Losing Our Way

Last month, a little-known committee with a long name, comprised of a lot of big names, issued a report on the tragedy of worldwide human trafficking. (And let me say at the outset that human trafficking is indeed a very large and very complex global issue in great need of attention and action; my comments are not meant to diminish this in the least.) 

            The committee is known as “The President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.” Among its members are denominational leaders, an evangelical mega-church, United Way, and others. Eleven of the Council’s fifteen members are religious leaders. Notably missing from the Council are Catholics, Muslims, and Baptists. 

            So far, you might not find anything particularly strange about the Council or its report. Or perhaps you wonder why a group of religious and charity leaders have been assembled under White House auspices; you thought there is supposed to be a “separation of church and state,” and a group like this seems to blur those lines. In that case, read on…

             This initiative was established in 2001 under President Bush, for the specific purpose of directing federal money to religious organizations; in 2007, it distributed $2.2 billion to these organizations. However, controversy dogged the initiative.  Under Bush, the initiative was accused of being politicized and overly favoring conservative evangelical organizations, causing its first director to resign in protest. Constitutional issues were raised. President Obama promised to revitalize it, but now conservatives began to complain that he was now the one doing the politicizing. By early 2012 it had no members and had all but disappeared.

             At about the same time, Obama was beginning to plan a major speech on global human trafficking, which he ultimately delivered on September 25, 2012 at the Clinton Global Initiative. By the time of that speech, he had revived the Council and filled it with new appointments. In addition, a government agency was quickly built around it, with 60 employees and a $385 million annual administrative budget. It was ready to take on new work…and just guess what it chose as its first project…global human trafficking! What an amazing coincidence! Two White House “minders” were assigned to the group, consultants and experts were brought in and, in April, a report was issued.

             You may or may not be surprised at the content of the report and recommendations. It contained ten recommendations to the President. Eight of the ten begin with “The Obama Administration,” “The White House,” or “The federal government;” none began with any mention of “faith-based” or “community partnerships.” It’s already sounding like a political document. The recommendations themselves contain the type of “loose” language we have come to expect from government agencies, words and phrases such as “lead,” “elevate,” “raise,” “inspire,” “develop,” “learn with,” “work with,” “designate,” “map and coordinate,” and more. These are so “spongy” that even the most minimal efforts can be said to advance them, and credit thereby taken. All of the recommendations are framed in such a way as to be achievable in the short and intermediate term. The report goes on to applaud the Obama administration for its leadership. The “minders” certainly did their jobs well.

             Along the way, Council members were wooed in the halls of power, treated to the glitz and glamour of Washington, D.C., rubbed elbows with the rich and famous. All of this attention must have been heady, and the individuals involved certainly made no secret of their appointments and participation, and all of the glamour and “stroking” that came along with them.

             That’s how seductive, how tempting, is power and influence…not to mention money. These leaders allowed themselves to be seduced, and to thereby compromise the independence of religion and its traditional moral and prophetic place to call rulers to account for their misdeeds. Instead, they have knowingly and willingly participated in the misdeeds!

             More than fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., certainly a modern-day prophet, wrote:

 The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.

             In our time, we are witnessing the prolonged death of the church (and churches) of Jesus Christ as it been for 500 years or more. More often than not in its 2,000 year history, the church has been engaged with nations and empires by the lure of power and wealth. This is a sad history, far removed from the ministry of the one whose name we worship. Even knowing this history, church leaders continue to allow themselves to be seduced, to the detriment of all the faithful whom they lead. No wonder the faithful are losing faith…literally…and leaving the church in droves, reducing churches to the “irrelevant social clubs” predicted by King.

             King calls on the church to “recapture its prophetic zeal,” a phrase pregnant with exciting possibilities. We have heroes and heroines of the faith who model the true church. We have the challenge of today’s young people to live up to our beliefs. To respond, we must be fully and constantly prepared to speak truth to power, to reject religious and other institutions whose primary interest is self-preservation, to reject seduction by power and wealth, to reject religions of judgmental negativity, and to act in the world by calling out the best in people, including ourselves. Are you ready?

 Rev. John Ransom is Pastor of Living Faith Community Church in Dunedin (www.livingfaithdunedin.org), host of the Emerging Spirit talk show series, and founder of Christians Passionate for Justice (coming soon).