Commentary: What You Never Get from the Presbyterian Washington Office

Why is it that whenever one receives news from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Washington Office, one never gets two sides of an issue? Instead the message from the Washington Office usually takes the form of a one-sided sales pitch, often in this simplistic form:

1.       God loves the poor.

2.       The poor have the problem of ________________ [name a problem].

3.       Therefore, we must institute a massive government program.

4.       To do that, you need to get your congressperson to vote for such-and-such a bill.

What is missing here? What is missing is a meaningful discussion that should follow point #2 and precede the naming of point #3 as apparently the only solution, or the only ostensibly Christian solution (which mostly resembles a political solution, often somewhat socialist in nature).

For example, take the June 2 Witness in Washington Weekly bit about global warming. The section simply assumes that climate change is a given and that human-caused carbon dioxide is the culprit. It simply assumes that forced reduction of our carbon dioxide emissions (a draconian 80 percent by 2050, which could, barring unforeseeable technological developments, put us with a lifestyle among such advanced economic powerhouses as present-day Haiti and Somalia) will fix the climate problem, when even such devastating economic measures would have at best the most negligible of effects on possible global warming. The article simply assumes that more government is the answer. It simply assumes that the Christian response is whatever political response the Washington Office advocates.

Thus, the next step gets confined to pushing a particular bill now in Congress. But is it really so cut and dried?

Why Not Engage the Issue?
Where is the sense in the Washington Office report that someone has truly thought about this issue and wrestled with its multiple dimensions? Why is there no sense of having heard and answered the concerns of people with every bit as much desire to have a decent environment and a just society, but who come up with vastly different assessments of the problem and suggestions for the cure?

Today, the Wall Street Journal ran an entirely contrary viewpoint from Senator Inhofe, and he’s hardly alone in such analysis. The Institute on Religion and Democracy, for instance, has produced a thinking Christian’s look at the same issues, titled: “What Is the Most Important Environmental Task Facing American Christians Today?“ IRD President, Jim Tonkowich provides evidence for global coolingrather than warming. And so on.

Where is thinking such as this reflected or even acknowledged in the Washington Office advocacy? Nowhere. You would think that such reasonable alternative viewpoints don’t exist or were of no interest to evidently closed-minded Presbyterians. Such contrary thinking is not acknowledged and engaged. Nor is it ever rebutted. Such contrary viewpoints are never even considered. And that is sadly so very typical of how the Washington Office operates.

The Washington Office offers sparse engagement with ideas beyond the very narrow ideological realm in which it operates. Rather than engage the debate, the Washington Office instead just springs off headlong into only one of many possible ways to respond as a conscientious Christian—a kind of reflexive resort to liberal politics as usual.

How different and pleasant it would be for the Washington Office not to insult us by spoon-feeding us a planned formula for any given issue! How good and refreshing it would be to see the Washington Office instead offer us a detailed analysis of the ideas in contention, each with its pros and cons, and then give us the dignity of making a decision on how best to respond! Yet, how distant that kind of operation would be from the present practices of the Washington office!