Margaret Carney, OSF: “I have a cousin who belongs to a Methodist congregation that’s doing a lot of work in this area [peace building] that we were talking about—and how they have dealt with the various exclusions churches are experiencing: LGBTQ persons, or perhaps excluding people of a certain political persuasion, or, in their case, the kind of Christian nationalist evangelicals. She said, ‘Our pastor says over and over: you will never meet a person for whom Jesus did not die.’ That stops me cold. If I can look at someone and say, ‘Oh my, Jesus died for you as much as for me,’ then I better shut up and listen to that person.”
Stephen Copeland, host of Off the Page: “Why does that move you so much? It’s a really beautiful notion.”
Margaret Carney, OSF: “It flips the whole way of thinking about that other person to, ‘What does Jesus think of this person? What does Jesus want? Of course, I think Jesus wants what I want. But if I can let go of that for a minute and just say [to myself], ‘But I just met this person, and Jesus has been loving him or her since birth, and loving them through life, and so I better figure out how to show respect for that.”