Calls for Christian unity should never be an excuse for silence in the face of Christian complicity in abuse, injustice, and disrespect. Too often unity has been used as a weapon to silence rather than a way to love. Jesus prayed for unity, yes, but showed up the way of freedom.

It’s quite sad how Jesus has been weaponized as a way for those who have been wounded to be silent in the face of their abusers and complicit in the structure that oppresses them. If your Jesus cares more about unity than he does about justice, you need to get rid of him.

That type of Jesus is foreign to the stories we read of Jesus in the gospels. The Jesus of the gospels understood that it dishonors the image of God to force those who are wounded to be silent and it diminishes the work of God in creating a world of love and justice.

Unity is good and can accomplish great things and is a way we live our Christian life. But unity should never be a way to evade, justify, and deny the terrible ways we’ve learned to be human, to be Christians, and to be neighbors. Jesus didn’t do it. We shouldn’t either.

“It was not that I wasn't interested in such reconciliation,” James Cone writes, “but I felt that first we must speak of black liberation, without which reconciliation had no real meaning. How could blacks be reconciled with people who act in ways that deny their humanity?”

When Jesus preached and prayed for unity, his idea of unity was consistent with love for others. This meant that his idea would never diminish or devalue the humanity others. Unity meant love, unity meant power, and unity meant justice. Without these, unity is simply performance.