We're offering a "talking across the divide during the election season" adult education option here at All Saints Church in a few weeks and so I was doing some research online this afternoon about what other congregations might be doing.Came across this Church of the Holy Trinity webpage and PDF designed to help parishioners vote their values. It comes with this introduction:
Members of Holy Trinity’s Peace & Restorative Justice Community wish to offer you a gift: a national agenda addressing major election-year issues of public policy. The agenda examines the issues through a Christian lens and makes specific public policy recommendations, taking into account the wisdom of scripture, the teachings of The Episcopal Church, and the consensus views of the Community.
The Community members are not telling you what to think, and certainly not for whom to vote, yet they do hope Setting the 2008 National Agenda: From A Christian Perspective will encourage you to examine you own perspectives and to participate in the 2008 elections.
Check it out. And then check out the reaction from "across the aisle" ... where Stand Firmites Greg Griffith and Jackie Bruchi have readied, aimed and fired at the folks from Holy Trinity for daring to suggest that progressive Christians not only HAVE Christian Values but should VOTE their Christian Values.
Shocked!
Shocked, I tell you!
Anyway, check it all out and give thanks that we live in a nation great enough to hold all this diversity in one big messy container. AND remember this Gospel According to Ed Bacon:
Faith in action is called politics. Spirituality without action is fruitless and social action without spirituality is heartless. We are boldly political without being partisan. Having a partisan-free place to stand liberates the religious patriot to see clearly, speak courageously, and act daringly.
P.S. -- And go ahead and call the IRS. Trust me ... we've "been there/done that" and lived to tell the story!
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2 comments:
It's about time, is all I can say. It seems right and proper to me that we, as a faith community, discuss a core set of values about humanity and the created world.
What I like about Trinity's document is that it's not a bunch of leaders telling us what to do -- it's about a group of our peers coming together to grapple with today's issues from an episcopalian perspective.
No wonder those on the right are apoplectic. THey thought that they had a monopoly on "religious political thought." Sorry folks!
-J
I looked through Trinity's document. I disagree with many of the positions, of course, but by no means do I see it a violation of the First Amendment. It endorses various moral and ethical issues and urges people to express them when they vote, but it does not endorse either a political party or a specific candidate. On that basis, it's fine.
I do deplore many of the positions. I think the body and comments of the Stand Firm posting (you have two links to the same posting, BTW) effectively refute the rather remarkable idea put forward in the Trinity document that abortion is consistent with the Christian tradition. But overall, the ability of Trinity of Manhattan to put this document out is necessary to ensure that their opponents can as well.
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