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This past weekend hundreds of liberal Christians from across the nation, including the Religious Left elite, convened for the 10th annual Ecumenical Advocacy Days for Global Peace and Justice (EAD). Its theme this year was “Is This the Fast I Seek?” Their rally culminated with demonstrations outside the U.S. Supreme Court for Obamacare.
The Washington, DC event has become a staple for liberal Catholics and Mainline Protestants alike, giving church lobby bureaucrats a forum to combine their voices to push for liberal political initiatives. The main plenary sessions witnessed a white-hot zeal for the Social Gospel as politicians and seminarians alike urged their audience to further public advocacy.
EAD boasted 50 sponsors, ranging from official Mainline lobby offices to liberal Catholic organizations like Pax Christi and NETWORK to nondenominational activist groups like Sojourners and Bread for the World. Starting March 23, about 700 participants attended workshops and lectures that instructed activists in more effective advocacy. The weekend culminated on March 26, when EAD bussed its troops to lobby congressional offices or demonstrate at the U.S. Supreme Court for Obamacare. Inside, the justices were hearing arguments about Obamacare’s constitutionality.
Church World Service chief the Rev. John McCullough announced on EAD’s opening night: “For us, it is all about justice…We are here to break the yoke of injustice, poverty, hunger, and unemployment throughout the world.” Marie Dennis of Pax Christi International added, “We know the federal budget is a moral document…especially on the margins of our communities and the world.” U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis spoke, via a recorded video message, assuring participants that the Obama administration is establishing an “America built to last,” where everyone gets a “fair share of work” and “makes sure our efforts extend to every person and every community.”
EAD coordinator Douglas Grace boasted that EAD stands as a way “to strengthen our Christian voice in the cause of national advocacy…There is enough for all.” When he announced that the conference’s Crystal City Doubletree Hotel was unionized and “bends over backwards to meet our eco-justice needs” (by bringing in Pepsi instead of Coke), the audience erupted into applause.
Even more enthusiastic was the Rev. Dr. Margaret Aymer, who encouraged her audience to make “a cry refusing to be silenced.” A New Testament professor at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, She directed her listeners to a passage from “Third Isaiah,” since “most scholars believe Isaiah 58 is a later writing” during the time of the returned exiles. “Religion is public and political,” the seminarian intoned, “You cannot fast while squabbling over how many angels dance on the head of a pin.” Aymer called for liberalized immigration law (especially since the floods of migrants come from “our own policies and wars”), “standing against for-profit prison systems…[creating] a new Jim Crow era,” and cessation of “selling guns and funding wars in other countries and pretending it doesn’t affect you.”
“Our pets have more food than the poorest of the poor in our streets,” Aymer thundered, “What would we do if we insisted that a nation so desperate to be called Christian share its food.” She expressed pity for the spiritual “nakedness” of soldiers, the “nakedness of men forced to kill other children of God in the name of national security.” She ended each talking point with “cry justice!” Audience members let out staples such as “Amen!,” “Preach it!,” and even “Hallelujah!”
Union Theological Seminary’s Rev. Dr. Gary Dorrien echoed similar sentiments on the next day. An outspoken progressive, Dorrien’s specialty in social ethics has most recently produced The Obama Question: A Progressive Perspective. He joked, “I’ve become a jukebox of Obama as of late.” Nevertheless, Dorrien came to speak about the liberal Christian heritage that arose in the 1800s. “The Social Gospel was one of the greatest accomplishments of the mainline churches,” the Episcopalian claimed, calling it the “Kingdom of God as found in Jesus.” He explained, “The Social Gospel gave a solid groundwork of economic democracy that we see today.”
“The common good has been taking a beating for thirty years,” Dorrien complained. The Union professor cited “politically structured inequality” from “global capitalism.” He further asserted, “There is no third way in economics. There isn’t even a second…[Our economy has] a golden straightjacket.”
Dorrien predicted that the speculation debt of corporations would “explode” within the year. “When the house collapses, the elites will do what they always do: they look after their own.” He mourned what he considered the “majority view” of Americans: “unrestricted liberty to acquire wealth…The story of our time is about a downtrodden citizenry with the government throttling their throats.” Dorrien, on the other hand, thought citizens need to “subordinate private interest to the common good.” Unfortunately, progressives face an “overwhelmingly better-funded opposition,” which includes the Tea Party, “overwhelmingly white, middle-class, and middle-aged or elderly…afraid of losing their racial supremacy benefits.”
