These statements do not claim authority, finality, or exclusive insight. It arises from the recognition that truth cannot be possessed without distortion, and that faith and democracy alike fail when certainty is used to excuse harm. In a time when religious and ideological language is increasingly invoked to justify brutal cruelty, exclusion, dehumanization, and unaccountable power, we offer these thoughts as a public posture or set of guidelines rather than as a doctrine - one that honors searching over certainty, responsibility over obedience, and shared becoming over fortified belief.
- We affirm that truth is approached, not owned.
- That no institution, ideology, or tradition is exempt from correction or accountability.
- That certainty invoked to justify cruelty has forfeited moral authority.
- That human dignity precedes any civic or religious doctrine, policy, and power.
- That democracy depends on humility, plural voices, and the willingness to be wrong.
- That faith, when it is worthy of trust, remains open, revisable, and accountable to love.
- That shared responsibility matters more than enforced conformity.
- That dialogue, restraint, and compassion are civic and spiritual strengths, not weaknesses.
- That no claim to truth is legitimate if it requires dehumanizing the other.
Faith is Not a Possession
One says they hold truth,
as one might hold a deed,
a barrier fence line,
at times barbed and long.
One might say they are biblical,
as though ink could finish breath,
as though God consented,
to be archived and laminated.
But truth was never a property.
It came as weather.
As fire that burned.
As a voice refusing permanence.
Moses carried it in stone that broke.
The prophets spoke of it in grief.
The psalmists and poets wrote of mercy.
The Jesus gospels spoke in parables
that God might be heard in no one way.
It was to be entered into experientially -
To be walked on roads that came-and-went.
Whose borders were permeable and crossed.
Those claiming to own "biblical truth"
built walls around the poor and unwanted,
calling imposed cruelty obedience,
mistaking a loving faith for absolutism.
But such an abominable faith was
It was to be a posture of listening.
The courage to say, "I do not know,"
We do not come to belief to arrive.
To conclude this is heresy is to repeat
of Jacob limping away from divine encounter,
of Mary consenting without clarity,
of Jesus rightly refusing lurid kingdoms.
Truth does not live in locked fortresses.
It breathes where questions are allowed,
where power is held accountable,
where love risks uncertainty.
If divinity speaks at all,
it speaks in the verbs of life -
calling, undoing, welcoming,
becoming, learning, loving.
And if democracy is to live again,
it will not be through sacred certainty,
or declared human "truths"
without owning flat, finished answers.
Those who claim truth's possession
have learned to keep their locked doors.
February 8, 2026
@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved
Seeking, Not Possessing
We do not claim to hold truth.
We commit ourselves to seeking it.
We reject the belief that Scripture is a finished subject,
or that "objectivized faiths" grant ownership of certainty.
We receive Scripture as witness, not weapon;
as provocation, not possession;
as a living field of struggle, failure, revision, and growth.
We deny any theology that confuses certainty with faith
or obedience with moral abdication of human rights and equality.
We refuse the use of “biblical truth” as a shield against responsibility,
or as a tool of discipline,
or as a justification for imposed, immoral, cruelty.
We reject fortress faiths -
faiths that make enemies of friends,
demands purity,
sacralizes power,
or renders love optional.
We affirm that faith is not assent but orientation;
not arrival but becoming;
not certainty but responsibility.
We stand with the deeper biblical postures -
of (rabbinic) argument, lament, parable, humility, and unfinished vision.
We believe any faith worthy of the name
must remain open to correction,
be accountable to the vulnerable,
and answerable to love's remiss.
We hold that faith and democracy rise or fall together -
each requiring humility, plural voices, revisability,
and the courage to be wrong and acknowledge it.
We confess that when belief harms another,
it has already betrayed its living source.
We do not guard truth -
We walk towards it, together.
February 8, 2026
@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved
Preamble
A Civic Statement
- We affirm that truth is approached, not owned.
- That no institution, ideology, or tradition is exempt from revision or accountability.
- That certainty used to justify harm has forfeited moral authority.
- That democracy depends on humility, plural voices, and the willingness to be wrong.
- That human dignity precedes policy, power, and ideology.
- That shared responsibility matters more than enforced conformity.
- That dialogue, compassion, and restraint are civic strengths, not weaknesses.
