COLUMBUS (WCMH) – A Columbus church is taking a different approach to Palm Sunday.

This year, St. John’s Church of Christ encouraged its members to celebrate the holy day by protesting against injustice.

“Even in the midst of everything that’s going on, we can celebrate, we can wave our palms, we can do it with integrity knowing what the true message of that is,” said Rev. Virginia Lohmann Bauman, the church’s pastor.

Palm Sunday marks the beginning of the Christian holy week leading up to Easter, traditionally representing Jesus’ final journey into Jerusalem. The Gospel says palm branches were placed in his path as he rode into the city on a donkey.

Some biblical scholars say the procession was a political protest in direct opposition of Pontius Pilate, who was also entering the city in a show of the Roman Empire’s military strength.

Lohmann Bauman explained, “This was really a protest march. It was not this nostalgic and sentimental thing that we tend to think it is. In fact, it was Jesus making a very clear statement as he went into Jerusalem in the last week of his life that the kingdom of God was more powerful than the kingdom of Caesar.”

A book by scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, coupled with civil unrest unfolding in downtown Columbus during 2020, inspired the pastor and other clergy at St. John’s church to focus the Palm Sunday service and sermon on protest.

“I think the pause that COVID made us take made us see things in a different light and put on different lenses,” said Hank Osmundson, a seminary intern at the church.

The church’s Sunday service was streamed online and clergy encouraged participants to wear t-shirts with protest slogans of their choice.

Osmundson said he was inspired to wear a shirt with the saying “Bad Theology Kills” in reference to his own experiences.

“We really take this to heart,” he said. “And I think the protest aspect is something that energizes us around what Jesus wanted us to do as loving our neighbors as ourselves. It gives us a reason to love ourselves as we are. As a queer person, I’m affirmed fully here.”

St. John’s calls itself an open and affirming church, displaying an “All are welcome” banner above its front door and often serving people struggling with homelessness.

The pastor hoped the Palm Sunday message would convey the church’s all-inclusive message.

“We have seen these demonstrations where people have come out into the streets to protest injustice and to find ways to be seen and heard in places where maybe they aren’t,” she said.

Osmundson added, “We realize the world isn’t as great as maybe we thought it was or pretended it was sometimes. We’re called to create the kingdom of God here on Earth.”

St. John’s Church of Christ plans to reconvene limited capacity, in-person services on Easter Sunday.