She’s reading a rather long passage that I can’t quite get here, but it’s quite funny.
The gist of it was that she was going to launch a march on Bastille day, July 14, to launch a revolution based on kindness. But she ended up being the only marcher.
Key quote: “Everything is stupid, and sometimes it’s on a really huge scale.”
She was in New Orleans recently and blown away by the sight. 9th Ward is as if the disaster struck yesterday. Was going to give nice words, but remembered that in a class about “what we don’t need in a minister” she learned that we don’t need “lots of nice BS.” So she told them the truth that it looked like things weren’t going to get any better.
It is true that things can be hopeless and there is a hard fight again, but also that we are safe and known. “For some reason having to do with our human condition we need to be cracked and broken.” Otherwise we would not surrender so entirely. When God is going to do something incredible he starts with something hard, and when he is going to do something awesome he starts with something impossible.
If you express the horrible things in the world with others, they waive it away. They will then “helpfully” explain what you are actually feeling, which isn’t all that bad.
“I’m a profoundly faithful and a profoundly worried person. You can be both.”
We heal up to some point about even the worst wounds. For example, we’ve gotten over the 2004 election. As in all of these cases, eventually you learn to dance again. When people say “time heals all” it’s just sadism. She doesn’t think God said that.
Believes that love is bigger than any injury we sustain. But the culture is terrified of our rage and “bad sportsmanship,” that they go around pretending they don’t see it.
She told the people of New Orleans to refuse to get over it unless they really and truly are. The culture says that crying weakens you but the culture lies. The crying baptises you. Grief helps us find our way home.
In New Orleans, block after block of houses have their doors open and the water line up to about 7-8 feet tall. She told them that if their houses are broken and their faith is intact, that’s a lot.
She related how she felt when she was on a busy road trip to a game of pin the tail on the donkey where we spin tired, sugared out kids around and then point them at the direction of the wall with the donkey on it. We’re the kids and Jesus is the donkey.
Where do we start? 4-step program:
- Stop. Breathe. Face the wall with God on it. Stop racing around, multi-tasking, like some speed-freak.
- Try to remember that it’s okay not to know more than you do. You only need to see a few feet in front of you - E.L. Doctorow analogy about driving with headlights.
- Come to believe that it’s a great triumph to let yourself do things badly.
- You can ask for a lot of help. American ideal is that if you get help you only get partial credit.
“Laughter is carbonated holiness.”
Quoted from Neil Postman - Amusing Ourselves to Death: 1984 has not occurred, but Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World in many ways had. People come to love their oppression. Embrace the technologies which undo their capacity to think. Orwell feared banning books, Huxley feared there would be no reason to ban books because no one would ready them anymore. Orwell feared truth would be concealed, Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in irrelevancy. <aside>I’m missing most of this, but you get the idea.</aside> In short, Orwell feared what we hate and fear will ruin us, but Huxley feared what we think we love will really ruin us.
Some people say the major heresy of the western church is silliness. The work of authentic religion is to teach humanity how to be travellers with mystery. Instead, we have taught people what to see rather than how to see. In western religion, we give people the conclusions. This prevents people from having the ability to critique their own lens. The higher level of consciousness is the only way to access the divine. When we are at the lower level, we pull the divine down to us - generally, into the dualistic, win/lose perspective. This is the level of consciousness that most people operate in.
Prayer has been understood at the functional level - getting God to do what you want. People started using words other than prayer to understand the higher level access to the divine - meditation (oh God, sounds too eastern), contemplation, etc. Doesn’t care what word we use, but he hopes to describe the higher level of seeing. Until religion moves to there, we won’t see very much, very far, but only mirror images of ourself. Won’t get out of egocentricity. One reason so many people are attracted to Buddhism is because it has refined the vocabulary to tell us that how we see is what we will see.
We need to teach our people how to see. Then they can be released into what to see. But that doesn’t matter, because once they know how to see, it will take care of itself. He would like to close down church programs for 3 years and just teach people prayer.
The normal way we see is the Egoic operating system. If we haven’t been taught how to look at the world contemplatively, we look at it calculatively. This operating system cannot get you there. The best it can do is produce liberals and conservatives. Both operating on the same OS.
The higher you move, the more comfortable you become with paradox and move beyond dualism. Think of all the dilemmas in life - if religion does not allow you to cope with the dualing items, then it is not real religion.
