By Diana Kim

“Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.” -Karl Barth

Wednesday January 6, 2021 will go down in history as a dark day for democracy. The world was in shock — though unsurprised — to see thousands of Trump supporters storm the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Described as a coup, domestic terrorism, insurrection, and sedition, the riot at the Capitol displayed the moral failings of our nation, as white men clearly marked in gear that depicts white nationalism and neo-Nazism claimed this to be the “beginning of the start of [the] White Revolution in the United States.”

In the midst of this, where is the Church? How will the Church respond to such events and to the moral crisis we are witnessing? Too often, Christians have compartmentalized their faith, restricting it behind church walls and not allowing it to engage with the public out of fear of becoming too “political.” That cannot be the case anymore. The Church cannot claim that it is unwilling to participate in the happenings of the public with the oversimplified justification of separation of church and state. The Church must respond to what has happened, confess its shortcomings in shaping the country’s morality, and stand for justice on all fronts of life.

It is in the compartmentalizing that the Church has lost its edge and relevancy throughout. Considering how many churches approached COVID-19, this is quite obvious. Churches and Christians throughout the country demanded that they be allowed to worship the way they are accustomed to, that wearing masks and preventing large gatherings were offenses against their faith and that their freedom to worship however they chose had been stripped from them. These churches and Christians were so determined to separate their faith practice from the pandemic — a global, medical, economic, and political crisis — that they became hotspots for the virus, with countless outbreaks taking place. This inability to recognize communal responsibility as a call to care for the Body of Christ and to love one’s neighbor is what makes the world question the Church’s relevance.

The Church cannot look to the riot at the Capitol and claim that it is not to be involved in the political, when it is an obvious representation of America’s original sin. Nor can the Church look to COVID-19 and claim that it is not to be involved in the biological or medical, when it can sow its part to care for others. To take Karl Barth’s famous quote, for the Church to be relevant, in a time when the world steers more and more towards the secularized, it must not only focus on the Bible or an oversimplified understanding of the “spiritual” but must also look to the newspaper — the world — and address the intersection of the two. We are to interpret the world through our Christian lens.

As I write this post, I imagine that there will be some churches that make it a point to directly address the insurrection on Sunday (1/11/21) through prayers, sermons, and discussions, whereas others will avoid the historic day entirely to prevent awkwardness among congregants. Still, some might address it in passing, possibly inserted into a prayer or sermon as a one-liner. If the Church is unwilling to speak against threats to justice that takes place in our cities and country, how can the Church rightly speak about the God of justice? If the Church is unwilling to speak against the sins of the nation, how can the Church rightly speak about our sins against God and neighbor? If the Church is unwilling to call out oppressors, how can the Church rightly cry out to the God of the oppressed? The Church must respond.

Diana Kim is a pastor of a local Korean church in Torrance, CA. Her primary goals in serving are to teach and equip the next generation to be passionate for Jesus and to live out His passion and care for the world. Diana is currently a PhD student at Fuller Theological Seminary and is majoring in Christian Ethics. Her current research area of interest is Asian American feminist ethics.