Radical Love

When faith becomes action, they call you dangerous and radical.

I don’t talk about my religion publicly, not because I’m hiding something, but because I’ve never felt the need to label what I can live. My values show up before I do. They are in my work, in how I treat people, in what I fight for. I’ve never seen the point in naming something that’s already moving through me. And in that choice, to abstain from performance, something beautiful has taken root.

The people I walk alongside, organizers, neighbors, family, and chosen kin, aren’t spiritually identical. Some are deeply rooted in their faith traditions. Others walked away long ago. Some lead congregations. Some show up only on holy days. Others are still figuring out what, if anything, they believe. And yet, when we do talk about religion, those conversations feel sacred. We talk about culture, harm, healing, and hope. We wrestle without judgment. We listen with depth.

I don’t wear religious paraphernalia. I’ve never felt called to. The only visible symbol in my life is a rosary hanging from my rearview mirror, a gift from my husband after a work trip to São Paulo, Brazil. It’s not about performance. It’s about love.

So why now? Why am I writing this?

Because if you dare to live like the Jesus I was taught to follow, the one who loved the poor, welcomed the outcast, defended women, and spoke truth to power, you’re branded as radical, dangerous, un-American.

Maybe they’re right.

Maybe that kind of love is radical. Maybe organizing for justice in the face of religious hypocrisy is a kind of faith. Maybe the mass exodus from the church isn’t a loss of belief, but a refusal to accept a version of religion stripped of love, service, and truth. For many of us who once believed deeply, it wasn’t the message that broke our hearts; it was the messenger. The pulpit became a platform for power, not liberation.

That realization didn’t crush me; it sharpened me. It made me more committed to the kind of inconvenient, justice-centered love Jesus embodied. More certain that real faith doesn’t hide behind dogma or authority, but shows up in the streets, in community care, in solidarity.

I wasn’t raised in the Southern Baptist tradition, but I chose to attend a church in that tradition because my friends were there. Over time, I realized it wasn’t a spiritual home. The sermons clashed with my values. The teachings contradicted the red-letter words I had tried to live by. That was a problem.

And as I watched my Catholic mother and Mormon father judged by our neighbors because of their denominations, I began to understand how deeply siloed and suspicious the church could be. I remember attending mass with my mom and having classmates beg me not to tell anyone I saw them there. In our Southern Baptist town, Catholics weren’t even seen as Christians.

That’s when the mask slipped.

I started seeing what my parents had seen: the hate wasn’t coming from the Book, it was coming from the pulpit. At some of those sermons, I was taught judgment, not justice. Superiority, not service. Fear, not freedom. And I believed it. For a while.

But when I started organizing, something shifted. I saw the same faith that told me to love my neighbor had also taught me to fear them. I saw how the Jesus I had memorized in Bible verses had been co-opted by a political machine more interested in white nationalism than liberation.

Let’s be honest, the Trump administration is full of people accused and convicted of cruelty, corruption, and abuse. And yet they cloak themselves in Christian language, even as they violate everything Jesus stood for. The pulpits? Silent. Or worse, complicit. That silence is violence. That alignment is betrayal.

As an organizer, I’ve learned that people rarely leave a community unless they’re pushed. And many of us, once faithful, once devoted, were shoved out by hypocrisy, greed, and sanctified bigotry. We didn’t lose faith. We lost patience.

You want to know why I left?

Because when I began organizing, I found more grace in grassroots meetings than in Sunday pews. I saw more holy work in mutual aid than in sermons. I saw people living out “love thy neighbor” while being called radicals by the very institutions that taught us those words.

Macklemore said it best:
"If you preach hate at the service, those words aren't anointed. That holy water that you soak in has been poisoned."

And it has. Poisoned by politics. Poisoned by patriarchy. Poisoned by power.

But here’s what I know:

I may not wear a cross, but I will carry the weight of compassion.
I may not be in a pew, but I will show up for my community.
I may not call myself a Christian, but I will fight for the people Jesus never abandoned.

That’s my pulpit,
That’s my prayer,
That’s my organizing.

And maybe, that makes me a radical.
If so, I’ll wear it like armor.