Two weeks ago, Paul Ryan fired Father Patrick J. Conroy, the first Jesuit chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives. Father Ryan is also the first House chaplain ever to have been fired.

Conroy was nominated for the position in 2011 by Speaker of the House John Boehner in consultation with Nancy Pelosi and has been reelected every two years at the beginning of each new session of the House.

While Conroy was not given a reason for being asked to resign, he did note that a prayer he offered in November as Congress was debating the new tax bill caused a surprising response from the Speaker’s office.

His prayer included the following:

May all members be mindful that the institutions and structures of our great nation guarantee the opportunities that have allowed some to achieve great success, while others continue to struggle. . . May their efforts these days guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.

The following week someone from the speaker’s office chastised Father Conroy saying, “We are upset with this prayer; you are getting too political.” Not too long after that reprimand, Ryan told Father Conroy directly, “Padre, you just got to stay out of politics.”

Conroy countered, “That is what I have tried to do for seven years. It doesn’t sound political to me.” And yet, this prayer was the first time anyone from the speaker’s office had ever accused him of being “too political.”

What’s going on?

At its core, what this controversy highlights is an ongoing divide in this country over what it means to be Christian. This is not a struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism (Ryan and Conroy are both Catholics) but a struggle between an understanding of faith as a private affair focused on individual piety and salvation and faith as a community endeavor focused on promoting the common good.

As a lifelong Presbyterian, I look for candidates for public office who are also concerned about addressing poverty, racism, social exclusion, violence against women and minorities (including sexual minorities) and other social problems that ravage our communities.

As a Christian ethicist, I believe that all people of faith bring our faith commitments and beliefs to the public square when we debate public policy and legislation and that we should. The faith commitments that we hold naturally shape how we think about economic and social policy.

My faith as a progressive Christian is rooted in the social gospel tradition of Jesus’ championing of the poor and marginalized and the Hebrew prophets insistence that the community care for the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger – those who are most marginal in our society.

Jesus and the Poor

Jesus didn’t say to the lame, “Rise up and go get a job!” or to the poor, “If you only worked harder you could care for your family!”

No. Jesus recognized that the structures of his society were unjust. He also recognized the vagaries of life and that circumstances of ill health, untimely death, a lost job, or other tragedy are part of life. When he said “the poor you will always have with you” (John 12:8), it was not an invitation to accept the reality of poverty as an inevitable fact of life. Rather, it was an assessment of the injustice inherent in human societies and a challenge to us to do better. A challenge to us to do what Deuteronomy 15 calls us to do:

“If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted towards your needy neighbour. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. . . . Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land.”

Poverty in the U.S.

read more here

 

The term “progressive” has long been used to represent an understanding of Christianity marked by an awareness of social sin; a consciousness of institutional and human potential and shortcomings; and, an emphasis on the church’s mission to engage the world.  The root of the term is “progress” and denotes the ways that humans over the centuries have become more conscious of our common nature and our common needs and acted out of compassion and our concern for justice to address those needs. Rather than focusing on charity alone, progressive Christians seek to transform the social systems and economic structures of society that marginalize people and the natural world. The term “progress” does not imply a single, uniform social goal.  Progressive Christians draw upon a variety of rich resources (Christian teachings and tradition, science, experience, social sciences, philosophy, etc.) to gain a greater understanding of the problems that we are facing and to work in collaboration with others to help our society, our world, and the church to make progress towards God’s vision of a new earth.

Progressive Christianity and scripture

Progressive Christians find firm footing for their social justice pursuits in scripture. At the heart of the biblical witness are the concepts of justice, covenant, and hospitality.  Prophetic books have provided us with some of the most memorable verses referring to justice in scripture.   The prophet Micah gives one of the clearest and most memorable references to God’s concern for justice.  In the sixth chapter of Micah, God challenges the Hebrew people to remember how God acted to liberate them from the oppression of the Egyptians in the Exodus.  God called people like Moses to lead them from bondage toward a more promising future. Micah challenges the Hebrew people to remember God’s justice as the foundation of human action.  What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God? (Micah 6:8) Jesus is remembered in the gospels as standing within a larger Jewish prophetic tradition. Through his teachings and actions Jesus resisted the unjust laws of his time that served to marginalize and oppress. He reminded others of their larger commitment to God’s covenant relationship; a covenant implying the responsibility to seek justice for the most vulnerable.

