Reading: Post @DisciplesGA #Abide2019
An article and a film that came out pre-General Assembly, that’s my denomination’s all congregation gathering (imagine a family reunion), have become more important post-General Assembly, at least for me. The article is haunting and I imagine the film relevant specifically after the sermon that Rev. Dr. William Barber II shared as the last Word from the pulpit to close @DisciplesGA.
Watch Rev. Dr. William Barber’s sermon here.
Rev. Barber’s sermon begins at 45 minutes.
The God of Love had a really bad week
Diana Butler Bass (cnn.com / July 20, 2019)
American Heretics: The Politics of the Gospel
an independent film in select theaters now – read the synopsis
A tagline for the film is something I’ve noted with youth for a while and something I’m going to have to start saying from the pulpit more: “It’s not what you believe, it’s what you do that matters.” Among mainline, Catholic, and “evangelical” christians, orthopraxy has to be more important than orthodoxy for the next decade if Western Christianity, as well as the Nation, will successfully recalibrate our moral compass.
The christian religious and political fundamentalists that have captured the flag of the GOP, and many of our State legislatures, did so through an ideological manifest destiny theology broadcast through the Trinity Broadcast Company, Focus on the Family, and political super pacs formerly known as the Moral Majority. It’s been done through “voter guides”, pulpits, cultural schism, racial schism, and pseudo higher education dictating a “christian” worldview. If you were in the near East, say Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, you might identify this kind of behavior as the Taliban.
It’s a basic civics class that reminds that these United States provides religious freedom, that is, to practice your worship and faith within the boundaries of your faith community and sacred day without fear of persecution from the government. It also means the government provides freedom from religion without fear of persecution or requirement that a specific religion’s orthodoxy or orthopraxy is normative for the Nation. That is what the pilgrims and our Nation’s founders fled in Europe.
If our Nation is going to become a more perfect union from local government to the Federal government, we must through the ballot box revive a Nation based on “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, rule of law, and equality rather than the white Christian nationalism that enables and profits from the oligarchs, racial schism, and cultural division. The poor and middle class, not matter your race or creed, have more in common and at risk than we want to admit or claim. Maybe Rev. Dr. Barber is right: a fusion movement is what it will take to shake the Nation from its 2001 grief.