- That no claim to truth is legitimate if it requires dehumanizing the other.
- That the future depends not on final answers, but on our capacity to listen, revise, and act together.
An Anti-Creed Statement (What We Refuse)
- We refuse the claim that truth can be owned, guarded, or weaponized.
- We refuse the use of sacred language to excuse cruelty or indifference.
- We refuse obedience that dissolves moral responsibility.
- We refuse faith that builds fortresses instead of communities.
- We refuse certainty that silences dissent or punishes doubt.
- We refuse nationalism baptized as righteousness.
- We refuse purity tests that require enemies to survive.
- We refuse authority that answers only to itself.
- We refuse beliefs that demand suffering as proof of loyalty.
- We refuse any vision of order that renders love optional.
- We refuse the lie that arrival matters more than becoming.
The difference between holding truth and seeking truth is not semantic. It is postural. It determines how Scripture is read, how faith is practiced, and how power is exercised.
To claim possession of “biblical truth” is to treat Scripture as a static deposit - as something finished, to be secured, and guarded. It becomes a boundary-marker distinguishing insiders from outsiders, and a credentialed authority that legitimizes teaching, discipline, and exclusion for others to follow. Truth, in this posture, is something one arrives at, then defends, and oppresses others for not assimilating towards their perceptions.
However, to seek truth through Scripture is to enter an altogether different relationship with the Divine, the sacred, the Loving Other - where holiness and justice conform to love and not love to holiness and justice.
Scripture must become a witness rather than a weapon, a provocation rather than a possession; to be encountered as a field of struggle, failure, revision, and growth... an unfolding conversation rather than a closed system of boundary truths. Here, faith is not about guarding (religious or faith) conclusions but about remaining open to interruption.
The church’s repeated insistence that it holds “biblical truth” must be framed in humility, but too often it is more accurately a descriptor for untenable, mythic certainties masquerading as real faith. And mythic certainties do not remain benign. They harden. Calcify. And eventually become inhumanly coercive as exampled by trans-abuse, immigrant-abuse, abuse of women, and children... all in the mighty name of faith.
One never should enter Christianity in order to "arrive". But to enter within to journey, wrestle, and be undone by the divine sacred of love and love's becoming. That holy posture - of seeking rather than possessing - places it's faithful closer to the Abrahamic-Davidic-Prophetic-Jesus tradition than those who claim to guard it.
2. The Myth of “Biblical Truth” as a Finished Object
In contemporary church discourse, “biblical truth” functions less as a theological claim and more as a mechanism of control within its power centers. It serves as a rhetorical shield against critique, a disciplinary tool for enforcing conformity, and a permission structure for cruelty. Too frequently the children and women of bible-churches experience abuse and oppression in the name of "biblical truth."
It allows religious institutions such as churches, synods, denominations, and schools, to say, "We are not choosing oppression - we are merely obeying God."
But the Bible itself never behaves as a single, settled truth-system. It is argumentative rather than uniform. It revises itself across generations. It contains internal resistance and unresolved tensions. Its ethical vision advances in fits and starts. It is morally uneven and theologically self-correcting. It is a very real picture of people and societies in motion, seeking thrival and discovering brutal roadblocks to love and energy.
To claim the Bible as a "finalized truth" is to deny the Bible’s own mode of existence. Scripture does not present itself as a "closed answer" but as a living record of human struggle with God, neighbor, power, and responsibility where truth is always approached and never quite apprehended. At its height, Israel failed and crucified the living God... how much more does the church do the same thing with Jesus' love and faithfulness through high-and-holy rules and obedience sentences??
In this sense, “biblical truth,” as it is often deployed today, rests more on a mythic foundation than it does a truth foundation - not because Scripture is meaningless, but because it is too dynamically alive to be reduced to mere "era-specific or culture-oriented" certainty. The problem is not that Scripture is unstable, but that certainty demands a stillness Scripture refuses to provide, and to which "certainty faiths" always demand of themselves.
3. MAGA Christianity and Fortress Faith
MAGA Christianity represents a particularly stark example of what happens when truth is treated as property. It fuses absolutist theology with nationalist identity and fear-driven boundary enforcement. The result is not faith, but oppresive fortress-building all in the name of "purity" and "White Christian culture".
Fortress faiths always require enemies. It depends on purity tests. It thrives on spectacle. It legitimizes punishment. It needs scapegoats to sustain itself.