When the scriptures talk about Jesus praying for 40 days, he had to be standing in the middle of a different pair of eyes that didn’t involve the thinking mind. The judging mind is only a self-cancelling system - based on binary system of affirmation and denial. For some reason we think someone will make an affirmation or denial that will cause the other side to roll over. Do we see any evidence of this? After a while we think if we talk louder it will get our point across. This just solidifies the other side in their belief of your immaturity (which you are).
We need something beyond affirmation and denial. In the last Presidential debate, we were convinced that our candidate won. But then it was divided 50-50, because we only hear what we want to hear. We need to move into the contemplative way of thinking.
The calculative way is not evil or bad, but rather it is insufficient at seeing the spiritual. The finite cannot access the infinite. The logical mind cannot access paradox and mystery like the trinity. It is no mistake that the trinity is three - it breaks us out of the dualism.
The Egoic operating system is confrontational, which leads to anger in our conversations. We are thinking about our next arguments rather than resting in a different place. Jesus always comes from a different place - he doesn’t buy in when they’re trying to trap him. “I am convinced that Jesus was the first clear non-dual thinker in the West.” This is why the church in the west has not been prepared to understand his teachings.
He is here to give us new software which will make us much happier. Dr. Phil: “Some point in the course of your marriage you have to decide if you want to be right or if you want to be happy.” Most people want to be right. He’s not talking about taking away “nos” - opposing injustice, etc. But the “nos” have to come from a primary “yes.”
Did not put the conference together to train in leftist politics. They have something better - a third way. If religion doesn’t learn to teach a non dual way of thinking, then we are not an answer. We can see the love affair with death that religion can have. Heroic thinking is always egoic thinking.
Science is becoming religion’s very best friend - previously considered an enemy. Read a book about neutrinos. The book said the only reason the universe doesn’t self-destruct is any time a atom disintegrates, it releases a neutrino. We cannot measure it, it isn’t visible, it’s weightless, races through the universe in all directions, changes flavors, cannot be captured, but leaves traces of its passing. Sounds like the holy spirit. Neutrinos neither negative nor positive, weightless, and are only released when atoms are destabilized.
We want to maintain our ego structures. The ego maintains itself through constriction and differentiation. “I’m this, I’m not like you.” The neutrino is only released when it stops constricting and differentiating. The soul defines itself in a different way. It looks out there and say “My God, I’m just like you.” We’re all the same, naked under our clothes. This is why mysticism is so dangerous - their seeing is too universal. It’s not dualistic.
Lets go back to Jesus. The sun rises on the good and the bad, the rain falls the just or the unjust. There is no ability to be superior under this teaching. Paintings of Jesus incarnate hold two fingers up showing his dual nature - fully human, fully divine. We need to put together the fact that we are sons of God and sons of the flesh and they don’t cancel each other out. This is good news. To the rational, dualistic mind, it’s impossible. It took the church 3 centuries to get its mind around this.
You would hope that we would be the masters of non-knowing. But in the neo-conservatism of Catholicism and Protestantism insists on knowing, which confines us to the lower levels of thinking. Jesus is asked 183 questions, but only answers 3 directly. He hardly ever answers the questions - he changes the question, or reframes the question. They are always designed around mystery. “Don’t you end the reading of a parable with a level of dissatisfaction?”
Jesus leads us to the end of our own knowing. But it is a kind of knowing that cannot be proven. The contemplative mind is the non-need to prove anything. If you have a lot to prove, you won’t become contemplative. When you are contemplative, you don’t need to prove things. “It is what it is.” Most times you can’t get there in the first half of life. You must be defeated many times trying to fix things.
“When someone runs into the room saying, I know why you did that - they probably don’t.” What great religion gives you is a respect for mystery. Jesus’ word for living in that space is faith. The other great heresy is we took the biblical model of faith and made it into a whole bunch of certitudes, an insistence on clarity, knowledge, and light. The mystics are always teaching darkness, not light. It’s a different kind of knowing, where you don’t need to know. The tradition calls this wisdom.
The gift of knowledge is listed separately from wisdom. In this case, he’s using knowledge to subvert the idolatry of knowledge. There are two major paths of transformation - the path of prayer, and the more common path of suffering. Sometimes much more quickly. Major grief, loss, failure, humiliation, gets you there quicker. Death is the utter encounter with mystery, which doesn’t make sense to our mind.
In initiation rights, grief is the only thing that can help a male give up control. God initiates us on the life path itself where in the midst of the woods we encounter the dark wood, where nothing makes sense. This is where the new door opens, and you can get on with your real spiritual journey. “Everything up to that point is just foreplay.”
