Progressive Christianity "Your monthly eBulletin- Personal and World Transformation through Social Justice" for Friday, 27 March 2015

Progressive Christianity "Your monthly eBulletin- Personal and World Transformation through Social Justice" for Friday, 27 March 2015
As progressive Christians are we called to work toward social justice? And can these acts bring about personal and world transformation?
Personal and World Transformation through Social Justice
We Are Called to Act
Recently, I had the pleasure of video interviewing 11 leaders in the Christian field about a wide range of current issues. We asked them questions like "Do you call yourself a Christian?" and "What does the term progressive Christianity mean to you?" and "What are the most important aspects of the teachings of Jesus to you?" I thoroughly enjoyed each interview and was moved by their intelligent, thoughtful, and passionate responses. When I asked them about how their beliefs affect they way they behave in this world and if they believe that being a follower of Jesus meant doing social justice work, one common response was - though Jesus did teach about going within and about stillness, the most important part of his teachings referred to how we behave toward others. One person said, "What is the point of life if it's just all about me? We have to be existing in this world in a way that decreases the suffering of human kind." What is amazing is that through selfless action we are positively transformed- our lives have more meaning, we are able to see god within all and to have made a positive difference with our time on earth.
There is hardly anything more rewarding then practicing acts of kindness, or when standing up for something we believe in, especially when we are able to see the positive affects of those actions. Jesus was first and foremost a social activist. He saw inequalities and injustices around him and he spoke out against them. He called us to give up our possessions, to share our bounty, and to love our enemies.
As we continue on in our series on Personal and World Transformation, we asked our contributors to ponder the idea of Social Justice. We would love to hear your thoughts as well! As you read through these excellent articles, please take a moment to add your comment![Deshna]

Point 6 from the 8 Point Study Guide by which we define progressive ChristianityPeace and Justice
Fred Plumer
Jesus was very clear in a variety of passages that if we want to experience this Realm of the Infinite Mystery or have a direct experience of the Divine Presence, we will need to reach out and take risks on behalf of those who suffer. “Pick up your cross if you want to follow me,” he was supposed to have said. So he talks about the Good Samaritan who risked his life to help the wounded Jew lying on the side of the road. He models with his own life a willingness to turn the tables in the Temple because of the unjust exchange rate the money changers were charging the poor Jews who had no perfect animal to sacrifice. He eventually showed us we should not even fear death when we are seeking justice for those who have no hope. And he went into Jerusalem to protest the injustices of the Roman and Priestly treatment of his people.Probably just about everyone believes in peace and justice. Therefore, striving for peace and justice among all people sounds like something every Christian should or would like to do. Unfortunately that has not been the case throughout history. Once Christianity was installed as the national religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, terrible atrocities—wars, murder and unjust acts of aggression and oppression—occurred in the name of Jesus the Christ and ruler of the world. Some historians have suggested Christianity has caused more pain and suffering than peace and justice over the last 1700 years. Even if this is a remote possibility, one must wonder if Christianity is worth saving if it has caused such suffering and divisiveness. But I believe it is important to remember we (ProgressiveChristianity.org) are viewing Christianity here as a path and an opportunity to experience the Sacred, the Infinite Mystery, the in-dwelling of something we call God or the Realm of God. We do not believe in the idea of Christendom or that Christianity or any religious structure has the only keys to the kingdom. This means we have made a shift from focusing on the persona, worshipping without questioning the ambiguous god/man, to focusing on the path that Jesus the wisdom teacher, the enlightened Rabbi, laid out for his disciples. Although it is not an easy path to follow, it can be a very rewarding and even life changing way to live one’s life.
Jesus was very clear in a variety of passages that if we want to experience this Realm of the Infinite Mystery or have a direct experience of the Divine Presence, we will need to reach out and take risks on behalf of those who suffer. “Pick up your cross if you want to follow me,” he was supposed to have said. So he talks about the Good Samaritan who risked his life to help the wounded Jew lying on the side of the road. He models with his own life a willingness to turn the tables in the Temple because of the unjust exchange rate the money changers were charging the poor Jews who had no perfect animal to sacrifice. He eventually showed us we should not even fear death when we are seeking justice for those who have no hope. And he went into Jerusalem to protest the injustices of the Roman and Priestly treatment of his people.
I believe we can assume whenever we take a risk on behalf of another, something changes in our relationship. It is no longer just a philosophical or political issue. It becomes a special kind of experience of the other. You cannot put your life in danger or take a risk on behalf of someone without that relationship changing. It is often the place where we begin to see the divine in another which allows us to discover the divine within ourselves. It is the place where, for the moment at least, boundaries disappear and we begin to experience the interconnectedness and the Oneness of all life. It can be a time when we move from an interest in trying to right a wrong, to a true experience of compassion for another. Then our compassion for another often leads us into a desire for justice for all people.
Genuine concern for other people includes resisting any forces that would drain them of energy, deny them sustenance, rob them of dignity, or destroy their hope. Progressive Christians believe the resistance to oppression or cruelty in society has always been both an obligation and an opportunity for those who follow Jesus. It is an obligation because it is a way to test our commitment to the path; it is an opportunity because when one puts oneself at risk on behalf of another, as a result of one’s compassion, it can be one of the most direct paths to an experience of the Realm of God or that absolute sense of Connectedness.
There is an important caveat here. Let’s take a closer look at the story of the Good Samaritan who literally put his life at risk to save his arch enemy, the Jew. The Samaritan merchant suddenly found himself in a difficult situation. He knew if he did not act this man would die. He also knew there were most likely robbers in the area and the safest thing would be to get out of that place. But he did the humane or even the holy thing and stopped and helped the wounded Jew. He took him where he could get help and paid for it at some significant expense. But then he apparently continued on his way to Jericho to do his work. He did not wait for rewards or praise nor did go back out into the desert and look for more victims to save.
Some people have misinterpreted the teachings of Jesus to presume we are supposed to fix all the injustices, all the wrongs, using all our energy and resources to save the world at the expense of our health, our families, and our financial resources. The universe will always provide plenty of opportunities to make a stand; to help another; to put ourselves at risk when it can make a difference when it counts; even to literally put our life on the line. But we must remind ourselves the teaching is to love another as we love ourselves. We cannot love others more than we love ourselves and loving others can never be a substitute for healthy love of self.
1. What is your definition of justice? What is your definition of injustice?
2. How far would you be willing to go? What changes would you be willing to make? What risks would you be willing to take on behalf of another?
3. When can striving for peace become un-peaceful? Can seeking justice ever become unjust?
4. How might we transform our negative fears into positive energy? How could we help others to do the same?
5. Can you think of an example when you took a risk on behalf of another? What did that feel like?
6. Can we strive for peace for others if we do not experience peace within?
This is an excerpt from our 2012 8 Points Study Guide which you can purchase here

Spiritual Defiance: Building a Beloved Community of Resistance
Robin Meyers
During his thirty-year career as a parish minister and professor, Robin Meyers has focused on renewing the church as an instrument of social change and personal transformation. In this provocative and passionate book, he explores the decline of the church as a community of believers and calls readers back to the church’s roots as a community of resistance. Shifting the conversation about church renewal away from theological purity and marketing strategies that embrace cultural norms, and toward “embodied noncompliance” with the dominant culture, Meyers urges a return to the revolutionary spirit that marked Jesus’s ministry.
Framing his discussion around three poems by twentieth-century Polish poet Anna Kamienska, Meyers casts the nature of faith as a force that stands against anything and everything that engenders death and indignity. He calls for active—sometimes even subversive—defiance of the ego’s temptations, of what he terms “the heresy of orthodoxy itself,” and of an uncritical acceptance of militarism and capitalism. Each chapter is a poignant and urgent invitation to recover the Jesus Movement as a Beloved Community of Resistance.During his thirty-year career as a parish minister and professor, Robin Meyers has focused on renewing the church as an instrument of social change and personal transformation. In this provocative and passionate book, he explores the decline of the church as a community of believers and calls readers back to the church’s roots as a community of resistance. Shifting the conversation about church renewal away from theological purity and marketing strategies that embrace cultural norms, and toward “embodied noncompliance” with the dominant culture, Meyers urges a return to the revolutionary spirit that marked Jesus’s ministry.
Framing his discussion around three poems by twentieth-century Polish poet Anna Kamienska, Meyers casts the nature of faith as a force that stands against anything and everything that engenders death and indignity. He calls for active—sometimes even subversive—defiance of the ego’s temptations, of what he terms “the heresy of orthodoxy itself,” and of an uncritical acceptance of militarism and capitalism. Each chapter is a poignant and urgent invitation to recover the Jesus Movement as a Beloved Community of Resistance.

Editorial Reviews
“This is Robin Meyers at his pastoral and prophetic best. Read it, and then for the love of God–RESIST!”—Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu
(Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu)
“A challenging and visionary manifesto. When this wind comes sweeping down the plain, it sounds a lot like the creative breath of a Genesis dawn and the fiery spirit of a Pentecost morning.”—John Dominic Crossan
(John Dominic Crossan)
“Spiritual Defiance is a veritable landscape of dramatically beautiful phrases and insights, bon mots and felicitous subtleties. Meyers’s “Resistance To Orthodoxy” section is particularly brilliant, seeming almost to scintillate before the reader. It would be hard, in fact, to imagine a more informing and/or pleasurable treatment than this of clericalism in the contemporary world.”—Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why
(Phyllis Tickle)
“Here is a book that could not be more timely, or more urgent. Robin Meyers has carefully and persuasively sketched out exactly what we most desperately need today to defeat the divisive forces that threaten to shred our communities. Fair and comprehensive, the book is also eloquently composed.”—Harvey Cox, author of The Future of Faith
(Harvey Cox)
“Robin Myers is unsettling, disruptive, even subversive. I find myself imagining a loud buzzer sounding in every seminary classroom and from every pulpit in America: ‘We interrupt this normally scheduled programming with a message from the Emergency Broadcast System. This is not a test; it is an actual emergency,’ which is followed by a reading of this book.”—Brian D. McLaren, author/speaker/activist
(Brian D. McLaren)
“Robin Meyers names the factors that are paralyzing the church and making it irrelevant. His witty discerning summons will ring true for many readers.”—Walter Brueggemann
(Walter Brueggemann)
“This is an important and delightful book. Robin Meyers is a modern practitioner of the traditional clergy/scholar model of ministry: wise, learned, witty, but with passion for the church refined by his years of experience as a pastor. At a time when everyone is ready to give up on the institution, he eloquently provides a hopeful, helpful vision for the future. Anyone who cares about the future of the church and the world the church is called to serve, should read this book.”—John M. Buchanan, Publisher/Editor of the Christian Century
(John M. Buchanan)
“While many are scrambling to find nifty fixes for all that ails the uninspired and uninspiring institutional church, Robin Meyers is looking instead to God’s holy fools, for passionate Don Quixotes of non-compliance, who are as resistant to scriptural and cultural rigidity as they are subversive for the cause of love. Rather than a Christianity that peddles implausible doctrines, Spiritual Defiance calls for a Jesus Ethic that lets go of ‘being right’ and gets on with the more distinguishing work of challenging empires and changing the world.”—The Rev. Dr. J. Bennett Guess, Executive Minister and National Officer, United Church of Christ
(The Rev. Dr. J. Bennett Guess)
About the Author
Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers is senior minister of Mayflower Congregational UCC Church, Oklahoma City, and professor of social justice in the Philosophy Department, Oklahoma City University. He is a peace activist and the best-selling author of six books. He lives in Oklahoma City with his wife, three children, and two grandchildren.
purchase for $19.26

What Shall We Overcome?
John BennisonRacism, the Imbalance of Power, and the Response of the Prophetic Voice
In the last few years we have witnessed a resurgence of racial strife, as the recurrent curse of our American story. Names and phrases like Trayvon hoodies, Ferguson and “I can’t breathe” have become protest chants. Hands raised high overhead are no longer accompanied with shouts of “Hallelujah,” but rather, “Don’t shoot.”
Equipping law enforcement personnel with body cams is now recommended to record whatever transpires, after the fact. And all the while, political forces work to dismantle, disempower, disenfranchise and discourage voting rights in our democratic society. One citizen, one vote, one voice is a constitutional principle that seems challenged and tested, once again.Racism, the Imbalance of Power, and the Response of the Prophetic Voice
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“They told us we wouldn’t get here. And there were those who said that we would get here only over their dead bodies, but all the world today knows that we are here and we are standing before the forces of power …”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking to 25,000 civil rights marchers, at the conclusion of the march from Selma to Montgomery, March 25, 1965
Preface
I’m writing these comments at a particular moment in time. And yet, unlike a week-old newspaper, the themes and issues have a persistently endless quality about them that just won’t seem to go away. The annual observance of Black History Month has just concluded. And in a few days, our nation’s first black president will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the landmark civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, by standing on a bridge named after a Confederate general and reputed early Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, Edmund W. Pettus.
In the last few years we have witnessed a resurgence of racial strife, as the recurrent curse of our American story. Names and phrases like Trayvon hoodies, Ferguson and “I can’t breathe” have become protest chants. Hands raised high overhead are no longer accompanied with shouts of “Hallelujah,” but rather, “Don’t shoot.”
Equipping law enforcement personnel with body cams is now recommended to record whatever transpires, after the fact. And all the while, political forces work to dismantle, disempower, disenfranchise and discourage voting rights in our democratic society. One citizen, one vote, one voice is a constitutional principle that seems challenged and tested, once again.
It took a half-century to elapse after those two marches from Selma, Alabama in 1965, for a docu-drama retelling that story gets an Oscar nomination. And the anthem, Glory wins Best Original Song at the Academy Awards:
One day, when the glory comes
It will be ours, it will be ours
Oh, one day, when the war is won
We will be sure, we will be here sure
Oh, glory, glory, glory.
One fine, glorious day it shall come, the singer sings; just as both the ancient prophets and the prophets of our own age once proclaimed. It understandably leaves us wondering when that day will come?
But perhaps it is not so much a matter of when we shall overcome, but the ever-present what? And in the naming of the what, we might also ask where is the echo of the prophet’s voice in all of this?
Naming the What
The short answer to the question of what we hope we shall one day overcome is the endemic racism that persists in America. In civic society – as in the biblical story – there is the letter of the law, and the spirit of the law’s intention. Civil rights can be the law of the land, and still miss the mark when it comes to the heart of the matter.
So the longer and more difficult answer to what we must overcome lies in a penchant for power of one human being over another that results in the kind of inequity that surpasses the simple cry for moral justice. The repeated historical reality is that such a precarious imbalance of power eventually descends into such disequilibrium that it becomes untenable and unsustainable.
We must overcome the penchant for power of one human being over another that results in the kind of inequity that surpasses the simple cry for moral justice.
It is also the same dynamic that can find expression in tribal, racial or ethnic conflicts, warring factions between nation states, gross economic disparity and the “prosperity” gap, and even radical extremism that usurps religious traditions to construct aberrant belief systems and consequent behavior.
For example, in the Christian faith tradition, the authentic letters of Paul have been used to both defend and condemn slavery. There are the familiar lines in Galatians 3 about faith superseding that which had previously guided right behavior; namely, the law (of Moses). Such faith that expresses itself through “oneness in Christ” not only fulfills the law, but ameliorates all previous distinctions between gender, tribe or race, or positions of dominance or subservience. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female,” Paul writes, “for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28)
But then there’s the shortest Pauline epistle, the Letter to Philemon. The traditional interpretation to the story relates how a runaway slave named Onesimus has somehow shown up in Rome, where Paul is imprisoned. Onesimus is being sent back to his owner, Philemon; who himself is a relatively well-to-do leader of an early Christian house church. So the story is about two masters swapping one slave. But the backstory and deeper meaning is about reconciliation and restoration of human relationships.
“ … that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but as more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. … So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.” (1:16-17)
Some scholars now question whether Onesimus was actually an indentured servant to Philemon; just as Paul refers to himself as a “prisoner” not of Rome, but of Christ; with his own subjugation to the gospel.
In point of fact, a runaway slave in 1st century Asia Minor would have found no refuge anywhere, nor had any future apart from his master. Those who might credit Paul with being a staunch abolitionist and a man ahead of his time might do well to remember he was still very much a part of an ancient world distinctly different than our own.
David Galston, Academic Director of the Westar Institute, makes two helpful points in this regard:
“It is easy to make the historical Paul sound congenial to today’s world. He resisted slavery, he promoted equality, and he had little sympathy for wealthy folk who exploited poor folk. Still, we must be careful not to make Paul too congenial by forgetting that he was still a person of the first century. His solutions to world problems were still “otherworldly” solutions. Paul consequently is an example of both the promise of Christianity (with his emphasis on equality) and the problem of Christianity (with his emphasis on apocalyptic solutions to world problems).”
The promise and problem of traditional Christianity are not dissimilar to the promised ideals of our democratic society that falls short awaiting it’s own fulfillment. Fifty years ago the hymn of the civil rights movement was We Shall Overcome (someday).
“Paul is an example of both the promise of Christianity (with his emphasis on equality) and the problem of Christianity (with his emphasis on apocalyptic solutions to world problems).”
The Problem of When
People get ready, there’s a train a-comin’

