Don’t Give the Boy Jesus | October 11, 2026 | Rev. Hassaun Ali Jones-Bey
The other day I was thinking of Christian nationalism and the president of the United States. Tears came to my eyes and I actually choked on the catch in my throat. I was thinking, “Don’t give the boy Jesus.” My emotional reaction was centuries too late, though. So this sermon is not about the president of the United States. It’s about you and me.
This weekend is when people observe Columbus Day, more recently observed as Indigenous Peoples’ Day in memory of the indigenous peoples and civilizations that essentially fell victim to centuries of genocide, effectively wrought by Columbus’ 16th century version of Christian nationalism.
This weekend people are also observing the MAAFA, which is a Kiswahili word for great disaster. The great disaster that people are usually referring to is the transatlantic slave trade, which was also essentially a Christian nationalist undertaking, simultaneous with the indigenous genocide.
Lest one might be tempted to associate Christian nationalism solely with the 16th-century Protestant Reformation and eventual British empire, it becomes crucial to remember the brutal tactics the Roman Empire used to “convert” indigenous Europeans to Christian nationalism a millennium before the MAAFA in the West—such as Charlemagne’s genocidal and even tree-killing “conversion” of the Saxons as described by Rebecca Ann Parker and Rita Nakashima Brock in Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of this World for Crucifixion and Empire.
Even in the 20th-century, according to One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Created Christian America by Kevin Kruse, business leaders—piqued by the religious language that Franklin D. Roosevelt used to blame them for the depression and promote the New Deal—began a long term Christian nationalist public relations strategy that produced the 1950s “Godless communism” McCarthyism, among other results that it is still producing.
So, when I say, “Don’t give the boy Jesus,” I mean don’t give Jesus to him, like a piece of land that he can own and do with as he wills. Jesus is not yours to give any more than the land.
Desmond Tutu and Jomo Kenyatta are often quoted as saying something like, “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”
The land has been misused to the point of declaring countless people homeless, in a system where owning multiple homes is considered a blessing. If you give the boy Jesus, he will imagine that your system is a continuation of the Creation, when, in fact, it is the opposite.
In other words, don’t sit comfortably in an economic system that promotes private ownership as opposed to stewardship of land, and imagine that you can give anyone Jesus. You can and will tell the boy that the communists are Godless because they don’t believe in Jesus, even though they behave more like Jesus than you do, in terms of land anyway. Don’t give the boy your Jesus.
Don’t give the boy Jesus. When you do you are giving him your soul too, but only at the level that you have grown capable of expressing it. That’s giving him the Word of God, but only at the level that you have come to understand and embody it.
For Muslims, that’s giving him Muhammad and the word of Allah. For Ifà people in the Diaspora, that’s like giving him Orishas, like Oshun, Yemonjah and Oya, for instance. For Jews, that’s like giving him Moses. For Buddhists, it’s like giving him Buddha.
For the people called Hindus, it’s like giving him Krishna and many, many more. For those who study the spirituality of Khemet (Ancient Egypt), it’s like giving someone Imhotep. For atheists and agnostics, it’s like trying to give away the common sense that you actually had to learn.
Oh yeah, for Christians (both Catholic and Protestant), it’s like becoming Judas. Don’t give the boy Jesus.
The boy is worshipping the system and many of its conservative leaders, like Andrew Jackson, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. He believes that the system continues the Creation—the work of the Creator—but he will eventually learn that the system is a compromise. Everybody compromises temporally and to some finite degree, to go along with the system.
The system is imperfect. It boards up houses in cities, while thousands, perhaps millions, go homeless. There was no homelessness in the Creation. Home was in the land, and all of the land and all of the people on it belonged to the Creator. So there was no such thing as homelessness.
Eventually—or, at least, one hopes—the Creation surfaces in people, and they get together to do something—the right thing—to solve the problem; like Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter. Not the economic problem; the human problem.
The solution to the human problem does not make one or a few of the “problem solvers” insanely rich. The solution to the human problem makes everyone a lot more sane—a lot more compassionate—a lot more christlike. Don’t give the boy Jesus.
Don’t give the boy Jesus. The price is too high. It can’t be counted in dollars or in any known currency. The price is way too high. It can’t even be counted in pieces of silver or pieces of gold. That’s been tried. Thirty pieces are not enough, not even thirty million pieces are enough.
If you give the boy Jesus, many generations after you will have to struggle to right an increasingly compromised system that believes it is righteously continuing the Creation. Don’t give the boy Jesus.
Don’t give the boy Jesus. The Creation is body, mind, heart and soul. A system imitating the Creation is either body and mind or heart and soul. The only hope, in the latter case, is to make such an unholy choice—and the winner always seems to be body and mind.
Don’t give the boy Jesus. He will try to claim that his system simply continues the Creation. Let him do that foolishness on his own. Don’t sell your soul to him, or to anyone else for that matter. Don’t give the boy Jesus.
As mentioned earlier, this is not the first time this has happened, that people have had to make such a choice, have had to beware of the wolf, in sheep tender’s clothing. Empires take over religious sentiments and turn them into religions. This is what empires do.
