Affirmation 6 – Poor and Outcast Neighbors

Affirmation 6
Standing, as Jesus does, with the outcast and oppressed, the denigrated and afflicted, seeking peace and justice with or without the support of others;

Evangelical Christian activist Jim Wallis writes in his book, God’s Politics, that he often does a little “Bible quiz” for audiences he speaks to.  He asks, “What is the most famous biblical text in America about the poor?”  He writes, “Every time, I mean every single time, I receive the same answer: ‘The poor you will always have with you!’  they shout out.”

I can relate to this experience.  Growing up in the affluent suburban community of Mercer Island, Washington (a suburb of Seattle) this phrase was drilled into my head over and over.  However, Jesus’ saying that “the poor you will always have with you” is far from the sum total of what the Bible has to say about poverty and, in fact, this passage is misinterpreted to mean that Jesus didn’t care about the poor (If so, why did he care in so many other passages?).

Contrary to what some would have us believe, the Bible is far more concerned with justice for the poor, widow, orphan, and foreigner than the issues like homosexuality, abortion, and prayer in schools.  For instance, in contrast to the six passages that could be construed as having to do with homosexuality (and not all of them hold up to closer scrutiny), there are over 2,000 passages in the Bible that have to do with wealth and our use of material possessions.  In some of the prophetic literature (Amos and Jeremiah), the claim is even made that you can be among the most pious people in the world and if you fail to care for society’s marginalized and denigrated, you may as well be worshipping astral deities or Canaanite gods, not the God of the Hebrews.

On the other hand, contrary to the view of some Christians who would claim that social justice is the ONLY issue God is concerned about, the biblical tradition  speaks quite assertively that turning our lives over to God and attending to our spiritual path are at least as important as social justice.  In fact, the great prophets of old would have thought it absurd to invest energy in the very justice issues they were so passionate about without turning one’s heart, and indeed one’s very life, over to the will and guidance of God’s spirit.

In this the prophets were utterly practical.  They recognized that the interests of society are fickle and tend to drift with the wind.  Without an adequate grounding in the spiritual path, they recognized that justice would be subject to people’s momentary whims and desires.  People would work on behalf of the marginalized only as long as it was the socially acceptable thing to do, rather than as a long-term commitment to doing “on earth as it is in heaven.”  Justice would be subject to fads, or to the exigencies of self-interest (“I’ll be glad to help the poor as long as I can make a buck off it.”).

It may seem contrary to popular wisdom, but the spiritual disciplines of prayer, Bible study, worship, and fellowship in a faith community, are critical to the maintenance of a long-term commitment to (and energy for) social justice.  This isn’t merely personal opinion, but is backed by solid evidence.  Throughout American history, issues of social justice have had a very hard time gaining traction in society until communities of faith took them up and began seeing them as part of their spiritual walk with God.

Of course, there have been many times when faith communities were the very ones standing in the way of justice, whether it was during the struggle against slavery, or for women’s rights, or for civil rights for all races.  Nevertheless, none of these movements caught fire in our society until a critical mass of faith communities began to embrace and sustain them.

One possible exception to this pattern is the current struggle for civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people (LGBT).  As in the “days of old,” many churches have followed the pattern of being slow to awaken to this social justice issue.  Yet what seems to be breaking the pattern is that a strong and growing consensus is developing in our society – particularly among those under the age of thirty – that LGBT equality is basic to our social contract.  This is happening despite faith communities, not because of them. To this day, being an active member of a faith community is the biggest predictor of support (or rather, lack of support) for LGBT equality.

To me, this break in the pattern of justice being carried forward by communities of faith is troubling.  For “secular” society to be the champion of social justice for LGBT people suggests that churches and other communities of Spirit have somehow lost a connection to the historical relationship between faith and justice for the marginalized.  What is particularly troubling about this break is that, whenever this happened in biblical history, the faith community went into steep and even disastrous decline.  It is as if God’s Spirit has a flow to it, and when that flow is impeded by the communities of Spirit overly long, it jumps boundaries and flows into “back channels” (These days, the “secular” community.).  While this new pattern cannot be sustained over long periods of time (the Spirit is intelligent enough to know that it flows most robustly when it is sustained by those committed to its flow), it can indeed work temporarily.  Justice can be sustained in the short-run by those who do not connect justice with their spiritual path – as long as it’s the “socially acceptable” or self-interested thing to do (On this latter point, note the embrace of LGBT equality by corporations who have realized it’s not profitable to discriminate based on sexual orientation).  In the meantime, the spirit-communities flounder, lose spirit and energy, and eventually begin to collapse in on themselves.

When this happens, the basic pattern morphs, and looks like this:  When the pain of collapse becomes widespread enough, and great enough, people begin realize once-again that they can’t sustain their faith communities under their own will and direction.  Some of them begin to rediscover the classic spiritual disciples – the things that turn their heads and hearts over to the Spirit – and this re-ignites their essential spark.  They begin to wake up and come alive in their worship and community life, and in their work in the community, even as other faith communities continue to implode.  Eventually, thus, this generalized implosion among the faith communities leads to an explosion of new energy similar to what happens when a star collapses in on itself (Supernova!).  Unlike stars, whose supernovas signal their final end, supernovas in the faith community tend to thrust them into another dimension or sorts – a higher level of existence.  These periods become known as “Great Revivals” and “Great Reformations.”

This pattern was perhaps best articulated for our times with respect to the Christian faith community by the late William Sloan Coffin, former Senior Minister of Riverside Church, who observed:

The Church, of all the institutions in society, interprets the memory and proclaims the message of the coming kingdom.  The Church may distort Jesus into a white middle-class pillar of American respectability; it may pervert his image into that of a religious Babbitt pushing the cult of successfulness; it may distort and pervert his image, but the Church cannot forget Jesus.  And in spite of its best efforts to domesticate that Jesus, the Church knows and frequently fears that his message will be rediscovered.  The Church cannot help but keep the name in circulation, and where the name is remembered there is hope.” (Credo, p. 138)

A true church is one which is “joyfully and unapologetically Christian” and is just as ”joyfully and unapologetically” justice-oriented.  As in biblical times, these go hand in hand, and lead to amazing vitality and life not just for the marginalized but for the whole community.