You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board

All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’

Don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord.
Singer/songwriter, Curtis Mayfield, 1965
A predominant theme in traditional Black spirituals is the hope things will be better in a next life. And that hope somehow makes suffering through the adversities of this life more bearable. Think of the many traditional folk tunes, such as Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (“comin’ for to carry me home”), or even more contemporary songs like People Get Ready, a song written by Curtis Mayfield and originally released by The Impressions the very same year as the Selma march.
The biblical story of exodus and deliverance from bondage to freedom in a promised land is a promise yet to be fully realized; except by “faith,” according to Paul. Likewise, there’s Jesus’ repeated depictions of the “reign of God” that is “at hand,” and yet to come. It can be viewed as either a continuation of that ancient, prophetic future hope; as well as a call to usher in the kingdom here and now. This dichotomy seems to be borne out, time and again. The Edmund Pettus Bridge was once a pivotal “crossing over” moment in our society. Now old men and women who once dreamt dreams and visions wonder if today’s youth will take up that same struggle all over again.
In 1965, a dear friend of mine was a 30-year old Episcopal priest from Southern California and vicar of a small mission congregation. He was part of a delegation of clergy chosen to participate in the conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery march. “We went to love the hell out of Alabama,” he said.
When he arrived in Montgomery he decided to first attend a church service that Thursday morning. “The massive nave of the red brick church was marked by stained glass windows,” Fred recalls. “And in one window were the words ‘He suffered and died for all people without respect to origin, race or color.’”
“Here,” my friend said, “I found in stained glass my real reason for being in Montgomery. And I couldn’t help but wonder at the weakness of Christianity.” Fifty years later, he wonders how we ever could have ended up back at the same bridge that should have led us so much, much further than we’ve come. “The march goes on, and it always will,” he has resolved.
Standing up with a Strong Voice
Randy is a participant in the progressive Christian faith community I lead. He works with the developmentally disabled in a local community program. One of his clients is an African American named Dwayne, who gets around by a walker and wheelchair. He has a speech impediment, and is often difficult to understand unless one listens closely. But Dwayne is also an advocate for the disabled.
Dwayne was part of a group which Randy recently took to see the film, Selma. Afterward, when asked what Martin Luther King Jr. meant to him, Dwayne said, ” Standing up with a strong voice.”
Speaking with a strong voice is the role of a prophet. In the prophetic tradition the tongue of those who stumble in their speech is set on fire to foretell that future time when the mute might shout with joy (Is.35:5). The one who now is silenced will one day stand and speak.
But the prophet is also the one who – at the risk of our displeasure – comes to expose secrets of our hearts. Who will risk life and limb once more, to speak to what we are called to overcome, once and for all?
David Oyelowo, who portrayed Martin Luther King, Jr. in the film, Selma, reflected on the actor’s role, saying, “When you see Dr. King giving those speeches, you see that he is moving in his anointing. Many historians just see King as a civil rights leader, but they don’t fully understand how being a minister and a faith leader made his role in the movement possible. … I don’t think [King] could have stuck … to the theme of nonviolence and love in the face of hate if he didn’t feel that command. faith was the engine for what he believed in and how he acted.”
Likewise, Cong. John Lewis, who was 18 years old when he participated in the first, disastrous march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on March 7, 1965, has spoken of the prophet and the prophet’s call. “When you listened to Martin Luther King, Jr. you had to move …” he’s said.
William Pettus Bridge, Selma, Alabama, 1965
In his New York Times bestseller, March, Lewis relates his now familiar story how he was nearly clubbed to death by an Alabama state trooper’s nightstick. In a recent interview for the Aspen Institute, he reflected further:
“I discovered — attending the nonviolent workshops – that if you’re going to lead, you must be a headlight and not a taillight. We studied the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence. We studied what Ghandi attempted to do in South Africa, and accomplished in India. We studied Thoreau and civil disobedience. We studied the great religions of the world. We studied What Dr. King was all about in Montgomery. And many of us in Nashville grew to accept the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence as a way of life – not simply as a technique or as a tactic.”
When asked what advice he would give to youth to address injustices they see in the world today, Cong. Lewis concluded, “Growing up … my parents and grandparents would say, don’t get in the way. But I say, find a way to get in the way. Find a way to get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble, and be prepared to speak up and speak out. Be bold. Be courageous. If you see something that is not right, that is not fair, that is not just – you have a moral obligation, a mission, and a mandate to get in the way and make some noise.”
Leaving Egypt together
“It is easier to get the people out of Egypt, than to get Egypt out of the people.”
Progressive Christian blogger, Chris Glaser, recently referred to Laurel Dykstra’s book, Set Them Free: The Other Side of Exodus. In the book, there is a paraphrase from the Pan African Healing Foundation which asks if people of relative privilege, like myself, are capable of change. Quoted is a wonderful old African American proverb that says, “it is easier to get the people out of Egypt, than to get Egypt out of the people.” Glaser writes,
“For people of privilege, for whom Egypt and empire have offered not only security and comfort but everything we have known, leaving Egypt and ridding ourselves of “Egyptian” ways and habits will be slow and hard. Acknowledging our role in empire is a first step in the long, slow journey out of it.”
So I think of an old bridge in Selma, Alabama. I think about the intended purpose of every bridge meant to take us to another side, another place, about exodus and deliverance. And I think again about the old story of two men with those strange names, Onesimus and Philemon.
The deeper message and backstory to that tale is about a broken relationship between two men who ought to be considered “brothers.” Like racism itself, slavery was only a symptomatic example of a human domination system that always results in inequity, injustice, discord and estrangement.
Paul’s appeal for reconciliation and restoration is the underlying point of the story, And Paul’s entreaty lays that moral obligation at the feet of the one who must stoop down in an act of disempowerment; in order to establish a new order and balance of power to what has been an imbalance.
It is then that a curse such as the one repeatedly borne by our own history can become a blessing, when it transcends the mere enforcement of civil rights in favor of the common good of right relationships.
Paul’s entreaty lays that moral obligation at the feet of the one who must stoop down in an act of disempowerment; in order to establish a new order and balance of power to what has been an imbalance.
© 2015 by John William Bennison, Rel.D. All rights reserved.
This article should only be used or reproduced with proper credit.
To read more commentaries by John Bennison from the perspective of a Christian progressive go to
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https://thechristianprogressive.com

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Prophetic Hospitality and Social Justice
Rev. Bruce Epperly Ph. D.
We live in an increasingly polarizing time. In politics and church life, many people are on hair-trigger alert, ready to retaliate at the slightest provocation. Disagreements lead to division and governmental and congregational gridlock. Even proponents of diversity often launch attacks on those who hold more conservative positions on immigration, global climate change, and marriage equality. It is clear that our times call for prophetic action. We need to present imaginative alternatives to injustice, environmental destruction, and prejudice. But, in our quest for social and political justice, we need to find ways to nurture Shalom practices that include our opponents as well as those for whom we advocate. If we are to be true to our progressive and prophetic ideals, we need to treat the opposition with the same care that we treat the oppressed.We live in an increasingly polarizing time. In politics and church life, many people are on hair-trigger alert, ready to retaliate at the slightest provocation. Disagreements lead to division and governmental and congregational gridlock. Even proponents of diversity often launch attacks on those who hold more conservative positions on immigration, global climate change, and marriage equality. It is clear that our times call for prophetic action. We need to present imaginative alternatives to injustice, environmental destruction, and prejudice. But, in our quest for social and political justice, we need to find ways to nurture Shalom practices that include our opponents as well as those for whom we advocate. If we are to be true to our progressive and prophetic ideals, we need to treat the opposition with the same care that we treat the oppressed.
Historically, win-lose and us-them ideologies lead to further division and, dare we say, violence. The freedom fighters adopt the same tactics as the reactionaries and when they take power perpetrate the same violence as those whom they have deposed. We silence opponents rather than let many voices be heard.
What we need is “prophetic hospitality.” On the one hand, our calling is to confront injustice and ecological destruction in all of its many forms. Whatever destroys the deepest values of humankind and creation goes against God’s vision of Shalom. On the other hand, we need to develop a spirituality and practice that embraces “otherness,” most particularly the otherness of those who hold contrasting political or social positions.
Hospitality involves welcoming of diversity in all its many forms. Hospitality embraces and includes apart from any qualifications of those whom we welcome. It may even involve the embrace of those who challenge our deepest values. This isn’t easy, nor does it condone violence and abusive behavior. It takes all the spiritual energy we can muster, but it is ultimately the only way to achieve our inclusive values. As A.J. Muste once asserted, “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”
Every day we are forced to choose between prophetic hospitality and alienation. As I was writing this piece, I took a Facebook break. The first image that confronted me was an article that noted “Vast Majority of Republicans Don’t Believe Obama is a Christian.” (https://www.forwardprogressives.com/new-poll-vast-majority-republicans-dont-believe-president-obama-christian/) My initial response was amazement and anger. My internal dialogue went as follows: “These people are idiots! Don’t they remember how rabid they became about the President’s pastor in the 2008 election? How can we trust such fools to lead our country?” Now obviously these people are misinformed and judgmental and their ignorance needs to be exposed. They need to be invited to see the world from another perspective. But, demeaning and belittling them will only lead to further defensiveness on their part. In such moments, I ask myself, “How do I avoid polarizing and hating myself?” I know there is a better way – the way of Jesus, Gandhi, and King. That is the heart of prophetic hospitality, the recognition that even those who perceive themselves are God’s beloved children and need our respect and affirmation.
The Gospels tell the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus. Jesus notices a man of small stature, sitting on a tree limb, and invites himself to his house for a meal. Is Zacchaeus’ stature a matter of height or spirit? Was Zacchaeus’ spirit cramped as a result of his focus on money and his alienation from his own people? When Jesus invited himself to Zacchaeus’ house, the crowd was scandalized. How can the Holy Man go to a sinner’s house? How can Jesus accept this evildoer? Shouldn’t Jesus judge and condemn him? Yet, Jesus was just as willing to address the needs of the oppressor as he was of one who had been marginalized and defined as a result of illness, lifestyle, mental illness, ethnicity, gender, or behavior.
The story is told of Abraham Lincoln. As the Civil War was winding down and the South clearly defeated, Lincoln was asked, “What will you do to the Southern states after the war ends?” His questioner expected vindictiveness and punishment. Lincoln replied, “I’ll treat them as if they’ve never left.”
Prophetic hospitality sees the possibility of transformation in ourselves and those who oppose us. It moves from “opposition” to “contrast” in its attitudes and language, recognizing our own fallibility as well as the fallibility of those with whom we contend. It challenges, but refuses to demean or demonize. It reaches across the divide, looking for common ground and our common humanity and identity as God’s beloved children. It is the pathway of “Selma” and Calvary and the soul force of Gandhi. It is the way of Jesus that appeals and brings forth the best in others and ourselves, and lets the “better angels,” as Lincoln said, come forth to create a more just, welcoming, and beautiful world.
Bruce Epperly is pastor of South Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Centerville, Massachusetts, and the author of over thirty books, including “Process Theology: Embracing Adventure with God,”“ Healing Marks: Healing and Spirituality in Mark’s Gospel,” “A Center in the Cyclone: Clergy Self-care for the Twenty-first Century,”and “Finding God in Suffering; A Journey with Job.” He may be reached at drbruceepperly@aol.com.

