wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] 'Vision, Virtue, and Vocation'

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www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2009/09035<http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2009/09035

>'Vision, Virtue, and Vocation'

Authors of new Social Creed press social justice agenda
with Obama

>by Jerry L. Van Marter
>Presbyterian News Service

LOUISVILLE ― Two primary authors of "A Social Creed for the
21st Century" have sent an open letter to President-elect
Obama advocating the social policies outlined in the creed.

Speaking on behalf of the U.S. churches that have endorsed
the creed, the Rev. Christian Iosso, coordinator of the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s Advisory Committee on Social
Witness Policy, and the Rev. Michael Kinnamon, general
secretary of the National Council of Churches, wrote: "... we
are ready to help you achieve great deeds that will bring
positive change for the people of America and the world."

The general assemblies of both the PC(USA) and the NCC,
which represents 36 member churches, endorsed the Social
Creed last year. The document, patterned after the Social
Creed of 1908, addresses a number of social ills bedeviling
U.S. society.

The full text of Iosso's and Kinnamon's message:

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:

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
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. We know this because our own
churches also run on democratic principles and it is hard
for people to participate when they are working two jobs
and scrambling find childcare and family time. Thus along
with urging full employment at a living wage, the churches
advocate "time and benefits to enable full family life,"
which for us includes Sabbath for worship and rest. 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
and 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," as a Lutheran theologian adds to the Pledge. 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
now time for the military-industrial bubble to burst as
well: we advocate "nuclear disarmament and redirection of
military spending to more peaceful and productive uses."

The churches alone cannot 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.

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