Starting with Occupy Wall Street, protests have spread across the United States with Americans from all walks of life decrying the economic inequities faced in our nation today. This movement is a new "Great Awakening" with implications for our spiritual lives.
People of faith are called to stand with the "least of these" and like in the days which Jesus walked the earth increasingly the "least of the these" make up the majority of the people as power and wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few powerful individuals (and in our time corporations).
In 2007, the General Assembly of the National Council of Churches adopted "A Social Creed for the 21st Century" that could read as a platform for Christian participation in the Occupy America movement. It read, in part:
In the love incarnate in Jesus, despite the world's sufferings and evils, we honor the deep connections within our human family and seek to awaken a new spirit of community, by working for:
- Abatement of hunger and poverty, and enactment of policies benefiting the most vulnerable.
- High quality public education for all and universal, affordable and accessible healthcare.
- An effective program of social security during sickness, disability and old age.
- Tax and budget policies that reduce disparities between rich and poor, strengthen democracy, and provide greater opportunity for everyone within the common good.
- Just immigration policies that protect family unity, safeguard workers' rights, require employer accountability, and foster international cooperation.
- Sustainable communities marked by affordable housing, access to good jobs, and public safety.
- Public service as a high vocation, with real limits on the power of private interests in politics.
For Christians, supporting the Occupy America protests should be clear-cut. The protesters are lifting up principles of compassion, justice and love. These principles are central to the Christian faith.
We need to do more to address the truly fundamental problems facing our nation. As a start, we need Congress to pass President Obama's American Jobs Act.
But we also need to dig more deeply and make the American economy work not just for the wealthy and the largest corporations but for the common good of all Americans -- while at the same time taking note of our place in the global community.
Supporting Occupy America is a Christian act born out of the call we have received to help build-up the Beloved Community. Our churches should seize this movement as a new Great Awakening and once again preach a Social Gospel that lifts up the common good of all and firmly rejects prosperity theology and other movements in our churches that have allowed us to ignore the fundamental principles of biblical justice.
Follow Rev. Chuck Currie on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RevChuckCurrie
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Sanitary conditions at the park are deplorable. The business alliance volunteers who usually clean the restrooms say they keep getting harassed by the protestors, so they won't enter the park until illegal encampment has left.
Alcohol and drug use was tolerated for the first 2 weeks of the occupation until word got out. Finally they are starting to crack down after the media got a whiff, so to speak.
A 9-year-old kid wandered away from the encampment and was lost for 2 hours. A TV reporter then discovered that 20 children were at this encampment. An illegal encampment. In downtown Portland. At night. What parent would allow their child to be in such a risky setting?
I believe more than ever that Jesus would not align Himself with such a movement. And I repeat: Trying to call the ministry of Jesus political in nature is disgraceful. I was saying that during the days of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and I continue to say it.
- Rev. Chuck Currie
If it doesn't work out for you, feel free to continue to try again. And again....
"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." (Isaiah 9:6)
The evidence of supply-sides epic failure matters not. As in all things religious, faith trumps truth every time.
Real Christians and real churches take care of their own families completely. With healthy families, they are then able to be a great blessing to those in need.
But once we let government start having the authority of the church, government started occupying more and more territory in the lives of its people.
Churches and families no longer know what their role is.
A turning point in this world that is becoming increasingly secularized and vulnerable to less compromising faiths, is for the Christian church and its faithful to start taking care and educating their children within their families and their churches. We also must start taking care of our elderly. We must also turn our backs on sports and entertainment worship. Most Christian families want to stay in big public schools so their children can enjoy big time sports and band. They can live with their children getting bullied. They can live with vulgar rap music blaring at basketball games, during cheerleader routines, and over the intercom in between classes.
It'll be okay. We're all praying for our children aren't we? We don't have to actually do anything about the stinking environment we put them in everyday - we actually want them there so they can reach the lost. SORRY, that's wrong.
Something 'Christian' that ACTUALLY IS.
Remember Christ hauling out that can of whoop on the moneychangers in the Temple?
IT'S TIME.