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The Yellowstone Ranch is a perfect analogy of the American church. In the show, the fictional Yellowstone Dutton Ranch is mentioned as being “larger than Rhode Island”, which means it covers approximately 800,000 acres, and would be valued at roughly $8 Billion. Owning a ranch the size of a small state gives its owner, John Dutton, an enormous amount of power, including the ear of the governor and his own small police force. The ranch is a perfect analogy for modern American megachurches, where the resources of thousands of people are often used to promote the agenda of a single man or small handful of individuals.

Although the ranch is fictional, many of the underlying values that drive the main characters in the show are all-too-common in the American church, including highly capitalistic ones. Just like in churches, John Dutton is presented as a conservative landowner, interested in protecting the land from development. In reality he is protecting his own power. The same way powerful church leaders are viewed as promoting the Kingdom of God, when in reality they too are merely protecting their own powerful platforms. Although most pastors are considered to be self-sacrificial simply by the nature of their chosen profession, the truth is, they generally use their platforms to generate wealth and promote their own ends far more than they use them to advance the Kingdom.

The truth is, we do not own the church any more than John Dutton actually owns the land his ranch sits on. While a fictional TV character could be forgiven for his hubris, pastors that consider themselves to be the owners of church buildings, property and even congregations should not be. In episode 28 of the Bodies Behind the Bus podcast, Reverend Kevin Coronado shared how he, his father and his father’s Hispanic congregation were often treated like interlopers in the predominantly white Baptist churches they met in. In spite of taking up their own offerings, which were more than enough to cover their own expenses and buy their own resources, they regularly had to fight with church leadership for the funding they raised.

That this would happen in a church is despicable. The Church does not belong to anyone. We do not own any part of it any more than we own any part of the earth. We are simply called to be stewards of all that God has entrusted to us, yet petty disputes and treating church resources as if they are property has reduced the American church to a money grubbing enterprise. The fight for territory and power have come to far more characterize the American church than love for one’s neighbor or caring for one’s community. In today’s podcast, I talk about the cost of that battle and how God saw it coming thousands of years ago.

Recently, I lost several hundred Christian followers on Twitter when I accused a well-liked member of the Twitter community of spiritual abuse and refused to bow to repeated demands that I take it back and apologize. Although many books have been written on the topic of spiritual abuse, they almost always examine or deal with abuse on an institution level, but rarely on a personal one. In fact, we love pointing fingers at the leaders of large institutions, because of how much power they have over those institutions. An institution is a group of people, however, and it is people that commit abuse.

We like talking about "institutions" however, because it depersonalizes the problem. It allows us to talk about abuse without actually having to examine who specifically is committing it. Talking about an institution allows us to reassure ourselves that since we are not an institution, then clearly we are not the problem. But if everyone is not an institution, then who is the problem? Well, no one, of course, which is why institutional abuse just goes right on happening because it is no one's fault.

Of course, we are very comfortable pointing fingers at leaders, but leaders only make up only a tiny fraction of an institution and therefore only capable of committing the tiniest fraction of abuse. The truth is, the majority of people in almost every institution are participants in abuse. We are very happy with a light being pointed at a handful of leaders in an organization, but we don’t want it pointed at us. We don't to examine how our individual actions result in abuse.

Spiritual abuse is about power and control. It happens any time we put ourselves in the place of God in anyone else’s life. Any time we try and invoke the name of God or Jesus to give ourselves more power or authority in someone else’s life than we are entitled to have. Most people are probably familiar with the third commandment as a command to not take the name of the Lord “in vain”, which is commonly interpreted to mean not using it as a swear word. I don’t believe that is actually what it means.

The NIV says to not “misuse” the name of God. I believe it refers to using the name of God to give yourself more authority than you are meant to have. Similar to when children invoke the name of a parent to give themselves authority. If a parent sends a child with a specific message, then they are genuinely acting on the authority of the parent. Just like Christians, however, many children will invoke the name of a parent to force a sibling to do their will. That is abuse. Too many Christians say things like “that is not of Jesus” or “that is not Godly” but that is not actually their right to decide.

Most of the teachings of Jesus are left open for individuals to decide what they mean. It is fine to quote Jesus directly, but it is no one’s right to decide for anyone else what it means to love your neighbor or what is or is not “loving.” Ultimately, we all pay a price for our own actions and decisions, which is why it is so important that we make them for ourselves. If another person is not going to pay the consequences for your choices, then they do not get to decide what you should or should not be doing - much less what God does or does not want you to do.

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Recently I have seen several Person of Color on Twitter insist that deconstruction has to involve decolonization in order to be “real”. Although I am of the opinion that no one has the right to tell anyone else how they “should” be doing something (most of raised in churches have already been “should-ed” to death), I do think it is important to be aware of what colonization is, where it comes from and how deeply embedded in white Evangelicalism the principles of colonization are.

It is very fair to say that what Mark Batterson did was in fact to colonize a certain area in Washington D.C. For all intents and purposes, he walked out a square and claimed it as his own. That is colonization. But colonization doesn’t just apply to a physical space, there is also such a thing as colonization of thought, and mass colonization almost always starts with or involves colonization of thought.

The reason for colonization is generally based on the idea of “might makes right.” If there’s 200 of us that agree on something and only five of you, we get to be right simply because we have superior numbers. Sometimes, it isn’t about the superior numbers but about superior firepower. If I have more guns than you, I get to be right. This is all part and parcel of colonization, but it all starts with a single belief: I am right and anyone who doesn’t agree with me is wrong. In today’s episode I explore colonization from its tiniest seed to it’s broadest and farthest reaching outcome - and how to identify the most basic elements of colonizing behaviors in us all.

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