Montrose has long struggled with how to address the issues raised by an increasing population of unhoused people. However, in November of 2024, the city passed a camping ban, which made it a crime to camp without permission within the city limits. The local Methodist church opened its vacant area to the affected population to camp. Not long after, the City began issuing tickets to the pastor, Kevin Young. To date he has received more than 20 tickets for being in violation of the city statute prohibiting camping. The pastor argues that it is his Christian duty to house the houseless, and to offer them succor. This position invokes recent cases by the U.S. Supreme Court addressing the conflict between local law and religious belief in action (often called preferences to sanitize the language).
Christian Nationalism’s Conjectured Beliefs
There are too many end times conspiracy theories to count, but they mostly have one thing in common: God’s going to save Christians, take them to somewhere else, and everyone else will burn for all eternity. I feel like that’s a little harsh, but the god of the Bible is pretty brutal. Regardless, the point is that…well, what’s the point if we’re going somewhere else and this world can just burn?
You Have Heard it Said…
Jesus’s entire ministry asks us to see those on the margins and then asks us, over and over, how we can move ourselves closer together to create a community in which all belong. Once we accept this, only one question remains: how will we work together to create this Heaven on Earth? We are a people of abundance! It is time we started acting like it.
The Revolutionist 