wfn.org | Episcopalians among religious progressives to launch new coalition

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2001-83

Episcopalians among religious progressives to launch new coalition

by Jan Nunley
jnunley@episcopalchurch.org

     (ENS) Galvanized by the outcome of the 2000 presidential election, and 
appealing to the memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., more than 250 leaders 
of faith-based groups launched a new Progressive Religious Partnership (PRP) at 
a three-day conference in Washington, D.C. on April 4-6.

     With the theme, "Remembering Dr. King, Reclaiming the Beloved Community, 
Advancing a Progressive Religious Agenda," the group decried what it called "a 
famine of faithful witness to God of justice and compassion, the God of Israel 
and Jesus. We have suffered what the great prophet Amos called a 'famine of the 
hearing the word of God' "in the last three decades of American political 
discourse.

     "Now is the time for large numbers of religious leaders to join in an 
organized effort to offer people bread instead of stone," declared the group in a 
founding statement entitled  "A Call for Faithful Witnesses." "Now it is time to 
lift high the banner of prophetic witness and to restore a progressive religious 
presence to its rightful place in the public square. We seek to put a progressive 
religious voice back into the national dialogue about morality and politics, to 
build a network of various progressive religious movements, and to create plans 
of action that contribute to greater justice and more inclusive community."

Alternative religious viewpoint

     "We don't want to demonize" the Religious Right, said Rabbi Steven Jacobs of 
Temple Kol Tikvah in Los Angeles, but to challenge the assumption that 
conservatives offer the only religiously-based viewpoint on public issues. 

     But that doesn't mean they're unwilling to step on toes. "There's a new 
recognition that the Gospel is being bought and sold, cut up and undermined," 
added the Rev. James Lawson Jr., pastor emeritus of Holman United Methodist 
Church in Los Angeles, an associate of King and one of the architects of the 
Civil Rights Movement. "I sense a recognition that the Religious Right funds a 
theocratic, fascist movement that emanates out of racism, sexism and violence."

     According to the Rev. Robert Edgar, general secretary of the National 
Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, the launching of the PRP represents a 
new level of collaboration among progressive groups, both religious and secular. 
"The Holy Spirit is moving among us with ego disarmament," Edgar chuckled, adding 
that organizing progressives is far easier in a Bush administration than it was 
during the eight years of the Clinton presidency. 

Episcopalian presence strong

     Episcopalians were prominent among the speakers and workshop leaders at the 
conference. The Rev. George Regas, president of the Regas Institute, was one of 
the initiators of the coalition. 

     "We began looking for ways to get the progressive voice back in the 
dialogue, but that voice has to be rooted in the sacred story," Regas said in an 
interview. But by the same token, he said, too many progressives had "severed the 
link between economic and sexual justice." 

     "We will not sacrifice one agenda for the sake of the other," Regas 
declared.

     The Regas Institute co-hosted the conference with the People for the 
American Way Foundation (PFAW), which Regas praised for being "smart enough" 
to know that a partnership with people of faith would be "hugely 
beneficial" to the things PFAW cares about.

     Other Episcopalian progressives at the conference included the Rev. 
Katherine Ragsdale, chair of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice 
(RCRC), who led a workshop on reproductive rights as a moral 
position; the Rev. William Rankin, president of the newly-formed 
Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance (GAIA), whose workshop explored the 
global challenge of AIDS; and the Rev. James Adams, president of the 
Center for Progressive Christianity (CPC), who spoke on "religion that 
cares about people who find organized religion ineffective and 
repressive."

Progressive church growth

     Regas' successor at All Saints' Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, 
the Rev. Ed Bacon, led a workshop on "Building Progressive Congregations--
Mobilization for the Human Family." Bacon spoke of growing progressive 
churches as those which are "relevant, energized, and energizing." 

     "You cannot be progressive if you don't have your vision set on the common 
good," Bacon told the group. "It is not enough just to take care of people who 
look like you." At All Saints', Bacon said, people come "with the church gathered 
to be transformed, so that when you are the church scattered, you are 
transforming the world. It's an 'oscillation of transformation'." Worshipers 
proceed from the Eucharistic table to "action tables," where they sign up for 
ministries, sign petitions, or otherwise "connect .to the tables that you live at 
the rest of the week: the dining table, the kitchen table, the operating room 
table, the table in the classroom or the table at the boardroom."

     "The church must never be neutral," said Bacon. "It must stand in favor of 
the core values of God Almighty." Those core values include being a "grown-up 
church" that's not afraid to talk about politics, sex, or money. "People do not 
want religion that is worried about the wrinkles in the linens and whether the 
acolyte team has on tennis shoes or not," he declared. "They want to be a part of 
making the world better."

Moral authority needed

     Brushing aside critics who maintain that politics and spirituality don't 
mix, plenary speakers took on everything from the federal budget and tax cuts to 
sexual and gender justice.

     "I hope everyone can accept the principle that the tax cuts and budget 
debates are faith and community issues," said Wade Henderson, executive director 
of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. "We need your moral authority to 
win this debate. If you're not working in coalition with other denominations and 
other groups, we're going to lose."

     Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children's Defense 
Fund, told the group that during the presidential campaign Bush "chose to 
take the trademarked mission statement of the Children's Defense Fund. So 
we are going to define for him what it means to `Leave No Child Behind."'

     "The rich folk are just going to have to wait on another tax cut until the 
hungry are fed, until we have no more children hungry and homeless and learning 
in crumbling schools," Edelman declared. "If we don't build a movement now to say 
'no'--then shame on us.Our job is to change what's possible."

     Other conference workshops included sessions on charitable choice, a death 
penalty moratorium, ecological spirituality, the 2000 election, reproductive 
rights, same sex unions, AIDS, missile defense and economic justice.

'Good religion loves everybody'

     The three-day conference was held on the 33rd anniversary of King's 
assassination. At the opening rally, the Rev. Charles G. Adams, pastor of 
Detroit's Hartford Memorial Baptist Church, preached to a crowd of about 400 from 
the pulpit of Washington's 163-year-old Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal 
Church.

     "There's a whole lot of dangerous, bad, sick religion in the world. Bad 
religion makes you hate folks; good religion loves everybody," said Adams, who 
first worked with King in 1957. "Let us go forward together. Let us turn the 
world upside down and turn it right-side-up in the name of justice." 

--The Rev. Jan Nunley is deputy director of the Office of News and Information for 
the Episcopal Church.