By Mark R. Powell
Granite City, Illinois is home to an abortion clinic, and so we directly have faced the question of abortion as a community for several years.
However, the debate became very vocal and intense in December of 2006 when a politically active, anti-abortion group, named Small Victories, placed large pictures of aborted fetuses along the route of the annual community Christmas parade, and then later -- after defeating a court injunction-- they again placed these pictures at the community Labor Day parade.
As you might expect, this direct political action generated a heated debate in the community. In addition, the question of this group’s tactics also became acute to the community from a different direction, since they also purposed to protest in front community churches, as a way to shame and intimidate those churches into joining them.
These concerns caused me to think-through what we were actually seeing in this dispute. That is, what should a church’s specific reaction be to the tactics of the Small Victories political action group, and what should the church’s general answer be to the culture wars.
For the sake of clarity, let me describe the direction of these remarks. I am making an argument concerning the church’s role and the Christian’s role as it faces the non-churched world. Which means that, while we will here touch on the culture war, it is not my intention to fight it. I should also say I write representing my own position, and not that of any church or any other Christian believer. This is what I believe, and to hold Christians elsewhere liable for these thoughts would be foolish.
DEFINING TERMS
To begin, it’s probably
wise for me to define what I mean by the terms I am using
as an underpinning for these remarks:
CHRISTIAN
A Christian
is a one who
has committed their life to the teachings of Jesus of
Nazareth -- a first century Jew who lived in Palestine --
regarding him as the reliable guide for a life of worth.
Christianity
developed
around the historical figure of Jesus, considering him to
be a real man, but also more than a man. Christianity in
the historic sense, then, holds Jesus as the Savior of the
world. Of course, thoughtful Christians know other
religions and other points of view exist out there, but
since this is not our topic, enough said.
CULTURE WAR
The Culture
War is a phrase used to
describe the polarization occurring in segments of American
society, as those parts of the nation attempt to re-define
themselves. The idea here is that a powerful split in the
middle class of America has occurred, forming a divide
around topics like abortion, homosexuality, gun control,
and the separation of church and state, so that the part of
the nation is cognitively estranged and divided into two
warring camps, each centered upon their beliefs about these
issues.
CHURCH
A Church
refers to the
group of persons who share values based on their
understanding of the beliefs and practices of Christianity.
And, in principle, it is this community that propagates the
Jesus-way.
PROTEST
Protest is a drastic communication
technique designed to create an immediate change in social
condition. It is a strategy in the toolkit of direct
political action, and as such it exists as a means to an
end. In short, protest is a sharp stick in the eye, offered
in public, and intended to gather attention and to coalesce
support, so that the protestor’s view of change can occur.
What is important for our discussion is to know that
protest is always a political act and not a religious act.
And, even when the protest is couched in religious terms –
be it anti-abortion or civil rights – it is still a
political device designed to meet a political goal.
Is protest effective? As direct political action protest
can be very effective, especially coupled with other forms
of direct action. The Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s
is a clear case in point. But just as often protest can be
counter-productive, as has been the case with the Small
Victories protest group. For example, it is well proven
that the graphic pictures of aborted fetuses they show make
even those sympathetic with their cause turn away. Knowing
this, and knowing that there are other more effective
strategies that do in fact succeed, one might well ask why
they continue to display the pictures?
HOW
SHOULD THE CHURCH RESPOND TO THE ISSUES OF THE DAY?
Another way to ask
this is to ask: Is protesting the calling of the
church? In general terms, I would
say it is not. Simply put, when a church chooses to make a
political protest what are they really doing? For a church
to act out in public protest means that this church has,
inescapably, chosen sides. And when a church chooses sides
that church has lost its ability to speak the message
of the Christ
in any
meaningful way to both sides of the conflict.