Experiencing Transcendence from Below
Rev. Timothy Murphy
How can I not be part of the problem: I often ask myself this question. As a white, straight, cis-gendered, male, able-bodied, economically-advantaged, mainline Protestant, American citizen, there is not a lot in terms of classic diversity that I bring to the table. This can be a challenge when one is committed to God's preferential option for those experiencing oppression. What's my role in the divine commonwealth, other than to get out of the way? Is my presence with another an act of solidarity or of benevolent paternalism?
Often, unjustly advantaged persons like myself feel resentful or guilty when they hear about a sacred preferential option from the "underside." Neither response is particularly helpful. We all have to find where we fit into the story of God's people struggling for dignity, and sometimes that means that we find we have more in common with Pharaoh than with enslaved Hebrews. But there is a place in God's vision for Pharaoh, too: "Let my people go!"Dear Friends of the Way,
How can I not be part of the problem: I often ask myself this question. As a white, straight, cis-gendered, male, able-bodied, economically-advantaged, mainline Protestant, American citizen, there is not a lot in terms of classic diversity that I bring to the table. This can be a challenge when one is committed to God’s preferential option for those experiencing oppression. What’s my role in the divine commonwealth, other than to get out of the way? Is my presence with another an act of solidarity or of benevolent paternalism?
Often, unjustly advantaged persons like myself feel resentful or guilty when they hear about a sacred preferential option from the “underside.” Neither response is particularly helpful. We all have to find where we fit into the story of God’s people struggling for dignity, and sometimes that means that we find we have more in common with Pharaoh than with enslaved Hebrews. But there is a place in God’s vision for Pharaoh, too: “Let my people go!”
I find that persons like myself, and churches that cater to persons like me, are generally ill-equipped to respond to the divine call, because it is not initially addressed to us. God reaches out first to those being trampled upon, and my role is to remove my foot. That is how I get to participate in the divine commonwealth. There can be no healthy relationships while oppression is ongoing. I get to be saved from oppressing others after they are saved from domination.
For this to happen, I need divine assistance, what is traditionally called “transcendence.” But it does not come from on high, an image which only serves to perpetuate the rule of the powerful. I need to hear the sacred voice not vertically but horizontally: through my neighbor, my enemy, and the excluded. Then and only then can I discern God’s call for me concerning that relationship.
Even when one has an experience that calls into question what is good, or acceptable, or just, there is the ongoing risk of trying to control relationships with oppressed communities under the guise of mutuality and repentance. “Don’t you know I’ve seen the light and can be your partner now?” Well, just because you are aware of the unjust power you have doesn’t make you innocent of it. Power differentials don’t disappear because you don’t like them. Being honest about the situation is a good first but not last step. At the end of the day, I live in hope that the divine can take situations of unjust influence and transform us into humble partners.
That would be real transcendence from below.

Haiti: A Case Study in Social In/Justice
Dr. Carl Krieg
How does one define social justice or social injustice in a situation such as this? There seems no question that the injustice side would include the slave trade itself, the impoverishment of a free nation by greedy boycott, crippling interest rates, and the invasion of a free state by an army basically doing the will of the foreign wealthy. Beyond that, the issue is more complicated. Given the difficulties of a poor nation absorbing refugees, a problem endemic in many parts of the world, the reaction of the Bahamas seems to be a balancing act of treating others justly while also treating one’s own citizens fairly. There are no simple answers. Defining social justice is no easy matter.The problem with Haiti began with the slave trade. People were kidnapped from the west coast of Africa, especially the areas of Guinea, Congo, and Dahomey. One hundred different tribes were represented, with one hundred different languages. The survivors of the ships were forced into the sugar cane fields, and the profits flowed back to France. By the 1780s, Haiti was the prize producer of sugar and coffee in the Caribbean, supplying all of Europe with 40% of its sugar and 60% of its coffee. France used the money to wage war against its European neighbors.
The masters were brutal in their treatment of the Africans. As a consequence, out of the 790,000 slaves in Haiti in the late 1700s, 40,000 had to be brought in every year to replace those who had died. This meant that practically the whole population had recently arrived from various parts of Africa, with no common language or traditions. In the years 1791-1802 the slaves revolted and created the first black republic in the Caribbean. That a disparate group of slaves could achieve such a remarkable form of government in so short a time is a testament to their commitment and perseverance.
Of course, the French were outraged, and enlisted the support of their allies, including the United States of America, to conduct an economic boycott of the fledgling country. Haiti had no choice but to acquiesce to the French demand for reparations for their “loss” in the revolt. The loss, of course, was mainly the value that they placed on the slaves who were now free. The amount was 150 million francs in gold, later reduced to 90, and Haiti was forced to borrow from banks, especially American banks at high rates, in order to satisfy the demand. In 1915, when political turmoil threatened stability in the impoverished country, at the behest of American bankers and investors, the US Marines invaded and occupied Haiti for 20 years. The final payment on the loans was made in 1947, about 150 years after the slaves had created their own country and declared themselves free. In the years since 1947, there have been the dictatorships of Papa Doc Duvalier, Baby Doc Duvalier, an attempt at democracy under the brief tenure of Aristide, another US invasion, and last but not least, a devastating earthquake that killed perhaps 300,000 and leveled Port-au-Prince. People simply struggling to survive continue to leave the devastation by the thousands, creating a refugee problem for the area, including the Bahamas.
The Bahamas itself is a poor country. During our first visit to Spanish Wells, a small island off the northern end of Eleuthera, my wife and I were introduced to a community of perhaps 75 Haitians who inhabit a shanty town built on rented land. Some of the folks are fortunate to have Bahamian residents who use them for manual labor, thus allowing the refugees to have legal but tenuous status. Most, however, are not that fortunate, and live in constant fear of being swept up by the immigration police, placed in holding cells in Nassau, and then deported back to Haiti. Amazingly, it seems to me, the Bahamian government allows the children to attend school on Spanish Wells, and also opens to them the doors of the medical clinic. Some adult men work on the road crew.
How does one define social justice or social injustice in a situation such as this? There seems no question that the injustice side would include the slave trade itself, the impoverishment of a free nation by greedy boycott, crippling interest rates, and the invasion of a free state by an army basically doing the will of the foreign wealthy. Beyond that, the issue is more complicated. Given the difficulties of a poor nation absorbing refugees, a problem endemic in many parts of the world, the reaction of the Bahamas seems to be a balancing act of treating others justly while also treating one’s own citizens fairly. There are no simple answers. Defining social justice is no easy matter.
An individual’s response is also complicated. We live a quarter mile down the road from the Haitians in a small but adequate cottage. We have a nice roof over our head, food to eat, a golf cart instead of feet for transportation. I wouldn’t call it a decision based on deliberation, but we and others have eased into a certain style of life, trying to be of assistance in ways that can make a small difference: a gift of food or propane, a ride to town, a trip to the beach for the kids, helping with homework, tutoring, a birthday cake. Our latest venture, in conjunction with a friend, is the purchase of three computers and an internet connection at the church in the “village”. The students use the computers for homework (as well as games and dreaming on Amazon.com, the new Sears catalog), and they also utilize web sites to help their elders learn English as well as look at internet images of the Haiti they once called home. One of the most touching moments for me personally was simply to be there while four Haitians, young and old, looked at pictures of their former neighborhoods with longing and a few tears. There is a lesson here for everyone: the gift giving goes in both directions and we get as much love as we give.
Prophets, Profits, and Statistics
Situations like Haiti do not occur in a vacuum, and there are at least two major influences that affect the context. One is God, the other is mammon, money, greed. Searching on the internet for “social justice”, one is amazed at the length and the detail of the description, which includes everyone from Plato to the UN. Generally speaking, the selfish have one definition, Jesus another. If we would call ourselves Christian, we’d look to Jesus, and Jesus, in turn, would point us to the prophets of the Hebrew bible, who were merciless in their condemnation of injustice.
From Amos we read:
“Let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”.
And from Ezekiel:
“The Lord’s word came to me: Human one, prophesy against Israel’s shepherds. Prophesy and say to them, The Lord God proclaims to the shepherds: Doom to Israel’s shepherds who tended themselves! Shouldn’t shepherds tend the flock? You drink the milk, you wear the wool, and you slaughter the fat animals, but you don’t tend the flock. You don’t strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the injured, bring back the strays, or seek out the lost; but instead you use force to rule them with injustice. So, shepherds, hear the Lord’s word! … The Lord God proclaims: I’m against the shepherds! I will hold them accountable for my flock, and I will put an end to their tending the flock. The shepherds will no longer tend them, because I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and they will no longer be their food.”
Too often Christians have in mind a Jesus who, as the Good Shepherd, holds a staff in one hand and a lamb in the other. Better we take our cue from Ezekiel. The crucifixion of Jesus by the Roman Empire was the culmination of a life of protest. Jesus lived at a time when the “shepherds” of the people, the wealthy, the aristocracy, the business leaders and the religious leaders, were strangling the peasantry in the pursuit of mammon, and his heart was with the people. I am against the shepherds, says the Lord. I am against the perpetrators of injustice.
Although social justice may be difficult to define, like pornography, “you know it when you see it.” (Supreme Course Justice Potter Stewart). Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, January 22, 2014, helps us to know it a little easier:
“On Monday, Oxfam published a startling report showing that the richest 85 people in the world are worth more than the poorest 3.5 billion.
This leads to the most startling figure in the report: “Our estimates suggest that the lower half of the global population possesses barely 1% of global wealth, while the richest 10% of adults own 86% of all wealth, and the top 1% account for 46% of the total.”
Yes, you know it when you see it.
Food to eat. A roof over our heads. Basic medical care. Enjoyment of family and friends. Surely that is God’s will for all people. Surely the pursuit of this end is why Jesus was crucified. Who can doubt that distributive social justice is God’s vision for the planet?

Deeper Love
PCU-LA, a Partner Organization
Deeper Love is a web resource, updated regularly with input from its users, offering faith-based language for progressive political and social action. It provides activists, lay and clergy people, politicians, campaigners, and organizers with inspiring rhetoric to advance social change. Deeper Love is edited by Rev. Jim Burklo, Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California, with the Theological Reflection Committee of Progressive Christians Uniting.
Deeper Love is a project of Progressive Christians Uniting – pcu-la.org - a social justice activist organization based in Los Angeles, California. Our mission statement:
Progressive Christians Uniting engages people and communities to embody Jesus’ way of compassion and justice for our world.
http://www.progressivechristiansuniting.org/PCU/DeeperLove.html

Table of Contents

Deeper Love is a web resource, updated regularly with input from its users, offering faith-based language for progressive political and social action. It provides activists, lay and clergy people, politicians, campaigners, and organizers with inspiring rhetoric to advance social change. Deeper Love is edited by Rev. Jim Burklo, Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California, with the Theological Reflection Committee of Progressive Christians Uniting. Email your suggestions for additions or changes to: admin@pcu-la.org .
Deeper Love is a project of Progressive Christians Uniting – pcu-la.org - a social justice activist organization basedin Los Angeles, California. Our mission statement:
Progressive Christians Uniting engages people and communities to embody Jesus’ way of compassion and justice for our world.
-We affirm the inherent dignity and worth of people and the planet.
-We promote practices of discipleship that build just and sustainable communities.
-We resist structural discrimination and oppressive powers.
(Special thanks to Peter Laarman, retired Executive Director of Progressive Christians Uniting, who proposed “Deeper Love” as the title of this project and articulated its central thesis. Thanks also are in order to Timothy Murphy, Executive Director, and Sean Patrick Murphy, Associate Director of PCU, for their extensive help in composing, editing, and formatting this work.)

For deeper love we share the bread

I won’t be full till all are fed

Till every soul has home and bed

The rest of us can’t move ahead

For deeper love we share the wine

I cannot taste the love divine

Till every soul has walked the line

And you’ve had yours like I’ve had mine

Now Mary sings her birthing song

Till every voice can sing along

And voices weak will rise up strong

Her choir is one where all belong

No one’s saved till all are healed

As Jesus on the Mount revealed

Your life and mine forever sealed

Just like the lilies of the field

We follow where the Christ has led

To table that for all is spread

And no one’s sitting at the head

But deeper love in wine and bread

https://soundcloud.com/rogressivehristiansniting/for-deeper-love

It’s been said that money is the mother's milk of politics.  But, to paraphrase a passage from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, politics does not live by mother's milk alone.  It also feeds on spiritual food.  Politics is animated by hearts that burn and souls that yearn.  Why else would people ever vote for a politician who passes laws that effectively take bread off their tables?

In his wise book, Reverence, the philosopher Paul Woodruff muses that "voting is irrational."  The outcome of an election is extremely unlikely to be determined by whether or not I vote.  So why do I still fill out the ballot and mail it in?  It's a ceremony, says Woodruff.  A liturgy we use to affirm the spiritual value of the dignity and worth of our common humanity.  It dramatizes and reinforces the conviction that your word and mine have no less weight than the voices of the rich and the famous.  Those of us who vote do so religiously - quite literally.  To cast a ballot is to make a statement of faith.  

Many of those who don’t vote – well over half the eligible electorate in many if not most elections – have lost faith because the language of politics is so seldom the language of the heart.  Love is drowned out by vituperative partisan ranting in mass media.

This project aims to change that.  It gives life to rhetoric that moves the heart to move the hand to mark the ballot to build a kinder and better nation.  “Deeper Love” is about keeping the body politic and the soul together in a new way.  “Deeper Love” offers an inspiring, positive political language of love that will “votivate” Americans.

But to move forward, we must look back to see how we got where we are today.

Politics didn’t lose its soul because of our Constitution, nor because of the way that our courts have interpreted it.  There is no separation of religion and public policymaking, even though the Constitution puts up a wall between church and state.  That’s because the wall has a one-way door in it. The body politic must refrain from imposing a creed or a structure of faith on the people.  But religious people and institutions freely influence politics.  And politicians can be guided by the light of the spirit as they see it, and speak the word of soul as they hear it.  Bans on Christmas crèches on the front lawns of city halls, or of scripture references on courtroom walls, pose no impediments to the free expression of faith in political life.  On the contrary, preventing the government from establishing religion has resulted in a very lively free market of faith in this country.

The French writer Alexis de Tocqueville, in his book Democracy in America (1840, p 445), was impressed with the vigor of religious life in America and with its positive influence on democracy: “Every religion… imposes on each man some obligations toward mankind, and so it draws him away, from time to time, from thinking about himself… Thus religious people are naturally strong just at the point where democratic peoples are weak.”  These words echoed those of William Penn over a hundred years before:  “If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants.”

Faith has always been part of public discourse.  For most of its history, American political rhetoric was characterized by what Rousseau called the "civil religion".  The American sociologist Robert Bellah saw it as a spirit and a rhetoric grounding politics in non-doctrinal, broadly Judeo-Christian themes.   Abraham Lincoln, though criticized for not belonging to any church, artfully and sincerely employed the civil religion to lay the spiritual cornerstone of reconstruction.  He declared that the Civil War was the consequence of the sin of the whole nation - north and south - for allowing slavery to go on for so long.  God demanded justice, and it was extracted in the blood of both the blue and the grey.  For Lincoln, bringing the nation together again was the next step in the divine plan to restore righteousness.  In his second inaugural address, he said:  “If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?” 

