Radical Civility

Well, I did go to church yesterday, and it wasn’t half bad. The Deus Absconditus was just as absconditus as He usually is for me in a worship service, but in a purely human sense it was nice. I enjoyed seeing the people — though since I recently got a rather drastic military haircut (known as a “high and tight”), the greeter in the narthex failed to recognize me and welcomed me as if I were a first-time visitor. A new church directory has just been printed; I got a copy of that; it looks great. I plan to scan and upload it to the church web site, with password protection so that only members can view it.

In lieu of a regular sermon, we heard a brief talk by Meighan Pritchard, a representative from CrossWalk America, one of many moderate/progressive organizations cropping up in response to the excesses of the Christian Right. It’s an outgrowth of another moderate/progressive organization, No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, which formed in 1998 when a number of Phoenix ministers met at a coffeehouse and decided to speak out against what they regarded as the Christian Right’s cruel and unbiblical bashing of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) persons. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that every new group in possession of a cause must be in want of a manifesto.  Thus NLS:CFJ came up with the Phoenix Declaration, which as of December 2004 had been signed by 160 Arizona clergymen and -women.

But NLS:CFJ was, by definition, composed solely of ministers, and the Phoenix Declaration spoke to only a single issue. This year they created a new organization, CrossWalk America, which is open to laypeople and speaks to a broader set of concerns. The basic assumption of both groups is that “moderate and progressive Christians have been overly content to remain silent as fundamentalism has gradually eroded mainstream Christianity in the public sphere. [They] believe it is time to ’stand up and be counted,’ calling the church to be church, in voice and action.”

The concerns are embodied in a set of twelve theological principles called The Phoenix Affirmations:

The public face of Christianity in America today bears little connection to the historic faith of our ancestors. It represents even less our own faith as Christians who continue to celebrate the gifts of our Creator, revealed and embodied in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Heartened by our experience of the transforming presence of Christ’s Holy Spirit in our world, we find ourselves in a time and place where we will be no longer silent. We hereby mark an end to our silence by making the following affirmations:

As people who are joyfully and unapologetically Christian, we pledge ourselves completely to the way of Love. We work to express our love, as Jesus teaches us, in three ways: by loving God, neighbor, and self.

(Matt 22:34-40 // Mk 12:28-31 // Lk 10:25-28; Cf. Deut 6:5; Lev. 19:18)

Christian love of God includes:

1. Walking fully in the path of Jesus, without denying the legitimacy of other paths God may provide humanity;

2. Listening for God’s Word which comes through daily prayer and meditation, studying the ancient testimonies which we call Scripture, and attending to God’s present activity in the world;

3. Celebrating the God whose Spirit pervades and whose glory is reflected in all of God’s Creation, including the earth and its ecosystems, the sacred and secular, the Christian and non-Christian, the human and non-human;

4. Expressing our love in worship that is as sincere, vibrant, and artful as it is scriptural.

Christian love of neighbor includes:

5. Engaging people authentically, as Jesus did, treating all as creations made in God’s very image, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental ability, nationality, or economic class;

6. Standing, as Jesus does, with the outcast and oppressed, the denigrated and afflicted, seeking peace and justice with or without the support of others;

7. Preserving religious freedom and the Church’s ability to speak prophetically to government by resisting the commingling of Church and State;

8. Walking humbly with God, acknowledging our own shortcomings while honestly seeking to understand and call forth the best in others, including those who consider us their enemies;

Christian love of self includes:

9. Basing our lives on the faith that, in Christ, all things are made new, and that we, and all people, are loved beyond our wildest imagination – for eternity;

10. Claiming the sacredness of both our minds and our hearts, recognizing that faith and science, doubt and belief serve the pursuit of truth;

11. Caring for our bodies, and insisting on taking time to enjoy the benefits of prayer, reflection, worship and recreation in addition to work;

12. Acting on the faith that we are born with a meaning and purpose; a vocation and ministry that serves to strengthen and extend God’s realm of love.

(That’s just the summary version. There’s a longer version if you’ve got a little time to kill.)

Anyway, to call attention to the Phoenix Affirmations — and, of equal importance, the fact that moderate and progressive Christians actually exist — a number of ministers and laypeople are walking the 2,500 miles between Phoenix and Washington, D.C. They left Phoenix on Easter Sunday; they plan to reach Washington on September 3 (Labor Day weekend), “where we will hold a rally to ‘nail the Affirmations to the doorway of America.’”

Inevitably, the participants in the walk have their own blog, which I have added to my blogroll.

Since the point of the walk is to generate attention, I was curious to see how much media coverage it has received. A check of LEXIS/NEXIS yielded just three hits. Two were cursory: 73 and 177 words, respectively. But the St. Louis Post Dispatch had a nice 820-word write-up:

When the Rev. Dr. Eric Elnes returned from a three-month sabbatical about two years ago, he had an idea that he thought would eventually fade, but it didn’t, resulting in a 2,500-mile journey across the country - on foot.

Elnes, pastor of the Scottsdale (Ariz.) Congregational United Church of Christ, went on the sabbatical in northern Ethiopia, southern India and south Oregon to explore Christian worship and spiritual practices. Instead, his thoughts turned to a reformation in Christianity and walking that message across the country.

Elnes, 42, and nine others, including a filmmaker, videographer and van driver, set out on a trek on Easter from Phoenix to Washington to draw attention to what the group calls “A New Vision for the Future of Christianity.”

The group CrossWalk America was formed just over a year ago and is separate from Elnes’ church. Rebecca Glenn, co-president of the group, says it is out to change the face of Christianity in this country.

“Where the difference lies is in the media and with some very loud Christian leaders that speak a message of intolerance and fear, and ‘if you don’t believe like I do then you can’t be a Christian or you’re going to go to hell,’” said Glenn, 46. “We speak a message of hope and love.”

“We walk because we don’t want to be silent anymore about what we believe is our Christian path,” she said. “We want to show others that if you live a Christian message based on the love of God, love of neighbor, love of self, that can make this world a much better place.”

I was a little surprised to discover that the marchers number exactly seven. Which I suppose help to explain the paucity of media coverage. But at least they’re doing something to restore compassion to the vindictive public face of American Christianity. And surely Edmund Burke was right when he insisted, “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”