Progressive Christians Uniting

Igniting the Progressive Church

A speech given by Rev. George Regas at the inauguration of the Orange County chapter of PCU.

I want to take on two wedge issues of the religious right and much of the Republican Party: gay marriage and abortion, and look at them through a theological lens. Then I want to turn to a third issue: a brief word on the church’s political responsibility - and conclude with some observation on the frequent absence of the sacred among so many mainline Protestant Churches.

GAY MARRIAGE

On June 5, the Senate will begin debate on a bill that would amend the constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage and block state marriage equality laws.

The religious right has pressed hard for this bill called “Marriage Protection Amendment.” The Senate Judiciary Committee passed it with votes falling completely on party lines. The full Senate will consider it on June 5. Most people say it has no chance of passing since a constitutional amendment requires a 2/3 vote of the Senate, but it serves to divert our attention from the real questions facing this country. It is a real wedge issue.

I don’t want you to be discouraged, so let me share with you what I think the God revealed in Jesus has to say.

God and love are not two realities but one. Love given is given to God. Love withheld is withheld from God.

The most popular religious song in America, hands down, is “Amazing Grace.” Get a bunch of Christians together and they want to sing “Amazing Grace.” But what bothers me is that few of us really understand that grace is the most radical concept in the Bible.

At the core of the Christian faith is the simple and yet profound assertion: God loves you just as you are. In the Gospel of Jesus, the first and last word is grace. This unconditional inclusive love and generous acceptance is not marginal to our religion. It is central to our belief.

God accepts us as we are – gay or straight. This radical acceptance is of the total person – mind, spirit and body. Grace is total acceptance. How that message needs to be proclaimed over and over again!

My friend and close colleague, Jim Lawson, who worked closely with Martin Luther King, Jr., made a comment a few years ago that still reverberates in my mind and heart: “The gay community’s struggle for civil rights is even more difficult than our black community’s struggle. We have our families and our churches to help us. The gay community has neither.”

If the Progressive church is to fight for gay marriage in the state, we must proclaim now a holy place in our churches to sanctify gay unions at our altars.

There is a mean spirit at work in this county and the church must stand up against it with the power of love and truth. Hatred is the depravity, not the choice of whom to love.

We know how increasingly Christians are taking the Bible literally. Thursday, I attended a Pacific Council on International Affairs luncheon to hear John Kerry. Next to me sat a bright young woman attorney from one of the most distinguished law firms in the country. She stunned me. She was a biblical literalist. She tragically started rattling off those anti-gay biblical passages. But let’s be honest about the Bible. No biblical literalist I know of still publicly advocates slavery or stoning to death an adulterer – both urged in the Bible. And she had to admit as much.

One day theologian Paul Tillich was accosted by a Bible-waving fundamentalist. “Professor Tillich, do you believe this book is The Word of God?” And the wise theologian responded, “Yes, I do, if it possesses you rather than you possessing it!”

In no way do I discount the Bible. It is the foundational document, the foundation for progressive churches. It is central to my life as a religious person. But if you take the Bible seriously, you can’t read it literally and dismiss what we have learned in the centuries after the Bible was finished.

A couple of weeks ago, I celebrated a marriage for a lesbian couple in Atlanta. The next day they flew to Canada where they were legally married. It was one of the most beautiful, deeply authentic, sacred marriages I’ve ever officiated. It was of God.

In any event, I read something of our friend Bill Coffin the other day that still haunts me. In a Washington Cemetery on the gravestone of a Vietnam veteran, it is written: “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men, and discharged me for loving one.”

ABORTION

I believe we have lost the fierce battle over abortion because the conservative opponents have used a moral argument and the progressive supporters have taken the legal ground of constitutional rights. And the religious right has not wasted a moment showing this voting Christian nation how foolish that looks.

Let me state as clearly as I can my position on abortion. We must proclaim the morality of freedom and the ethical integrity of choice. Freedom of choice is a deeply theological issue. In creation, God gave human beings the freedom to choose. What shall a woman do with her body – her life? This freedom of choice is central to what it means to be a human being. In the understanding of the Bible, to be human is to be free to choose.

Yes, we must be profoundly and effectively involved in the political arena to preserve choice. However, for a woman with a crisis pregnancy, the issue is not political. It is deeply personal. No one walks into an abortion clinic and says, “I’m here to exercise my constitutional rights!” Choice is so much deeper. It reaches the core of what it means to be human.

As a theologian and ethicist, I see no way that the moral status of a fetus can be of greater moral standing than a pregnant woman deciding her destiny. The standing of the woman is greater in the first two trimesters. In the third, if her life and health or her future reproductive possibilities are at risk, then that claims priority.