Think about it this way, when a church chooses to represent
republican or democrat concerns in an election, they
forfeit their greater calling to be peacemakers, to speak
truth to both belligerents, or to be prophetic in the
biblical sense. Said another way, the church does not carry
a political mission, is a political force only marginally
and indirectly, and therefore, for a church to protest is
to damage its true and actual vocation. Or, put in still
another way, a genuine church owns the essential mission
and the central passion to care for those who have had
abortions, for the abortionists, and for the
anti-abortionists, all at the same time! Difficult, to be
sure, but this heavy lifting belongs to those
actually
following the
Jesus-way.
The upshot of this reasoning says that the church’s
authentic purpose is to be a sanctuary of peace from the
madness and anger in the world – a shelter. But, in order
to be this, the church must continually offer itself as
present to all, as a place of dialogue for a suffering
community, and not a camp that nurtures only one side of
the issue. To be this sanctuary of peace, the church must
oppose the temptation of making grand pronouncements and
the illusion of special knowledge. Failure here is serious.
For, if we say only people with our point-of-view will be
welcomed and heard, then our communication is a foul word
that loudly proclaims that the ultimate promise of
forgiveness-for-all has left the vocabulary and the
activity of the church.
Caveat
Still, there may be some
political circumstance occurring in the community when a
church might decide the situation is so egregious that some
sort of direct political action must be made. If this were
to come to pass, one might well ask if it always follows
that political protest is the most effective response for a
church to argue against the grievance? That is, are there
alternatives? Political pressure groups such as Small
Victories do not want us to think there are. They would
have us believe that their way is the only way. But of
course this is folly, and examples of creative church
responses other than political protest can be detailed
without difficulty.
SHOULD
CHRISTIANS CARRY SIGNS?
Now, the question of whether an individual Christian should
carry a protest sign is a totally different inquiry from
how the church
responds to
the issues of the culture wars. That is, what the church
must do to fulfill its calling is not necessarily the same
thing as what a particular Jesus-follower might do to
fulfill theirs.
That is, if an individual believes deeply enough in a
social issue at hand, then as an individual, and as a free
citizen, one might well think that taking to the streets
and protesting is the right and proper action to take. But,
I would argue, that the choice to protest as a
self-proclaimed Christian carries stiff differences from
the normal political protestor, coming pre-packaged with
severe Christian brackets.
What I mean is, should a Christian choose to politically
demonstrate –because this protest is a public act – the
Christian must be very careful that both the words they use
and the actions they take exhibit they are indeed
Christian! If a Christian carries a protest sign then this
must be done without rancor or hate. Instead, the attitude
here is one of grief and last resort. And, if a Christian
carries a protest sign, at the very least, the
Jesus-teaching of the golden rule must be vigorously
self-applied. If not, the protestor demonstrates that they
are in fact not Christian, no matter what they claim, and
the watching world has the right to consider them as
unbelievers.
This is the heart of the problem with the Small Victories.
They are decidedly not a group of Christian individuals
acing out of grievance. They are an organized political
action group acting out of political motive, and seeking
political redress, using Christendom’s vocabulary as a
marketing and a fund raising device.
This is OK, of course. It is still America, after all. But
the fact that they claim to be acting in the name of the
Galilean Savior carries no weight since their words and
actions have been so unloving and hurtful. To be sure,
their political strategies may bring them the recognition
they desire, but it produces large defeats for the
community of faith here, a fact for which they seem to care
very little. Calling Granite City “sin city,” for example,
may sound positive to their adherents and their out-of-town
financial supporters (who no doubt see them as martyrs),
but it does nothing really to forward the message of Jesus
in a community of people who are already born, a community
that needs to hear all over again that God is not angry at
them.
At its core the Small Victories political protest is based
upon the false notion that God is not already at work in
the community. Their comments and statements clearly lead
one to think they somehow believe they bring God to the
community in the morning as they arrive to picket, and when
they pack up and head out of town at the end of day God
goes with them, perhaps fearful of remaining in Granite
after dark. Not so! Let us remind ourselves that the
ever-present God was here working long before these
politicos began their protest, and he will be here long
after they have gone for good.