Recently, I participated in a People’s Lobby gathering in Chicago. This progressive community organization has been focusing on, among other things, ending mass incarceration, renewable energy, fair elections and corporations paying their fair share. There were commitments made, by various office holders, to our agenda. There was a celebration of new people—about three dozen, many young adults, running for office with commitments to social justice.
I have been involved with faith-based community organizing for years: the Calumet Community Religious Conference (responding to the closing of steel mills), Witness for Peace, the Developing Communities Project (with Barack Obama as our organizer), Metropolitan Alliance of Congregations and SOUL (Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation). These organizations were led by clergy and people of faith. They were heavily Christian. Some included Jewish and Muslim leaders. People’s Lobby, however, is not a faith-based organization. It includes, among other elements, a “Faith Liberation Movement” of clergy and people of faith, but the organization itself is broad-based. It is made up of a diversity of ethnic groups, urban and suburban, religious and non-religious (agnostic and atheist), all of which are represented in the leadership. What we have in common is a commitment to social justice.
I like the nature of this organization. Christians do not have a privileged place. We are one group among many others. We are engaged in a common mission of bringing about change in our society oriented to justice. We share from a place of faith—of a particular faith. Others share from other places. We are able to serve the common good along with others. We are able to be what Jesus called us to be, salt, light, and yeast. We can hardly be these without being engaged in our world which includes embracing the gifts and visions of others.
Early on in the program, various groups, perhaps a dozen, were given an opportunity to make some noise indicating their presence among us. By the level of noise, it was clear that there was a sizable group of faith leaders. I was grateful for this witness that linked our faith to social justice, especially given that many, with little experience with Christians, have (through the media) associated Christians with reactionary impulses: anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-others, narrow, mean-spirited, and judgmental. The impression is given that Christians are looking out for themselves and are pressing for a privileged place for Christianity in American society and law.
A pastor, an African American, ended the meeting with a prayer. Before praying, he acknowledged that what he was about to do came from his faith tradition and that there were many others who did not share in this tradition or in any faith tradition. He encouraged others to reach out to God in the way they thought of God, or if they did not believe in God, to simply share in the spirit of the work we were doing together. He did not speak from a place of special privilege but from a place alongside others and as a servant to others. Certainly, this is where Jesus, who was the servant of all, has called us to be.