First, the church needs to stand as a counter-witness to all dehumanizing and nauseating propaganda. Jesus spoke powerfully and directly to this calling as his central message in the Sermon on the Mount: we are taught to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. The vocation of every Christian and of the church as a whole is to stand always against the dehumanization of any person or group. Even when we rightly understand a group or person to be a legitimate threat or to be engaging in active harm, we are tasked with never losing sight of their humanity, their possession of the imago Dei, and the unconditional and undying love that God has for them. Beyond that, the church has been taught to embrace an “upside down” view of the social order wherein those that our community deems least worthy of honor and dignity – the oppressed, poor, and marginalized – are understood to be the very people whom we are most honored to count as members of our body.
— Paul Hoard and Billie Hoard, Eucontamination, p. 192-193
Photo: Cloister, Mont Saint-Michel, France, June 18, 2026.