If religion doesn’t move to the second half of life questions, we won’t be able to influence politics. The life of contemplation or suffering is how we will be able to influence.
When most people don’t receive an answer, they close down. Slowly you stop hoping. If religion does not transform your pain, you will always necessarily transmit it. The wars of the world are the transmission of untransformed pain. The fact that we don’t treat people like the slave traders in the movie shows that we have already been transformed in many ways.
Trinity is an eternal giving between the three. If this is true, then any thought of violence, hatred, withholding by God is theologically impossible. God only gives.
If God is a punishing God, then most of the people in this room are more compassionate than him. We wouldn’t torture our enemies for all eternity. <aside>Apparently, he’s not a big fan of the concept of hell.</aside>
Most institutional religion is invested in stage 3 of 9 of consciousness - good versus bad. We have been given the gift of being able to undercut any theology of war. When you are at the higher levels, you can have sympathy with folks at the lower levels.
Find some kind of practive where we can let go of dualistic critique. For men, it’s competition, for women, it’s comparison. Is this relativism? No, because what religious experience is to encounter the absolute. Once you meet the great lover, then everything else is relativized. That’s what makes you patient. That’s what makes you humble. Anybody who knows, knows that they don’t know. If you’ve met God, you’re humble, and if you’re not humble, you haven’t met God.
What we’re really teaching in contemplation is how to live in an undefended way. We are highly defended creatures, with rationalizations surrounding us. When we can let go of those, only then communion and community can happen.
This will not lead you into a privitized individualistic Christiantiy, but exactly the opposite. Universal communion, universal empathy, which allows you to get out and for God to get in. If you get this you will know for yourself. Your politics will change, you economics will change, your sexism will change. These things will fall away.
Authentic religion is the most radical form of political correction there is.
Jim Rice, Editor of Sojourners magazine is giving this talk. He was raised Jesuit but is now married to a Mennonite and attending a Mennonite church. He came initially as a peace organizer. He grew up in a town in Washington where the first nuclear weapons were first produced. The mascot of the school was the Bombers, and the logo was a mushroom cloud. This has influenced his commitment to peacemaking.
What is our sense of identity - is it from the nation-state? Or is it from the greater body of the church. The most important thing to be a peacemaker is your spiritual grounding.
Paradoxes for peacemaking: MLK: “The arc of the universe bends toward justice…” MLK again: “Justice never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability.”
Opening questions (I’ll answer them here): What’s your experience with nonviolent action? I was involved in some on-campus protests against the first Iraq war. What kind of intentional training do you have for nonviolence? None.
It looks like this session will be a little more “unconference” like with Jim Rice just serving as the facilitator and lots of comments in the room.
Most people in the room had no formal training, but Rice is emphasizing that we should have more. Education is very important so that we can learn the lessons of the past so we don’t repeat the mistakes. 9/11 is the 100th anniversary of Gandhi’s first nonviolent campaign - the first time nonviolence was at the part of an intentional campaign.
We need to make a commitment to up our intentionality about nonviolence and learn from our predecessors.
It’s easy for us to look at the history of nonviolence action and miss the behind the scenes things. None of us are legislators, so we will be doing more of the behind the scenes things which plant the seeds for nonviolent social change. The people who marched in the civil rights movement were intentionally trained in nonviolence.
How do we approach the question of nonviolence? Church’s 3 major approaches: just war, pacficism, and holy war. Rice thinks the just war theory has a lot of merits. The church has approached the just war theory with integrity, but the state has never used it in that way - it has used it to justify war. He thinks we need a fourth category, since pacifism has been connected with nonaction. Fourth category is non-violent action, not passive-ism.
What are some of the techniques of nonviolence?
Boycott to apply economic pressure, sit-ins, marches, student sit-ins at admin offices, fasts (there are ethical questions around coercion), vigils, refrain from something besides food (TV, etc), voting/voter registration, letter writing, blocking traffic (especially when what is being blocked is connected to what you are opposing), symbolic actions - crosses for soldiers killed, film making/art, prophetic witness, civil disobedience (trespassing, resisting the law publicly), consciencious objection, language - do not judge people when we talk about issues, teaching, strike
Sanctions can hurt the people they are meant to help many times. Could a boycott do the same? But targetted sanctions might be better.
What has been done historically?
If we were the campaign to end the Iraq war, what specific things could be done?
