The Union's Perfection

To continue from last week: 

"It was as if the framers said we want "a church," we just want it to get its authority from somewhere other than a crown, or a senate, or a congress, or a president.  We want a citizen's church and even better, citizens' churches!  

Disestablishment and free exercise together are the germ of the American Experiment. The framers gave the world a gift.  I think we are still unwrapping it."

Part of how I am unwrapping this gift is to struggle with many different ways in which religious leaders exercise their freedoms of speech, of assembly and of petition.

I have been a member of the Poor People's Campaign for nearly four years.  The Rev. William Barber is the principal of this movement and some of you will remember his address at the Democratic Convention that nominated Hillary Clinton. The heart of our democracy needs defibrillation!

Many scoffed and some questioned the appropriateness of his inclusion in the agenda of that 2016 partisan event.   And I have heard from more than one such critic that it's hard to hear his address and not be stirred.  Many have admitted and without cynicism I among them, that the weakest part of his address was his call to support Hillary.   I'm pretty sure that was part of how his being on stage was negotiated.

I'm also among those who understand his call -- read, petition -- as larger than a political convention.  That's where all citizens' churches are at their best.  No matter our stripes -- Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, Sikh, or no religion at all -- when:

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. . ."

It is a calling larger than our differences be they ethnic, denominational, political, economic, etc!  It is exactly the calling our first amendment intends for "citizens' churches" to sound.

How ironic that one of the greatest tests of our "American religions" is not found in any scripture. The Preamble of our Constitution as it sets forth the intent of government forces us and all churches to consider, deeply, how we are engaged in that effort to form a more perfect union.

In this era of perpetual campaigning it is nearly impossible for a "petition of the government" to be viewed as a non-partisan effort. But no matter our stripes -- political or denominational -- it is surely proper for "clergy" to petition our government and to join the civic -- sadly, not always civil -- discourse that our framers intended for all of its citizens to join.  And we join not to silence any voice especially those of other faiths or those who have no faith.  We, with them, join so that all speech is free, so that all assemblies are safe, and so that our government hears the petitions of all.

We are still unpacking this gift.  TBTG, we may never finish.