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Street Roots • September 29-October 5, 2017
Street Roots • September 29-October 5, 2017
Adam
Phillips will
give a TEDx
talk on
inclusion, the
foundation of
his evangelical
practice
A series highlighting the role o f religious leaders
and groups in Portland’s resistance movement
BY EMILY GREEN
He said in recent years, lines were drawn
between who could and could not be a “real
Christian,” and changes in the church’s regional
astor Adam Phillips began his sermon on
leadership
led to a reversal of its commitment to
white supremacy with a personal anecdote
support his values of inclusion.
about walking through a slum in Ghana
before arriving at a “door of no return” - one of “We started getting the most harassing phone
calls and emails - from our religious leaders,” he
many passageways Africans were forced through
said. They wanted him to take down signs he had
on their way to slavery in the Americas.
hung that read: Everyone’s welcome. Yes,
It was the last Sunday in August, and for two
everyone.
weeks, Phillips had been preaching on
But Phillips refused, and when the church
dismantling white supremacy following the neo-
leadership asked if he would allow “them” -
Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va.
meaning LGBTQ congregants - to participate in
“I feel dubious at best, addressing white
the children’s ministry, in the church’s leadership
supremacy. I am a white, cisgendered, privileged
and in the band, he said, “Of course.”
male,” he told his congregation. “I fear I might
Apparently that was not the answer they were
whitesplain or mansplain these things. I’m
looking for.
embarrassed at my privilege in this
But losing his church may have been a blessing
conversation.”
in disguise, as he’s now free to practice his faith
But he persisted, calling on his fellowship at
as he interprets it.
Christ Church in downtown Portland to confront
Phillips and his supporters launched a crowd
racism.
funding
campaign that helped him raise enough
“It’s not just about marches and protests. It’s
money to start over with a new church, and most
about simple everyday moments to dismantle this
of his small congregation came with him.
generation upon generation upon generation sin
Elsa Johnson, 33, had been a lifelong member
that so infects our lives even to this moment,” he
of the Evangelical Covenant Church, but she,
said.
along with her husband and two young children,
Phillip’s choice of sermon topic that Sunday
followed Phillips when he left.
was not likely to surprise his congregants. While
Johnson had grown up near the denomination’s
he was ordained through the Evangelical
headquarters in Chicago, and her family’s history
Covenant Church, one of the fastest-growing
is closely intertwined with the origins of the
evangelical denominations in the world, his views
denomination, with many of her relatives and
on feminism, LGBTQ inclusion and climate
friends still practicing.
change have set him apart.
“It wasn’t hard to decide to go with Christ
While in some ways, Phillips, 37, still considers
Church, with Adam, but it was hard to realize that
himself an evangelical Christian, he said he’s not
they were not standing with our church and our
a good poster child for the religion.
values,” she said of her former denomination.
“We’ve gotten in trouble for things we believe
“It’s a continual hope that they will one day also
in,” he said during a recent interview in the tidy
value inclusiveness for all people at all levels of
living room of his modest home in North
leadership with that church.”
Portland’s Kenton neighborhood.
On Oct. 7, Phillips will give a TEDx talk on
Phillips explained his approach to faith while
inclusion at TEDxMtHood, held at Roosevelt
nearby his wife of 15 years, Sarah Phillips, tended
High School in in North Portland. His “idea
to their child, a 2-month-old boy named Desmond
worth sharing,” to put it in TED Talks terms, he
(for Desmond Tutu). Behind the leather-bound
said, is that inclusion is actually an ancient idea.
chair where Phillips sat hung an abstract painting
Today, Phillips’ church has grown to 150
of a brown-skinned Virgin Mary and baby Jesus.
members. He attends marches and rallies with
Next to him, a well-stocked bar, complete with
his congregation and incorporates calls for social
muddler, cocktail shaker and plenty of bourbon.
justice action into his weekly sermons. He’s also
About two and a half years ago, Phillips made
working on a book about spiritual practices and
national headlines when he lost his job, his
reflections around resistance.
church and his funding because he openly
This summer, he began a public Bible study at
welcomed the LGBTQ community into his house
6:30 p.m. the first Monday of every month at
of worship.
Century Bar in Southeast Portland. He calls it
He had opened the church’s doors just nine
“Public Theology,” where religion and progressive
months earlier.
politics are discussed over vegan nachos and beer.
