Expanding political horizons in the local congregation
Political Pulpit
Object:
Wes has offered important reflections on implementing what we write about in these columns in your parish. How appropriate a topic with the congressional and local elections behind us and the new year on the horizon.
Wes is right on target about our responsibility to place the socio-political debates in our denominations before our parishioners, to facilitate conversation about them, or else these issues will never surface on parishioners' radar screens. (The only time the media ever gives sustained coverage to such statements of our denominations is when it helps put the church in a bad light.) Likewise, Wes' advice to solicit the wisdom and actions of the "father and mother figures" in your congregation in order to resolve disputes, to find ways for you as the pastor to get involved in local political issues demonstrates sound parish horse-sense from which we can all profit. To this wisdom I would add two points with which I am pretty sure from our conversations over the years that he would agree. It is wise if you postpone engagement in local politics until you have served the congregation for a while, know the people and the territory, and have the reputation of being a pastor who puts the congregants and our Lord first. My other point is to invite you to consider a suggestion Wes made several years ago in another column. He proposed that pastors, bishops, and denominational leaders do what good CEOs do, try to assemble advisory teams of the very best people on those topics in the community that require action, drawing on their wisdom and gaining their enthusiasm for the proposals for improving the community that finally emerge from the group. When the church has local community heavyweights behind its plans and proposals, things can really get implemented in town and in the parish.
Of course despite all our agreements on these matters, you would expect that the two of us have a few points where we see things a little differently. The title of this column tells you what our friendly disagreement is all about. I think politics in the congregation is about expanding parishioners' and our own horizons.
Wes is right: "People are mostly concerned with the things that really affect them in deference to the larger issues that make newspaper headlines!" Very few congregations do engage in studies of issues that impact the world or nation (hunger, poverty, ecology, discrimination, decline in moral standards). That is the (sinful) reality. Augustine called it concupiscence. We will always try to bring the issues of the day back to ourselves and our own self-interest (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 5, pp. 75-276). It is as Martin Luther said about us: "Even if they do good works, they are only looking out for their own advantage" (Luther's Works, Vol. 21, p. 137).
In view of such innate selfishness, I believe it is the business of the church to critique it, by expanding horizons, by getting parishioners to think beyond themselves and their immediate self-interests. I am not naïve about this proposal. It is not easily accomplished and involves risks. But it is precisely to prophesy against our innate selfishness and to expand our horizons that we need the political pulpit, and we need to do what we can to stimulate conversation in the church about global and national issues. As I noted above, if it doesn't happen in the church, where is such conversation going to transpire?
Of course this is not to argue against Wes' call for local political engagement in and by the church. I'm just trying to raise the issue of how we do it, that we don't take up local issues to the exclusion of and without regard for national and international dynamics.
How will you address the local issues in your community, in your congregation? The assigned lessons for these months provide rich suggestions. Concern for the poor reflects in the first lessons for December 5, January 6, January 23, and February 20, as well as in the second lesson for January 6, and the gospel for December 12 and January 30. We are reminded of the mandate to seek peace in the gospel for December 25 and February 20 as well as in the first lesson for New Year's Day. Even the need to protect the plight of the worker (so appropriate in our present economic climate) is addressed in the first lesson for February 6 (Isaiah 58:1-2a [9b-12]) along with lots of attention to justice in the first lessons for January 9, January 30, and February 6. And don't overlook the condemnation of divorce in the gospel for February 13 (Matthew 5:21-37). No two ways about it: You can't do local politics without advocating policies that promote justice and peace and that protect the poor and the welfare of the labor force. Even though Wes doesn't advise it, faithfully witnessing to the Bible might even have to address family and marriage issues, as well as homosexual relations on February 13. All of the Sundays and festivals noted above are opportunities to make your pulpit political, to analyze the social problems of the day, even local problems, in light of these core Christian and human ethical norms.
Don't take the preceding discussion as a denial of the fact that there is some wisdom in using our concupiscent tendency to make everything about ourselves as a gimmick, in using local issues as a springboard to work on the larger social ills. You have to start somewhere. But it also means that when you and your congregation plunge into the local issues of your community (be it zoning, traffic, crime, taxes, illegal immigrants, the schools, you name them), you not only consider them in light of the social norms taught by our lessons in these months, but that you also consider the implications of the positions you take for the whole county, state, nation, and world. A realistic Christian perspective as I advocate also entails that you not be so naïve as to imagine that how your community is proceeding with these issues is isolated from current social and national trends. Some examples follow.
