The sanctuary smells faintly of coffee and perfume. The choir is still humming the last note when the side door opens and a young gay couple slips in, holding hands. The air changes. Conversations falter. Eyes follow them down the aisle, cold and unblinking. No one says hello. No one slides over to make room. They sit alone, the space around them as deliberate as a wall. The sermon will be about love, but not for them.

Two rows up, a man everyone knows is having an affair leans back in his seat, grinning at a joke from the usher. He’s on the finance committee. He leads the men’s Bible study. People ask him to pray for their children. They know about the affair, the temper, and the way he talks to his wife. Yet in their minds, the ledger is already balanced: He’s done so much for this church. He’s such a godly man. We have to forgive him. The harm is real, but the uniform he wears makes it invisible.

It is the same congregation. The same people who will bow their heads in prayer for “the lost” will turn their faces away from the couple in the back. The same people who will quote Scripture about sin will clasp the hand of a man who harms without remorse.

This is the sickness: harm is tolerated when it comes from inside the circle, and humanity is denied when it comes from outside it. The measure is not morality; it is allegiance. And in the end, the reason is always the same. Power: who has it, who keeps it, and who gets crushed to protect it.

We pretend morality is a matter of belief, but in practice it is a matter of belonging. If you wear the right uniform: the Sunday suit, the well-worn Bible, the practiced smile — then, you can do almost anything and still be called righteous. The harm you cause is softened, excused, or simply ignored because you are one of us.

But if you do not belong, if you love the wrong person, or if you do not fit the script, you can be spotless in your conduct and still be treated as a threat. The same people who will clasp the hand of a man who cheats, lies, and wounds without remorse will recoil from a couple whose only “offense” is holding hands in public.

This is Sunday suit morality: the belief that righteousness can be worn like clothing, that the appearance of faith is more important than the practice of it. It is a morality that measures the cut of the fabric, not the content of the heart.

And it is not an accident. The double standard is not a flaw in the system; it is the system. The selective outrage, the strategic silence, and the way harm is tolerated when it comes from inside the circle all serve one purpose: to protect the power of the group. Calling out the man in the pew would mean holding one of their own accountable, and that risks the cohesion, the hierarchy, the control. It is easier to police the outsiders.

We like to imagine that morality was born in a church pew, that before the Bible, humanity was a lawless mob. But history tells a different story. Long before the first sermon was preached, people were already building codes of honor, systems of justice, and shared understandings of right and wrong. Ancient Mesopotamia had Hammurabi’s Code. Confucian ethics shaped dynasties. Indigenous nations carried oral laws that bound them to care for the land and each other.

Morality is not the invention of Christianity; but Christianity, like every major religion, has been used to brand morality, to claim ownership of it. And once you claim ownership, you can decide who is in and who is out.

That is where the Sunday suit comes in. It is not just a metaphor for performative faith; it is a uniform of belonging. Wear it, and you are shielded. Step outside it, and you are suspect. The man in the pew with the affair is wearing the suit. The gay couple in the back is not. And so the harm of the first is minimized, while the mere existence of the second is magnified into scandal.

This is not a glitch in the moral system; it is the operating principle. The outrage is selective because it is never really about the act; it is about the actor. Harm from within the circle is tolerated because calling it out would threaten the cohesion of the group, the authority of its leaders, and the comfort of its members. Harm from outside the circle is amplified because it reinforces the group’s sense of purity and control.

And here is the part we do not like to say out loud: the same Christians who shame the couple are the ones protecting the man. It is not two different groups. It is the same hands raised in worship, the same voices singing about grace. The same people who will quote Scripture about sin will clasp the hand of someone who is actively wounding others: because he is ours, and they are them.

They will rail against what they call the “delusion” of two men in a romantic relationship, yet never speak about the delusion of a person living in open, unrepentant harm while calling themselves a Christian. That is trans-religion: wearing the costume of faith without the substance, pretending to be transformed when nothing inside has changed. And somehow, that deception is never called out with the same zeal they reserve for the people they’ve decided are outside the circle.

The question for Christians, and for anyone who claims to care about right and wrong, is whether they are willing to take off the Sunday suit and see clearly. To call out harm wherever it lives, even when it is in their own pew. To defend dignity wherever it is under attack, even when it belongs to someone they have been taught to see as “other.”

If morality is only enforced when it costs us nothing, it is not morality at all; it is theater. And if faith is only used to shield the powerful and shame the vulnerable, it is not faith; it is a costume. Until we name trans-religion for what it is, the costume will keep winning over the truth.