Not long before losing nearly everything,
Phillips said he was drawn to religion from a
Phillips was considered an up-and-coming pastor
young age. While his family didn’t attend church
within the Evangelical Covenant Church. He had
when he was growing up, he sought out any and
already made a name for himself and held a
every opportunity to attend with friends. He
promising future as one of the denomination’s
went to Pentecostal and evangelical youth groups
leaders.
and attended Catholic Mass. But it was at a
“It was really shocking to me in some ways
neighborhood Evangelical Covenant Church in
because I guess I was pretty naive,” he said. “We
Hudson, Ohio, he said, where he found his faith
had rules that we weren’t allowed to do gay
community when he was in high school. At the
marriage and so on and so forth, but I was always
time, he had no idea it was part of a
encouraged to be very inclusive in my theology.”
denomination with hundreds of churches in the
Page 9
Faith3lustice
T o do church, but
do it different!/
The Rev.
News
STAFF WRITER
P
PHO TO BY A L A N BORRUD
The Rev. Adam Phillips speaks to Street Roots at his family’s home in Portland’s Kenton neighborhood.
U.S. and ministries on every continent.
When Phillips attended Ohio State University
in Columbus, he joined a campus ministry group.
As an international-relations major, he said he
was becoming aware of all needs for social
justice in the world.
“My campus ministry group just did not know
how to deal with that,” he said. “We were kind of
being trained to go around and convert people to
get a ticket to heaven, and that didn’t make sense
to me.”
He began to question what it really meant to
love your neighbor as yourself and follow the
teachings of Jesus. He said he was discovering
that being a Christian wasn’t just about getting
“fire insurance” to escape hell, but about
addressing the real needs of people.
“That’s when I started to feel that maybe my
call was to do church, but do it differently,” he
said.
After graduating from college, he received his
pastoral training at North Park Theological
Seminary in Chicago. He co-pastored an
Evangelical Covenant Church near Wrigley Field
and helped plant another in Washington, D.C.
He also spent five years leading interfaith
mobilization efforts for the ONE Campaign, a
nonprofit advocacy group co-founded by Bono
with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation. He traveled the country, speaking
with imams, rabbis and ministers, encouraging
them to get involved in advocating for policies to
address world hunger, clean water, education and
other international development issues.
“It wasn’t a political thing,” Phillips said of his
time with the campaign. “It was a way for me to
live out my calling and my seminary training and
my sense of what it meant to be a pastor.”
For Phillips, being evangelical is believing God
is active in our world, living out the Scriptures’
teachings and seeking out the good news.
He said this means “I don’t believe that God is
up in the clouds with a lightning bolt and a long
white beard angry at us, ready to strike. I think
that God is a God of love and a force of embrace
and light and justice in our world that is so good.”
He said being evangelical used to mean being
involved in the community and living out a
disciplined life for the common good. But his
perceptions of the denomination have changed -
first when he lost his church, and then confirmed
with the popularity of President Donald Trump
among its followers.
“I think you have to talk about Donald Trump
when you’re talking about evangelicals in 2017,
because 81 percent, according to Pew, of
evangelical voters voted for Donald Trump. And
that is a real referendum, I think, on what it
actually means to be evangelical,” he said.
“Now you see a scenario where evangelical
means voting for a president that is literally today
threatening to wipe out North Korea and 25
million people, or having what they call ‘locker
room talk’ during the campaign, and these are
people who voted for him and they, so far, don’t
seem to be upset with this.”
An ABC News/Washington Post telephone
survey in early July found 61 percent of white
Evangelical Protestants still approved of Trump’s
performance. Another poll, conducted by Pew
Research Center a month earlier found 74
percent of non-Hispanic white Evangelical
Protestants approved of the president.
“For me, over the years,” Phillips said, “I’ve
realized that call and that commitment is quite
different than the way we were told to be, in
terms of evangelicals, whether it was Christian
radio or the books we were told to read. It’s
actually a much bigger and more inclusive and
better story than we were ever allowed to
believe.”
Phillips said he’s not alone among evangelical
Christians in coming to these conclusions.
“I think we’re seeiiig a major move amongst
millennials,” he said, “waking up to the reality
that our faith is not just about going to heaven
when we die.”
