Jesus was a radical, and it's time to start saying so

I'VE LONG BEEN FASCINATED by the religious right. When I was a kid I had a Sunday morning paper route, and one of my favorite rituals after getting off work was watching televangelist Jimmy Swaggart sweat out the sin. It was mesmerizing theater. In college I used to seek out roving revivals, just to get a whiff of the snake oil. A few years ago, while I was working at an alternative newspaper, one editor jokingly referred to me as his "faith and values guy," because of my fascination for all things fundamentalist.

If Bible-banging conservatives were involved, I was there with a notebook: in part because, as a liberal journalist, I was interested in exposing the political machinations of the movement's cynical leadership; in part because I could get parishioners to say more than they should have. I knew how to fit in. I knew what they wanted to hear.

When I would introduce myself to potential sources, for instance, they'd typically ask whether or not I was a Christian. "I'm still sorting out the whole religion thing," I'd say sheepishly. They liked that. It put me in the category of savable.

After working on a story about a 4,000-seat conservative "megachurch" in the Minneapolis suburbs, though, something turned in me -- call it a moment of clarity. The church I wrote about was, as I expected, self-consciously slick, overly simplistic, and fueled by fear. My conclusions published, the hate mail poured in.

"Obviously, you are not a Christian," one reader concluded. A number of missives expressed similar sentiments. If only I were not so lost, so arrogant, so blind. If only I believed.

The thing is, I do believe. I spent my childhood running through the halls of my family's big old church. Mom taught Bible school, Dad directed the choir, and the minister who confirmed me remains a philosophical and spiritual counselor. They made me the bleeding heart I am.

The Jesus they taught me about lived and died in the name of justice, in the spirit of peace. He was an anti-establishment activist who begot peacemakers from Gandhi to Chavez, King to Mandela. And I had forsaken him: in social circles, because my progressive friends equated Western religion with na•vetŽ; professionally, because I wanted to get the story. And while, on some level, I will always be sorting out the whole religion thing, I'm no longer reticent to say that I believe Jesus walked the earth. That I believe he provoked the powerful, considered economic injustice a sin, and welcomed all people -- no matter what their race, religion, sex, or sexual preference -- without judgment or expectation.