Are Love and Exclusion Mutually Exclusive?

Exploring the limits of inclusion - if there are any

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

(A twelve-minute read.)

This (longish) post may stand in juxtaposition to my post last week—or perhaps just provide some balance. Either way, here goes.

A few months ago I started following a guy on social media who used to be an evangelical pastor but who is now deconstructing his faith. I had seen friends of mine repost some of his material and I was both encouraged and challenged by it, so I decided to give him a follow.

I quickly realized, despite a lot of good stuff he posted, that following him left a different taste in my mouth.

As I think I’ve made it clear in previous posts, I’m all for questioning—and I have great sympathy for those deconstructing their faith. In many ways, I’m going through my own sort of deconstruction—which I think everyone should do and, in many ways, is simply the journey of religious and theological maturation (what Christians would call “sanctification,” which, in this context, is the process by which we shed our false pictures of God and replace them with more accurate and love-centered ones).

But what challenges me about this person’s posts is the dogmatism with which he declares who Christians should or shouldn’t include in their religious communities. In many ways, the dogmatism he displays seems to be the vestiges of the black-and-white evangelical faith he is trying to escape—which I get. Many times in our rejection of our former narrow-minded religious zeal, we replace it with another sort of anti-religious zeal. This is just a natural part of the journey. We replace religious dogma with anti-religious dogma.

Again, I get this.

But it leaves me feeling a little uncomfortable at times.

This whole topic essentially gets at the heart of my own wrestling the last few years. On the most fundamental level what I wonder about, as my wife and I have stepped outside our religious bubble and sought to invite others into life with us, is what the bases for inclusion are.

This is what instigated my doctoral studies to begin with, as I detected afresh that my own denomination was historically against using creeds and statements of belief to determine who was in and who was out—though, spoiler alert, I’ve quickly discovered that such an understanding of my denomination’s history is a very surface-level reading of that history and doesn’t reflect reality all that much (in other words, they were quite exclusive—despite my wishes to the contrary).

Simply put, I hear a lot of religious people—especially Christians who are spreading their wings and embracing a more love-centered understanding of Jesus—who give the impression that religious communities can never exclude anyone if the community is truly and consistently about God’s love. It is fundamentally at odds, the thinking goes, with the Jesus-message for a group or organization to exclude people from membership in their group, even if it’s done in the nicest of ways. (Though, it should be noted, that those who are the most vocal about inclusion, usually don’t necessarily want to truly include everyone—but often just the specific groups they’re advocating for.)

Again, I’m very inclined to this view, and sympathetic to such a perspective. And if we’re going to err, I’d probably rather err on the side of permissive inclusion than harsh exclusion. After all, there were many times when Jesus essentially said that it was his job to do the sifting and the sorting when it comes to who’s in and who’s out (see, for example, Matthew 13:24-43).

And yet, it seems to me that love and exclusion are not necessarily mutually exclusive—so long as we’re clear on what we’re excluding people from.

Total inclusion?

A few years ago, I was visiting with a friend who attends my church occasionally. She had grown up in my faith community, the daughter of a fairly well-known pastor in my denomination, but had basically left the church and would probably describe herself as agnostic now. A brilliant, successful, and influential person in my community, she shared with me that every once in a while she’d attend the local Unitarian Universalist Church, in addition to our church.

If you don’t know anything about the Unitarian Universalist denomination, it’s about as liberal, inclusive, and non-creedal as you can find. It’s a classic old New England denomination, comprised mostly of educated people who are probably mostly agnostic but, I guess, still want some sort of religious community.

As she described her experience attending some of their meetings, she explained that she came to a surprising point of clarity. Sitting in their meetings, as people around her read poetry, talked about politics, and how to better society, she suddenly thought to herself, “What’s the point?”

In other words, if a religious community doesn’t have some sort of transcendent or other-worldly convictions or purpose—if there is no direction, no mission, no purpose beyond just getting together and affirming everything everyone else says or does—then community doesn’t really mean much or serve an end.

To be fair, I don’t actually know much about Unitarian Universalists and I’m probably misrepresenting their religious agenda. And, in fact, I’m pretty sure I am—because even Unitarians do stand for something.

And that’s part of the point: no one is truly always inclusive. Even the Unitarians would have their religious hills they’d die on and reasons for excluding people (though I find a lot with which to disagree with him on, Carl Trueman is probably right when he says that “the Unitarian may claim a creedless faith, but he is never going to invite a Trinitarian, who insists upon the nonnegotiability of the Trinity, to fill his pulpit”).

Even Jesus, the great exemplar of inclusive love, ultimately excluded people—or, at the very least, allowed others to exclude themselves when he refused to lower the standard.

Perhaps you’re familiar with the story of the so-called “rich, young ruler.” A young man came to Jesus and asked him what he had to do in order to inherit eternal life. After a little back-and-forth, Mark records that Jesus, “looking at him, loved him, and said to him, ‘One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven” (Mark 10:21, emphasis added).

And what happened?

Mark records that the young man “was sad at this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”

I love how Mark, almost anticipating what later generations might say, threw in that little clause, all of two words long, about how Jesus “loved him.” He wanted to make sure the reader knew the high standard Jesus asked of the young man was borne out of love and was not at odds with it. And when the young man found himself standing on the outside of God’s kingdom, it wasn’t because Jesus didn’t love him but precisely because he did.

This is perhaps challenging to our modern sensibilities of inclusion, and it deserves further development on how Jesus’s exclusive call—which is repeated throughout the Gospels—doesn’t contradict love. But my point here is simply to establish the fact that love and exclusion aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, if one believes, as I do, that Jesus is the embodiment and fullest expression of love.

