During my activist days I linked up with other people of faith in the community in which I was a church pastor. We engaged in public witness and made efforts to shape not only general opinion, but also to influence those who held political power. Our agenda, broadly stated, focused on economic and social justice issues.
We were fortunate that our member of Congress was receptive to entering into dialogue with us, and we took advantage of the opportunity to meet with him on a regular basis. He made a comment that has stuck in my mind down through the years since then. As we discussed issues related to poverty, he bluntly stated, "The poor have no voice."
In other words, people caught up in cycles of unemployment, housing discrimination, inflation, lack of health care, few educational opportunities, and related difficulties did not have easy access to those who made decisions and crafted legislation that affected their lives in deep and often detrimental ways.
It was one thing, his comment implied, that concerned folks like us raised issues we felt were important. It was another matter altogether that those stuck in the morass of a desperate situation had few opportunities, if any, to let the powerful (and wealthy) understand their realities.
I think we all sensed that to be the case, but still, we tried.
One of my colleagues, Kathy, a Catholic social ministry advocacy coordinator, and I took up the call from the national lobbying organization Bread for the World to sponsor a local Hunger Tour. The idea was to cart around decision makers in one's community and show them examples of the extent of the scuffling and suffering of people, especially related to food insecurity.
We devised a plan to invite office-holders and candidates (it was an election year) from local, state, and national levels to a day of visiting sites in our town that illustrated the food situation faced by those who were "left out."
Kathy arranged for a school bus, together we listed places to visit (dumpsters behind grocery stores, the local prison, food pantries, soup kitchens, welfare and legal services offices, etc.), and we divided the contact list of invitees.
One particularly distressing phone conversation I had was with a county judge. He just couldn't get it through his head that people really were suffering all that much in our community, or that elected officials could or should do anything about it. The thrust of his response was, "You in the church should just take care of it, if there really is a problem." This, of course, came on the heels of his party's president (it was the 1980's, you figure it out!) endeavoring to cut federal income tax credits on contributions made to churches and other benevolent non-profit organizations.
My blood pressure and anger rose with each passing second of my conversation with this person, and when the call ended I slammed down the phone and may have let slip a vain expression or two.
Surprisingly enough, though, the judge showed up for the tour and we made unspoken eye contact as people boarded the bus. We actually had a decent turn-out of candidates and office-holders, and we drove them around town, making our case. I doubt many, if any, opinions were changed, however.
All of this comes to mind for me as I observe evangelicals embracing The Current Occupant despite his myriad moral and ethical flaws. It seems they latched on to him primarily because of his stated positions on abortion and LGBT issues. Failing to see the whole person, many evangelicals sense an opening to impose their narrow views on the rest of the nation.
Equally disturbing is the tendency by evangelical "leaders" to want to cozy up to TCO, to get a "seat at the table." Billy Graham was famous for doing this. James Dobson of Focus on the Family played the insider role with Bush the Younger, and I'm sure many others have been seduced by the illusion of power in similar ways. My sense is such striving only serves the purposes of those in positions of power, expanding their bases, and the religious groupies actually are shunted to the children's table at whatever feast they think they are attending.
It occurs to me that Jesus had little use for worldly power. When called on the carpet by Pontius Pilate after being arrested because those religious leaders who sought to cozy up to Roman authority fingered him as a threat to that authority, Jesus stood silent under Pilate's questioning.
Pilate was not the authority to whom Jesus answered.
So, it seems to me that speaking truth to power is one thing. Submitting to that power to the extent of getting caught up in it and trying to embrace it, is another.