From its founding, America's public life bubbled out of a spiritual fountain, taking form somewhere between Deism and “mainline” Protestantism.  Generally, politicians employed faith language that stayed out of the weeds of sectarian dogma.   And Christians understood that political action and structural social change were necessary means toward the end of living out the gospel.  We don’t associate the Salvation Army with progressive politics today.  But in the1890’s, Ballington Booth, commander of the Salvation Army in the United States, said that “To right the social wrong by charity is like bailing out the ocean with a thimble… We must readjust our social machinery so that the producers of wealth become also owners of wealth…”  Many other evangelicals and fundamentalists in America in the late 19th and early 20th century were political leftists, and did not hesitate to use religious rhetoric in support of the labor movement and of the legislative efforts to reign in the runaway power of corporate trusts and monopoly capital.  William Jennings Bryan was a fundamentalist Christian who ran unsuccessfully three times for the presidency as the Democratic nominee.  Later he became famous for defending six-day creationism in the Scopes Monkey Trial.  Hard as it is to imagine it today, in that time he was attacked by the Republicans for being so strident and public about his old-fashioned religious beliefs. But in fact his most notable uses of religious rhetoric fit into the mold of the “civil religion”.  He was a vigorous advocate of “bi-metallism”, which would have allowed the US central bank more flexibility in monetary policy that would have benefited farmers and workers.  The business elite defended the gold standard.  In his famous “Cross of Gold” speech, he declaimed:  “If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”  It was a classical example of the use of religious rhetoric without reference to religious dogma.

Martin Luther King did the same.  A Baptist preacher, he spoke for the highest ideals of the nation when he compared the civil rights struggle of blacks to the exodus of the Jews from Egypt to the Promised Land.  It was an inclusive spiritual message that resonated with people across religious boundaries.

Such expressions of the civil religion began to recede in 1980's as the Republican Party entered into a coalition with Christian fundamentalists.  It was a political wedding of the business elite with white cultural conservatives in the Bible Belt.  The movement suggested a real American to be someone who accepted a specific creedal manifestation of Christianity.  Biblical literalism and Christian exclusivism, once confined to a cultural backwater, became integral to right-wing public discourse.  Political candidates were subjected to grilling about their doctrinal purity.  Horrified by such divisive language, many Democrats abandoned religious rhetoric for fear of being associated with radio preachers drawling about apocalyptic “end-times”, or they used religious language in a defensive, negative way to distinguish themselves from Republicans.  Except for brief flickers of consciousness that they have abandoned a potentially sympathetic constituency, many progressives still cede too much of the language of faith to conservatives' political space.  Theological conservatism does not and never did equal political conservatism, but political progressives seem to have lost sight of this fact.

The conservative movement for over 30 years has consistently demonized government as the enemy of the people, and when it has held power in Washington, it has given Americans good reason to believe that this assertion is true.  President Barack Obama sagely diagnosed the resulting “Catch-22” on October 29, 2014:  “There has been a certain cynical genius to what some of these folks have done in Washington. What they’ve realized is, if we don’t get anything done, then people are going to get cynical about government and its possibilities of doing good for everybody. And since they don’t believe in government, that’s a pretty good thing.  And the more cynical people get, the less they vote. And if turnout is low and people don’t vote, that pretty much benefits those who benefit from the status quo.”  

This cycle of cynicism alienates the American people ever further from their national institutions and symbols.  Gerrymandering of legislative districts to favor the party in power has the effect of further demoralizing the electorate.  Just before the 2014 midterm election, the public’s approval rating of the Republican-dominated Congress was 14% (less than half of President Obama's approval rating), yet almost all incumbents were re-elected because their districts had been drawn to ensure their “safety”.  A growing number of Americans blame politics and politicians in general for their alienation, and that makes progressive change even harder to achieve. 

Conservatives relentlessly advocate "personal responsibility".  You are on your own.  You owe little to society, and society owes little to you.  This is a factless, faithless, loveless political philosophy.  It is unappealing to most Americans.  Republicans may have prevailed in the 2014 midterm election, but their political dogma landed with a hollow thud in the hearts of the 64% of potential voters who didn't cast ballots.  How can any politician claim a mandate for action with such a pitifully low voter turnout?  To do so makes a mockery of democracy.  And the outrageousness of politicians acting on a mandate that doesn’t exist makes citizens even less motivated to vote.

Political conservatives generally use negative rhetoric in campaigns – except when they use religious language.  The opposite is true for progressives.  “… Democratic religious rhetoric tended to be considerably more negative than that of Republicans. This is particularly interesting, given that secular speech did not follow this pattern.  In fact when we examine the secular campaign stump speeches, it is clear that Republicans tended to be the more negative party of the two,… Nevertheless, this pattern was reversed when the parties spoke to voters in religious terms… much of the angry Democratic religious rhetoric was in response to the relationship between religion and the Republican Party.  This defensive posture has characterized much of the Democratic religious rhetoric from 1980 to 2004. “  (Christopher Chapp, Religious Rhetoric and American Politics, Cornell Univ. Press, 2012, P 77)

The disuse and misuse of religious language by progressives is also a consequence of a long-term trend in America toward spiritual individualism.  What religious language will resonate with a nation of such diverse beliefs, or of no beliefs at all?  According to recent Pew Research Center data, 23% of young people between ages 18-29 have no religious affiliation, and that number is rising.  In their magisterial analysis of current trends, American Grace, Robert Putnam and David Campbell describe the weakening loyalties of Americans toward all kinds of religious institutions.  Yet the bookstores and the blogosphere abound with things to read and watch about matters spiritual.   America is split between a minority of citizens with very strong religious allegiances and a larger population with increasingly fluid spirituality.  Putnam and Campbell tease out the statistics to reveal a hard core of politically conservative and strongly religiously affiliated people who are more attracted to the political orientations of their congregations than they are to their theological commitments.  This minority group of conservatives who tend to show up regularly to vote faces a larger population of citizens whose voting turnout is as spotty as their worship attendance.  The right-wing political preaching in conservative churches has alienated many young people who are dropping out of both religion and civic engagement.

The collapse of the civil religion is partly a consequence of progressives’ failure to understand the nature of politics itself.  George Lakoff, cognitive linguist at UC Berkeley, argues that people reason with their emotions, not through a cold, Cartesian logical calculus.  But many progressives craft their political rhetoric with the assumption that people vote on the basis of cold self-interest.  Says Lakoff: “Right now the Democratic Party is into marketing. They pick a number of issues like prescription drugs and Social Security and ask which ones sell best across the spectrum, and they run on those issues. They have no moral perspective, no general values, no identity. People vote their identity, they don't just vote on the issues, and Democrats don't understand that.” Lakoff explains that conservatives do a much better job than liberals in expressing their morality in straightforward, emotionally-charged terms.   Until progressives learn this lesson, they will have a hard time motivating their natural constituencies not only to vote for them, but to vote at all.  People vote on the basis of inspirational morality and identity, and spirituality and religion are central to both.

“I do think the Democratic Party has for far too long been hesitant to talk about the 

things we deeply believe and value, ... Many public policy positions have their foundation 

in religious beliefs that we hold dear.” Former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland (an ordained Methodist pastor)

Political progressives try to appeal to the American people with particular policies that would benefit them.  But this does not inspire the souls of the people, and it also leads into the weeds.  Hardly anyone understands exactly how Obamacare works, nor do they wish to read the fine print.  Hardly anyone has considered every complex detail of the bipartisan immigration reform proposal that the Tea Party Republicans have stymied in Congress.  Progressive politicians must touch the hearts of the people by inspiring them to serve not their own self-interests, but the interests of their fellow citizens.  If we all vote with love for others, we can begin to meet everyone’s needs.

“The question of bread for myself is a material question, but the question of bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question.”  Nikolai  Berdyaev 

The politics of deeper love, delivered in spiritually grounded rhetoric, affirms democracy as the way we care for our fellow citizens in the thousand ways that they cannot possibly or practically care of themselves alone.  We need progressive political platforms expressed in heartfelt, positive, and simple terms, using the spiritual language of compassion, especially for the most vulnerable members of our society.

The collapse of the old civil religion partly results from the increasing religious diversity of America.  Immigrants bring to our shores all of the world’s faiths, and sects of those faiths, contributing to the spiritual heterodoxy of Americans.  We pick and choose our beliefs from a longer and longer menu of perceived options, creating individualized theologies and combinations of practices.  The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, in his book Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited, explored the North American tendency to make religion a matter of personal experience.  There is a trend of long-standing in America to value direct mystical encounter with God over the repetition of corporate religious ritual.  This perspective dominates across the theological spectrum.  The Pew Research statistics show that more and more people report having mystical spiritual experiences, even as worship attendance goes down.  Fundamental and evangelical Christians today ask a question that would have been essentially meaningless to the first Christian settlers in America: “Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?”  The 1620 Pilgrims believed that their salvation came to them not as individuals through personal confession, but as a community through divine providence and predestination.   But this sense of communal spirituality has eroded among Christians across the theological spectrum.  And Americans with weaker religious ties also see spirituality as a matter of personal experience and mutable choice.  Culturally Jewish people practice Buddhist meditation, people raised Catholic go to yoga retreats, and some nominal evangelical Christians believe in astrology and reincarnation. 

The civil religion was predicated on a society in which people had respect for civic institutions.  It was predicated on a spiritual authority underlying the temporal authority of governments and churches, and even of companies and clubs.  But the relentless conservative message that “government is the enemy”, the splintering of the news media into a myriad of sources that often are no more than ideological echo-chambers, the lack of loyalty of corporations to their employees and the resulting lack of loyalty of employees to their employers, to say nothing of the drastic weakening of people’s loyalty to religious denominations – all are both causes and effects of the weakening of social authority.  

Conservatives know they are a minority group whose political domination is tenuous, so they show up to vote more often than liberals. Conservatives feel and express, more clearly and succinctly than liberals, the emotional logic of their positions.  Conservative politicians wrap themselves in the flag and claim to be the “real” Americans, while dismantling the American institutions that protect the people from physical and social insecurity.  This perpetuates a cycle of cynicism that alienates the American people ever further from their national institutions and symbols.  A growing number of Americans blame politics and politicians in general for this alienation, and that makes progressive change even harder to achieve.

“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”  Martin Luther King Jr. 

At its root, this cynicism is a spiritual problem, and it requires a spiritual solution.  “The present crisis of authority is only one of a thousand consequences of the general crisis of spirituality in the world at present.  Humankind, having lost its respect for a higher authority, has inevitably lost respect for earthly authority as well.” These were the words of Vaclav Havel, the avant-garde playwright who became the first president of the Czech Republic after communism, in a talk to the National Press Club of Australia in March of 1995.  He believed that both capitalism and communism had lost this sense of responsibility to a transcendent order, and had been swept up in destructive hubris.  Havel was not a religious person, but he believed that the future of democracy and of human civilization depended on deep respect for the transcendent.

Even if we wanted to go back to the old days of the “civil religion”, could we?  - now that American religion has become so diversified, atomized, privatized, and even commodified - now that we have so little sense of holy or even unholy authority underlying our institutions?

But we can and we must craft a fresh political rhetoric that flows from our shared spiritual experience of compassion, giving life and purpose to our democracy.

America still has a soul.  It will express itself differently than it did in the days of the nation’s founders, or even in the days of the great civil rights and anti-poverty struggles of the 1960’s.  We may be at a loss for words to express them, but our nation’s heart is still burning to put our transcendent values into action.  

Havel gave America a hint of the new civil religion in his memorable address to a joint session of the US Congress in February of 1980.  “Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe toward which this world is headed – be it ecological, social, demographic, or a general breakdown of civilization – will be unavoidable…. (what is required is) Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my company, my success – responsibility to the order of being where all our actions are indelibly recorded and where and only where they will be properly judged.”  Havel used spiritual rhetoric to move his nation away from a spirit of retribution against the oppression of the communists and toward a flowering of democracy and freedom.  As an artist who understood the reality and power of words, he believed that this rhetoric was not only a tool to use toward these ends, but was the essence of the ends themselves.  The open expression of respect for the transcendent is itself the foundation of social and political authority.  And the transcendent need not be expressed in supernatural terms.

“In the beginning was the Word,” opens the gospel of John. Can we have personal spiritual experience without language to express it? Whether or not one believes that thought is predicated on language, it’s clear that experience and words to describe it are inseparable, and that words are social constructions. So there is no way for spirituality to be individualized completely. Charles Taylor observed that “It matters to each of us as we act that others are there, as witnesses of what we are doing, and thus as co-determiners of the meaning of our action. (p 85)” 

“So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55: 11, NRSV) This was the word of God divined by the prophet. The ancients took this idea literally. Until the invention of the printing press, when printed words became ubiquitous, most people believed that words were not just random symbolic place-holders to refer to things, but were real things in themselves. Words were real entities that went forth in the world to act and deliver results. 

Part of the disenchantment of Western civilization has been the loss of this palpable sense of power in the word. Essential to the re-enchantment of our civilization and its political life and institutions is holy awe for the potential energy packed in the language we speak and hear and write and read. 

This resource aims to re-enchant America with a spiritually-centered rhetoric that reconnects our souls with our political activism in a language that unites rather than divides, includes rather than excludes. It is language that opens doors to the world rather than separating insiders from outsiders. It is language that takes a stand but doesn’t suggest a last stand. It is language that leaves room for interpretation. It moves through poetry and music. It’s a rhetoric that makes us hungry for love and justice, moving us to share the bread for the sake of a deeper love. 

References:

Robert N. Bellah, Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditionalist World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, p. 168. http://www.robertbellah.com/articles_5.htm

Ballington Booth, quoted in Norris Magnuson, Salvation in the Slums: Evangelical Social Work 1865-1920, 1977, p 166.

Christopher Chapp, Religious Rhetoric and American Politics, Cornell Univ. Press, 2012

Vaclav Havel, quoted in “Cross Currents” magazine, Fall 1997.

George Lakoff, quoted in UC Berkeley News, Oct 27, 2003. 

Robert Putnam, David Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us: New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010.

Edward Schillebeeckx, The Schillebeeckx Reader. Crossroads Press, 1987.