Again, I know this really makes our inclusive hearts shutter. And I get that and agree.

I’m also not here declaring which issues can be utilized as bases for exclusion while still aligning with love (I don’t believe one can make a compelling case, for example, that they’re being loving by excluding people on the basis of race—for starters).

The point is, using a simple example: if a person wants to start a restaurant that sells pizza and calls it “Pizza Kingdom,” it’s not unloving for them to reject an applicant who wants to open up a “Pizza Kingdom” franchise that sells hot dogs rather than pizza.

Of course, the challenge here is that religion is a whole other category. We’re not just talking about selling pizza; we’re talking about issues of an eternal nature, by definition. Anytime we add God to the equation, the stakes get raised—and the possibility of deep-rooted shame becomes all the more likely.

But, again, to repeat my point: it doesn’t seem to me that love and exclusion are necessarily mutually exclusive. They can be, and they often are, but I don’t think they have to be—so long as we keep a couple things in mind, which are, admittedly, not easy to pull off.

Some exclusionary safeguards

Firstly, I think we need to go overboard in making sure people understand that membership in a particular religious organization does not equate to salvation or having the inside track on God. This is, I think, where most of the rub lies.

Whether intentionally or unintentionally, most religious communities—and especially more conservative, fundamentalist types—give the impression, on some level, that inclusion in their group is what saves a person. Or, if it’s not what saves them, being excluded from the group certainly goes a long way in the path to damnation.

My own faith community does not explicitly or officially teach this type of perspective, but one could be forgiven if they thought we did.

For much of my life I’ve had the deep sense that if a person leaves our denomination, it essentially marks the beginning of their journey into full-fledged and guaranteed apostasy. We would speak about such individuals with a hushed tone, a sunken gaze, and a lamenting demeanor. There was no possible way such people, even if they joined another Christian denomination, were actually taking a step towards God; it was always a step away from God and truth or salvation.

In my observations, this is true of many other faith communities—be they Mormon, Catholic, Baptist, or others I’ve encountered. There is an implicit, and sometimes even explicit, messaging that says exclusion from their religious group means exclusion from God’s grace.

And if this is the paradigm we live with, whether intentional or not, then it’s no wonder people react so emotionally to religious communities that exclude people. Doing so basically declares that such individuals are not simply excluded from that particular community; they’re really excluded from God’s community, God’s love—from salvation.

We therefore must go the extra mile if we’re going to choose to have criteria for inclusion and exclusion, to make sure people understand that being a part of our group does not mean a person is saved—and, perhaps more importantly, that not being a part of our group does not mean they’re lost.

But this briefly leads to my second point: especially because, no matter how much we might try to say otherwise, people will often get the impression that membership into a religious group equates to membership into God’s family, we should therefore be very, very thoughtful and deliberate about the issues over which we choose to exclude people. Probably less is more here.

I say this because, inevitably, what we choose to exclude people over will become significant sources of shame. If I choose to exclude people from my group because of what they eat, for example, then I am potentially setting them up to relate to food in a shame-based way. The same is true for what they wear, watch, whom they sleep with, whom they’re attracted to, and so forth.

Of course, at the end of the day, we can live with that—so long as we’re clear about what our values are and what we’re willing to draw a line over. I wouldn’t lose much sleep, for example, if I discovered that a mass-murderer was experiencing shame because I excluded him over of his mass-murdering.

But I just think religious communities need to be a lot more careful, prayerful, and deliberate about the places we draw our lines.

Do we really want to exclude people, for example, because of what they eat or wear?

I’m a little hesitant to do so. As I’ve noted before, I don’t have much interest in policing matters that don’t directly affect people beyond the practitioner themselves.  It feels like such an approach places the focus on externals and almost always leads people to give little attention to the “weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith” (Matthew 23:23).

In short, I don’t believe love and exclusion are necessarily mutually exclusive—so long as we make sure people know exclusion from our group doesn’t equate to exclusion from God, and so long as we’re very careful and thoughtful about the matters over which we’re willing to exclude people. And by this, I’m essentially proposing, at the very least, that we do not exclude people over matters that do not directly affect people other than the person committing the act.

A postscript

I’ve gone long enough with this post, but let me make one more observation that doesn’t have much to do with anything I’ve written above. And I’m not sure what relevance it has to anything, but it’s just an observation: when we talk about exclusion from a group, I think the people who are most animated by it are those who’ve spent extended time in the group—and usually, it’s people who were born and raised in the group.

Very few outsiders, who are considering joining the group but may or may not meet the criteria, get all that upset if they fail to meet the membership requirements—at least not the visceral-type reaction that comes from a person who has a long history with the group and gets expelled from or nudged out of it. That’s just my observation—for what it’s worth.

I think I partly note this because the voices that mostly highlight the need for greater inclusivity, including my own, will sometimes appeal to the way a group appears to outsiders if the group is not as inclusive as they’d like it to be. But I’d say that, by and large, that critique doesn’t hold much water. Most “outsiders” understand that a group will have membership criteria, and they’ll usually just move on, without batting an eyelash, if they fail to meet those criteria. (I’m not at all implying that there’s no missional fallout if a religious community comes across to the general public as too exclusive; I think that can also be a serious issue.)

So when we’re talking about the need for greater inclusivity, those who crave it the most are those who already have a history with the group but who nevertheless grow up to discover that they’re not sure they buy into all that the group stands for. Essentially, they want the community they’re familiar with and used to, without being required to check off all the boxes the community stands for.

I’m not saying this is right or wrong. I’m just making an observation.

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil student at the University of Oxford (what they call a PhD), focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.