It's the Social Justice Gospel.
It's not black or white. It's not exclusively Southern Baptist or Pentecostal or Presbyterian or Catholic or Jewish or Muslim--it's all of us. Sometimes it might be angry, but it's not hate-mongering. It's not war-mongering. It's not rabid nationalism masquerading as "patriotism" or raging intolerance masquerading as "religion." It's not the evils of abortion-abortion-abortion or gays-gays-gays. It's not hellfire and damnation. It's not anti-any-faith-but-my-own-brand-of-Christianity dogma.
On Wednesday, March 19, I was fortunate enough to go to The Carter Center in Atlanta to hear a compelling argument for a citizen-driven movement for change in America. Progressive evangelical leader Jim Wallis spoke to the need for a revival of faith in a nation whose government is broken; whose moral and ethical compass is spinning, leaving us lost, isolated from one another and from the truth. And before all you ardent secularists and faith-is-the-big-myth folks start hollering "Oh, no you don't! I'm not buying your religious hocus-pocus!", let me share a few quotes from Jim Wallis' message:
"Religion has no monopoly on morality...for the last twenty-five years this country has been afflicted by the Religious Right...God is not American--or Republican...the idea of the common good also has secular roots...a whole new denomination has emerged--the 'spiritual but not religious'..." Wallis, who, like Barack Obama, was against invading Iraq from day one, maintains that we must leave behind the "exclusive use of war to fight evil."
Great moral shifts in this country have often begun in and been fueled by our communities of faith. Broad social movements arise to change bad public policy: Reforming child labor law, the abolition of slavery, civil rights, voting rights, ending war. Fiery rhetoric from both the pulpit and the secular public square moves us to demand change for the common good. And when we act together, when we believe the larger truth of our humanity is more important than our individual differences, when speak as one voice, we expose social injustice. We effect positive change.
It's never easy. Sweeping change calls for self-examination. The truth is too often ugly and those who hold up the mirror, demanding that we look at ourselves, are seldom well-loved for having done it. We are fond of cosmetics; pretty, shiny things that mask our flaws. We want to be free to love ourselves, to believe in only the best of what we've done, of who we are. An honest look, in bright light, in the American mirror tells us this:
We breached the borders of the New World uninvited. We refused to assimilate or learn the language. There was land and wealth to be had and we wanted it all. This was our Manifest Destiny. So we took what we wanted, shoving Native Americans out of the way--and none too gently. We began with thievery and ended with genocide. When we wanted cheap labor, we participated in the kidnapping and enslavement of free citizens of Africa. We believed "...all men are created equal...", but slavery, child labor and denying women the vote were acceptable in our new democracy. We brutalized people of color. We stripped Japanese Americans of everything they owned and condemned them to the American equivalent of concentration camps during WWII. We have an ugly history of participating in the overthrow of duly elected leaders of other sovereign nations when it served our national interest; often, that "interest" was greed-driven. We wanted their natural resources and we wanted them cheap. We've propped up murderous tyrants when it suited our purposes. We have used lofty terms like patriotism, liberation and democratization to justify our actions.
We have been, and we remain, an imperfect nation. The inner struggle to do the right thing rather than the self-serving thing has always been a necessary exercise--and it is one battle we fail to fight until we are led to do it. Those who dare to speak out against the sins of our greed, our indifference and our intolerance are often the objects of public scorn. In today's toxic environment of swaggering American arrogance and the co-opting of religious faith by narrow fundamentalism, any criticism of this country is regarded as heresy. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright may have been inflammatory in his rhetoric but an examination of the entirety of his "...God damn America!" and post-9/11 sermons bears witness to this fundamental truth: He was not entirely wrong, nor was he anti-American. He was speaking to the need for self-examination and for change. He was preaching the Social Justice Gospel from his own undeniable experience, from his own undeniable pain.
Calmer voices should--and will--prevail. The definition of "people of faith" is, at last, expanding. For the common good. For battling the true moral sins of poverty, starvation, disease, ignorance, inequality and wars without end. Whether we join a movement for social justice in the name of God, in the name of Christ, in the name of Allah, or in the name of secular morality, is irrelevant. What matters most is that we unite in fostering the credo shared by all major religions and by all good people: We are, indeed, our brothers' and our sisters' keeper. Their suffering is our suffering. We have the power, if we choose to follow those who speak to our hearts and our collective conscience, to heal a broken nation.
If we want to lead the world we must restore the world's faltering faith in American leadership. And that will happen only when we have courage enough look in the mirror, see what's really there, and find faith enough to make it right.
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Posted March 26, 2008 | 04:22 AM (EST)