For 24 years of my life, I was a church planter and pastor. At the beginning of those years, I would have gladly called myself an Evangelical. But those years coincided with the rise of the Religious Right, and at the end, Evangelical meant something very different than before.
I couldn't use the word without a lot of explanatory and qualifying adjectives. In my book "A Generous Orthodoxy," I called myself (among other things) "a small-e evangelical," but sometimes, it was just simpler to say "post-evangelical" or to avoid the whole "e-word" altogether.
Whatever I am, every election cycle, I feel, as I think many [E]vangelicals feel, that major media -- whether it was Fox News, MSNBC, CNN or whoever -- just don't get people like me. They consistently pick evangelical spokespeople who don't even remotely speak for us. Tony Perkins, Richard Land, Albert Mohler and company ... they have every right to express their opinions, and I'm sure they speak for a lot of folks, but I also know that a lot of us feel completely unspoken-for whenever their faces come on the screen.
This time around, it's been almost comical to see the same old stories recycled -- one can hardly call it reported -- again and again as news. Evangelicals are losing their influence, Evangelicals are flexing their muscles, Evangelicals are dead as a political force, Evangelicals have resurrected as a political force, Evangelicals are right wing fanatics, not all Evangelicals are right wing fanatics, et cetera, ad nauseum.
As a pastor, I did not want to be sucked into the Religious Right, but I didn't want to be labelled religious left (if there is such a thing) either. So I studiously tried to avoid politics altogether. That created problems of its own, as Paolo Freire said: "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."
Since leaving the pastorate, I've felt more free to be politically outspoken for several reasons. First and foremost, doing so won't disrupt the community I was paid to lead and help keep unified. Second, being misunderstood -- which always goes along with speaking out -- wouldn't be as costly to others, only to myself.
But in this election cycle, even though I've felt free to speak out, I haven't really wanted to so much. There is already so much noise, and every day brings a new outrage. "I'll just sit this one out," I've said to myself more than once. But then old Paolo Freire's words come back to mind.
So what do you do when you aren't comfortable being outspoken, aren't comfortable being silent and aren't comfortable being uncomfortably in between? If you are of a literary bent, you drift from direct to indirect communication, from trying your best to tell it straight to following Emily Dickenson's old dictum, to tell the truth but tell it slant.
For me, that's meant a foray into comic short fiction, maybe the literary equivalent of a sitcom. Short, light, a point, but not point-heavy ... flavored with some sugar and salt and fat like a snack, but maybe a little shot of vitamins in there too.
Meanwhile, with the election cycle and its daily outrages rolling on, I've been finishing up a major book about Christian identity in a multi-faith world. Talk about a serious subject! What could be more serious than how we can forge a religious identity that is characterized not by strength with hostility, and not by tolerance with weakness, but rather by strength with benevolence toward other faiths? The release date -- Sept. 11 -- underscores the seriousness of the subject. But even there, as the title suggests ("Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?"), it has seemed important to keep levity close at hand.
After all, when taking ourselves too seriously is part of the disease, we'd better not overdose on seriousness as part of our therapy.
So this last year or so has been a time to indulge in humor, fiction, fantasy, comedy, and other flights of imagination and fancy. The first three ebooks are highly comedic -- "The Word of the Lord to Democrats," followed by "...to Evangelicals" and "...to Republicans." The fourth, "The Girl with the Dove Tattoo," is a bit more dramatic than comedic, but no less fictional.
As I worked on them, I kept thinking about Jesus' use of short fiction -- often highly comedic -- that we call parable. And I saw the biblical Book of Jonah in a new light too. Like my projects, it is ultimately serious -- about how we demonize and dehumanize the other, often using religion to do so. It goes to great lengths to let God get a word in edgewise ... but it does so with a twist of comedy and fantasy, and maybe even what we might call political satire.
Dr. King captured the frustration of trying to speak, calling it "a vocation of agony":
And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
Bill Berkowitz: Kirk Cameron's 'Monumental' Christian Nationalist Quest
Religion is a man-made power tool fueled by fear and need and greed--wielded all too often by those filled w/hate.
As national law, religious law, imposed on a citizenry enforced with the power of government is tyranny.
Religion also seems to be very profitable for the TV preachers and, it now seems, for your. Congrats.
What is there to say when critical thinking, or even jokes, are considered murder?
If you say you don't like something about someone, you're killing them. If you think of something someone has done to you, or say it, the same thing. Even less confusing, it only applies to some people, others apparently have a 'license' to "kill" in this way, at will.
You can't say anything about anything, unless you have nothing to say.
And this is the world some people want.
Evangelicals spread the gospel of Jesus the Christ; and that can exist and continue without any politics. Telling people about God and Jesus and their love and mercy and grace is far more important than any campaign issue.
Famous Christians who are rigidly conservative do not speak for me or many of my friends. There are many famous Christians who are moderates and liberals, but whose voices are not being heard simply because they don't get the publicity since the media seem to turn to the same people over and over again and then the public (and media) get the wrong idea that all Christians think the same way when we definitely don't.
McLaren, Wallis, Sider, Hunter, Detweiler, Campolo, Ford and many others, whose books are on shelves in our home, have informed me and formed my thinking about faith and politics. I am grateful for those authors and activists who don't let conservatives claim the name "evangelical" or "Christian" or let conservatives act as if they speak for God, or imply that Jesus is only their Savior. What I read in the Bible aligns more closely with the thoughts and actions of McLaren and other authors I've read than with those of Perkins and other conservatives like him.
A mindful person will pay close attention to the effects of both action and inaction, on the issues one is confronted with in each of our daily lives. Sometimes it is best to not interfere, sometimes it is a moral obligation to speak out for truth and justice. One's impact must be measured and mindful, for there are consequences either way. We are confronted with choices to be made daily, and for those of religion we will be judged for our choices by our creator.
One must recognize the difference between weakness and sin, versus mindfulness.
When it is time to speak out, it is our duty to do so.
Complicit silence is just as wrong as the act of evil, do not become complacent!
"The only other historical remark I am to make, is, that the violent persecution which many eminent Christians met with in England from their brethren, who called themselves Protestants, drove them in great numbers to a distant part of the world, where the light of the gospel and true religion were unknown. Some of the American settlements, particularly those in New-England, were chiefly made by them; and as they carried the knowledge of Christ to the dark places of the earth, ... Does not the wrath of man in this instance praise God? Was not the accuser of the brethren, who stirs up their enemies, thus taken in his own craftiness, and his kingdom shaken by the very means which he employed to establish it."
The author of that telling review of political hi-jinks in merry old England was none other than Princeton President John Witherspoon, who went on to sign the Declaration of Independence, and performed innumerable political works.
The Dominion of Providence Over The Passions Of Men, John Witherspoon, 1776 Princeton NJ.
http://www.the-highway.com/providence_Witherspoon.html
Wikipedia article about Witherspoon :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Witherspoon
Any preachers ready to turn the world upside down again?
Any thoughts?
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Does this give you a better sense of the disenfranchisement non-theists often feel in re US Politics?