Pilot's Operating Handbook for Life

I first saw this over on the UCC blog (the original from the National Council of Churches is here), but I thought it was good enough to repeat here.

Your church, your communion, and the National Council of Churches USA do not endorse any political party or any candidate.

Be that as it may, our Christian faith compels us to address the world through the lens of our relationship to God and to one another. Public discourse is enhanced as we engage civic leaders on the values and ethics affirmed by our faith. At the same time, religious liberty and the integrity of our democracy will be protected as candidates refrain from using faith-based organizations and institutions for partisan gain. We offer these 10 principles to those seeking to accept the responsibility that comes with holding public office.

1. War is contrary to the will of God. While the use of violent force may, at times, be a necessity of last resort, Christ pronounces his blessing on the peacemakers. We look for political leaders who will make peace with justice a top priority and who will actively seek nonviolent solutions to conflict.

2. God calls us to live in communities shaped by peace and cooperation. We reject policies that abandon large segments of our inner city and rural populations to hopelessness. We look for political leaders who will re-build our communities and bring an end to the cycles of violence and killing.

3. God created us for each other, and thus our security depends on the well being of our global neighbors. We look for political leaders for whom a foreign policy based on cooperation and global justice is an urgent concern.

4. God calls us to be advocates for those who are most vulnerable in our society. We look for political leaders who yearn for economic justice and who will seek to reduce the growing disparity between rich and poor.

5. Each human being is created in the image of God and is of infinite worth. We look for political leaders who actively promote racial justice and equal opportunity for everyone.

6. The earth belongs to God and is intrinsically good. We look for political leaders who recognize the earth’s goodness, champion environmental justice, and uphold our responsibility to be stewards of God’s creation.

7. Christians have a biblical mandate to welcome strangers. We look for political leaders who will pursue fair immigration policies and speak out against xenophobia.

8. Those who follow Christ are called to heal the sick. We look for political leaders who will support adequate, affordable and accessible health care for all.

9. Because of the transforming power of God’s grace, all humans are called to be in right relationship with each other. We look for political leaders who seek a restorative, not retributive, approach to the criminal justice system and the individuals within it.

10. Providing enriched learning environments for all of God’s children is a moral imperative. We look for political leaders who advocate for equal educational opportunity and abundant funding for children’s services.

You may have heard by now that the IRS is investigation the UCC (and threatening loss of tax exempt status) because of the speech that Sen. Obama gave at last year’s General Synod in Hartford, CT. There has been plenty of coverage, so I won’t rehash too much of it, but it still seems an awful lot like it is politically motivated (whether by more fundamentalist members of the UCC as has been rumored or by someone out to embarrass Sen. Obama remains unclear). The invitation (one of dozens of speakers including Bill Moyers and Lynn Redgrave) was to a UCC member to discuss how his faith affected his life in politics. The invitation was extended before he became a presidential candidate and the leaders at Synod went out of there way to make sure that there was no campaigning allowed and didn’t come close to an endorsement, so it is hard to see how they could have violated the tax exempt status. Regardless, after 7 months (and coincidentally just before the Ohio primary?), the IRS makes it public that they are investigating. While they probably have an obligation to investigate to avoid the appearance of impropriety, the facts here would seem so overwhelming that they ought to quickly end the investigation by finding that the denomination did nothing wrong. The facts are so overwhelming that a prestigious Washington, DC law firm has agreed to take the case on for free and the lead is a former Solicitor General of the United States who (I believe) has never lost a case before the US Supreme Court. Sigh….

I read two interesting posts on the God’s Politics blog today that got me thinking and I wanted to put some of those thoughts down in writing, but I may not be able to do them justice in such a short time. The first post was this one by Tony Jones. I have to say that a great deal of what is coming from the “emergent” community resonates with me. Anyway, I agree that

Carried into the modern world by the French and American revolutions, individual rights became the foundation of liberal democracy, clearly the most robust and equitable of all systems of government yet conceived. And although it happened more slowly than many people would have liked, the concept of individual rights brought about great goods like ending government-backed slavery, women’s suffrage, and the civil rights movement.

But as he points out, it goes further than that. We who call ourselves Christians are called to go further than be concerned with our own individual rights, we are called to be concerned with the individual rights of others. Part of me thinks that is easier for a middle-aged (or approaching it) middle-class guy like me who isn’t worried about if I’ll have anything to eat tonight or whether my kids have jackets and socks and underwear and a roof over their heads. On the other hand, I’m constantly reminded of those who have practically nothing who still seem to find it in their hearts to be more concerned about others than themselves. I wonder if I could do the same. I’d like to think so, but I honestly don’t know. Sherry just got back from El Salvador and the stories she tells of the people they worked with there (and in Ukraine where she is going again in April) are gut-wrenching. The stories she tells of some of the people who went down to “help” are sickening (maybe I’ll expound on that later). Anyway, I’ll be interested to see what he says in part 2.

The second article was this one by Becky Garrison. She writes about discovering she is directly descended from Rev. Roger Williams who founded Rhode Island. He had some very strong views on the separation of church and state based on the very real persecution that he was fleeing. As far as her question about whether religious leaders should be endorsing candidates, they are human beings, too. As individuals they have every right to support the candidate of their choice, but as she points out, they must be careful not to become “political pawns.” To borrow a phrase from the Quakers (see also this) religious leaders have an obligation to “speak truth to power.” When they cease to be able to take their chosen leader to task for his/her failure to do the right thing (like torturing prisoners to name just one example), then they lose their moral authority. The other extreme though, and something that bothers me a little about this year’s election, is the apparent requirement that candidates have to have some strongly held religious beliefs. While I don’t think that is necessarily a detriment, it also certainly isn’t a requirement to be able to govern and I’d rather the politicians be going to church for reasons other than political expediency.