Charles Taylor, Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited. Harvard University Press, 2002.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America,1840

Paul Woodruff, Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, chapter 2

Rubric for a Rhetoric of Deeper Love
1)Despite the remarkable religious and spiritual diversity of America, despite the decline in religious affiliation and participation, the people of this country are still deeply attuned to rhetoric that springs from the Jewish and Christian traditions. Creatively employ Judeo-Christian imagery and brief references to Bible stories, poetry, proverbs, and parables that express universal values of compassion for the vulnerable, fair-play, respect for differences, social justice, and social inclusion (see appendix). You do not need to indicate the source of the phrase or quotation. In many cases, leaving out the source is best, to avoid alienating non-religious people: religious people will recognize the quote from scripture. Avoid making reference to passages that focus on doctrine, dogma, or details of belief.
2)Use religious and spiritual rhetoric in a positive and emotionally authentic way. “Angry appeals… do little to win the hearts of voters, and in fact, there is little difference in how religious committed and uncommitted voters responded to angry religious messages… Interestingly, candidates who conveyed anger through religious rhetoric actually tended to be evaluated less favorably by the electorate as a whole as a campaign progressed.” (Religious Rhetoric and American Politics, Christopher Chapp, 2012, P 100.) Use religious rhetoric to inspire people to build a better America, to express a vision of the good society. Avoid using it to condemn personal or social sins.
3)Liberally use spiritual adjectives, while being conservative about the use of religious nouns: “We gather with divine gratitude” is an alternative to “We thank God”. This evokes spiritual values in a way that feels gentler to the many Americans who are “burned-out” on organized religion.
4)Occasionally employ imagery and short references to scriptures and traditions of other faiths, again focusing on passages that reflect universal values. Again, in many cases it may be best not to tell the source of the quotation. (See appendix under “Scriptural References”)
5)Occasionally use “code” terms that speak positively to particular religious communities without insulting or denigrating any other traditions. Examples of evangelical Christian “code”: “have a heart for - hedge of protection - blessed and favored - name and claim - iron sharpens iron - wonder-working power” (see appendix under “Code Terms”). Code terms inspire specific audiences without catching much attention from people outside those groups.
6)Have simple answers when people ask you about your faith. Be honest about it, of course, but in the context of public life, avoid references to dogma and doctrine that might have the effect of alienating people needlessly. Some examples: “Do you believe in the Bible?” answer: “I believe every word is worth reading.” “Do you believe every word of the Bible is true? Do you believe the Bible is without error?” answer: “I believe that God, who inspired it, is without error.” “Do you believe in God?” answer: “The Bible says God is love, and I try to put love into practice.” “Do you take Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?” answer: “Jesus asks me to follow his way of love and justice. I believe in that way, and I am committed to following it!”
7)Know enough about the Bible to know what’s not in it (see appendix under “What’s Not in the Bible”). For example: Jesus said nothing at all about abortion or homosexuality. “Give a man a fish and he’ll be hungry tomorrow, teach a man to fish and he’ll never be hungry again” is not in the Bible. There is nothing in either the Hebrew or Christian scriptures that supports the idea of unregulated free-market capitalism: in fact, charging interest is forbidden according to the Old Testament.

John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony: "For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” "I always consider the settlement of America with Reverence and Wonder-- as the Opening of a grand scene and Design in Providence, for the Illumination of the Ignorant and the Emancipation of the slavish Part of Mankind all over the Earth."

John Adams, A Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law (draft), February 1765: "It is with great satisfaction, that we appeal to the historic page of our own country, for a striking comment upon the preceding discourse. Our fathers were led out of the house of bondage in Britain, into the wilderness of America, and planted here, as in the land of promise, by the same divine Shepherd, who led ancient Israel from deep oppression and misery, to the joys of freedom and plenty. The same good spirit, which inspired Moses and Aaron, to undertake and conduct so arduous an enterprise, evidently guided and animated the leaders in that great attempt, which gave birth to New-England. The same union of friendship, of counsel and exertion in the public cause, which characterized the Hebrew lawgiver and high-priest, distinguished the political and religious fathers of Massachusetts."
David Tappan, A Sermon for the Day of General Election , May 30, 1792: "This favoured region, favoured indeed of heaven, is America. It is here, a knowledge of those political truths, which the immortal Sydneys and the Lockes of former years investigated with philosophic eye, bursts spontaneous forth. It is here, that men, led by the hand of nature, their minds unawed and unobscured by opinions and customs as barbarous and unfriendly to social rights as the dark chaotic ages, which gave them birth, see and acknowledge as axioms, what philosophers have toiled to establish by deductions, long and intricate. It is in America, that the germs of the universal redemption of the human race from domination and oppression have already begun to be developed; it is in America, that we see a redintegration of divine love for man, and that the voice of heaven itself seems to call to her sons, go ye forth and disciple all nations, and spread among them the gospel of equality and fraternity."
Bishop James Madison, Manifestations of the Beneficence of Divine Providence Towards America , February 19, 1795: "It is little wonder that people at home and abroad consider Independence Hall as hallowed ground and revere the Liberty Bell as a sacred relic. That pile of bricks and mortar, that mass of metal, might appear to the uninstructed as only the outgrown meeting place and the shattered bell of a former time, useless now because of more modern conveniences, but to those who know they have become consecrated by the use which men have made of them. They have long been identified with a great cause. They are the framework of a spiritual event. The world looks upon them, because of their associations of one hundred and fifty years ago, as it looks upon the Holy Land because of what took place there nineteen hundred years ago. Through use for a righteous purpose they have become sanctified."
Jane Addams, social reformer: “That Christianity has to be revealed and embodied in the line of social progress is a corollary to the simple proposition, that man's action is found in his social relationships in the way in which he connects with his fellows; that his motives for action are the zeal and affection with which he regards his fellows. By this simple process was created a deep enthusiasm for humanity; which regarded man as at once the organ and the object of revelation; and by this process came about the wonderful fellowship, the true democracy of the early Church, that so captivates the imagination.... The spectacle of the Christians loving all men was the most astounding Rome had ever seen.” “The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”
President Woodrow Wilson:
“Almighty God,
ruler of all the people of the earth,
forgive, we pray, our shortcomings as a nation;
purify our hearts to see and love truth;
give wisdom to our counselors and steadfastness to our people;
and bring us at least to the fair city of peace,
whose foundations are mercy, justice, and goodwill,
and whose builder and maker you are…. “
President John F. Kennedy, Massachusetts General Court, January 9, 1961: “But I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier. ‘We must always consider,’ he said, ‘that we shall be as a city upon a hill—the eyes of all people are upon us.’ Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us—and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill—constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities. For we are setting out upon a voyage in 1961 no less hazardous than that undertaken by the Arabella in 1630. We are committing ourselves to tasks of statecraft no less awesome than that of governing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, beset as it was then by terror without and disorder within. History will not judge our endeavors—and a government cannot be selected—merely on the basis of color or creed or even party affiliation. Neither will competence and loyalty and stature, while essential to the utmost, suffice in times such as these. For of those to whom much is given, much is required.“
President John F. Kennedy, 1961 Inaugural Address: “With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
Martin Luther King, Sermon at Temple Israel of Hollywood in June 1965: “When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
Martin Luther King, Sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on February 2, 1968: “Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like any man, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
President Bill Clinton, 1992 Democratic Convention speech: “…as the Scripture says, ‘our eyes have not yet seen, nor our ears heard, nor minds imagined’ what we can build.”
President Bill Clinton, 9/11/92 speech at the U. of Notre Dame: “As the great American Baptist, Roger Williams, understood so well, without the freedom to say no, the word yes is meaningless.”
Marion Wright Edelman, director of Children’s Defense Fund: “When Jesus Christ asked little children to come to him, he didn't say only rich children, or White children, or children with two-parent families, or children who didn't have a mental or physical handicap. He said, "Let all children come unto me."
President George Bush, 2002 State of the Union speech: “…there’s power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.” (Note: this is an example of evangelical Christian “code”: “wonder-working power” is a phrase from a beloved revival hymn.)
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton: “God bless the America we are trying to create.”
President Barack Obama, 2009 Inaugural Address: “This is the source of our confidence – the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny. This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed.”
By Jim Burklo, Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California:
In humility before our Creator we affirm our equality as Americans, and are moved by God’s love to serve our country and each other.
Sacredly sealed by our votes through our democracy, we ordain our government to the service of our people. (Note: “sealed” is an example of “code” – it is an important term in the Mormon faith.)
The measure of America’s faithfulness is the degree to which we direct our government to serve the needs of the most vulnerable of our citizens.
God leads us all in getting farther ahead when we don’t leave anybody behind.
Jesus offered people dignity and bread at the same time: he didn’t make people choose between the two.
The aroma of justice makes the soul hungry for it.
Let us liberate America from the yoke of personal and public debt. If I own what you owe, I’ll reap what you sow.
We can leverage the little faith we have today so that we can move more than mere mountains tomorrow, growing in faith to make our nation great.
Jesus healed not only the sick, but also the systems that sickened them: he fed the hungry while changing the systems that starved them.
Faith opens our eyes to the changes we need to make in our country, and at the same time infuses us with the hope and enthusiasm we need make those changes.
Here’s how to make America once again a city on a hill that cannot be hid, and a light to the nations: we protect the poor and middle-class with a powerful public "safety net", take strong action to protect the environment, raise taxes on the rich and cut military spending to balance the federal budget, and rationalize regulations so that private enterprise will thrive on a more level playing field.
Let us bring heaven down to earth, and build the New Jerusalem of abundance and harmony in Cleveland, Baltimore, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.
Our Constitution represents the very pinnacle of human achievement, yet at its root is a spiritual humility that we human beings are corruptible, requiring a system of checks and balances to keep us from succumbing to greed and pride.

Abortion Rights
Seeds:
“Abortion is a decision for a woman to work out between herself and God, who gave her sovereignty over her body - not between herself and the state.” Jim Burklo
“We speak of Esau and others in the Bible as having a birthright, not a conception-right. After a strong religious experience we might say we’ve been “born again”, but not “conceived again.” Rev. Scotty McLennan, Dean of Religious Life, Stanford University, in “A Christian Rationale for Abortion” in JESUS WAS A LIBERAL, Palgrave McMillan 2009, p 19
“I was taught that it is more important to be on God’s side than to have God on your side. God’s side is mercy, love, justice and compassion. It is time …. to start the conversation in the faith community that will let us pursue these with regard to reproduction and sexuality so that jubilee will come to the captives of reproductive and sexual oppression.” Dr Willie J. Parker, abortion doctor quoted at Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights webpage - http://rcrc.org/homepage/its-time/campaign-launch/dr-willie-j-parker-its-time-to-talk-about-religion-and-abortion/
Leaves:
“Christ is with those who suffer through the difficult decisions of reconciling their sexual and/or gender identities, and those who need to make difficult reproductive decisions as well – whether that is to end a pregnancy or to be able to parent the children they already have in the safest and healthiest ways. The intimacy of that suffering, of seeking guidance during those hard times invites God to be a facilitator in the redeeming of that person’s oppression.” Latishia James, seminary student, quoted at Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights webpage -http://rcrc.org/homepage/perspectives/everyday-faith/everyday-faith-latishia/
“… fetus as “person” or “human being” has never been a settled question within Christianity nor Judaism. There are large segments of the Judeo-Christian world that, historically and currently see the embryo or fetus as potential human life, but not as fully human until birth or until some stage in fetal development well past conception.” Rev. Scotty McLennan, Dean of Religious Life, Stanford University, in “A Christian Rationale for Abortion” in JESUS WAS A LIBERAL, Palgrave McMillan 2009, p 17
These, then, become the guiding principles on abortion in Jewish tradition: a woman’s life, her pain, and her concerns take precedence over those of the fetus; existing life is always sacred and dates precedence over a potential life; and a woman has the personal freedom to apply the principles of her tradition unfettered by the legal imposition of moral standards other than her own. “Jewish Perspectives on Abortion” by Rabbi Raymond A. Zwerin and Rabbi Richard J. Shapiro at Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights website.
Roots:
“A Christian Rationale for Abortion” in JESUS WAS A LIBERAL by Rev. Scotty McLennan, Dean of Religious Life, Stanford University, Palgrave McMillan 2009, p 15 ff.
“Reflections on Abortion” in Progressive Christians Speak (John Cobb, editor), Progressive Christians Uniting – (Westminster John Knox Press, 2003) pp 36-52
Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights - http://rcrc.org