Our national government and economic structures are all geared to favor the rich. Here are the facts. It costs a fortune to get elected. That means you either have to be rich or to have a lot of rich friends and donors in order to get elected to public office. As recently as 2006 it took on the average $1.9 million to win a seat in the US House of Representatives and $40 million if you wanted to become Senator from New York, Pennsylvania, or Connecticut. And when you get elected, who are you going to help? Those (the rich interests) that got you elected. This explains why lobbyists (representing wealthy clients) spent $3.49 billion on Congress in 2009! These statistics also in turn explain why the wealth gap continues to spike in America (the average CEO earning 310 times what the average American worker does, while just prior to the Reagan Revolution in 1978 the gap was just 35 to 1). Of all the industrialized nations of the world, the US ranks behind each one except Mexico and Turkey with regard to percentage of the population who is poor (17%). And it is last regarding length of time people remain poor (7% of the population qualifying as persistently poor). All the hubbub prior to and in the congressional elections about maintaining the Bush tax cuts overlooked the fact that the biggest beneficiaries of the Republican largesse were individuals making $200,000 per year and family's making a quarter of a million annually. It doesn't impact many of us or our parishioners. The tax cuts were only a big deal for the rich, though our politicians and the media, which the rich own, didn't let many of us know. And let's not forget that the middle class Americans pay a much higher percentage of their salary income in social security taxes than those making over $100,000 per year (as in 2010 every penny the rich make over $106,800 is tax free). No two ways about it: Federal and state government are biased toward the interests of the rich and powerful.
The lesson for our present topic should be obvious. Don't be naïve in your local political engagements. These national trends are probably impacting your town and county governments too. The rich and powerful, the business owners, usually get their way. What looks good at a glance for your town may not be very good for your parishioners if you really study the action of the local governing entity, and if the action or ordinance is good for you it may not be good for the poor and street people in your village. With that kind of political realism, along with the moral norms I've helped you identify in the lectionary texts for these months, you and your flock will be ready to join Wes in the trenches, ready to do local politics in your congregation, but with a political horizon that stretches beyond your selfishness, stretches you and your parish to care for the best interests of everyone in town, the best interests of the nation and the globe, the best interests of all God's children and creation. Preach that word these months, and you'll be preaching the true meaning of Christmas, offering your parishioners the most important New Year's resolution that they and our nation are going to hear! Enjoy those festivals, friends, but don't forget to talk about their political significance, about caring for and governing villages that make life better for all God's creatures.
Mark Ellingsen is a professor on the faculty of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta and the author of hundreds of articles and fourteen books, most recently Sin Bravely: A Joyful Alternative to a Purpose-Driven Life (Continuum).
Wes is right on target about our responsibility to place the socio-political debates in our denominations before our parishioners, to facilitate conversation about them, or else these issues will never surface on parishioners' radar screens. (The only time the media ever gives sustained coverage to such statements of our denominations is when it helps put the church in a bad light.) Likewise, Wes' advice to solicit the wisdom and actions of the "father and mother figures" in your congregation in order to resolve disputes, to find ways for you as the pastor to get involved in local political issues demonstrates sound parish horse-sense from which we can all profit. To this wisdom I would add two points with which I am pretty sure from our conversations over the years that he would agree. It is wise if you postpone engagement in local politics until you have served the congregation for a while, know the people and the territory, and have the reputation of being a pastor who puts the congregants and our Lord first. My other point is to invite you to consider a suggestion Wes made several years ago in another column. He proposed that pastors, bishops, and denominational leaders do what good CEOs do, try to assemble advisory teams of the very best people on those topics in the community that require action, drawing on their wisdom and gaining their enthusiasm for the proposals for improving the community that finally emerge from the group. When the church has local community heavyweights behind its plans and proposals, things can really get implemented in town and in the parish.
Of course despite all our agreements on these matters, you would expect that the two of us have a few points where we see things a little differently. The title of this column tells you what our friendly disagreement is all about. I think politics in the congregation is about expanding parishioners' and our own horizons.
Wes is right: "People are mostly concerned with the things that really affect them in deference to the larger issues that make newspaper headlines!" Very few congregations do engage in studies of issues that impact the world or nation (hunger, poverty, ecology, discrimination, decline in moral standards). That is the (sinful) reality. Augustine called it concupiscence. We will always try to bring the issues of the day back to ourselves and our own self-interest (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 5, pp. 75-276). It is as Martin Luther said about us: "Even if they do good works, they are only looking out for their own advantage" (Luther's Works, Vol. 21, p. 137).
In view of such innate selfishness, I believe it is the business of the church to critique it, by expanding horizons, by getting parishioners to think beyond themselves and their immediate self-interests. I am not naïve about this proposal. It is not easily accomplished and involves risks. But it is precisely to prophesy against our innate selfishness and to expand our horizons that we need the political pulpit, and we need to do what we can to stimulate conversation in the church about global and national issues. As I noted above, if it doesn't happen in the church, where is such conversation going to transpire?