This is why cruelty can coexist so easily with “biblical truth” language without producing cognitive dissonance. Once truth is owned, love becomes optional. Compassion becomes negotiable. Suffering becomes collateral.
Outsiders are not wrong to connect this magafaith-posture to ICE raids, dehumanizing policy rhetoric, indifference to suffering, and the sacralization of state power. These are not accidental failures of that theology. They are its logical outcomes.
When certainty is baptized, coercion soon follows.
4. The Older, Deeper Biblical Posture
What must be articulated aligns not with today's modernized, albeit secular, faith absolutism, but with the deeper, "truer," biblical posture itself:
The Hebrew prophets argued with God rather than quoting Him. The wisdom tradition refused certainty and prized discernment. Jesus taught in parables precisely to prevent closure and resist final answers. Paul confessed that we see “through a glass, darkly,” acknowledging the limits of knowledge even within faith.
Across these traditions runs a consistent thread: faith is not assent - but reorientation. Not possession - but re-attunement. Not certainty - but re-acquired responsibility.
This posture cannot coexist with absolutism. One dissolves the other. The moment faith becomes fixed, it ceases to be faithful. The moment faith learns faithfulness it ceases to be fixed.
5. Re-Birthing Faith and Democracy
To link this faith critique to democracy is exactly right. Democracy MUST depend on epistemic humility, a plurality of voices, critique and revisability, and the willingness to be wrong.
It requires shared participation rather than enforced conformity. These are not weaknesses. They are the conditions of collective life.
Similarly with any faith - whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc. When churches and faith groups claim to own truth, they train people to accept authoritarian certainty, moral exemption, and (often enforced) hierarchical obedience. When churches model God's love, they then place themselves in the posture of seeking truth rather than owning truth; cultivating dialogue rather than demand obedience; and willingly seek to be accountable, compassionate, shared responsibility, and grow in civic maturity with cultural and religious difference.
In summary, challenging the rhetorics of “biblical truth” is not an act of anti-faith or lost-faith; it is a very pro-God, pro-democratic, pro-human, and profoundly biblical in its deepest sense.
When true truth seeks seek loving, critiquing approaches to flat statements of "biblical truth" they are not dismantling their faith. They are removing false floors that lead to abuse and oppression. They are allowing perceived truth to breathe again as Abraham had learned with his experiences in Ur and later, with God. Seekers of true-truth are but naming the difference between faith as arrival and faith as becoming. We wish always to become the latter.
-
Truth is not a possession.
Any claim to hold truth as settled, guarded, or owned has already begun to distort it. -
Scripture is not a finished object.
It is a living record of struggle, argument, revision, and moral growth.
To freeze it is to betray it. -
“Biblical truth” has become a mythic device.
It now functions less as theological insight and more as a shield against responsibility,
a tool of discipline,
and a permission structure for cruelty. -
Certainty masquerading as faith is not humility.
It is mythic certainty—and mythic certainty always hardens into coercion. -
We reject obedience that dissolves moral agency.
“We are merely obeying” is not faith.
It is abdication. -
Fortress faith is not faith.
Any belief system that requires enemies, purity tests, spectacle, punishment, or scapegoats
has already abandoned love. -
Cruelty justified by sacred language is not a failure of theology.
It is its logical outcome when truth is treated as property. -
The deeper biblical posture is unfinished by design.
Prophets argued.
Wisdom refused certainty.
Jesus spoke in parables to prevent closure.
Paul confessed partial sight. -
Faith is not assent.
It is orientation.
Not arrival, but becoming.
Not certainty, but responsibility. -
Absolutism and faith cannot coexist.
One dissolves the other. -
Democracy and faith share the same ethical soil.
Both require humility, plural voices, revisability, and the courage to be wrong. -
When churches claim to own truth, they train people for authoritarianism.
When they seek truth, they form people capable of dialogue, accountability, and care. -
Challenging “biblical truth” rhetoric is not anti-faith.
It is pro-human, pro-democratic, and faithful to Scripture’s living character. -
We did not enter belief to arrive.
We entered to walk, to wrestle, and to be undone. -
The future belongs to becoming, not certainty.
Faith that cannot be questioned will not survive.
Faith that refuses possession may yet endure.
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