Up, And Welcome…Everybody.

In the UMC example, two things happened.

a. An inspiring new generation of leaders emerged. A younger generation, who worked to get elected as General Conference delegates. And they worked with Moderates to get stuff done. That, absolutely, positively, has to happen in politics, right now.

b. Everybody came to understand that everybody was needed. Every single vote. Every single conservative, moderate, or progressive United Methodist. That also absolutely, positively, has to happen in politics right now.

ALL were needed at the table. Right now, all ARE needed at the table.

If America is to survive, a similar political movement will be needed. It will need to be broad, diverse, and willing to work together, across differences, and generations. The old blaming the young, or vice versa, will not help. People will have to work across lines of gender, race, sexual orientation, rural/urban, rich/poor. And only if the goal is some common hopeful future…will it work.

That’s my view. Your mileage may vary.

But I will tell you friends, and this is really my point in wrting this final session of this long essay: That’s how it worked in the UMC…and the UMC almost always mirrors the United States.

5. I Can’t Tell You This Will Work Out. But I Can Tell You That It Might.

I know, that’s very unsatisfactory. You want more certainty. But, see: Point #1.

Before we get to “everything worked out,” there is an Espada Moment when you are completely UN-sure any of it will work out.

That is where we are now, in our nation. In our nation, we are roughly in 2019 in our United Methodist Church story. And, as painful as that is, perhaps we must hold space for that discomfort.

I will tell you what feels certain to me…

If left unchecked, the MAGA movement will become even MORE violent.

But! Even IF checked…the MAGA movement may likely be violent for the rest of our lives. Starting in 2016, I started saying “We will be fighting back against these forces the rest of our lives” And that still seems horrifically, and even more deeply, true.

I have no fantasies of political violence ending, even though it would be very helpful it it did. Our culture is simply too addicted to violence, recrimination, and the cycle of scapegoating that always leads to more political violence.

As a non-violent pastor, who admired Dr. King, I reject political violence.
But, as Niehburian “Christian Realist” theologian, I fear we are in for even more.
It’s unnecessary and is not what God wants. God does not demand blood.

There are other ways.

Right now, I take great comfort in our clergy siblings all across the country, who are now standing up against the tyranny of ICE and its detention of thousands of innocent migrants. I take comfort in local Latino/a activists, who are self-organizing to reduce harm and are showing such beatiful care for their local communities.

I take great comfort in the large, social movements that seem to be developing, everywhere across the land.

Much of this will be hyper-local….neighborhood by neighborhood. It will not be organized, top down. But it will hopefully build, from bottom up.

This, again, is what happened all over the United Methodist Church. In every part of the country, like simultaneous wildfires, after 2019, resistance broke out.

It shocked…everyone, frankly. None of us saw it coming.
Which leads me to one final lesson….

6. When and if American returns to some sense of normal democratic functioning, the “path” there will probably surprise us all.

Oh sure, somebody will bloviate that they saw it coming.
They will be lying.

This is because the path will open through a “process-view” of our future…an evolutionary view of our future…a building up of hopeful movements in thousands of places.

It will not be centrally planned. That’s what authoritarians do.

For Christians, it will be a working of God’s Spirit.
For everyone else, it will feel like a surprising coalescing together of minds, and hearts.
These are the same things, from a certain point of view.

But, friends, here’s my final word to you today.

Cry your tears of Espada. As often as you must.

This is where, as I keep repeating here in our present day, it is helpful to have a spiritual practice of some kind. We maintain spiritual practice, not to hide from the world, but to deal with how screwed up it is.

I cry about once a week now. And by cry, I mean: huge, heaving tears where I confess to God how little I control, and how hopeless everything seems.

Espada Moments spiritually clear the decks for us.

If we can hold on through them, there is light and life on the other side.
There is compassion, love, decency, and hope.
There is community.

There are futures that can unfold, more spectacular and surprising that you can possibly imagine, right now.

I promise.