Pitts challenges UCC to make headlines for social justice

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

Pitts challenges UCC to make headlines for social justice

> Written by Jeff Woodard
> 07/02/2011
> Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts challenged
> General Synod 28 participants to make headlines
> on behalf of social justice concerns.

Maybe we do the predictable things we do more often than we?re aware.

> Maybe we?re just not crazy enough.

That suggestion was lifted up by Pulitzer

Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr., during
his keynote address Saturday morning to General Synod 28.

?It turns out that history is replete with trials
and accomplishments of crazy people,? said Pitts,
who won a Pulitzer for commentary in 2004 with the Miami Herald.

?From George Washington and Mahatma Gandhi to
(Motown founder) Berry Gordy igniting cultural
revolution with a $700 loan, there have always
been those who are just crazy enough to confound
expectation and overcome long odds,? said Pitts.

?People confuse ?crazy? with ?can?t be done? or
?don?t know how.? And they think ?can?t be done?
is an expression that means ?never tried to do it
and we should accept it the way it is.??

Speaking on the podium between two large-screen
images of photos taken from the NASA?s Hubble
Space Telescope, Pitts said he marvels each time he views them.

?I have always found these pictures of immense
value to me when imagining the possibilities,?
said Pitts. ?There is something humbling in these
images; these clusters of stars, these swirling
masses of gases, these spiraling galaxies. These
images represent the smallest corner of God?s possibilities.?

Pitts read in its entirety a Herald column he
wrote nine years ago about a friend, the Rev.
David Bowers, who refocused his ministry toward
reducing the alarming murder rate among young people in Washington, D.C.

?Some people think this preacher was a chapter
short of a complete Bible, if you get my drift,?
Pitts said to laughter. ?I told him he was crazy,
and he said, ?You?re right.? Then I told him that
Martin Luther King Jr. was crazy, too.?

Pitts cited Oprah Winfrey, Bill Clinton, James
Earl Jones ? even Moses ? as among those who?ve
overcome great odds. ?Sometimes we obsess about
our impediments and overlook our possibilities.
Everyone has an impediment to overcome ? it can
either define you or spur you on.?

Pitts said organized religion has a way of taking
God and putting him into a box.

?It has a tendency to imprison him in the

littleness of human imagination. We seem to have
this idea of a God that we have created in our
own image; a God that stretches only to our own
likes and dislikes; a God who thinks what we
think, wants what we want, sees as we see, and does as we do."

To consider those images of the swirling cosmos
is to recognize that if God is what we say God
is, he is God over all of that and an infinity
more. He is the Creator of creation itself, and
therefore, by definition, cannot be contained
within the boxes that you and I construct for him.?

Pitts? emotional tone elevated when he decried a
world where ?the only thing growing faster than
poverty is the lack of compassion for those trapped in it.?

?We live in a world where the inability to reason
has become a badge of honor, and people are proud
to parade their ignorance and call it truth,?
said Pitts. ?When did it become possible for a
Glenn Beck to declare that preaching a social
gospel ? which, for my money, is the only kind of
gospel worth preaching ? is a sign of communism
and totalitarianism? When did it become possible
for him to say that and not be drowned out by
protests of people of faith who get up every day
and serve the betterment of society?

Pitts also lashed out at the reality that wars
are somehow financed and tax breaks are afforded
multi-national corporations and
multi-million-dollar individuals.?But there is
never money enough to provide health care for a
child growing up on the other side of town,? said Pitts to applause.

?But here?s the best question,? concluded Pitts.
?What are people of faith going to do about it? I
submit to you that the beginning of an answer
comes with the courage to imagine.?