Health Care
Seeds:
“We believe that as spiritual and sacred vessels, we are responsible for the care of our bodies to the best of our ability and for the care of one another regardless of individual circumstances.” Faithful Reform in Health Care, 2010
“Jesus sends his followers on a mission to do two things: preach the gospel and heal the sick. Does he say that we should only heal those who can afford health insurance?” Rev Jim Burklo, Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California (see his short video for the One Care campaign for universal, single-payer health insurance in California: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7eKcY5wjHE )
“From the earliest passages of the Bible (Genesis 15:26), Christians recognize that it is ultimately God who heals, and in the New Testament Jesus’ healing ministry is intended to demonstrate the presence of God…. health care is a basic right rather than a commodity available only to those with means…” The General Board of Church and Society, United Methodist Church, “Universal Health Care in the United States of America”, adopted October 2001
“The Talmud, a far-reaching collection of Jewish law and principles, lists 10 public services that a community must provide: three of these relate to basic public health and sanitation - public baths, public toilets and a doctor.” Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly.
Leaves:
Health care is a shared responsibility that is grounded in our common humanity. In the bonds of our human family, we are created to be equal. We are guided by a divine will to treat each person with dignity and to live together as an inclusive community. Affirming our commitment to the common good, we acknowledge our enduring responsibility to care for one another. As we recognize that society is whole only when we care for the most vulnerable among us, we are led to discern the human right to health careand wholeness. Therefore, we are called to act with compassion by sharing our abundant health care resources with everyone. Faithful Reform in Health Care, 2010 www.faithfulreform.org
“Jesus had a plan for universal health coverage, two millennia ago! As his followers, we are called to put that plan into action, here and now. You and I don’t need to wear whites and carry stethoscopes to do it, either. As faithful voters, we now can make a big difference in the lives of the millions of Americans who have no health insurance, and the millions more who have inadequate or unaffordable coverage. Praying for the sick is very important. It binds us spiritually to those who suffer, and joins our souls with their process of recovery. But prayer isn’t enough. Citizen activism is needed for us to become Jesus’ agents of healing.” Rev. Jim Burklo, Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California
“Because the scriptural test of a just nation is how it treats its weakest members (Micah 6:8; Amos 5:24; Jeremiah 5:26-29), we will be clear and consistent advocates to policy-makers on behalf of public health matters and access to healthcare for everyone. We join other faith-based communities in urging our government to establish policy for a system of healthcare in which everyone, everywhere in the United States has access to basic, affordable healthcare, and where the risks and expenses are shared by all.” Mennonite Church USA, 2006
“The 16th century compilation of Jewish law, the Shulhan Arukh, states that where doctors reducing fees to care for the poor is not sufficient, the community must provide a fund. Consistent with this and many other related dicta in Jewish tradition, the Rabbinical Assembly, the international community of 1600 Conservative rabbis passed resolutions on health care in 2002, 2008 and at our last convention in March 2011 in support of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. “ Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, in the Washington Post: 3/26/2012
Roots:
Jesus’ Universal Health Plan – Rev. Jim Burklo: http://www.health-ministries.org/article.php?story=20091014192736908
Being A Good Samaritan: CA Health Care Curriculum
California Council of Churches: www.health-ministries.org/mediagallery/album.php?aid=7
Faithful Reform in Health Care, 2010 www.faithfulreform.org
California OneCare http://californiaonecare.org/
Progressive Taxation & Social Safety Net
Seeds:
God’s love urges that all our most vulnerable fellow citizens get the care that they need, and taxes are the most practical and effective way for us to provide for them.
My sacred responsibility in paying taxes is proportional to my income and wealth.
Rev. Jim Burklo, Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California
"If you claim to be a Christian, then you are by definition responsible for the dignity of your neighbor. Progressive taxation is the only economically viable way to make this responsibility come to life." -- Rev. Jason Hubbard, pastor, Bostwick Lake United Church of Christ, Rockford, Michigan.
"We tax ourselves to do what God requires of us, because the sin of greed prevents our voluntary charity from adequately caring for our most vulnerable citizens." Rev. Jim Burklo, Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California
Leaves:
Divine love moves us to be actually effective in serving the most vulnerable among us. For many essential human needs, taxing ourselves through our democratic system of government is the only way to get the necessary resources. Love inspires sharing both our rewards and our burdens. Since people of higher wealth experience less burden on their lives from taxation, love asks that they pay a higher rate of tax.” Rev. Jim Burklo, Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California
“The law must compel the payment of taxes because most people, due to the human tendency towards greed, would never pay their share voluntarily. Christian theology identifies greed, as well as all other sin, as an inescapable part of the human condition due to the Fall of humankind.” Susan Pace Hamill, Professor of Law, University of Alabama School of Law
"Jesus said 'Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required' (Luke 12:48). This requirement should have an equalized impact on people's lives, rather than being a flat percentage regardless of income. So those of higher incomes should be required to pay a higher rate of tax." Rev. Jim Burklo, Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California
“The Rashba, the great 13th-century Spanish Talmudist, taught that tax should not be collected from each person equally; rather, one’s responsibility in paying taxes is proportional to one’s wealth (Responsa Rashba, 3:381). “ Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, UCLA Hillel Senior Jewish Educator
Roots:
A very thorough biblically-based theological argument for progressive taxation: "An Evaluation of Federal Tax Policy Based on Judeo-Christian Ethics" - Susan Pace Hamill, Professor of Law, University of Alabama
A Jewish argument for progressive taxation, by Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, the Founder & President of Uri L’Tzedek, the Senior Jewish Educator at UCLA Hillel. http://www.jewishjournal.com/bloggish/item/are_taxes_fair_good_or_jewish_a_defense_of_the_progressive_taxation_2012030/
President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast, talking about the Christian basis for progressive taxation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j06TTdKT64U
Campaign to preserve the SNAP Food Stamp program from devastating cuts by Congress: Bread for the World, a Christian charity:https://secure3.convio.net/bread/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=136
Facts illustrating why charity is not adequate to meet human needs:
Housing:
Habitat for Humanity (faith-based charity): total number of housing units built in the US since 1978: 30,000 units
US Department of Housing and Urban Development: Government-issued Sec. 8 housing vouchers for low income families (30% of income paid as rent, rest of rent subsidized): 1,400,000 housing units annually (millions more households are eligible for this subsidy but cannot access it due to the limited funds for the program.)
Food:
The total food aid provided to needy Americans by private charity (including churches) amounts to 6% of all food aid provided by the US government. (Source: Bread for the World - a Christian charity) There is no way to feed the hungry in America without taxpayer money.
Table of Contents








The Environment and Climate Change
Seeds:
“The foundation of the Christian faith is about loving others as Christ loved us, and it is clear from the work that I do myself as well as I see from other colleagues that those with the least resources to adapt to a changing climate will be most affected by our actions.” Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist at Texas Tech and evangelical Christian
Leaves:
“All of the categories of those whom Jesus called “the least of these” (Matthew 25: 33-40) will be directly affected by climate change.
“I was hungry.” Climate change could dramatically influence food supplies and create very serious food shortages.
“I was thirsty.” Drought is a direct result of climate change.
"I was naked.” The impact of climate change could strip whole groups of people of everything they have.
“I was a stranger.” This text has converted a whole movement of Christians around how we treat immigrants — but climate change is already creating refugees of island nations.
“I was sick.” Public health is extremely affected by the pollutants in our environment, and climate change increases that. And we are already being jeopardized by these pollutants.
“I was a prisoner.” Global warming could cause massive social and societal disruption that easily can create more crime and burden criminal justice systems. There is a direct correlation between rising temperatures and rising violence. “
Jim Wallis, executive director of Sojourners: “Taking Climate Change Seriously”, 6-5-14, Sojourners e-news
Roots:
Forum for Religion and Ecology at Yale University - http://fore.research.yale.edu/about-us/
Science and Religion in Public Schools
Seeds:
“Sunday schools should teach the “who” behind the emergence of life on earth, and public schools should teach the “how”.”
“The belief that God literally created the world in six days belongs in Sunday schools but not in public school science textbooks, because it does not use scientific methods to explain how God did it.” (Jim Burklo)
"...The New Testament talks about how faith is the evidence of things not seen. By definition, science is the evidence of things that are seen, that can be observed, that are quantifiable. And so that's why I see faith and science as two sides of the same coin." Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist at Texas Tech and evangelical Christian
Leaves:
“The scientific problem with creationism has nothing to do with God. You can believe in one or another kind of God while being part of the scientific quest. You just have to keep asking how God creates life and the cosmos, and you have to subject your answers to the tests of evidence. Creationists say God made the world in six days, but offer no explanation of how God did it. Thus they have walled themselves outside the realm of science. Their dogma stands in the way of the curiosity that drives us to make sense of our world. Creationism is predicated on a doctrine that won't subject itself to the test of evidence, and meanwhile the evidence in favor of evolution is overwhelming.”
"Creationism isn't so much about six-day biblical creation as it is about affirming a self-contained, simplistic, all-encompassing world-view that makes frightened people feel better. Until promoters of real science and practitioners of progressive faith understand this, they'll continue to have trouble defending sound science education in schools and getting adequate funding for university research. First we have to practice the divine love that casts out fear at the level of our whole society. We have to establish economic justice in America so that people aren't afraid of going bankrupt over medical bills, of starving if they lose their jobs, or of violence erupting in their children's schools. Then we can do what Michael Dowd does in his book: Thank God for Evolution.” (Jim Burklo)
Roots:
Michael Dowd, Thank God for Evolution
Michael Zimmerman, The Clergy Letter Project - http://theclergyletterproject.org/
Religious Freedom
Seeds:
“America has a thriving free market of religion because our Constitution neither inhibits nor privileges it.” (Jim Burklo)
http://vimeo.com/99036119
Leaves:
“It’s important to engage publicly the concerns of conservatives about government intrusion in religious organizations, and in matters of personal religious conscience. The examples they cite are almost all ones in which people with religious scruples can avoid compromising their religion. If you don’t want anything to do with abortions, don’t go to work for a hospital that performs them. If your church-related charitable agency doesn’t want to help gay people adopt children, then don’t receive government funds for your work. Concerns about religious or faith-related organizations being forced by anti-discrimination laws to hire people in same-sex marriages or to pay for benefits for same-sex couples must be put into perspective. All workers, everywhere, deserve these protections. Religious organizations should not be excepted. But as a practical matter, how likely is it for a male secretary, married to another male, to be comfortable editing an anti-gay-marriage sermon by a fundamentalist pastor? The pastor is within his or her rights to order that task to be done. Who wants to work in an environment that is actively oppositional to one’s very identity? There are legal ways of making it highly unlikely for an atheist to get or keep a job in a fundamentalist Christian church. Just because a congregation can’t discriminate in hiring non-clergy staff, that does not in any way prevent the congregation from practicing its tradition and standing up publicly for its positions. Some extreme conservatives demand that churches be able to endorse candidates for office. Nothing is stopping them from doing so. They can give up their tax-exempt status and do as they please. For-profit religion is still religion! The “religious right” movement in America started with the government’s threat of denial of tax-exempt status to the fundamentalist Bob Jones University, because it discriminated against black students. Conservative Christians were politically mobilized by their anger at this supposed intrusion. But what was the real problem? An attack on religious freedom, or mere failure to qualify for a tax break? Conservatives seem to be contradicting their dogma against “big government” by demanding that the government directly or indirectly subsidize their religious organizations.” – Jim Burklo
Roots:
Americans United for Separation of Church and State – au.org
Jim Burklo on Religious Freedom: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithforward/2011/12/defining-and-defending-religious-freedom/#ixzz3MlcGvpsn
Immigration
Seeds:
“Scripture tells us, we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger -- we were strangers once, too. My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.” (President Barack Obama, 11-20-14)
Leaves:
Chicago New Sanctuary Coalition - Immigrant Welcoming Congregation
Welcoming Covenant – crln.org
We are called to engage faith communities and leaders through education, advocacy, and action to live in compassionate solidarity with our immigrant sisters and brothers. We stand together in our faith. Regardless of national origin everyone has basic human rights including, livelihood, family unity, and physical and emotional safety. We are committed to lifting up the voices of immigrants and creating space for their stories to be heard. We will work for just and humane immigration policies, and the transformation of the social and economic systems that are root causes of migration. We will build relationships of solidarity and mutuality. We will work towards making not just our religious communities, but our world, a sanctuary of peace and justice for all people.
Therefore, we covenant to:
• Be a welcoming congregation: a public, prophetic voice in support of fair treatment and hospitality toward our immigrant sisters and brothers
• Challenge ourselves to listen deeply and learn continually from all who are affected by the current crisis
• Build relationships of solidarity and mutuality through direct service, action, advocacy, and accompaniment.
Roots:
Interfaith Immigration Coalition - http://www.interfaithimmigration.org

Blessing Taxes, Honoring Oaths

Taxes are the way that people of faith care for the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens, by funding our government’s social safety-net services. Charity through faith communities and other groups is a vital supplement, but no replacement, for the role we give our government in meeting critical human needs.
The “Blessing of Taxes” in worship is a sacred re-affirmation of the blessings that flow from the taxes we pay: services to the poor and ailing; schools, roads, sanitation; public safety and defense; protection of the environment; and promotion of a healthier economy - to name a few. It is also a moment to recommit ourselves as citizens to shape the priorities that determine how our taxes are spent.
Some congregations place tax forms on the altar for a blessing on the weekend before taxes are due. Some pastors focus their sermons on the sacred duties of citizenship and on their visions for the ways that tax money should best be spent. Some congregations plan special discussions related to citizen activism and social issue awareness following worship.
The form of the blessing differ, but the essential message is the same: we give thanks to the Love that is God for the good that comes through our taxes. They are a special form of our "offerings" in worship. Many blessings flow from them, and divine guidance is needed for us to have the wisdom to see to it they are spent for the best purposes.
In addition, we celebrate and bless all citizens who faithfully support their neighbors through payment of their taxes, remembering the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., that "taxes are the price we pay for civilization."
The “Blessing of Taxes” is also a good time to influence our elected representatives to renounce any ideology that violates their oaths of office. 236 members of the US Congress and 41 Senators have signed Grover Norquist’s pledge never to raise taxes for any reason. But there are times when certain tax rates must be raised to provide for the well-being and security of our people. Politicians cannot fulfill their oaths before God to do their duties well and faithfully if they promise to cripple the ability of the government to act in the best interests of our nation.
The Norquist pledge signers are holding America hostage to an anti-tax anti-government ideology. Adherence to this arbitrary and ultimately meaningless pledge has weakened national security, dampened economic recovery, and denied vital benefits to our neediest fellow citizens. It's time to demand that our politicians renounce this pledge, for the sake of the common good. Taxes should be levied at fair rates that fund essential government services, and they should vary according to the needs of the nation.
Copy this "confession and repentance" (see Oathwatch.org) and email it to all politicians who have signed Norquist's pledge:
Failure to Abide by my Oath of Office: Confession and Repentance
I hereby confess that by signing a pledge never to raise tax rates, I contradicted my oath of office which I made before God and my constituents. There are times when, in order to support and defend the Constitution, it is necessary to raise tax rates. There are times when, in order to discharge the duties of my office well and faithfully, it may be essential to vote to increase government revenues.
And so before God and my fellow citizens I publicly repent of this violation of my oath of office by mailing this statement and the shredded pieces of a copy of the anti-tax increase pledge to University Temple United Methodist Church, 1415 NE 43rd St, Seattle WA 98105, to be preserved for posterity in a vault in the church basement. In my repentance, I receive forgiveness from God and from my constituents.
Signed: ________________________________ Date: __________________
Elected position held: _______________________________________