Declaration of Peace campaign (www.declarationofpeace.org), resolution of remorse asking forgiveness from Iraqis, use electronic technologies, www.voicesinwartime.org
We cannot do this alone, need to join together.
Only if we believe we can change the world will we do the work required to change the world.
Prophet Isaiah talks about Biblical importance of breaking the chains of oppression. Our light only shines after we provide support to the most marginalized among us.
Wilberforce was relentless in his quest to end slave trade. We will need to become relentless in the same way to overcome poverty. But the question of poverty appears to be a Goliath. God has given us the stones like David to overcome poverty, but we need to overcome the paralysis presented by statistics.
37 million Americans live in poverty. 1/4 of African Americans, 21 percent of Latinos. 12.6 percent of total population. U.S. has the highest poverty rate of any industrialized nation.
Katrina pulled back the veil on poverty. In a recent survey, Americans are drawing the wrong lessons. Only a small increase in number of Americans aware of poverty. An increasing number of Americans drew the lesson that government can do no good. Katrina brought a teaching moment on poverty, but the window is closing.
A Covenant for a New America created to address issues of poverty in the country.
Immediately after Katrina, Congress wanted to cut services for the poor and taxes for the rich. Budget is a Moral Document campaign was a counter to this. But was reactive, not proactive.
The Covenant for a New America is an effort to put poverty at the top of the agenda by the 2008 elections. Poverty has become a missing item in our elections. Must change the nature of the conversation to do this.
In 2000, the Millenium Summit was held in New York to discuss the failures of globalization. The benefits of globalization were not going to those who needed it most. Decided on new partnership between wealthy and poor countries - created Millenium Development Goals, the biggest of which is to cut in half the number of people living on less than $1 per day. Others - every child has access to education, reverse AIDS pandemic, sustainable development, and so forth.
The vast majority of Americans didn’t know that the summit happened and that the U.S. signed up for this. Political leaders had no accountability to make the promise real. Our government hasn’t stepped up with a counterpart to the MDG for the U.S.
Three goals of covenant:
- Work needs to work in America. 9.2 million working families are still working below the poverty line. No increase in minimum wage for 9 years - which is $5900 below the poverty line. Dramatic increase in the cost of living - lack access to credit, pay more for basic needs. 47 million Americans lack access to health care. Goal is to increase the minimum wage to a living wage, affordable child care, available health care, lower transportation costs.
- Children should not be poor. 1/6 children grow up in poverty, 1/4 of black children. Can not break cycle of poverty when lack of opportunity is the ruling aspect of children’s lives. Goals - cut number of children in poverty in half over 10 years.
- Mobilize greater leadership to achieve MDG. Debt cancellation, trade justice. Farm subsidies go mostly to large corporations, not small farmers, but they have a powerful lobby.
<aside>Honestly, there doesn’t seem much that is new here. The answer to how we move beyond left and right seems to be “adopt the Covenant for a New America.” Sounds good to me as a liberal, but I’m not sure how it would be accepted by conservatives.</aside>
During the Pentecost conference this year, a spectrum of religious groups endorsed the covenant. But if there are not individuals on the ground doing the work, then the Covenant will not be implemented. How in the local context can we make this a reality? How to get it into the media and the public dialogue?
Good question from the audience - how can we get churches behind these goals when churches are so split politically?
Answer: Study guides. Christians and Poverty. Biblical View of Government. More conservative folks bring their ideological baggage along (<aside>But don’t liberals do this too?</aside>). Small group discussions to facilitate dialogue in a non-threatening way. We need to get folks to believe in overcoming poverty, not necessarily on the methods.
So far, things are going much better from a tech standpoint this morning. Laptop is up and EV-DO is humming. Now I just have to hope my battery holds out.
Jim Wallis is back on stage talking about the film last night. He’s using this as an intro into the confusion he sees about religion in our society. On his book tour around the country he hears from people that didn’t know that you could be religious and care about poverty.
“17-year old kids stop me at the airport and say - I just want to shake your hand, you’re the only Christian I see on TV and don’t throw up after.”
How do we connect the two great hungers - for spirituality and social justice?
Feels that the conversation about religion and politics is changing. Doors are opening. The number and diversity of people coming to book signings are increasing. Young evangelicals, catholics who don’t want to see everything reduced to one issue, mainline folks, rabbis, muslims in a fight for the heart and soul of their faith. Many people who are “spiritual but not religious” - “a new denomination.”
