Pastor fired from progressive church after preaching anti-Trump, pro-justice message
Pastor Ben Boswell was pushed out of Myers Park Baptist Church after preaching too much about “inclusivity” and “justice.”
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Earlier this week NPR’s Frank Langfitt reported on a North Carolina church that fired its pastor because he had become too provocative, inclusive, and… kind. What made the story truly shocking, though, was that this wasn’t some Southern Baptist, evangelical, MAGA-loving clown show of a church. This was a church already considered fairly progressive. So why the hell did they get rid of their leader?
The controversy goes back to just after the election, when Pastor Ben Boswell correctly pointed out to the congregation at Myers Park Baptist that things were going to get very, very bad.
Boswell likened the moment to what he called the "gathering dark of Hitler's rule." He added that Trump's election would lead to the "crucifixion" of immigrant families as well as transgender and nonbinary people.
"But our faith also teaches us … that every crucifixion needs a witness," Boswell said. "The fight is not over, it's just beginning."
Just watch this short clip from the sermon and you’ll see how powerful Boswell’s words were:
All of that has turned out to be accurate. In the weeks since the inauguration, Trump, Elon Musk, and a host of spineless Republicans have allowed the president to gut civil rights protections, especially for trans people and immigrants, while quickly dismantling as much of the government as possible. By treating the government itself as the enemy, without having any understanding of what “the government” entails, they’re creating chaos everywhere to the point that undoing their destruction is going to be virtually impossible. That’s the point. Just like fires did to parts of California, Trump and his Republican allies are purposely trying to destroy whatever good the U.S. government was doing under the impression that billionaires and conservatives are wiser than countless non-political civil servants who have dedicated their lives to making the world a better place.
None of this, of course, is news to anyone who’s been paying attention to Trump for the past decade.
That’s why Boswell’s sermon wasn’t out of line or even surprising. He was just telling his congregation the truth. They responded in kind too, giving him roaring applause after he was finished.
And then, NPR notes, a few weeks later, he was booted from his job.
Several weeks later, the board met on Zoom. They voted 17-3 to ask Boswell to step down. NPR obtained the audio.
The audio of that meeting cites attendance problems at the church and the idea that Boswell “has been given every chance to change his words and actions to appeal to a broader audience… but has not been successful in doing so.”
Fellow Deacon Robert Dulin was more direct.
"We have got to put more butts in the seats, butts in the seats," he said.
There’s some logic to that. A church is a business, and if they don’t have customers, it means they can’t pay their staff. But to blame that on Boswell’s preaching and not larger sociological trends seems unfair, especially when the church markets itself as “open to all” with specific references to “inclusivity” and “justice.”
If the only way to get people to join your church is by watering down a fairly straightforward and honest message, you should be asking yourself whether it’s really worth having that church at all.
If they have a pastor who’s living out their stated values from the pulpit, why is the attendance problem his fault, since any replacement would presumably be preaching the same message?
Ultimately, it seems like these people would be happier if they had a larger MAGA-obsessed congregation than a smaller loving one. In fact, the NPR piece points out that some church members felt Boswell was too radical for their tastes:
[Deacon Robert] Dulin said many people who had left the church in recent years had complained about the 44-year-old pastor's heavy focus on social and racial justice.
Dulin paraphrased what he said he had heard over and over from those who had quit the parish: "I am tired of being indicted because I am white. I am tired of being banged over the head every week about immigrants and LGBTQ, and I just want to come to church and be encouraged."
Carol Pearsall, who is 73 and a longtime church member, said she heard the same thing from outgoing parishioners and knew what they meant. "I was ready for less guilt-trip and more love," said Pearsall, who added that she remains a fan of Boswell's and never considered leaving.
These people aren’t looking for a new pastor. They’re looking for an excuse to be openly racist and bigoted, and they want a pastor who will give them permission to do it. In which case they ought to find a Southern Baptist or white evangelical church that will embrace their faith-based hate. There are plenty to choose from!
It seems ridiculous to go to, or run, an openly inclusive church and then whine about how it’s too inclusive for your tastes. If your takeaway from criticisms of white Christian Nationalism is that someone’s attacking you for being white, it’s a sign of your own ignorance. (Some of the complainers apparently had a problem with a “Black Lives Matter” sign that Boswell put up outside the church.) And the reason Boswell and other progressive leaders have spent so much time talking about the attacks on immigrants and LGBTQ people is because they’ve been the predominant target of right-wing attacks.