So, truly religious people have to be careful. It’s deceptively simple in such a case to end up worshipping the empire instead of God. This is precisely why you don’t want to give the boy your Jesus. Don’t give the boy Jesus.
Let him approach Jesus like all the rest of us do—gradually, humbly—learning from the outcomes of our own decisions, both wise and foolish, growing mature. This is a lifework for everyone, not to be taken lightly, definitely not to be rushed.
Am I badmouthing missionaries? Yes, I am. I’m not interested in having people join my religion, submit to my empire. I am not voting for the boarding up of a lot of potential homes and the overfilling of others, in a city full of homelessness.
That’s why you shouldn’t give the boy Jesus. It could take his whole life, perhaps his whole generation, to see through your shallowness. Or even worse, he could become rich and powerful enough to give your Jesus to even more people.
That’s right. He could give birth to an empire. He could spread even more homelessness, in the name of Jesus. Do the human race a favor. Don’t give the boy Jesus. Let him discover Jesus for himself, in his own time and place.
For instance, the books of law in the Old Testament prohibit charging interest on loans to fellow children of Israel. More than a millennium later, the New Testament seems to expand the law to anyone who truly desires to be a child of God. Half a millennium after that, the Qur’an seems to forbid charging interest to anyone.
Is this an example of community expanding infinitely with time, as per the conclusion of Thurman’s The Search for Common Ground: An Inquiry Into the Basis of Man's Experience of Community, or is this an example of spiritual growth over time in the conceptualization of Jesus. Is there a difference between the two? Thurman may not have sermonized on this sort of economic/political thing, but he did sermonize repeatedly during the McCarthy era on the true meaning of loyalty. So I think it’s the type of question we need to start asking.
When I say, “don’t give the boy Jesus," I am not saying, you should not share your religious sentiments with the child. Quite the contrary, you should share them as sentiments, not as a religion. Then the child can learn from you, as you continue to learn, and he or she can develop sentiments of his or her own.
If you want to give the child something, give him or her one or more Creation stories. Tell him or her how we say we got here. Tell him or her that he or she already knows as much about it as you do. Tell him or her or them that they will even grow enough to choose their own pronouns. Tell him, her or them that some indigenous traditions say, some people have “two spirits.”
Tell him or her or them also that a lot of people will try to give her or him or them Jesus, or whatever their religion is. Tell her or him or them that those people are not mean or evil; that they were just misled at a young age and are still figuring things out.
Tell him or her or them to approach Jesus gradually, humbly, learning from the outcomes of his or her or their own decisions, both wise and foolish, growing mature. Tell him or her or them this is a lifework for everyone, not to be taken lightly, definitely not to be rushed.
In addition to the Creation stories, give the child permission to check out his or her or their and other people’s ancestors. Tell the child that he or she or they came to this life through ancestors, and that he or she or they will leave this life on the way to becoming an ancestor.
Tell the child to learn what ancestors did, and to consider what she or he or they would like for people to tell future generations about his or her their community; and also to consider what impression the child would like to make—with his or her or their life choices—upon the Creator.
By learning what the ancestors did and seeing how it affected the world, the child will be encouraged to approach Jesus gradually, humbly, learning from his or her or their own decisions, both wise and foolish, growing mature.
Once again, tell the child this is a lifework for everyone, not to be taken lightly, definitely not to be rushed. Remind him or her or them that you are badmouthing missionaries. So, you’re obviously not perfect. You’re still learning Jesus too.
Despite the MAAFA and indigenous genocide, there are Black Christian and even Native Christian Churches, arguably because what the empire did to Jesus is the same thing that was done and is still being done to Blacks and Natives. So perhaps these churches are purifying the religion, taking the nationalism out of it? This is one of those contradictions that is not supposed to be final. But the empire does not see the contradictions.
The people in the empire can see and feel the contradictions though. They can suffer and sacrifice to eliminate the contradictions. The empire continues operating as an empire, and the contradictions return, almost unnoticed. Soon the people can see and feel them again, and the struggles and sacrifices can begin again.
There is something about empires and their systems that opposes the cycles of Creation. But the cycles happen anyway. They are created in the people, in all of the people. So they happen anyway even though the systems violently oppose them…. I think I might be badmouthing missionaries again. So I’m obviously not perfect…. But that’s another sermon….
Can we see the divine in what our ancestors intended—not just in what they did, not even just in what they tried to do? Can we see the divine aspiration that might even have been turned on it’s head—inverted by the circumstances, vicissitudes of life—in what they tried to do, and can we come closer to that divine aspiration, the Creation, in our life, in our generation? Just as important, how can I more faithfully model that—convey the unadulterated divine aspiration, convey the Creation—for the generations to come?
Right here and right now, may we individually and collectively know and become the divinely healing wholeness, the sacred and secular oneness of each and all directions, of all space and time throughout a sacred and secular cosmos of peace and blessings—in which we continually seek and grow in knowledge and wisdom of ourselves and of each other. May we wade in the waters of healthy and beloved community ecologies. Amen, Ameen, Ashay, and Let it be.
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