Social Action Alert

Commencement

As with any transition, there are some short-term consequences. The Task Force, which has enjoyed praying, working and acting with you, will not continue in office. This will most likely be the last issue of the Social Action Alert we prepare. More important, urgent matters may be neglected or delayed. The new committee will be nominated by the Nominating Committee and elected by presbytery. It will probably be organized after the May meeting of presbytery.

Before we turn our work over to the new committee, the Task Force wants to share some of its hopes and review a few of the issues we've already introduced. We all face many social justice issues. Your task force has presented some already. There are many others – from the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, other General Assembly agencies, Synod and our newspapers. However we’re organized, Christians need to respond.
 

Children in Poverty

As the richest state in the nation, Connecticut adds a particular twist to child poverty. Of the three states in this Presbytery, Connecticut has had the fastest growth in the numbers of its poor children. There are some recent encouraging signs. The tide, just possibly, has turned. The Connecticut legislature will be addressing this in its upcoming session (9 Feb - 3 May).

Resources: Two studies have just been released which we all should read:

• Pulling Apart, A State by State Analysis of Income Trends, Bernstein, McNichol, Mishel, Zahradnik, January 2000, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 820 First Street, NE Suite 510, Washington, DC 20002, (202) 408-1080. Available free in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format at http://www.centeronbudget.org/


This study finds Connecticut worst in dollar and percent change in average income of bottom and top fifths of families, ’88-’90 to ’96-’98 and offers suggestions for government policies that might address this problem.

• The Social State of Connecticut ’99, Fordham Institute for Innovation in Social Policy, Tarrytown, NY, 1999. Available free by calling the Connecticut Commission on Children at (860) 240-0290 or from their web site: http://www.state.ct.us/coc


Connecticut is the only state to commission an official study of the condition of its people. This is designed as a baseline for government planning. It doesn’t advocate, it describes. Those of you in Rhode Island and Massachusetts should get a copy both because many of the issues are the same and to show your leaders what they’re missing!

Gambling

Paul Gallant, of Sierra Tucson, spoke about gambling addiction to the commissioners at the November Presbytery meeting. Your responses to the questionnaire we distributed suggest this is an important issue. However, only six churches reported doing anything at all about it.

Resources: A slightly edited version of the study Gambling and the Christian Faith is available at: http://www.horeb.pcusa.org/gambling/images/gambling_and_the_christian_faith.htm
or in printed form, from Presbyterian Distribution Service as # 72-620-98-001. The March/April 1999 issue of Church & Society (PDS 72-630-99-602) is also devoted to this subject.
 

Domestic Violence

Guns

The Unity Which Divides Us

An Editorial

• Mark Achtemeier, addressing The Presbyterian Coalition conference, http://www.presbycoalition.org/Gathering4-MarkAchtemeier.htm

 
So it is with unity. As an abstract concept, we owe it nothing. Unity for its own sake is an idol. But Jesus… Jesus is one. Christ is not divided. And that means all who are one with him are one with each other. And it means further that if we are not one with each other we cannot be united with him (1 John 2:9). And if we are not united with him, then we have lost the source not just of our unity, but of our forgiveness, our sanctification, our knowledge, and our mission. Gathering this up into our first thesis:

Thesis 1: To break fellowship with other persons who show any signs at all of being in Christ is to deny our own oneness with Christ and our own hope of salvation in him.
 

• Barbara Wheeler, keynoting the Covenant Network Conference, http://www.covenantnetwork.org/wheeltrue.html
 
...stay put. Separation from the body in which we have grown into Christ should be almost unthinkable. Calvin was adamant on this point. In one of his finest rhetorical passages he points to the church in Corinth, where “almost the whole body had become tainted..., where some hold the resurrection of the dead in derision, though with it the whole gospel must fall..., [and] where many things are done neither decently nor in order,” and then asks how Paul responded. “Does he seek separation from them..., discard them from the kingdom of Christ, strike them with a final anathema?” No, Calvin answers, “He not only does none of these things, but he acknowledges and heralds them as the Church of Christ, and a society of saints.”

In dealing with our elephant, we might remember John G. Saxe’s poem, The Blind Men and the Elephant. Our elephant, I submit, is our vain self-assurance that we know Jesus. Of course we do, but in Paul’s words, “only in part.” We all are seeking. We’re all on a pilgrimage toward knowing. Though some have traveled farther, none of us has arrived at the “then” of “face to face” knowledge. We need to take each other’s partial knowing seriously. “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body…”

Some have said the issue is the interpretation of Scripture. Ralph Sundquist tells of participating in a national church committee some twenty years ago as it sought to address the church’s social policy. After hard work they gave up because they could not agree about the interpretation of scripture. Surely we are divided over how we read scripture, but our divisions are even more basic. Some have said it goes back to the Auburn controversy. It goes back even further.

What was the issue at the very first council, the one at Jerusalem? In part, it was whether people must receive the Law before they become Christians. If history teaches us that Paul won, surely the opposing case was strong. A Messiah is the answer to a problem of the Covenant. Just what can/does a Messiah mean to people who are not Yahweh’s people, who are not bound together by God's Covenant? In somewhat different terms the issue goes back even further, to the time of Moses. Was God's original chosen flock so dumb they didn’t remember their jewelry after Aaron made it into a golden calf/god? Perhaps what they demanded, while Moses was detained on the mountain, was a god who would be there in predictable ways. A god they could control. Are we so much brighter or more faithful? In all times God's people have struggled with what it means to be faithful, and how to correctly express faith.

No doubt some must be more correct than others about the present divisive issues. But how will God be served if we don't find a way to learn from each other, to listen to each other? Let's be sure our "Unity in our Diversity" conference is a healing time.

There are three options before us: win/win, lose/lose, compromise. If one side “wins,” as Achtemeier and Wheeler said, they will bear the guilt for rending the body of Christ. So both sides lose. However many people and property the ‘winners’ keep, and whether the ‘losers’ have the resources to become a new denomination or not, we will all be less a part of the body of Christ. I don't know how we get from where we are to a win/win situation. I know God's abundance can get us there. If we continue being two people – a house quite clearly divided – it is obvious we are both losing.

Compromise, far from being a dirty word, is the particularly Presbyterian opening for grace. In a compromise, none of us get what we think pure. None of us gets her or his way. When we vote, at presbytery, in session, congregation, committee or other governing activity, we often humanly feel we either win or lose. But that’s not the reformed understanding. What we get is God’s guidance, not the majority’s preference. Much as I dislike ‘b,’ its purpose may not be about exclusion so much as about teaching us all more about the nature of love and sin. It certainly has caused many of us to pray and reflect on the nature of God’s calling.

In compromise, we will get each other. We will have the gift of loving before us. We will be freed to do social justice, and to worship. As it is, we are spending all our efforts avoiding the elephant.

Godspeed!