What the hell sort of encouragement are these church members looking for? What “love” are they missing? If caring for the “least of these” is too damn annoying for Christians—God forbid they ever listen to anything Jesus said—then they are welcome to go to a church where faith is used as a weapon against marginalized communities. That’s apparently where their black hearts are at.
There are legitimate reasons a church might get rid of a pastor whose sermons reflect the church’s mission: One argument against Boswell is that he didn’t take care of his congregation well, though he disputes that. But even those concerns seem to cover up the congregation’s actual concern that Boswell just cared about other people way too much.
Bob Thomason, a former chairman of the board of deacons, said most or all of the congregation supports social justice. "But for some people, being able to focus on social justice … would be a welcome luxury because they have alcoholic spouses," he said. "They have children that are addicted. They have cancer. They have these personal needs."
Then they should find a therapist, not a pastor who’s teaching them to live out the Gospel message as he sees it. How privileged and arrogant must these people be that they’re upset at sermons about social justice because those messages aren’t all about them?
The silver lining to all this is that three church leaders “resigned in protest” after Boswell’s firing. At least they saw the discrepancy between the church’s supposed values and actions.
When this story first broke in November, the Charlotte Observer spoke to Tim Emry, one of those board members who resigned, and Emry saw through the church’s spin:
He said he doesn’t think the stated reasons are the actual reasons for Boswell’s termination. During the Sunday meeting, he said, [Board of Deacons chair Marcy] McClanahan allegedly made a comment about Boswell being given chances to change his words and actions to “appeal to a broader audience.”
“That struck me as heavily coded language,” Emry said. “There’s a lot of old white people at that church who are performatively liberal, who, when push comes to shove, aren’t comfortable talking about racial justice, aren’t comfortable with his course in confronting whiteness, aren’t comfortable with trans folks.”
When the reporters asked McClanahan about that comment, she was outraged:
She said she also disagreed with Emry’s characterization that Boswell’s anti-racist positions played any role in the decision.
“I’ll tell you, on a personal level, it is incredibly insulting that Tim said that,” McClanahan said. “I have a brown son.”
Ah. She’s seriously going with the “I am related to a person of color, therefore I can’t possibly be racist” argument. I’m sure JD Vance and Ginny Thomas would applaud her defense.
But Emry spoke the truth. Plenty of liberals like saying they’re liberal but don’t actually care to follow through on that idea. And the people on the other side of that notice. Just listen to church member Bruce Griffin, who had a blunt response to the internal critics:
When asked about the fact that some white congregants said they felt beaten down by Boswell's continued emphasis on social and racial justice, Griffin responded that as a Black man he felt beaten down every day.
Griffin said he planned to leave Myers Park.
So… mission accomplished, I guess, for the church’s leaders. They don’t want to feel guilty, and now they won’t have to. They can focus on a broader message that ignores political realities. They can preach a message that appeals to the church’s white elderly members instead of the younger, more open-minded people in the community whose families could eventually become permanent members of the church.
I have no clue how this move will attract more people to the congregation, but it doesn’t seem like this building serves any useful function at this point, anyway. What good is a progressive church if it shies away from a progressive message in order to get “butts in the seats”?
If “loving thy neighbor” is merely a slogan and not put into practice, it’s worthless. But these critics don’t want to be challenged and they don’t want their faith to direct their attention beyond their own bodies. It’s the same reason so many conservatives who typically wear their faith on their sleeves got so damn offended when Right Rev. Mariann Budde asked Donald Trump to follow Jesus and have mercy on the marginalized. They don’t care about Jesus; they just want the religious label in order to gain more political power, which they can then use to hurt every group they deem beneath them.
When that’s the case, the only person who comes out of all this looking good is Boswell.
One of the reasons behind the staggering number of Christian sects is the pronounced tendency of Christians to shop around until they find a church that tells them what they want to hear. Few things anger conservative Christians more than having someone urge them to actually live up to the moral principles their faith supposedly mandates. They never stop demonstrating the disconnect between religion and morality. All in all, they make a compelling case for atheism.
They'd like to believe of themselves that they are good and kind and caring and welcoming, without any of the burden of actually being good and kind and caring and welcoming.