Sara Weddington, the attorney who argued Roe v. Wade, is the daughter of a Methodist minister. A few years ago in Pasadena, I heard her say that if she had Roe to argue again, she would place more emphasis on religious freedom as the underpinning of a woman’s right to choose.

When a woman makes the decision to have an abortion, she stands on holy, sacred ground. We need to say that.

A few years ago, I was on a panel at Temple Isaiah in Hollywood discussing abortion and the Religious Right. There were some distinguished people on this panel: the Editor of Mother Jones, State Superintendent of Public Education, Dukakis’ former campaign manager, a law professor, a talk show host, and me. I was the token religionist, as they called me.

During the question period, a woman, who appeared to be in her 80s, came to the mike. “I’m pro-choice,” she said. “I’ve been a radical feminist all my life. But as I stand by women choosing to have abortions – the Christian Coalition people, all those on the Religious Right, make me feel guilty and ashamed for what I am doing.”

Oh – how those panelists grabbed the mikes to answer her plaintive cry. But the answers were all political, constitutional law, secular in scope. All important. They didn’t give me a chance to speak before the next person rose to pose another question. And the timid person that I am – I didn’t intrude!

I regretted that. What this wonderful woman was asking was for some assurance that she could be pro-choice, could support abortion, and still be a good Jew. She wanted to be a crusader for choice and feel she was a holy person when she kissed the Torah in procession at Sabbath worship. She longed for a spiritual, religious word of support, and we gave her a political creed. That’s why the religious right is beating the hell out of us on abortion.

Yes, abortion that is legal and also morally and ethically sound. Choosing abortion, a woman stands on holy ground …for in the deep places of my soul, I believe there is something vicious and violent about coercing a woman to carry to term an unwanted child. To force the unwanted on the unwilling, to use a woman’s body against her will and choice, is a kind of legalized rape that is morally repugnant. We must confront the Roman Catholic Church, the Religious Right and much of the Republican Leadership with this gross immorality.

Any discussion on abortion must be pivotally tied to the issue of poverty. My friend Dr. Glen Stassen, Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Seminary and strongly pro-life, was surprised when he analyzed the data on abortion. Abortion was declining during the Clinton years. In the decade before George W. Bush became President, abortions declined by 17.4%. When George W. Bush became President, you would expect abortion to continue going down, even to plunge, given President Bush’s anti-abortion promises. Instead the opposite happened. At least 52,000 more abortions occurred in the United States in 2002 alone than should have been the case had the 1990s record of abortion decreases continued.

Dr. Stassen’s analysis needs careful reflection. Under George W. Bush the number of abortions increased substantially.

To anyone familiar with why most women have abortions, this would be no surprise.

Two thirds of women who have abortions cite inability to afford a child as their primary reason. Job losses and decreased average real income have added to the serious impact.

5.2 million people lost their health insurance between 2000 and 2003, and women of child bearing age are overrepresented in those 5.2 million. Abortions increased because many more prospective mothers cannot afford the costs of hospital and caring for a child.

Economic policy and abortion are not separate issues; they form one moral imperative.

What would Jesus say about all of this? I think these words might come from his lips: “Shame on all those conservative politicians in the nation’s Congress and in State Legislatures who have for years so proudly proclaimed their love for children when they were only fetuses- but ignored their needs when they were born.”

Yes, yes, Jesus admonishes us.

It is the cruelest irony how so many of these anti-abortion politicians have no interest in the things that make a newborn child healthy and beautiful. It violates every standard of decency to force a poor woman to have a child, and then deny her good prenatal care.

Conservative politicians with the blessing of the Religious Right have strongly advocated the dismantling of social programs that provide a decent life for children once they enter this world. The ultimate test of a society is the kind of world it creates for its children. And what we have allowed to happen to children in America is a moral scandal and breaks the heart of God. No matter what rhetoric is used, any public policy that makes a child’s life more miserable is an abomination before God.

III. POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT

The IRS said a sermon I preached on the Sunday before the November 2004 Presidential election, which was characterized as a blistering indictment of the Bush administration’s Iraq war policies, constituted an impermissible intervention into a political campaign and threatened All Saints’ tax exemption. So you know I’ve given a little thought to the appropriate place of political activity.

During my 28 years as rector of All Saints Church, I often preached sermons that touched upon what some would characterize as “political” issues. So many of the political issues that we confront today coincide with deeply held, core religious beliefs: issues relating to marriage, family, community and yes, even war and foreign policy.

It seems to me that fundamentally moral issues, such as peace and the alleviation of poverty, are indisputably the province of church pulpits, regardless of which politicians are debating that week or where a Sunday happens to fall in an election cycle. My successor, Ed Bacon, has continued this tradition of proclaiming a theologically based commitment to alleviating poverty and promoting peace and social justice.

