Photo by chuck chowen @ibechowen
I’m writing this as my first post since returning to Denver from the Poor Peoples’ Campaign Moral Monday at the Border in El Paso, Texas. My last post was about the pervasive heretical interpretation of the Bible that has dominated the religious narrative since the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior so it seems appropriate to write an authentic counterpoint to that heresy using The Poor Peoples’ Campaign as inspiration.
The Poor Peoples’ Campaign is an effort to recall and restore a movement started by Dr. King, one that may have ultimately resulted in his assassination. The Poor Peoples’ Campaign is an effort to weave all disenfranchised people together. regardless of the things that have been used to divide us, race, gender, urban vs rural, Republicans and Democrats.
The Poor Peoples’ Campaign and several other organized efforts are showing the beginnings of something big, a shift in what it means to be Christian. I’ve seen this in many of my conversations across the spectrum of my friends who have “Christian” as a piece of their identity, there is a shift away from the dogma of selective application theology and towards a new old way. By selective application theology I mean the process of using scriptural contradictions, often due to bad translations, to exclude people from God’s love or from the kingdom of heaven. The shift I see is one based in acceptance, one that strives to reflect humanity's diversity, and that will strive for the kingdom of heaven on earth now, not in some far off time or place.
It will be interesting to see whether efforts like the Poor Peoples’ Campaign will have an effect on the national Conversation about what people of faith should be doing in these trying times. To be frank, it is not prayer of thought or best wishes that is on offer from these agents of change. Instead what is on offer is prayer of action and witness, prayer of solidarity and justice. These are the prayers that this movement, much greater than just a poor people's campaign, is bringing to our tables.
In his speech at the opening of Wild Goose 2019, Reverend Dr. Barber called for a moral Pentecost. Not only is he right, I think it may be that the seeds of this Pentecost have been sown in the hearts of some of the most unexpected people and planted by the hands of some of the least likely farmers. It is actually in the hearts of those were raised by the strongest purveyors of the heresies of hate where I find a deep conflict between the Bible they know and the theology they are raised in.
Photo by chuck chowen
@ibechowen
All people who are raised in this way know and are beginning to recognize this conflict. There is hope in this breaking as people realize how far we have fallen as people of faith. The children who were immersed in this heresy seem to be waking up to their conflict far faster than the “mainline” communities. This transformation of the Religious conversation is coming. The real question is, what we can do with these conversations?
What will come out of these conversations? What policy will come from this? What new definitions will emerge? Will we as Christians allow ourselves to be divided and categorized over single issues, as has been our past and is our present with abortion and Sex Ed and many others?
Christianity is a multi-platform faith. These individual issues aren’t enough to define what it is to be Christian. We must talk about the devastation at our border, about the demolition of our environment, about the prison industrial complex, about the wealth gap. All these things are all scriptural issues, not secular issues. They are moral and spiritual as well as mechanical. This is where we must stand up as Christians or people of any faith and refuse to be silent. We must not be externally defined and turned against one another -we know what we are called to do.