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"Tax Blessing" by Rev. Rich Lang
Offered in worship at University Temple Methodist Church in Seattle on Palm Sunday 4/13
God of a love overwhelmingly awesome we reach out to Thee this day in the hope that a righteous shaking might come to our own beloved nation. As we offer our taxes may a renewed understanding arise that these monies are to be used for commonwealth so that all might have a roof over their head, food in their belly, health care for their bodies, safe streets for their security, just regulations for markets and commerce, and a peaceful transformation where swords are downsized so that that which builds health and hope are fully funded. Remember our idealism o God, remember the sacred covenant we once made with you --- “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all are created equal, that all are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among the people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” --- Remember o God the idealism of our birth and raise up for us new leaders who embody those dreams and hopes, and restore our people, o God --- give us a future and the will to embody Your reign of Shalom. We pray in the Spirit of Jesus --- amen.
Blessing of the Ballots
A ceremony in worship: A sample ballot is lifted up and a prayer is offered – then the ballot is passed around the congregation for “laying on of hands” and silent blessing.
“My Prayer for Election Day” by Jim Wallis, 2008
“On the eve of this historic election let us pause for a moment of thanks. We should thank God for the men and women who committed themselves to establish a new nation, in which voting was possible. We should thank God for the courage of the women of the Suffrage movement who pioneered the path to the 19th Amendment and ensured women the right to vote. We should thank God for those who risked and sacrificed their lives to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to allow all our citizens, regardless of the color of their skin, to vote.
We also pray for forgiveness, that there are still some in our country whose votes are not allowed to be cast or counted, even in recent elections. We pray for protection of all the voters and the votes of this election.
We pray for the candidates, their family and their staff--who have worked tirelessly to offer the country the vision of the future they deeply believe in. Give them rest and a sense of peace, no matter what the outcome of the election. We pray for all the citizen volunteers, who have made democracy better by their work on this election campaign.
We pray most of all against a spirit of fear. The Scriptures say that "God has not given us a spirit of fear but a spirit of love, a spirit of power and a strong mind." Help us to remember the words of our Lord Jesus, who reminds us that love casts our fear and to be not afraid. If the Scriptures say, "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil," certainly we can make it through election day. No matter how we vote, let us vote more for the visions, ideas, and candidates that best represent our best values; rather than voting against candidates simply because of the negative and often manipulative things that others have said about them.
As a people of faith, we do not find in our scripture, we can not locate in any sacred text, a mandate to support a particular candidate for president or vote for a particular political party during this election. While the scriptures may not say what box we should check on election day, we must strive to be clear about the priorities of the kingdom of God how we can best impact the common good. Voting is one part of the prophet's instruction to "Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare."
Today we also pray for those who will vote differently than we do, for their own reasons also deeply rooted in faith. And we pray, despite the outcome of the election tomorrow, that we will find the ways to build bridges and work together for the common good of the country we all dwell in. And may our votes tomorrow be guided less by a fear of our neighbor and more by a hope for the future.
God has blessed all the nations of the world, not just America. But we pray tomorrow for God's special blessing on our nation, and that the opportunities to fulfill our country's greatest possibilities might be greatly enlarged.
Jim Wallis, Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners, 12/5/2008 at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/my-prayer-for-election-da_b_140878.html
A Prayer for the United States Presidential Election by (Methodist) Bishop Kenneth H. Carter, Jr.
Creator of us all; you are the source of every blessing,
the judge of every nation and the hope of earth and heaven:
We pray to you on the day of this important and historic election.
We call to mind the best that is within us: that we live under God,
that we are indivisible, that liberty and justice extend to all.
We acknowledge the sin that runs through our history as a nation:
The displacement of native peoples, racial injustice,
economic inequality, regional separation.
As we profess a deep and abiding gratitude
for the goodness of ordinary people who have made sacrifices,
who have sought opportunities,
who have journeyed to this land as immigrants
and strengthened its promise in successive generations,
who have found freedom on these shores,
and defended this freedom at tremendous cost.
Be with us today and in the days ahead.
Remind us that your ways are not our ways,
that your power and might transcend the plans of every nation,
That you are not mocked.
Let those who follow your Son Jesus Christ
Be peaceable people in the midst of division.
Send your Spirit of peace, justice and freedom upon us,
Break down the walls of political partisanship
And make us one.
Give us wisdom to walk in your ways,
Courage to speak in your name
And humility to trust in your providence. Amen
“A Prayer for Those Who Lead us” by Safiyah Foshua
God, we have become like a ship that has lost its compass.
Grant wisdom and peace to our national leaders,
Guide them to seek a common vision for our common good.
When solutions seem impossible, show them the way.
Where there are differences, let your love prevail.
Heal our divisions and heal our land, we pray. Amen
A “blessing of the ballot” ceremony for individuals, at the polls or after filling out an absentee ballot at home:
Repeat this prayer, silently or aloud, after voting: "I thank God for all Americans who risked their lives defending my sacred right and duty to vote." Then imagine saluting the ballot box, or saluting your ballot when you put it in the mail. As you salute, imagine the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the signing of the Constitution. Imagine Washington crossing the Delaware during the Revolution. Imagine the joy of the slaves upon learning of their emancipation. Imagine the joy of women when they won their long fight for the vote. Imagine soldiers fighting in World War II, imagine civil rights activists registering voters under threat from the KKK, imagine Martin Luther King saying "I have a dream!" at the march on Washington.

What’s In the Bible (New Revised Standard Version)
Isaiah 1: 17: "...learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow."
Amos 5:24: “…let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
Micah 6:8: “ …what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Luke 1: 52-53: "He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away."
Matthew 5: 14-16: “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5: 43-47: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies andpray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?”
Luke 4: 16-30: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Romans 8: 24-25: “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
I Corinthians 12:4-7, 14-26: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. …..For the body does not consist of one member but of many. …..But God has so composed the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.”
Revelation 21:22-26: “And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light shall the nations walk; and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory into it, and its gates shall never be shut by day -- and there shall be no night there; they shall bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.”
What’s Not in the Bible
“When God closes one door, He always opens another.”
“A person’s got to lift himself up by his own bootstraps.”
“If you give a man a fish, he’ll be hungry tomorrow, but if you teach him to fish, he’ll never be hungry again.”
“God doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle.”
“God helps those who help themselves.”
“Hate the sin, love the sinner.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“Charity begins at home.”
“God works in mysterious ways.”
The list of the “Seven Deadly Sins” is not to be found in the Bible.
Jesus said nothing at all about abortion or homosexuality.
There is nothing in either the Hebrew or Christian scriptures that supports the idea of unregulated free-market capitalism: in fact, charging interest is forbidden according to the Old Testament.
Scriptures of the World’s Religions
An excellent resource for references to scriptures from the world’s religions on topics like compassion, peace, the environment, etc, can be found at the website of the Tanenbaum Center: https://tanenbaum.org/tanenbaum-resources/shared-visions/#toggle-id-3
Important Jewish (Hebrew) Words/Phrases for Public Rhetoric
Kaddish – a specific prayer of mourning – asking to have it said by a Jewish person at a somber occasion is powerful
Lamed Vav – literally, “36” – according to a mystical Jewish tradition, there are 36 people living at any given time upon whose good works and deep humility the existence of the whole world depends
Mitzvah – good deed, observance of the Law
Shabbat shalom – say it at greeting/parting between Friday and Saturday sundowns - “peace of sabbath”
Tikkun olam – healing or repairing the world
Tzaddik - good person
Tzedakah – righteousness or charity
Code Terms
Code terms inspire certain audiences while remaining “off the radar” for others. Theologically progressive Christians, and many other religious people, primarily situate themselves in the “mainstream” culture. They use jargon specific to their faiths, but mostly only in the context of their faith communities. However, evangelical and fundamentalist Christians often use “code” language publicly to mark their identity as a distinct subculture in contrast and often in contradiction with the “mainstream” culture. Subgroups within evangelical and fundamental American Christianity use different subsets of this code. Using this code language in public rhetoric can be powerful in making an emotional connection with people who are part of this subculture, while signifying little for those who aren’t. However, it runs the risk of confusing people if the speaker is not really part of the subculture that uses the code.
Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christian “Code Terms”:
God laid it on my heart
I have a heart for (“I have a heart for the special needs of the elderly,” etc)
Let’s invoke a hedge of protection
I have discerned
I have a word of the Lord for you on that (an interpretation of scripture, or an opinion that feels like it came from God)
Let’s love up on people (“We need to love up on our school teachers,” etc)
Let’s get prayed up (common in African American churches)
Let’s press into God (“Let’s press into God in prayer for….”)
Afterglow (after a spiritual moment)
Bathe it in prayer (“Let us bathe this decision in prayer,” etc)
Missional imagination (“My missional imagination is activated for making health care available to all Americans,” etc)
Walk the aisle, pray the prayer
Blessed and favored
Name it and claim it (popular in “prosperity” churches)
Christ-follower (rather than Christian – a current popular conception among evangelicals is that Christianity is not a religion – emphasizing that it is a way of life)
Set me on fire (for a cause, for a mission)
Put on the armor of God
Iron sharpens iron
Freedom in Christ
Wonder-working power (of the blood of Christ – from an old hymn)

Dear Church — An open letter from a young adult who’s about to give up on you
Sarah Carson
Dear Church,
Look, I know you’ve gotten plenty of letters like this in the past ten – if not twenty or thirty – years. I know you’re used to hearing it by now – you’re irrelevant, you refuse to change, you just aren’t any fun.
But I never minded those things about you. In fact, I liked that you were counter-culture. I like that you stood up for what was right instead of what was popular.
That’s what I was looking for, after all. A community that would take a stand. People who were fed up with letting terrible things happen.
I stood up for you for years.
I invited my agnostic friends to come sing Christmas carols and to volunteer at the soup kitchen. They never came, but I kept encouraging them all the same.
I believed you’d show them your true colors. I believed you’d make them believe the way you had won me over with how you loved the poor and disenfranchised, with how you cut through the ideology with love for the hungry, the homeless, the lonely.
Dear Church,
Look, I know you’ve gotten plenty of letters like this in the past ten – if not twenty or thirty – years.
I know you’re used to hearing it by now – you’re irrelevant, you refuse to change, you just aren’t any fun.
But I never minded those things about you.
In fact, I liked that you were counter-culture. I like that you stood up for what was right instead of what was popular.
That’s what I was looking for, after all.
A community that would take a stand. People who were fed up with letting terrible things happen.
I stood up for you for years.
I invited my agnostic friends to come sing Christmas carols and to volunteer at the soup kitchen. They never came, but I kept encouraging them all the same.
I believed you’d show them your true colors.
I believed you’d make them believe the way you had won me over with how you loved the poor and disenfranchised, with how you cut through the ideology with love for the hungry, the homeless, the lonely.
I was just a kid when we met.
I was a wiz on the Bible drills, and I have the ribbons to prove it.
I have a scrapbook full of youth group memories at Christian music festivals, at Sunday night youth group, and at the winter camp retreat.
I remember learning to care because of adults around me who cared – who spent their evenings after work making space for my friends and me to feel loved and valued, who planned the most epic scavenger hunts you’ve ever seen.
But now I’m 30 years old.
Now my best friends have deep scars from your good intentions.
My mother, my father, my sister, my grandmother all talk about how hard you are to get along with.
They quote Bible verses to me and ask me what the hell is going on.
I tell them people are difficult to get along with, that it’s the sum of our parts that makes us whole.
But are we whole,church?
Are we about to make a difference or are we about to make a fool of ourselves?
Are you about to make a fool of me?
Because most days it looks like taking your side is taking the low road.
My friends are about to stop listening when I say you love them.
My family is about to stop waiting for you to care.
Where are we going, church?
I want to help you fix this.
But we both know help only comes to those who help themselves.
Please get moving.
Your friend,
Sarah

Playing For Change is a movement created to inspire and connect the world through music.
As we made our way around the world we encountered love, hate, rich and poor, black and white, and many different religious groups and ideologies. It became very clear that as a human race we need to transcend from the darkness to the light and music is our weapon of the future. This song around the world features musicians who have seen and overcome conflict and hatred with love and perseverance. We dont need more trouble, what we need is love. The spirit of Bob Marley always lives on.
This is the fourth Song Around The World video released from the CD/DVD Playing For Change: Songs Around The World and the follow up to the classics “Stand By Me,” “One Love” and “Don’t Worry.” This unforgetable track was performed by musicians around the world adding their part to the song as it traveled the globe.
WATCH AND LEARN MORE HERE

Event:PluralismSunday 2015
May 3, 2015
On PLURALISMSUNDAY, the first Sundayin May- May 3, 2015 (or other times during the year) – churches dedicate their worship to a celebration of our interfaith world. Progressive Christians thank God for religious diversity! We don’t claim that our religion is superior to all others. We recognize that other religions can be as good for others as ours is for us. We can grow closer to God and deeper in compassion—and we can understand our own traditions better—through a more intimate awareness of the world’s religions. On PLURALISMSUNDAY, churches celebrate elements of other world faiths in their sermons, litanies, and music; many feature speakers and singers from other faith traditions. Some congregations have exchanges with other faith communities, going to each other’s houses of worship. This event is a project of PROGRESSIVE
CHRISTIANITY.org.
Sign up your congregation now to participate in this event.
Pluralism Sunday

On the first Sunday in May – May 3, 2015 (or other times during the year) – churches dedicate their worship to a celebration of our interfaith world. Progressive Christians thank God for religious diversity! We don’t claim that our religion is superior to all others. We recognize that other religions can be as good for others as ours is for us. We can grow closer to God and deeper in compassion—and we can understand our own traditions better—through a more intimate awareness of the world’s religions. On PLURALISM SUNDAY, churches celebrate elements of other world faiths in their sermons, litanies, and music; many feature speakers and singers from other faith traditions. Some congregations have exchanges with other faith communities, going to each other’s houses of worship.About
DIVIDED WE STAND, UNITED WE FALL Read the words of Thomas Jefferson, celebrating religious diversity in a letter he wrote to a Jewish leader in Savannah, Georgia, in 1820: “the maxim of civil government being reversed in that of religion, where its true form is, “divided we stand, united we fall.”
On the first Sunday in May- May 3, 2015 (or other times during the year) – churches dedicate their worship to a celebration of our interfaith world. Progressive Christians thank God for religious diversity! We don’t claim that our religion is superior to all others. We recognize that other religions can be as good for others as ours is for us. We can grow closer to God and deeper in compassion—and we can understand our own traditions better—through a more intimate awareness of the world’s religions. OnPLURALISM SUNDAY, churches celebrate elements of other world faiths in their sermons, litanies, and music; many feature speakers and singers from other faith traditions. Some congregations have exchanges with other faith communities, going to each other’s houses of worship.
SOULJOURN is a resource at Patheos.com for celebrating religious pluralism and for learning about the faiths of the world, and inviting people to explore religious diversity in their own “back yards”. The new novel by Jim Burklo, Associate Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California, is a conversation-starter for churches and other groups that are exploring world religions. The online study guide for the novel is a resource for discussion about world religion and interfaith relations. Congregations that welcome “Souljourners” - people visiting houses of worship of traditions other than their own – can advertise their welcome with this logo:

