Churches as progressive leaders
I'm taking a little time out with the StreamingChristianity! newsstream that we host here on CrossLeft. Spending time reading the headlines is always a real pleasure for me. To a far greater degree than reading a single discussion board, or opening the latest issue of Sojourners' Magazine, the newsstream reminds me of how vast the churches really are, and the extent to which they really are occupied by people who believe that we act in Christ most fully when we work against poverty, oppression and intolerance around the world.
A few highlights from the last couple of days:
- today, Dec. 10, is Human Rights Day. 32 American cities will be wearing white wristbands to support Human Rights. The ONE campaign, or Make Poverty History, as it is known in the UK, fights poverty worldwide. "ONE calls for debt cancellation, trade reform and anti-corruption measures in a comprehensive package to help Africa and the poorest nations beat AIDS and extreme poverty." In the US it has heretofore been a celebrity campaign, but recently churches like the 30,000 member Saddleback Church in California have urged the American church to take a public, active role, as church leaders have to great effect in the UK.
- on Thursday, American Methodist, Episcopalian, and Lutheran bishops "called on the United States Congress to defeat the 2006 Federal Budget “once and for all�, because it betrays the poor."
- from Thursday to today, Katrina survivors have marched from Mississippi to New Orleans. "Survivors have raised the demands are for immediate jobs, education, housing, clothing and food. Survivors have made the demand to place the control and direction of Gulf Coast reconstruction in their hands. Survivors demand opportunity to exercise the right to return to the Gulf Coast with dignity and without poverty." The meeting is run by trade unions and other activists, and hosted by the local United Methodist Church.
All of these initiatives are exciting, and it is exciting to me that CrossLeft has such tools for helping Christians find out about these meetings and get involved.
However: the news page is just the first step. When we find out about these events in advance (rare, because we depend on press releases after the event, or networking from communities who don't necessarily know about us) we can post the events on our calendar and draw the attention of our readers to the events. We need Progressive Christian groups to speak to each other more. Better planning will help us connect willing volunteers and donors to these types of events.
We also need to hear more about what happens at these meetings. Readers of CrossLeft, I humbly ask you, if any of you are involved with conferences or meetings whose content is related to the wider Progressive Christian movement, please let us know what goes on in these meetings. Tell us who came, what action items and methods were discussed, what future action will come out of the meetings, what you'd like to see improved or what lessons that conference can give to others. Tell us words of wisdom that inspired you and what you're doing with them.
In the future, CrossLeft will be involved in publicity for the Progressive Christian movement. The important events covered here have gotten limited coverage, despite their vision and scale. One way to insure that events get more coverage is to increase their geographical impact. Bishops meet and denounce Congress; that's certainly important. But it's far more important when local pastors are writing letters to the editor urging all self-professed Christians to vote in accordance with the Bishops' reasoning. CrossLeft will be involved in promoting this kind of letter-writing. Ideally, we will host a page of action alerts and sample letters-to-the-editor, which local Christians can use to disseminate the Progressive message wherever they are.
What else should we be doing to get the message out? Help us brainstorm a path to action.
