In today’s post, I want to focus briefly on current efforts by American Christians to influnce Capitol Hill for the purpose of influencing policy, legislation, and the American culture. In high school and college I competed in both Policy and Lincoln-Douglas debate, and learned that any discussion of policy change must include the framework of inherency, harm, and solvency. Solvency obviously shows how your particular plan solves for the harm, while the harm section proves how the status quo is negative. So in this post I seek to help this conversation along by describing the status quo.
Most of what I am about to share are antidotal evidence from my “inside” experience on Capitol Hill and generalities to (hopefully) establish a behavioral pattern and philosophy of American Christians. Again, please forgive me if my analysis seems myopic, but it is my view from the inside, none the less. Now, onto the three pieces of evidence.
As the judicial filibuster Civil War was heating up this early spring, a certain unnamed Christian organization set the stage for our discussion of the status quo. This first anecdotal evidence is probably inside information, but you may have heard of this example if you follow politics closely, especially the religious right variety. If you are standing, please sit and hold on to your mouse because you may go through the roof on this one.
Because said organization was appalled at the dastardly attempt by Democratic Senators to thwart our good Christian President’s fair-minded nominations, they decided to contact a newly elected Democratic Senator and, shall we say, try their hand at the art of persuasive influence. They contacted the Press Secretary of the newly elected Senator and basically gave him an ultimatum: either denounce his new colleagues and their obstructive tactics by publicly decrying the use of the filibuster, or face a barage of phone-calls, letters, and demonstrations back in the district.
And protest they did, well his wife actually. You see, the newly elected Senator’s wife owns a Dairy Queen franchise and several activated Christians protested the Senator’s filibuster support by marching and chanting around a local Dairy Queen. The Senator reacted by calling the organization’s leader some choice words for attacking his wife, obviously personally hurt and frustrated by the thier tactics.
What I failed to mention, however, was one minor detail at the beginning of the story: the Press Secretary with whom the unnamed Christian organization spoke is a Christian. This Christian was simply gobsmacked at their demands! She informed the representative from the organization that bringing this request to her Cheif-of-Staff and Senator would frustrate and hinder her efforts to reach the office for Jesus. The unnamed Christian organization didn’t care and reiterated the threat.
Needless to say, the Christian staffer was extremely distraught over the damage this organization had done within her office. This organization was a bearer of the name of Jesus and destroyed any bridges she built to Him through her personal witness. Because the unnamed Christian organization was more concerned about generating protest and megaphoning their displeasure over a parliamentary procedure, Christianity as represented by this organization was scared and made irrelevant among this community of non-Christ followers.
So that is the first piece of anecdotal evidence outlining a severe cultural, behavioral problem within the Church as She approaches Capitol Hill, and Her affect on this mission field. It seems as though zero thought was given to the impact this organization would have on the kingdom-movement of Jesus within this Senator’s office, completly dismissing concerns when confronted with a plea for temperance from the Christian staffer.
I am sorry, but this post has got my blood boiling, so I think I will let this sit for a day and return with two other examples of recklessness. I leave you with a few closing questions, however: Are we, the Church, really serious about advancing the “your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is already being done in heaven” part of Jesus prayer to Abba? How about within the community of Capitol Hill? Is the Church willing to put aside Her thoroughly anthropocentric practices and adopt those of Jesus and His Kingdom? Is the Church truly interested in spiritual revival (rather than political) within the Capitol Hill community, or is She so dead set on resurrecting the Kingdom of our Founders at the expense of the Kingdom of God?
be His,
jeremy
