wfn.org | Vision, Virtue, and Vocation: the "Mainline Church" message to Obama

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

Vision, Virtue, and Vocation: the "Mainline Church" message to Obama

NOTE TO EDITORS: The following op-ed message is offered to you to use 
any time as you deem appropriate. The authors are well-known 
ecumenical leaders who offer their counsel and support to 
President-Elect Obama as he prepares to take the oath of office. 
Iosso and Kinnamon were also important architects of A Social Creed 
for the 21st Century (see 
http://www.ncccusa.org/news/ga2007.socialcreed.html), which updated 
the 1908 Social Creed of the Churches, then a revolutionary 
declaration of the responsibilities of persons of faith to work for 
social justice. The authors write out of the knowledge that the 
President-Elect comes out of the same religious tradition.

For interviews with the authors or additional information, please 
contact Philip E. Jenks at 212-870-2228, pjenks@ncccusa.org.

___

By the Rev. Christian Iosso and the Rev. Michael Kinnamon

Everyone, it seems, has a message for the new President.  They are 
full of wish lists and urgent demands and heartfelt dreams for our nation.

The churches have a message for President Obama, too.

Mr. President, we have thought about what needs to be done, and have 
been working at it throughout the history of these United 
States.  And we are ready to help you achieve great deeds that will 
bring positive change for the people of America and the world.

We Protestant and Orthodox churches - the ecumenical faith community 
- know how serious is the need for social reconstruction at home and 
the restoration of honor abroad. We have long worked in the soup 
kitchens, sheltered the homeless, pushed for environmental justice, 
defended public education, volunteered overseas, and steadily opposed 
the war with Iraq, despite the weaknesses of media and congressional 
oversight.

As the President-elect knows, we do not scorn "community organizers;" 
our urban congregations have helped fund them and have given them a 
base from which to work. We visit the prisons and know how bad they 
are; we are regular caregivers in the hospital wards and emergency 
rooms.  We know first-hand how many are without health insurance.

While many look at who has a role on the platform at the ceremony, we 
look at the commitments of the man being inaugurated:  long a member 
of a distinctive, well-informed congregation of the United Church of 
Christ (church of the historic pilgrims as well as contemporary 
prophets), he is one of us.

The social vision of the ecumenical churches is summed up in the 
"Social Creed for the 21st Century," unanimously adopted by the 
General Assembly of the National Council of Churches of Christ one 
hundred years after the first "social creed" was adopted by the 
churches in 1908.

That earlier social message addressed the challenges of its day - 
industrialization and proposed measures like a "living wage," the 
abolition of child labor, and prototypes of Social Security and 
Workers' Compensation. When Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the 
churches' annual assembly in 1933 he thanked them for their 
biblically based social teachings. The text from Jesus that he quoted 
is in the 2008 version of the Social Creed and articulates the 
purpose of the Creed, and of faith's prayer for society:  "that all 
may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10).

The 2008 Social Creed, speaking to our day, addresses the challenges 
of globalization and sustainability and the context of war and 
inequality, which is both morally and politically debilitating. While 
the new Social Creed lists 20 specific reform measures under three 
theologically-grounded headings, it is the overall vision that is 
key: "a vision of a society that shares more and consumes less, seeks 
compassion over suspicion and equality over domination, and finds 
security in joined hands rather than massed arms."

The churches do not split personal and public virtue. Individual 
character and morality are crucial, but they depend on the character 
of churches and other nurturing institutions. Action for social 
justice - the "social activism" some critics scorn - is grounded in 
communities that lift up God first.

While solidly patriotic, our churches have resisted the kind of 
arrogant nationalism that confuses the flag and the cross. We 
remember the Bible's warnings about empire, that only a people who 
humble themselves shall be exalted.

Especially now in economic life, the churches stand for "grace over 
greed," and recognize the need for burdens to be fairly shared, and 
modern forms of usury to be regulated out of existence. This means 
affirming progressive taxation as well as adequate social welfare: a 
society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members.

The vocation of the church is different from that of the nation, but 
even a wiser and humbler United States still has a great vocation as 
"one nation" among others "under God."  The Social Creed summarizes 
countless church statements that address our nation's current 
challenges:  "multilateral diplomacy rather than unilateral force, 
the abolition of torture, ...strengthening ...the United Nations and 
the rule of international law." The ecumenical churches helped write 
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 60 years ago and have never 
forgotten its principles of "full civil, political, and economic 
rights for women and men of all races."

The churches do not affirm diplomacy without responsible power, but 
can never tolerate the deliberate violence of "wars of choice" and 
the economies distorted by them. We have seen the high tech and 
housing bubbles burst but it is now time for the military-industrial 
bubble to burst: we advocate "nuclear disarmament and redirection of 
military spending to more peaceful and productive uses."

The churches alone can not create a moral consensus for the 
redirection of America, but if President Obama harkens to his 
personal experience, he knows that the solid, unheralded work of the 
churches will be there, in support of more courageous action than 
most observers outside the faith community can imagine. In Reinhold 
Niebuhr's famous words, we pray that we may now have a nation with 
the "courage to change" for the better.

___

The Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon is General Secretary, National Council 
of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and a former professor of 
theology. The Rev. Dr. Christian Iosso, formerly a pastor in 
Westchester County, New York, is Coordinator for Social Witness 
Policy, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The authors were among those 
who developed the Social Creed for the 21st Century.

NCC News contact:  Philip E. Jenks, 212-870-2228, pjenks@ncccusa.org

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