| Ira Chernus PROFESSOR OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER |
Praise the Lord and Pass
the Petition
If you are waiting for a religious left to
emerge to offset the power of the religious right, it may already be in your
own neighborhood, at a local church or synagogue. I stumbled across a branch of
the religious left quite by accident recently, in
On a weekend in mid-February, nearly 200
Evangelical Lutherans from all over the country came to
They had demanded action from public officials
in their communities, and they were proud of their victories. Among the local
triumphs some of them claimed were: affordable housing for thousands of
families; guaranteed access to health insurance for all children; treatment
centers instead of prisons for criminals; a new community center where a meth house used to be; free day-care centers; water and
sewer lines for 150,000 rural poor who had none before; laws requiring public
contractors to pay a living wage; surveillance cameras in police cars -- to
watch the police themselves.
The list of wins went on and on. In every
case devout Christians, often allied with secular activists, had put enough
pressure on politicians to turn empty promises into real results. These
Christians did it all because they felt called by the Lord to do His work, to
create justice in the world -- and because they've learned the rigorous,
disciplined organizing techniques pioneered by Saul Alinsky,
who created the Industrial Areas Foundation in the 1940s, and Ernesto Cortez,
who then sparked Alinsky-style organizations from the
barrios of Texas to the valleys of Los Angeles.
The Christians I met at CBOSS pray endlessly to Jesus,
but their savior is no meek and mild turner of the other cheek. He is the Great
Organizer. He agitates, builds political tension, and goes toe-to-toe with any
authority who abuses power to oppress people. He is the model of a fighter for
justice who won't ever quit until the wrongs of the world are righted. This
Jesus has political values as radical as -- maybe more radical than -- yours.
He offers his followers eternal life in heaven. But first He demands that they
work to create justice on earth every day by practicing the arts of tough
political love that He taught so long ago.
They call their political work
"faith-based community organizing," or sometimes
"congregation-based organizing" to avoid confusion with George Bush's
"faith-based initiative," which is a very different thing. In Bush's
approach, religion is supposed to take the sin out of the sinner. That,
congregation-based community organizers will tell you, is a case of blaming the
victim. The problem lies not in the supposed sins of the poor, oppressed, and
marginalized. The real sin is oppressive economic and political systems that
deprive people of rights, resources, and hope.
That sinful system flourishes -- as they
reminded themselves many times over in the CBOSS meeting -- because the
powerless let the powerful get away with it. When the powerless heed the divine
call to organize, they can exert enough political power to force sinners to
mend their ways, and so to mend neighborhoods, schools, and social institutions
that their greed has destroyed.
I happened to meet only representatives of
the Lutherans, but progressive Christians, it turns out, are everywhere. The
Lutherans organize in interfaith coalitions with Catholics, other Protestants
-- and increasingly Jews and Unitarians. In some locales, Muslims, Buddhists,
and other faith communities are joining in, too. They also work hand-in-hand
with non-religious, non-believing activists -- even out-and-out atheists. If
you are involved in any kind of campaign for justice, these are people you want
on your side. They will probably support most of the same causes you do. In
fact, they may already be working for many of them.
To be perfectly frank, all their
God-and-Jesus talk may make you nervous. A whole weekend of
it made a non-Christian like me kind of twitchy. If your knowledge of Christian
activism comes mainly through television and radio, you probably hear words
like "congregation-based" and "faith-based" and think
"conservative" or even "fanatic." If you hear
"baptized" and "resurrection," the words "Bush"
and "right-wing" undoubtedly come quickly to mind. No wonder
Christians make us nervous.
I went to CBOSS as an outsider, accompanying
my partner, the director of Interfaith Funders, a
national consortium of faith-based and secular grant-makers who support
faith-based community organizing. (Their website is a great resource for
learning more about the nature of this community.) But at the closing session,
when they called for evaluation and feedback, I decided to join in.
I asked the Lutherans to understand how hard
it is for secular activists like me to hear their talk. I said they should cut
us some slack when we seem anti-Christian to them, or mistakenly lump all
activist Christians together as "the religious right." I urged them
to overlook our trepidation and work with us for common political goals. They
gave me a rousing cheer. The spiritual godfather of their movement, Rev. John Heinemeier, a minister who transformed whole neighborhoods
in the Bronx and
But we need to hear their message, too. There
is nothing inherently conservative in Christian language. It can point in any
political direction, even the most radical. After all, it's the language of
Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, and the Berrigan
brothers. If all that stuff about "the power and glory of Christ" and
"all praise to the Lord" makes for knots in your stomach, or even a
gag in your throat, let it be. Put it in the same class as those aching feet
after a long day of leafleting or your aching head from an all-night organizing
meeting. It's just a price to be paid to get our political work done.
We'll pay a much bigger price if we let the
Christians' God-and-Jesus talk keep us from making alliances with people like
those at CBOSS. If we want to make social change, the faith-based are the
people to work with. Their organizing techniques are among the most
sophisticated I've seen. They've built at least 180 ongoing organizations in
cities and towns across the country, linked in huge networks like PICO, the Gamaliel Foundation, the
We're not talking about single-issue
coalitions that win a victory and then dissolve. These are religious
denominations that have been around for centuries. And they plan to stay around
for centuries more. They can tap into powerful national organizations with
immense resources. Most important, they have an almost inexhaustible energy.
They get it from all that praying and singing and talking about God. So the
next time you hear someone praise Jesus, stop and ask them about issues like
health care, a living wage, affordable housing, and police brutality. You may
be surprised to find an invaluable ally for your own activism.
True, there may be some issues dear to your
heart that you and some of these Christian organizers don't see eye to eye on.
Their views on social issues like abortion and gay rights span the spectrum
from radical to conservative. But faith-based organizers have learned a vital
lesson from Saul Alinsky, one all of us should
absorb: To build a broad political base, have no permanent enemies and no
permanent allies. Work with anyone who shares your current goal. If there are
some subjects that might create tensions, just don't talk about them, at least
until the goal is won.
At the victory party, you may discover that
your Christian allies have turned into friends. You may find that now, over a
beer, they are ready to listen to your views on subjects once too tense to talk
about. But watch out. They'll be praising the Lord for turning the world toward
justice. And their enthusiasm is infectious. You might be astonished to hear
yourself praising the Lord, too.
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