Anecdote from a person he met: “It’s easier to be gay in Boston than religious in the Democratic party.” Church’s lack of passion for justice was an obstacle to faith for one of the folks he mentioned. Many people have come to faith because of his book - asking what’s next? Young people are coming back to faith.
Pastors are doing book studies with folks from the right and the left. Bringing people together from the right and the left. Rick Warren: “I’m conservative on Jesus, I’m conservative on the Bible, I’m conservative on the resurrection, but I’m becoming a social liberal.”
Can’t change a country until you change the wind. Wallis thinks the wind is changing on some of the important questions. Theologically and politically. He thinks both the Democrats and Republicans are failing to address the issues of our time. Doesn’t feel a hunger for a “religious left” to counter a “religious right.” Instead, hunger is for “moral center.” Go deeper.
Calvin College, western Michigan, red part of blue state. Bush was to give commencement address, but 300 students were concerned about it. Didn’t want the country to think they all support the war and are Republicans. Wallis: “Press corp is coming, when they come, give them something to cover.” They took out a full page ad in newspaper asking Bush to change policies regarding economics, environment, war. Half of student body signed the ad, half of coverage was about the protest. Doesn’t mean school is Democratic territory, but does show the old political calculus is changing.
For the last 10 years, younger evangelicals have been coming up with fresh environmental campaigns. Last 2-3 years, evangelical leaders (National Association of Evangelicals) have begun to talk about global warming as a religious issue. Talked about “creation care.” Blew things open in Washington since global warming constituency is not a part of the Republican base. 22 of the old guard evangelicals opposed this. Dobson: “The environment is a decisive issue.” Five years ago this opposition would have succeeded, but this time it failed. Evangelical Climate initiative put in the New York Times - signed both by liberal and conservative evangelicals. Religious right lost control of the agenda.
Election is now on the agenda. Wallis: “I am for moral values talk. But who gets to define what moral values are?” Religious right are remininding us of what the moral issues are: abortion and same-sex marriage. But now other issues are being raised. Believes that the model of the religious right is over and a new dialogue has begun.
Even having some miracles: Like, Democrats talking about God. Revisited Barack Obama’s talking about the divorce between progressive politics and a moral/religious component. Best address since JFK in 1960. Wallis: “I like Barack Obama.”
Religious right had “Justice Sunday” this past year. Anyone who doesn’t agree with the President’s judicial appointments is not a person of faith, according to them. Teaches us a lesson, however. Those of us who disagree with folks on the religious right should never disagree with them the way they disagree with us.
After Martin Luther King was arrested, wrote Letter from a Birmingham Jail to people of faith who did not support his cause. Never said that they were not real Christians, but did call them to join the fight. If MLK couldn’t do it over segregation, the religious right can’t do it over judges, and we cannot do it back to them.
Wallis: “Lets make our discourse different from theirs.”
Thinks that the wind is changing on issues we care about. Campaign launched last year: “Budget is a Moral Document.” Reflects the priorities of families, cities, states, countries. Congress wanted to cut food stamps - the logic “made sense” to Wallis - in a time of war, deficits, and increasing poverty, cut services to the poor and give more to the rich. Church leaders met with the politicians and told them to stop hurting people they work with. Changed many politicians’ minds, but it passed anyway with Cheney’s veto override.
Wallis made altar calls to come and get arrested in Washington. John Perkins was his favorite who came. Perkins said his mother died when he was 7 months old - he thought he killed her mother. But he later found out his mother died of a nutritional deficiency because she was poor and no one cared for her. 76-years old, he was arrested and dragged off to jail. 100 papers covered this but were confused - religious people talking about things other than abortion and same-sex marriage?
Census numbers - more people are living in poverty. 46 million Americans do not have health insurance. Sojourners is getting behind Prop. 86 to tax tobacco companies to fund health care for children.
Katrina shows us the three obstacles to addressing poverty. 1) Poor people are not a priority. There are 3 pharmaceutical company lobbyist for each member of congress. How many for poor families and children? 9 million families have at least 1 member working full-time and are still in poverty. Half are married households. The voice of the religious community is going to be the most powerful voice to make poor people a priority.
As soon as we talk about poverty, there is a debate over strategy - liberal versus conservative. Conservatives: family breakdown, lack of personal responsibility. Liberals: funding. When he hears that he believes that neither lives around poor people. We need to address both sides. In the suburbs, kids can make bad choices many times, but in the inner city you only get one chance to make a mistake.
