Every Man a Minister
What the Far Right Mean When they Promise to "Restore the Family as the Centerpiece of American Life"
I was raised by born-again Christian pilgrims who packed up a moving truck and drove east from Detroit to Salem (MA) to join a new house church group formed by students from an Ohio seminary and a Christian college in Massachusetts. This was the early 80s and “born againism” had taken hold in evangelical churches, with evidence that the phenomenon also appealed to non-evangelical Christians, as well.1 My twin brother and I were only four years old, and what I remember most about the move was the roadtrip in our parents’ brown conversion van with a bed in the back. It was a great adventure (and a big long nap)! We moved into an apartment in Salem’s Point neighborhood where there was another kid from Michigan who called himself Marshmallow but where our closest friends were Vietnamese, Dominican, and Puerto Rican: Tuan next door, Robeson across the way in a dead-end off our street, and Luis who lived across town near Forest River Park.
Some of the members of the church lived in the same neighborhood, and others lived in more affluent areas nearby. Our Sunday meetings were held in various members’ homes and every third week we met in a building owned by the House of Seven Gables corporation. Each week’s teaching was led, or facilitated, by a different member, and musicians in the fellowship provided accompaniment to our singing. Some of my fondest early memories were etched on those Sundays, and some of my deepest held values were forged there, too.
I still hold a lot of those values closely, even though I am not a religious person and haven’t attended any formal services with the convictions of a believer since the mid-90s. And in any case, I never believed in god the way it was hoped I would, not even as a child, not the way I sometimes still wish I could, and I stopped going to church when I was 15. Rather than putting my energies into the religious project of tending to faith in the unseen, I have endeavored to put a different kind of faith to work as an educator, researcher, and policymaker. Fast-forward three decades and I’m now a Ph.D. with a dissertation conceptually framed around the labor-affirmative tenets of Catholic Social Teaching. That all started for me as a child, in rooms full of the joyful noise of neighbors and friends gathered together to break bread (Italian loaves from Steve’s Quality Market, thank you very much!) and share Welch’s Grape Juice. That’s what my religion would have been built on, had it kindled and roared.
One key aspect of my decision to cease attending was the very clear message I was getting from my elders about my gay friends - and about myself, since I’ve identified as bisexual for as long as I can remember thinking about such things. It is not a stretch to say that my parents, too, contributed to my decision to leave and my suspicion of the love being preached alongside the often dehumanizing talk of queer folk. Musicians I listened to were not “about family values" and I inferred an implicit threat in one pointed inquiry about whether anyone was “buggering” me that made me fear homelessness. This dynamic has shifted in the intervening years - both within my family and in American society - but the agony and anxiety of possible shunning was visceral and immediate, and lingers with me to this day.
My point in drudging up hard memories is not to chide my parents, but to point out that the vision of Christianity I was raised on held two foundations: an aspirational basis in kindness and openness, built on espousals of unconditional love and perpetuated by belonging; and the harder feelings of fear and revulsion that were borne on by ignorance. It is this latter “truth” that is rife throughout the Heritage Foundation’s now-infamous Project 2025, and which drives both the viscerally absent morality of ex-president Donald J. Trump as well as the narrowly-conceived “Christianity” that seems to be the core of Ohio Senator James David Vance’s misogyny and racism. And should these two men be elected into the White House I fear that the “ministerial exception”2 will extend beyond its initial confines - protecting the First Amendment rights of religious organizations to determine the makeup of their doctrinal leadership and direction - to include employment and policy directives in all private and public entities, regardless of religious affiliation, mission, or actual practice. In short, I fear a nation in which all decisions are determined by men (yes, all men, and yes, only men) empowered as ministers of their families and businesses.
The concept of being “born again” often entails a physical baptism that accompanies this re-birth, and this tradition extends to before the historical figure of Christ is supposed to have lived. Here’s a relevant article from an October, 1982, issue of Christianity Today.
For a primer, see Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute entry on “Church leadership and the Ministerial Exception.”