Our common narrative as a faith community in rooted in the covenant relationship that God established with creation.  This covenant tradition begins with Noah, is renewed with the descendants of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, and again by Moses on behalf of the Israelites. The covenant tradition implies, not only a relationship between God and the people of God, but it implies that the people of God are a community bound together by bonds of kinship, faith, and responsibility. Through God’s covenant the whole creation experiences God’s blessing.  The term “blessing” is often misused in contemporary conversations to refer to individual economic and material well-being. Biblical notions of covenant and hospitality fly in the face of the dominant social attitudes of power, responsibility, and individual freedom.  The New Testament describes the actions of Jesus in the world as renewing the covenant between God and God’s people to enjoy God’s blessing, one in which the believing community is not only accountable to their kin and to God, but they are charged with offering hospitality to their neighbor. As Jesus interprets the Great Commandment “to love your neighbor as yourself” in the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, Jesus challenges his listeners to remember their hospitality codes and obligations to include strangers, enemies, and those who are in peril. Jesus did not say, “Help those who are deserving.” Rather, quite the opposite. In Matthew 25:34-40 he instructs his followers to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit with prisoners. The call of Christ to offer hospitality in the world is rooted in the common humanity that we all share as children of God.

Progressive Christianity’s Impact on Society 

Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/todojustice/2018/04/07/what-is-progressive-christianity/#WhW3HUI2b3KVGguy.99

Will I go to church on Easter?

I guess it’s only fair to answer that question honestly myself before asking readers their take on the question.

The best answer I can give today is probably? (And yes, there is a question mark in my voice when I answer).

Like many progressive Christians, I often struggle to go to church.

Why go to church?

It’s not really the getting up on Sunday mornings instead of sleeping in or relaxing or reading a book or talking a walk. I like to do all of those things and I find all of them restorative and sometimes sacred acts. After all, I’ve getting up and going to church on most Sundays for fifty years now.

I know its popular to say things like, “I feel as close to God in nature as I ever could in church” or some such variation. And I know that to be true too. There are many places where I feel the presence of the sacred and where I feel it is possible to celebrate and praise that which I experience as holy and numinous in the world.

But there is more to going to church than praising God. I know, right? Given the dominance of “praise music” it’s sometimes hard to remember that these days. Maybe that’s one of the reasons “praise music” annoys me so much (well, that, and the insipid, patriarchial, Jesus-centric lyrics).

So, of course, one aspect of church is praising God or the divine or the sacred or whatever you choose to call that which you believe/revere. But it is so much more than that. To think that the divine needs or desires our praise is so anthropocentric. The holy does not have an ego that needs to be stoked, folks – that’s us – humankind.

I believe that going to church is largely about two things – being community to one another and opening ourselves to hear the divine word from others. Neither of which we can really do by ourselves, in the woods or wherever else we might choose to spend our Sunday mornings (or whenever your worship time might be) by ourselves or with our intimate others.

Read the rest here

So, you have found your way to this site. Welcome, and thank you for poking around here. You already know from a previous post that I am a scholar and professor. I teach social ethics at Elon University in NC and my scholarly and professional life is focused on questions of social justice. From poverty, inequality, racism, sexism, and classism to housing, homelessness, living wages, and reproductive justice – my work and my life is focused on understanding the structural factors that shape injustice and helping to educate broader publics about how to engage in social change.

I am on sabbatical this year (2014-15) and one of my sabbatical goals was to experiment with social media and develop an online presence. I’d love to hear from you about issues of social injustice, social change, solidarity, and transformation.

Hey dear readers! I believe there are four of you right now. Amazing since I just started this blog 30 minutes ago. I thank you and look forward to hearing from you.

I’m curious to know – why do you read blogs? What are looking for? Do you find it?

Like all of us, my life is shaped and formed by the many different roles I carry in my life – teacher, preacher, scholar, wife, mother, friend, professor, colleague, daughter, sister, among others. Though people may see me through many different lens as they approach me in these various roles, there is only one me inside. Whether I am acting in my role as mother, teacher, preacher or friend – to my core, to my bone, in my heart of hearts, my life and my work is about doing justice, loving kindness, and seeking to walk humbly with my god.

This blog is my invitation to any who are interested, to join me as I seek to discern with you and others, how it is we can live with integrity and faithfulness in the places where we find ourselves.