There are structures and hardness of heart which make poverty inevitable. He wants to see liberals talking about problem of out-of-wedlock birth and personal responsibility, and conservatives talking about strategic investments in funding items which will address poverty.
Issue of war - may have reached the tipping point on Iraq. 2700 Americans, tens of thousands of Iraqis dead. Occupation is the catalyst to the insurgency and civil war. Administration keeps repeating “war on terrorism” in order to make us afraid. Wallis’ kids live 20 blocks from the White House. Wallis: “I want to stop the war on terror as much as any one else, but not by taking out other people’s 8-year-olds and 3-year-olds.”
War on poverty was choked off by buildup to Vietnam. His microphone just died and one in the crowd shouted “it’s the NSA.” Wallis: “We have a room full of conspiratorial nuts here.” Now we are seeing the same kind of funding being choked off by the war effort.
Talking about his father, a World War II veteran going to the WWII monument. He was involved in the mop up operations after the atomic bombs. Nuclear explosion had sucked out all the air, and when it rushed back in everything was flattened. Passing a small pile of bricks they found a little girl - 5 years old, with tattered clothes, hobbling around on one leg. He felt that she was just a child - none of this was her fault. They knew should would die soon because of the radiation. This memory caused him to cry - “that’s war, and that’s why I hate it.” He still believes that we needed to defend ourselves from attack, but why drop bombs on civilians? Has opposed every war since, especially the Iraq war. What would happen to our leaders if they saw a 5-year old girl come out to stop them in their tracks. But they don’t get close enough to see her.
Went to San Antonio at Alamodome to speak to 20,000 Lutheran teenagers. Had a huge cross - had to walk under the cross to the stage. Changed his speech to talk about not just walking under the cross but living under the cross. It’s a mistake to say that Christianity is just what you should do and how to be nice. Without the cross, Christianity is confusing. The cross is where Jesus took on the suffering in the world and overcame it. In order to take on the cross today, we will need to embrace the suffering and pain of the world again.
Was struck not only by William Wilberforce’s public moments, but by how distraught he was about the problem he was legislating against. Richard Rohr talked about pilgrimmage - that is where we will need to discover Jesus - in the pain and suffering in the world. We have to call a whole new generation of Christians to clear up confusion by finding Jesus in a suffering world.
The life expectancy gap between rich and poor is now 40 years. One child every three seconds dies due to disease and hunger.
At Azusa Pacific University, two years ago, 30 students were doing service. Now 1500 are doing it. Director of program said all he has to do is put them in the midst of the poverty and their faith kicks in. They first feel betrayed that no one told them about this - sometimes lose their faith at first. But then what they remember about Jesus kicks in and they come to life.
We need to invite the American church to make a pilgrimmage into the suffering of Christ.
Remember on 9/11, say to somebody that the best way to overcome terrorism would be for the richest nation in the world to lead against sex trafficking, HIV-AIDS, and the environment and we will overcome terrorism.
Crowds are now getting younger and younger. 11-year-old girl at his book table. He asked what she got from the message: “I think we need to change the world.” He asked who is going to do it? “People like me.” 3rd grader said that if children were dying in the silent tsunami, then if she’s a Christian, she should do something about it.
People of faith have ended slavery, establish civil rights, helped bring down Berlin walls and end Apatheid. Spiritual movements need to have concrete goals. The most successful movements offered people a chance to invest their lives. He sees a whole generation of people who want their lives to count for something. The slavery of poverty - the poverty of slavery is the new altar call. “Make Poverty History.”
Still do not hear much about upper middle class kids being trafficked. Vulnerability of poverty leads to human trafficking and slavery. Cannot stop 15-year-old Phillipine girls from becoming prostitutes by prosecuting people. Need to eliminate poverty to eliminate the issue.
Closing story. Preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Pastor Joe Roberts was about to retire and greeted him. When he had first been there the nation had just recognized the MLK holiday. Invited Wallis to preach about service and justice. He was intimidated by the pulpit that MLK had preached at. “Doctor King was for justice so we should be too.” Then a booming voice called out saying “help him Lord!” This was deacon Johnson, and he pulled the sermon out of him. That pulpit had pulled out our best stuff as Americans. We have bad stuff, but also good stuff inside of us.
Bad religion pulls on our worst stuff - fears, hatreds, selifishness. Good religion pulls on our best stuff. “We have had too much bad religion for decades and it’s time for some good religion.”