Denouncing “predatory capitalism” and “democracy of the few,” Dorrrein intoned: “Constantly we are told the investor class would lose its incentive to seek profit…[but] Americans are not overtaxed.” He claimed: “If we had stayed with the Clinton taxes, our government debts would be minimal.” (At this point, an audience member loudly whispered, “He’s brilliant!”). Dorrien furthered, “We’d still be greatly below European levels of taxation.” He proposed an intricate Keynesian system of tax hikes interspersed with strategic breaks for green energy and other environmentalist causes. He surmised, “This system does not rest on idealistic ideas regarding human nature.”
Touting Occupy Movement, Dorrien hailed it as a “a social movement with a radically democratic impulse.” To an ever-aging audience salivating for social relevance, he noted, “There is an important role for religious organizations in the Occupy Movement.” He denounced the “United States’ obsession with supremacy and dominance.” And he condemned the church’s supposed espousal of white supremacy, sexism, “Christian exclusivism,” and “heterosexism.”
Democratic Congressman Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, who’s also an ordained United Methodist, shared more Social Gospel. “Unfortunately, you will not hear the word “poor” on Capitol Hill,” he declared, “You will hear the word ‘loser.’” He argued, “I think the most significant question is not on the Congresses table of discussion: what constitutes a great nation?” Cleaver argued that a nation’s greatness should be judged on how well it cared for its poor and downtrodden. “A great nation is made when it uses its blessing to help the people of the world and the people of home,” he proclaimed. He thought America should be “self-sufficient without selfishness…mighty without menacing.”
The Congressman further argued, “The budget is not just a guide; it’s a moral document…It’s an x-ray of our national innards.” He observed: “You show me how you spend your money, and I’ll tell you what you believe in.” Cleaver complained that the decade or so included a tax-cut “for the wealthy” and two foreign wars. He laughed, “We represent the only nation in history to cut taxes to go to war…We say we’re pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan…We still haven’t pulled out of Japan and Germany!” “We are a nation that caters to the rich,” he bemoaned, “It is ridiculous to tell rich people they don’t have to pay more taxes.”
Cleaver also commented on faith and government. “One of the problems is that Capitol Hill has too many Christians…There is a de facto religious test,” he stated. “A man has a right to exercise his faith without being penalized politically,” he countered, “There are people who think Jesus is theirs. Jesus will not be pimped!” Here the audience broke into a thunderous applause. “With the passage of each year, more and more people think compromise is cowardice,” Cleaver reported, “Others think God called them specially to Congress…their decisions are baptized by God…There are people who think that when they are voting, God is voting.” He described this as a “horrible, horrible theology” and “not healthy for a republic.” Cleaver pointed to this no-compromise approach as part of an even wider crisis in civility. “This country rewards nastiness…All I have to do to get on TV is to say something nasty…When we blame Congress, we need to look in the mirror. We are responsible for it.”
The Democratic congressman concluded by despairing over the state of the union. “Bees cannot sting and make honey at the same time. The same is true of Congress,” he said. “The Ryan budget won’t get approved…because nothing gets approved…We have created a system where nothing moves.” Cleaver longed for a time when the legislative and executive branches colluded with each other, regardless of party or the concerns of constituents. He blamed the breakdown on the 1994 election of a Republican majority, which halted the previously civil era. Cleaver also condemned “voter suppression” via laws about “registration and ineligibility.” He also mourned how even the deluded impoverished masses support free market policies. “People are voting against themselves,” he worried, “The poor folk are supporting tax cuts…[They are] living vicariously through the rich.” “We cannot allow this nation to crumble,” Cleaver insisted, “It crumbles from a lot of silence from good people.”
Cleaver, Dorrien, and Aymer encapsulated EAD’s religiously leftist zealotry. More puzzling than the political grandstanding was the almost spiritual ecstasy that participants gained from pulling their politics into their church life. Participants often mentioned their anger and frustration with their home congregations, where church members refuse to join in activist campaigns. For the old Religious Left, advocacy denotes true righteousness. Who needs grace when there are (political) works?
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