You may recognize his name behind best-sellers-turned-movies like The Fault In Our Stars and Paper Towns, but did you know John Green is also a Christian?
In a Twitter series advocating for refugee support, Green tweeted “And for those of you who share my faith, Jesus is awfully unambiguous about the poor, shelterless, and imprisoned,” with a link to Matthew 25.
Green is far from the first prominent believer to call for compassion when dealing with refugees: A Christian billionaire announced last year he wanted to buy an island for the refugees while Charisma News columnist Michael Brown evaluated how believers can approach the crisis.
Though Green doesn’t flaunt his faith frequently, this is not the first time he’s written about Christianity.
“I don’t talk about it very often, but I’m a religious person. In fact, before I became a writer, I wanted to be a minister,” Green wrote in a 2008 blog post. “There is a certain branch of Christianity that has so effectively hijacked the word ‘Christian’ that I feel uncomfortable sometimes using it to describe myself. But I am a Christian.”
Green was enrolled in divinity school and served as a hospital chaplain when he began to face one of life’s most difficult quandaries: Why bad things happen to good people.
”I was enrolled in divinity school and thought I was going to become a minister – I’m Episcopalian – but I was disavowed of that notion pretty quickly while working at the hospital,” Green told the Sydney Morning Herald. ”I found myself really unfulfilled by the answers that are traditionally offered to questions of why some people suffer and why others suffer so little. I still go to church sometimes but I would not feel comfortable leading the services.”
But just because he’s a Christian doesn’t mean he’s a conservative. Green is a fierce advocate for teaching evolution in schools and challenging religious traditional thoughts, which mostly have mostly been adopted by Republican conservativism.
The writer says he doesn’t bring up religion often because it’s nearly impossible to have quality discourse online.
However, he does appeal to evangelicals to understand traditionally liberal issues, such as climate change, in biblical terms.
“Apocalypticism has always been a part of Christianity. Early Christians (and some argue Jesus himself) were convinced the world as we know it would not survive for more than a generation or two. For much of recent history, this has meant for many Christians that we don’t need to worry too much about what some Christians derisively call ‘the World.’ Evangelical leaders (and Governor Sarah Palin) have said that man can’t possibly affect the climate, because God made it and humans could never destroy it,” Green wrote in the 2008 blog.
“We are unquestionably called by the Bible to stewardship of the land, and right now that means Americans must make drastic changes in the way we use energy and how we find it,” he wrote.
Whether Green adheres to the associations with the Christian label or not, he maintains he is a man of deep devotion to his faith. You can find more out about Green’s faith by watching the video below.