Some fear that the threats of the IRS and the publicity surrounding my sermon will have a chilling effect on other churches that would like to speak out for peace in this war-fractured world. Perhaps it will for a few.

But I think many more will take courage from this story and find ways to proclaim that religious communities must stop blessing war and violence. I am heartened by the outpouring of support that All Saints has already received from many in the faith community whose beliefs span a wide spectrum. They realize this matter involves First Amendment principles we all hold dear.

Some might argue that religious communities should stay out of politics altogether. But that would render our message of core moral values – the values that Jesus taught us – irrelevant. The fact is, all life is arguably political. For example, Jesus says to us: “Heal the sick.” Thus, when we address the desperate health needs in the nation and across the planet, this is at once a moral and a political issue.

The rightful role of communities of faith is not to speak and act as though God is in the pocket of the Democratic or Republican parties. Our role is to boldly proclaim the biblical themes of justice for all, peace on Earth, the sacredness of all life and the preciousness and fragility of the environment.

EXPERIENCE THE SACRED

There is so much talk today about a new religious left, the left hand of God, a progressive religious movement, — all I can say is yes to it all but a few cautions. We must engage fearlessly the wedge issues. That is why I take grave issue with both Rabbi Lerner and Pastor Jim Wallis. They refuse to take on gay marriage and reproductive choice – two issues that hurt progressives significantly at the polls.

But I raise serious questions also with what is going on in most mainline Protestant Churches.

The Progressive Church for the 21st Century must become a place where people experience the sacred in profound, life changing ways.

Don Miller, Professor of Religion at USC, has a very helpful book, Reinventing American Protestantism – Christianity in the New Millennium. Miller is a liberal Christian and a member of All Saints who after five years of research of conservative churches which are growing rapidly, makes some observations on how mainline churches must redefine themselves if they are to regain their leadership.

Miller says mainline church leaders need to radically rethink how to engender the experience of the sacred. He is convinced that charismatics do not have a “corner” on the market of religious experience. The decline of members in our churches is a profound spiritual problem. We lack a passionate commitment to a God who is alive with transforming power.

There is a wonderful story about St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church on Park Avenue in New York City where a stranger came in for worship. The man got so caught up in the Rector’s sermon that he shouted, “Amen!” There were several people who stared at him critically. He determined that that he would contain himself. But the preacher was proclaiming the good news of Jesus and his forgiving love. The man, so lifted by the message, shouted again, “Amen. Alleluia!” Everyone around him was gazing so coldly at him that he determined once again to keep his enthusiasm for Jesus to himself. But his resolve didn’t work. Again, inspired by the message of this living, loving God, he exploded, “Amen. Alleluia. Praise the Lord!” Within minutes, an usher with his cut-away morning coat came to the pew in this magnificent Byzantine church and sat down beside this spirit-filled man. “Sir, you must control yourself. We don’t act that way in this church.” “But I have religion!” he responded. “Sir, you may have religion but you didn’t find it here.”

I’m sure that story is apocryphal but the underlying realities are present in too many churches. A radical belief in the grace of God to transform the human spirit must be central to our ministries. Too often we in the old line churches have lost this faith. Claim it again. Claim the power of God’s love and grace to change us forever.

Marcus Borg, who is best known for his provocative work as a Jesus scholar, has a book entitled: The God We Never Knew – Beyond Dogmatic Religion To A More Authentic Contemporary Faith. The book was a blessing to me. These are his words:

“Uncertainty about God is particularly a problem among mainline Christians and churches. As everybody knows, mainline denominations have suffered a major decline in membership over the last 30 years. The causes are complex, but among the most important is doubt about the reality of God…some mainline congregations have been growing and what they all have in common is this: they take God seriously. Congregations that are full of God are full of people. The converse also seems to be true: churches that are uncertain about God will soon find their pews empty of people.”

The Progressive Christian movement in too many places is dispirited in a literal sense. There is no juice, no passion, no conviction that there is a new world waiting to be born.

When the disciples told the story over the years of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, it spoke to them not simply as an incident in the past of Lazarus coming out of the tomb – but of a present reality. They believed that Christ’s spirit had been let loose in the world – let loose to liberate and heal and redeem. And Christ still calls out, “Come forth and live! Unbind them and let them go!”

One of the primary reasons so many in the younger generation have wandered into the corridors of the occult or moved into Eastern mystic practice or joined fundamentalist Christian Churches is that so many old line churches have failed to present the Gospel as a living experience. Too many churches resemble the one described in one of Flannery O’Connor’s books, “…a church where the blind don’t see, and the lame don’t walk, and what’s dead stays dead.” That’s not what I believe the Christian Church is about. Christ in you, the hope of glory. Christ in you, with power to transform your life forever. The Progressive Christian Church must claim that power again and help people get in touch with the sacred.

Posted under: Founders, Orange County