Of course this is not to argue against Wes' call for local political engagement in and by the church. I'm just trying to raise the issue of how we do it, that we don't take up local issues to the exclusion of and without regard for national and international dynamics.
How will you address the local issues in your community, in your congregation? The assigned lessons for these months provide rich suggestions. Concern for the poor reflects in the first lessons for December 5, January 6, January 23, and February 20, as well as in the second lesson for January 6, and the gospel for December 12 and January 30. We are reminded of the mandate to seek peace in the gospel for December 25 and February 20 as well as in the first lesson for New Year's Day. Even the need to protect the plight of the worker (so appropriate in our present economic climate) is addressed in the first lesson for February 6 (Isaiah 58:1-2a [9b-12]) along with lots of attention to justice in the first lessons for January 9, January 30, and February 6. And don't overlook the condemnation of divorce in the gospel for February 13 (Matthew 5:21-37). No two ways about it: You can't do local politics without advocating policies that promote justice and peace and that protect the poor and the welfare of the labor force. Even though Wes doesn't advise it, faithfully witnessing to the Bible might even have to address family and marriage issues, as well as homosexual relations on February 13. All of the Sundays and festivals noted above are opportunities to make your pulpit political, to analyze the social problems of the day, even local problems, in light of these core Christian and human ethical norms.
Don't take the preceding discussion as a denial of the fact that there is some wisdom in using our concupiscent tendency to make everything about ourselves as a gimmick, in using local issues as a springboard to work on the larger social ills. You have to start somewhere. But it also means that when you and your congregation plunge into the local issues of your community (be it zoning, traffic, crime, taxes, illegal immigrants, the schools, you name them), you not only consider them in light of the social norms taught by our lessons in these months, but that you also consider the implications of the positions you take for the whole county, state, nation, and world. A realistic Christian perspective as I advocate also entails that you not be so naïve as to imagine that how your community is proceeding with these issues is isolated from current social and national trends. Some examples follow.
Our national government and economic structures are all geared to favor the rich. Here are the facts. It costs a fortune to get elected. That means you either have to be rich or to have a lot of rich friends and donors in order to get elected to public office. As recently as 2006 it took on the average $1.9 million to win a seat in the US House of Representatives and $40 million if you wanted to become Senator from New York, Pennsylvania, or Connecticut. And when you get elected, who are you going to help? Those (the rich interests) that got you elected. This explains why lobbyists (representing wealthy clients) spent $3.49 billion on Congress in 2009! These statistics also in turn explain why the wealth gap continues to spike in America (the average CEO earning 310 times what the average American worker does, while just prior to the Reagan Revolution in 1978 the gap was just 35 to 1). Of all the industrialized nations of the world, the US ranks behind each one except Mexico and Turkey with regard to percentage of the population who is poor (17%). And it is last regarding length of time people remain poor (7% of the population qualifying as persistently poor). All the hubbub prior to and in the congressional elections about maintaining the Bush tax cuts overlooked the fact that the biggest beneficiaries of the Republican largesse were individuals making $200,000 per year and family's making a quarter of a million annually. It doesn't impact many of us or our parishioners. The tax cuts were only a big deal for the rich, though our politicians and the media, which the rich own, didn't let many of us know. And let's not forget that the middle class Americans pay a much higher percentage of their salary income in social security taxes than those making over $100,000 per year (as in 2010 every penny the rich make over $106,800 is tax free). No two ways about it: Federal and state government are biased toward the interests of the rich and powerful.
The lesson for our present topic should be obvious. Don't be naïve in your local political engagements. These national trends are probably impacting your town and county governments too. The rich and powerful, the business owners, usually get their way. What looks good at a glance for your town may not be very good for your parishioners if you really study the action of the local governing entity, and if the action or ordinance is good for you it may not be good for the poor and street people in your village. With that kind of political realism, along with the moral norms I've helped you identify in the lectionary texts for these months, you and your flock will be ready to join Wes in the trenches, ready to do local politics in your congregation, but with a political horizon that stretches beyond your selfishness, stretches you and your parish to care for the best interests of everyone in town, the best interests of the nation and the globe, the best interests of all God's children and creation. Preach that word these months, and you'll be preaching the true meaning of Christmas, offering your parishioners the most important New Year's resolution that they and our nation are going to hear! Enjoy those festivals, friends, but don't forget to talk about their political significance, about caring for and governing villages that make life better for all God's creatures.
Mark Ellingsen is a professor on the faculty of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta and the author of hundreds of articles and fourteen books, most recently Sin Bravely: A Joyful Alternative to a Purpose-Driven Life (Continuum).