He said this faction of believers, which he has
noticed evolving over the past 10 years, is one
that “still takes the Bible very seriously, that still
believes that God is active in the world, but is
turning away from the culture wars and the fights
that we used to have in the world and trying to
be about change.”
Shortly after losing his church, Phillips walked
in the Portland Pride Parade holding a sign that
read in bold lettering: “As a Christian, I am sorry
for the narrow-minded, judgmental, deceptive,
manipulative actions of those who denied rights
and equality to so many in the name of God.”
The response was overwhelming.
“I had no idea what that sign would do,” he
said, looking back. “It opened up so many
amazing conversations and people on the parade
route coming and hugging me and crying. Some
of those people joined our church.
“It was a huge eye opener,” he said. “I was
thinking that we were just going to quietly
embrace LGBTQ folks, and it became really clear
to me that you couldn’t just be quiet; you had to
be public about it. You had to evangelical about it!
Because it was good news, and the good news
was that you could be gay or lesbian, bi or trans
and keep going, and that God loved you, and God
embraces you, and you didn’t need to change.”
Today Phillips openly performs gay marriages,
with the next one planned for Halloween. He has
also included members of the LGBTQ
community in his church’s leadership team, and
his congregation has placed a special emphasis
on being supportive of trans rights and its trans
members.
Damien Geter said Phillips’ church is not the
first Christian church where he felt welcome as a
gay black man. However, it is the first church
he’s ever attended where the preacher talked
about racial justice from the pulpit.
“I remember sitting in the pew and thinking
there is no other church, maybe in this country,
that is having this discussion right now,” he said.
“Not in an after-church meeting or a before
church social, but in the church - that’s what the.
sermon was about.”
Geter added, “It’s great, because for me, faith
is so personal, and being black is so personal,
that it’s just another conduit to help make a
change.”
Phillips said he’s trying to open his
congregation’s eyes to Portland’s and Oregon’s
history of racial exclusion because even today, it’s
more deeply ingrained than many liberals may
realize.
“We meet at this church downtown, and two of
the stained glass windows have slave owners in
them,” Phillips said.
But racial justice is just one of four areas of
mission his congregation has committed to this
year. They continue to focus on LGBTQ
inclusion, and also the housing crisis and
homelessness and refugees and immigrants.
Phillips said the church is connecting with
groups already working in those areas and
offering their assistance. They’ve made welcome
kits to help refugees settle into their new homes
and hygiene kits for people living on the streets.
They also support immigrants rights groups and
have engaged in some work around sanctuary.
“For me,” Phillips said, “this is what this is
about: It’s integrating prayerful, meditative,
spiritual thoughts but being embodied and active
in the world. So whether it’s doing something -
serving at the overnight shelter when it gets cold
outside or packing bags for schools or
Thanksgiving meals, or marching in the streets to
resist white supremacy or homophobia - that’s
what it means to be active in our world. Social
justice is just living out the fruits of our faith.”
Geter encourages others who may be looking
for an inclusive Christian community to visit
Christ Church.
“Adam is doing real things,” Geter said. “When
I talk to him, I can hear it in his heart that this is
something that really means something to him,
and he is really trying to make a difference. He’s
made a difference in the LGBTQ community in
having a safe space for us, and he’s trying to do
the same thing with race, and I think he can do
it. And I think that he can do it in one of the
whitest cities in the country.”
emily@streetroots.org; Twitter @greenwrites
"It's not just
about marches
and protests. It's
about simple
everyday moments
to dismantle this
generation upon
generation upon
generation sin
that so infects our
lives even to this
moment."
THE REV, A D A M PHILLIPS,
O N W H IT E S U P R E M A C Y
If you go
What: TEDxMtHood 2017
(speakers include the Rev.
Adam Phillips)
When: Saturday, Oct. 7
Where: Roosevelt High School
Theatre, 6941 Central St.,
Portland
Tickets: $37-77; visit
tedxmthood.com for more
information
Online
Rabbi Ariel Stone, who
convened the Portland Interfaith
Clergy Resistance, leads her
congregation in the fight for
social justice. Read this
previous installment of Street
Roots’ Faith & Justice series at
news.streetroots.org/
faithandjustice
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