Middle Church: Reclaiming the Moral Values of the Faithful Majority from the Religious Right - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bob Edgar is the general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, the leading U.S. organization in the movement for Christian unity. He has headed the 45-million-member NCC since January 1, 2000. An ordained elder in the United Methodist Church, Dr. Edgar came to the Council from the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, California, where he was president from 1990 to 2000. Dr. Edgar is well known for his service as a six-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where he was the first Democrat in more than 120 years to be elected from the heavily Republican Seventh District of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Edgar has been a pastor, teacher, college chaplain, community organizer, and director of a think tank on national security issues. He serves on the boards of several organizations whose missions involve social justice. Dr. Edgar and his wife live in New Jersey and have three adult sons.

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Introduction

One cold February day during my senior year of seminary, I did a controversial and, to some people, even radical thing: I boarded a bus and rode to Washington, D.C., to hear a Baptist preacher deliver a sermon on politics.

Like many others, I had read about his views and activities in the newspaper. I knew he preached against the decay of values in public life, and I knew he was often condemned for mixing politics and religion. His critics believed a clergyman had no business preaching about politics from the pulpit. Some feigned concern about the separation of church and state, but I think they were more opposed to the substance of his message than the fact that a minister was delivering it. He never called on the government to impose his Christian views. He simply spoke from his heart, and his heart and his faith were inseparable. He evaluated public policy according to his beliefs about right and wrong, and those beliefs were grounded in his Christianity. Faith led him to the conclusion that America was a morally sick nation that was ignoring Jesus' teachings, and in calling our society to account, in judging the policies of his country according to the principles of his faith, he threatened the familiarity and ease of the status quo. And, like so many messengers of faith who challenge our comfort too closely, he was denounced and vilified.

I was not troubled by the idea of a minister preaching politics from the pulpit, any more than I would discourage a rabbi or imam from delivering sermons that connect their religious values to public policy. I believe in the separation of church and state, but not in the separation of people of faith and institutions of government. What is politics, if not the highest expression of our moral feelings as a people? If discussion of morality is banished from the pulpit, then where is it permissible to speak about right and wrong? I had been a pastor of my own church since age nineteen, and I always felt the pulpit marked the beginning, not the boundaries, of ministry. So when a friend called and told me there would be a gathering of religious leaders in Washington who were concerned about the detachment between public policy and moral belief, I was intrigued enough to attend.

It was a clear day in Washington, bitterly cold but brilliantly sunny. As I leaned over the balcony rail from the upper level of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, the preacher we had come to hear walked up the center aisle. It was one of those profound experiences that imprints itself on one's memory in the form of general feelings rather than specifics. I cannot recall his words, only that his voice seemed to fill every space in the church, that he was earnest and unafraid, and that he was able to challenge America's moral failings without seeming judgmental or alienating. For him, the Gospels formed a seamless tapestry with current events, and he was unafraid to speak of both in terms of right and wrong.

It was a scene that might be repeated in many a church today, with a Jerry Falwell railing against homosexuals, a Pat Robertson endorsing tax cuts, or a Franklin Graham denigrating Islam and proclaiming Christianity to be the one, true American faith. But these were not the voices that called me to ministry or inspired me to political activism. The preacher in the pulpit on that cold but clear February day in 1968 was a thirty-nine-year-old Georgia-raised Baptist named Martin Luther King, Jr.

The occasion was a meeting of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About the Vietnam War. His topics -- poverty and peace -- may seem somewhat foreign to observers of contemporary politics but should be familiar to any student of scripture. Today those issues have disappeared from too many pulpits, replaced by narrow issues of personal piety.

More than thirty-five years after a Baptist preacher from the Deep South first inspired me to political action, it is time for mainstream Americans -- the people I call "Middle Church," "Middle Synagogue," and "Middle Mosque," who may disagree sincerely on questions of personal piety but who can come together on many issues on which our three faiths are so clear -- to reclaim our faith and restore it to its proper and historic place in our nation's unfolding story: as a force for justice, peace, the poor, and for the health of our fragile planet.

The Bible mentions abortion not once, homosexuality only twice, and poverty or peace more than two thousand times. Yet somehow abortion and homosexuality have become the litmus tests of faith in public life today. Those with different ideas about them, or even those who simply believe religion is about far more, are routinely dismissed as un-Christian, unfaithful, even un-American. The politics of faith have been co-opted in the service of a political agenda defined by fascination with war, indifference toward poverty, and exploitation of God's creation for the benefit of a relative few.

It is time for Middle Church -- an umbrella term I use to refer to mainstream people of all faiths -- to stand up to the far religious right and to embrace Christianity no less sincerely. The classic, historical Christianity practiced by Middle Church is far more authentic than the narrow religious expression of most radical right-wing religious leaders. We in Middle Church, Middle Synagogue, and Middle Mosque are not secularists who wish to banish God from the public square. We are people of faith whose traditions lead us to work for peace and care for the poor.

The far religious right is fond of condemning homosexuality because they say the Scripture is immutable and its words are literal. I do not mean by this the many good people of faith who espouse conservative political views, but the far right, who are increasingly intolerant of dissent and whose influence in Washington has grown beyond measure. I do not personally believe God stopped talking to us with the final word in the book of Revelation. As a pastor, the services I led always included readings from the Old Testament, the New Testament, and what I call the "Now Testament." I did so because I believe if we listen, we can hear the divine in the words of people like King, Gandhi, or William Sloane Coffin, the mentor who invited me to Washington that day in 1968. But if scriptural literalism is to be the test of morality in public life, then I welcome the discussion that ensues.

I opposed the war in Iraq, for "a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace," according to the Epistle of James (James 3:18). I believe in environmental preservation because God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden "to till it and keep it," Genesis 2:15 reminds us, and I believe God's gift of "dominion" over the land was an invitation to steward God's creation. My faith cannot condone imprisoning suspected terrorists in deplorable conditions for unlimited durations without being charged with a crime or being given access to attorneys, for "justice, and only justice you shall pursue," God commands the Israelites in Deuteronomy 16:20. And most of all, I believe we must end poverty, heal sickness, and embrace the outcasts among us because the essence of faith is contained in Jesus' words in the Gospel of Matthew, words whose lesson is found in similar terms in other traditions, from Judaism to Islam:

for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.... Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me. (Matthew 25:35-36, 40 -- New Revised Standard Version [NRSV])

In these words and similar lessons in other traditions...