On whether or not activism or political protest/dialogue seeking is a “proper” stance for the Church in the world. Some liberals say that it is improper not because to be critical of America is wrong , as the conservatives seem prone to say, but because nothing of eternal value will ultimately arise from it.

Now as many times as this MAY WELL happen and often does, I don’t think so. IN the case of Sojourners, we are most decidedly NOT dealing with a group of ivory tower liberals who won’t get their hands dirty. They have , for years, lived out many examples of a radical third way. I believe that it is this which makes them well qaulified to speak some truths to the people in power in our country, as well as to provide plenty of concrete examples over the years of how there is a CHurch which cares about the issues Jesus seems to have emphasized in his life (and death) more than the “American Way Of Life” which seems to have become the root value underlying the rally cry for war on those who we were told are threatening this and about to strike us unless we strike them first. An administration that has quickly amassed a legion of lies across the board, using fear and the assurance of “security” as their methods.

Many evangelical Christians have adopted the German martyred by the Nazis, Deitrich Bonhoefer. But what he said about the neccessity to speak the truth to power is not one that is allowed to hit home as directly as Bonhoefer would have it were he in our shoes today (it seems so to me; not to put words into his mouth, for his life was such an obedience that I shudder to presume to do so; but this is one of the reasons I shudder, becuase of what I believe he WOULD say, and how HIS situation might have played out in my journey.

Stanley Hauerwas”Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Truth and Politics”

In short I will try to show that Bonhoeffer rightly understood that the gift the church gives to any politics is the truthful proclamation of the Gospel.

This would seem to include the emphases of the gospel; the seeking after justice, the protection of the oppressed, the activity of God’s people to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and certainly to do no harm to those being oppressed by others who wield power over them. Indeed, it is often preached in our crusades that we are standing up for liberty of those who cannot defend themselves; and yet if that stance continues to cause the deaths and suffering that it was meant (or so the claim goes) for them, there is cuase here for some truth telling to our own elected officials. Yes, these elected officials are supposed to have the information and the leadership to represent us in these decisions, but when those who wield the highest rank are themselves engaged in deception in order to achive an end by means otherwise not acceptable, this is an occasion and a call to accountability. Even as Christians are subject to a higher ethic than that of democracy, it is not really a choice we have as to whether we feel up to the task of seeking to confront our fellow Americans with the fire with which we are dabbling recklessly as if we were children.

One of the reasons may well be the general assumption that truth and politics, particularly in democratic regimes in which compromise is the primary end of the political process, do not mix. Yet I hope to show that Bonhoeffer saw clearly that such a view of politics abandons the political realm to violence.

American Christians today have allowed themselves to be schooled in the lie of the world; and accepted a deal that says “in the real world”, we really should “have them on that wall” (as Colonel Jessup, played by Jack Nicholson tells the Tom Cruise character. “You want me on that wall; you NEED me on that wall”). So we trade a Kingdom of God for an earthly one, one carried out with modern talk of “Empire” on the lips of neocon profiteers. I do NOT believe that there would be immediate reversal of direction if Kerry had been elected. He is still part of the elite in whose interest the “American Way” myth is perpetuated. I was hoping for the lesser of two evils; even hoping that some of Kerry’s earlier skepticicm about accepting administration justifications for war , and his own testimony about Vietnam upon his return from there, would give him a unique perspective and compassion for the costs of war. I believe he would have begun to immediately attempt the mending of international relationships which cowboy George and his band have damaged with their arrogance and hubris.

No, Bonhoeffer surely saw that when politics goes wrong, and people are being deceived, and lives are sacraficed for untruths and distortions of truth, then there is an alternative and a word we must show and must speak.

My oft-made claim that the first task of the church is not to make the world more just but to make the world be more the world is interpreted as a call for Christians to withdraw from the world. By focusing on Bonhoeffer’s understanding of how the church serves the world by being God’s truthful witness, I hope to direct attention to the same theme in my own work. For it has always been my conviction, a conviction I believe I learned from Barth, that the character of a society and state is to be judged by the willingness to have the Gospel preached truthfully and freely.

The Religous Right seems to want to silence the Jesus of the Gospels, and by extension, the Peaceable Community of which Hauerwas writes. This seems to be a part of the role of BEING Church. By no means all of it. That would relegate the Church to a “Progressive” verison of the Right, doctrine without obedience; and obedience without community, a community that is damaged if we do not embody it, and if we emody it, we cannot acquiesce in the destruction of not only the fabric of other societies but also wiping out their very lives. MLK said that ” a threat to justice ANYWHERE is a threat to justice EVERYWHERE”. When I hear people “question MLK’s theology”, I shake my head, because what is theology if not first obedience, and then the narrative that tells that story of seeking how to be obedient? And the narrative which tells of the struggles to resist the “darkness” in its many forms which besets any who live in this society.