HOW CHURCHES CELEBRATE PLURALISM SUNDAY:
Rowntree Memorial United Church of Canada London Ontario celebrated Pluralism Sunday on April 28th, 2013 – relying on materials available through The Center for Progressive Christianity with the Bohemian Cafe dialogue from the Pluralism Project presented during sermon time.
St Andrew’s on The Terrace Church, Wellington, NZ, invited a member of the Buddhist community to speak about his journey as a secular Buddhist at our Sunday morning service on 5th May 2013.
First United Methodist Church of Madison, celebrated Pluralism Sunday on May 5, 2013 with worship focused on appreciation of religious diversity and what we receive from other faiths. Liturgical movement and music of other traditions were included. The church also hosted an interactive, intergenerational World Peace Village that day with banners, prayers, traditions, and sacred items from several different faiths.
First Congregational Church of Tacoma, WA, held an Interfaith Celebration Service and Dialogue on Sunday, April 22nd, 2012. An interfaith inspired service happened at 11am with speakers from several different faiths. Afterward a round-table discussion ran from 1p-3:30pm.
Countryside Community Church, UCC, Omaha, Nebraska conducted “The Faith of Jesus in a Pluralistic World” in 2012, the first in a 6-part series in a chain of TWELVE 6-part series called “By This Way of Life – Twelve Journeys Into the Heart of Christian Faith”.
On May 6, 2012, St. Augustine’s Episcopal Parish, Tempe, Arizona, hosted Imam Yahya Hendi and Rabbi Gerald Serotta as co-preachers for the 10:30 AM service.
On Sunday May 6, 2012, “Conversations about Progressive Christianity”, a study group of Lynnhaven Colony Congregational Church, United Church of Christ sponsored its Third Annual International Pluralism Sunday. After the success of sharing with local Buddhist communities, and then a progressive Jewish congregation last year, in 2012 they shared time and talent with a local Catholic Workers Movement house. Special guests were Steve Baggarly and Kim Williams who operate Sadako Sasaki House in Norfolk, VA. They offer short and long-term hospitality to homeless men and women and serve 100+ folks four mornings a week, bringing “breakfast-to-the-streets. This “faith-based”, intentional community supports the Plowshare movement for disarmament and is involved in nonviolent civil resistance against militarism locally and with the Atlantic Life Community.
Unity Church of Monterey Bay in Monterey, CA consistently honors other paths to God or the Sacred by reading sacred Scripture from at least two other faith traditions (in addition to the Judeo-Christian scripture) on the topic of the Sunday lesson.
In May 2012 it offered a series based on Karen Armstrong’s book “12 Steps to a Compassionate Life” which also cites various faith traditions.
Niles Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Fremont, CA, celebrated Pluralism Sunday on Sunday, May 8, 2011 with a dialog sermon (by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer and the Rev. Steve Kindle) based on Matthew 2:1-12 and Acts 10:9-16. It covered topics such as how we become Christians, the implications of our stories of becoming Christians, why (given the plurality of religions that exist) we are still Christians, and (given that neither claimed that Christianity is superior to all other religions) what we think about the validity of other religions and the purpose of evangelism for progressive Christians. You are invited to listen to the audio of it here.
On Sunday, May 22, 2011 at Plymouth Congregational UCC in Helena, Montana, Rev. Cathy Barker preached on religious pluralism and use the wonderful “Reading from Many Traditions” from the Tanenbaum Center, with special music with Native American drum and flute.
On Sunday May 1, 2011, the “Conversations about Progressive Christianity” study group of Lynnhaven (VA) Colony Congregational Church, United Church of Christ sponsored its Second Annual International Pluralism Sunday. After the success of sharing with several of its local Buddhist communities last year, this year the church shared time and attention with members of the Jewish community. Rabbi Israel Zoberman, Founding Rabbi of Congregation Beth Chaverim in Virginia Beach, was the speaker for Pluralism Sunday at Colony Congregational. May 1st was also Holocaust Remembrance Day and the church focused this solemn remembrance from an Interfaith perspective and the themes that follow for the whole human family. In addition to this special day of worship May 1st at 10:00 am and potluck meal at 11:00 am, several other learning opportunities happened: a Shabbat service with Congregation Beth Chaverim on Friday April 15th at 7:30 pm and the community-wide Holocaust Remembrance Day service at 6:45 pm on Sunday May 1st at Ohef Shalom Temple in Ghent.
The Unitarian Church of Weymouth, MA, featured a Pluralism Sunday sermon by the pastor, Richard Trudeau, on May 1 titled “More Like an Eddy than a Rock,” presenting the basic ideas of Buddhism, contrasting them with those of Christianity, and pointing out ways in which the two supplement each other.
First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethton, TN, celebrated Beltane on Pluralism Sunday, May 1, 6 pm. Bel was the Celtic sun god who was in his glory during the light half of the year. In the old traditions, this feast day celebrated the new growth and fertility of the land and all of its inhabitants. The Peacemaking Committee celebrated with dancing and dining at the church, and will hold the rite outside if weather permits.
The Congregational Church of Belmont, CA, on May 1 heard a local Baha’i leader speak in worship and the pastor of the church, Kristy Denham, preached on “Many Streams, One River”.
First Congregational Christian United Church of Christ, Chesterfield, VA on April 10 had Malik and Annette Khan of The Islamic Center of Virginia to do a presentation of Islam with the church’s Adult Faith Formation gathering. It also celebrated pluralism in its May 1 worship.
Celebrations of Pluralism Sunday include many other creative ways of embracing religious pluralism as integral to our Christian faith. Mt. Hollywood Congregational UCC in Los Angeles included in worship a performance by the students of the Shanti Interfaith Choir from the University of Southern California. St. Paul’s Church in Laramie, Wyoming, read the Golden Rule in 6 different religious traditions. Other churches focus on sermons about religious pluralism: Rev. John Shuck, First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethtown, Tennessee; Rev. Christine Paulus, St Luke’s Church in Philadelphia.
SIGN UP your congregation to be listed as a participating church for 2012 – by emailing Rev. Jim Burklo, Pluralism Sunday Coordinator forProgressiveChristianity.org. (Churches can celebrate the event on other dates and still be listed as participants – indicate your plans for the event to Jim so these details can be listed on our site.)
PLURALISM SUNDAY is initiated by ProgressiveChristianity.org. Congregations worldwide have adopted its “Welcome Statement” that affirms that other religions can be as good for their followers as Christianity is for us.
Learn here what churches around the world are doing to promote religious pluralism as a profound expression of the love and the humility that Jesus preached and practiced. You’ll find sermons, litanies, book reviews, and other resources your congregation can use to create a celebration of PLURALISM SUNDAY that is appropriate for your community.
Read Past Articles on Pluralism Sunday

Jim Burklo’s New Novel “Souljourn”
SOULJOURN is an entertaining way to learn about the religions of the world, and to get inspired to learn a lot more. It’s a novel with a mission – to increase religious literacy so that people of all faiths, or no religion, can understand and respect each other more.
Power in the Blood - EasterSunday
Sea Raven
The Jews were not the first nor the only people to realize that their survival depends on justice. The argument for millennia has been whether justice that supports life is retributive (payback) or distributive (fairness); the theology of Empire (piety, war, victory) versus the theology of Covenant (nonviolence, justice-compassion, peace). Retributive justice systems are the hallmark of imperial power. But along with retributive justice come other social systems. We are born into the normalcy of civilizations that develop means of controlling individual behavior ostensibly for the common good, but which instead set traps and create victims: the poor, the elderly, the sick, the outsider, the marginalized, the disenfranchised for whatever reason. Under such conditions, most humans are happy to give up their freedom to any regime that promises salvation, whether it is liberation from injustice in this life, or deliverance from hell in the next. As many victims of these systems have learned, revenge is not enough to restore wholeness.
(Excerpt from Theology From Exile Vol. III, The Year of Mark by Sea Raven, D.Min.)
Acts 10:34-43; Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 118:14-24; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Mark 16:1-8
For Christians who follow the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B’s readings for Easter cherry-pick the words of Isaiah – the prophet of the exiled Jewish people – to proclaim the great feast on the mountain, celebrating “the Lord for whom we have waited.” That “Lord,” we are to understand, is not the liberating God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That “Lord” is Jesus. Paul’s argument with the community in Corinth has also been taken out of its context in order to serve the dogma that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.” Careless readers might think that means Jesus was predestined by God to die as retribution for our wrongdoing, as foreseen by ancient prophecy.
Perhaps because it is Year B – “the Year of Mark” – we have the bizarre original ending of Mark’s gospel. Mary Magdalene, Jesus’s mother Mary, and Salome encounter a young man in a white robe perched inside Jesus’s borrowed tomb. He says, “Don’t be scared. Jesus was raised and isn’t here. Go tell Rocky and the others that he will meet everybody back in Galilee.” The terrified women bolt out of there as fast as possible and “they didn’t breathe a word of it to anyone . . .” Mark’s obsession with secrecy seems counterproductive. Inquiring minds might want to know how anybody ever found out about it. But we have John 20:1-18, which is read every year, to counteract any ambiguity. The story of Jesus’s life and death and resurrection has been used to prove that God loves us, even when we don’t love ourselves. God forgives us because Jesus took the punishment we deserved. We are guilty from the beginning of causing Jesus’s crucifixion. But because God loved the world enough to crucify his own son instead of us, we are forgiven, and accepted into heaven in the next life. We feel humbled, yet confident, secure in the certainty of our own individual salvation from sin and death.
The story of Jesus’s death and resurrection carries far more power than that.
Start with the Apostle Paul, whose message is lost if all we pay attention to is the snippet we are allowed to consider on Easter Sunday. Paul’s message is founded on four principles: 1) sin lives in the law; 2) Christ crucified; 3) Christ resurrected; and 4) grace. When Paul talks about “sin,” he’s not talking about petty trespass. The “sin that lies dead apart from the law” (Romans 7:8b) is much deeper than individual wrongdoing. Paul is talking about what John Dominic Crossan and the late Marcus Borg call “the normalcy of civilization.” Whenever and wherever humanity organizes itself into a civilization, rules and regulations are developed. The result is personal, social, and political systems that by their very nature lead to injustice. That is the sin that arises from the law. When Paul talks about “Christ crucified” – or in this specific case, “Christ died for our sins” – he is talking about Jesus’s willingness to give up his life for the principles he taught. Those principles are radical fairness, radical inclusiveness, and the radical abandonment of self-interest. When Paul talks about “Christ resurrected” – or in the snippet for Easter Sunday, “he was raised on the third day” – he is talking about transformation. This transformation begins when the individual takes on the work begun by Jesus of restoring God’s justice to the world – although, Paul says, “it was not I but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Cor. 15:10b). This “grace” is the free gift of the presence of God without requirement. “There is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). By the grace of God, then, in partnership with anyone willing to sign onto the work, the world itself is transformed. God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion – the “kingdom of God” – is established, here, now.
The Jews were not the first nor the only people to realize that their survival depends on justice. The argument for millennia has been whether justice that supports life is retributive (payback) or distributive (fairness); the theology of Empire (piety, war, victory) versus the theology of Covenant (nonviolence, justice-compassion, peace). Retributive justice systems are the hallmark of imperial power. But along with retributive justice come other social systems. We are born into the normalcy of civilizations that develop means of controlling individual behavior ostensibly for the common good, but which instead set traps and create victims: the poor, the elderly, the sick, the outsider, the marginalized, the disenfranchised for whatever reason. Under such conditions, most humans are happy to give up their freedom to any regime that promises salvation, whether it is liberation from injustice in this life, or deliverance from hell in the next. As many victims of these systems have learned, revenge is not enough to restore wholeness.
Neither the ancient world nor the globalized society of the postmodern twenty-first century has truly grasped the meaning of “love your enemies” – or kenosis – “the radical abandonment of self-interest.” The practice of kenotic love is embodied most clearly for Christians in Jesus, yet is perhaps not so rare as we might think: Nelson Mandela; The Amish Community’s response to the massacre of its children; the refusal of the Christian Peacemaker Teams to testify against their captors in Iraq; the Berrigan brothers and the Plowshares actions against the Vietnam War; Freedom Riders; Dorothy Day; the Union movement of the 1930s; the witnesses who stood against Senator Joseph McCarthy; the French Resistance; Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Sojourner Truth.
The “cloud of witnesses” that signed onto Jesus’s Way is huge, mostly anonymous, and not exclusive to Christians.
The Easter season is permeated with ancient symbolism that still raises the short hairs on the back of our necks. It is neither through accident nor God’s intervention that the story of Jesus’s execution and resurrection became entwined with the Jewish Passover story of God’s action in the liberation of the Jewish people. The blood of the lambs was smeared around the doorways of the Hebrew people so that God’s Angel of Death would pass over those places and descend on the houses of the oppressors. In John’s gospel, Jesus was executed at the same time that the Passover lambs were being slaughtered. Blood poured out on ancient altars as an offering was a symbol of profound reconciliation between the failure of human systems and the perfection of God’s realm of justice-compassion. G.F. Handel combined that archetype with words from Revelation 5:12: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and has redeemed us to God by his blood, to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing.”
There is still power in the blood. The power lies in the willingness to give up the well-being assured by imperial systems and act to overturn them. Jesus died doing that. So did Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Raoul Wallenberg. The blood of others will also be required before the kingdom is accomplished. That is not a prophecy of violent end-times that can only be escaped by those who believe in the Rapture. It is acknowledgment of the kind of commitment and risk that results in Isaiah’s Banquet on the Mountain.
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Not Without Courage
Gretta Vosper
Tune: Eventide
Might justice reign in this, our broken world?
Might love mend hearts where anger has unfurled?
Could we bring forth a land where all are free?
Not without courage, without you and me.
Might we build hope where none has been before?
Might we prepare for peace and not for war?
Could we find homes for every refugee?
Not without courage, without you and me.
Might we speak truth to arrogance and power?
Might we each child with confidence empower?
Could we reach deep and end all poverty?
Not without courage, without you and me.
Might we defend another’s right to speak?
Might we stand up for those who are too weak?
Could we destroy the roots of misery?
Not without courage, without you and me.
Might we refuse to see another’s race?
Might we find beauty in each other’s face?
Could we not recognize we’re family?
Not without courage, without you and me.

Moving further into the Inspired by Hollywood series, we went to see the movie Selma. What a powerful film and so timely. That black men are still twenty-one times more likely to be killed by police than white men* in America is staggering and the media’s attention, drawn to this truth by the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, has drawn our attention, too. Watching Selma brought home the shameful truth that in far too many places, racism still rules the streets.
The song I wrote for use in this service is set to the tune Eventide. Written by William Henry Monk, it is welded to the words of Abide with Me which wasn’t really part of my church background. It has become familiar to me only through the use of it at funerals and hymn sings at long term care facilities. But it is beautiful and moving and so when I was looking for a tune to meet my heart and to which I could write new words, it came to mind.
Not without Courage
© 2015 gretta vosper
Tune: Eventide
Might justice reign in this, our broken world?
Might love mend hearts where anger has unfurled?
Could we bring forth a land where all are free?
Not without courage, without you and me.
Might we build hope where none has been before?
Might we prepare for peace and not for war?
Could we find homes for every refugee?
Not without courage, without you and me.
Might we speak truth to arrogance and power?
Might we each child with confidence empower?
Could we reach deep and end all poverty?
Not without courage, without you and me.
Might we defend another’s right to speak?
Might we stand up for those who are too weak?
Could we destroy the roots of misery?
Not without courage, without you and me.
Might we refuse to see another’s race?
Might we find beauty in each other’s face?
Could we not recognize we’re family?
Not without courage, without you and me.
*Who Police Killed in 2014, Think Progress

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