I was just looking at an online brochure for an event on the West Coast sponsored by Sojourners.  It follows a successful Call To Renewal event in Washington DC, Politics and Spirituality: Seeking a Public Integrity (which happened January 14-16 this year). This one is called Politics and Spirituality: Outer Witness, Inner Faith (to happen Sept.8-10 in Pasadena)  My mind immediately jumps to Journey Inward, Journey Outward.  I don’t want to jump to hasty conclusions,  but I just want to give my impression,  and I hope I’m wrong.  On a list of 12 topics,  the only one that mentions the church is:

“ Churches and Politics – how can we talk about political issues in church?  ”

For me,  the role of the church should be more central than that.  The “base” for all the operations and dialogue should be the church.  The way that The Church of the Saviour insists upon the integration of mission, call,  and the structures of accountability to each other as a body seems to me to be a requirement.

There will probably be many people attending that event (and who attended the D.C. event who are as convinced as I am that the “engagement” with culture takes palce, as Hauerwas suggests,  as a people who are BEING THE CHURCH ;  and in so BEING,  illuminates the dark places by the sheer light of their being  an alternative;  another way.

This is just the impression I have when I see the list of topics and there is no sense there of the way in which all of the discussions assume an alternative community that is the center for it all.  As I said before,  there are likely many people at those events who assume the existence of a church in which many of these discussions take place,  or who will take back to their churches some ideas about what kinds of questions their churches ought to be raising about what it means to BE the church.  The Church of the Saviour communities have many people in it that have been close to the Sojourners community.

I also still have an affinity for what Jim Wallis is doing in bringing to “the public square”  a “representation” of what the Christian Right is leaving out of the discussion about “faith” and “values”.  I have gotten Sojourners for 21 years,  and will continue to do so for years to come.  But I am pulling for a more central role in Sojourners for the church as a base for ANY of these discussions,  and more identification of the ways in which various churches are BEING the church.

I understand that this is a time when the attentions seems to be on “bringing faith perspectives to the public square”.  So there is lots of language like “people of faith” instead of “the Church”, perhaps because the idea of church has been , well,  “polluted”; “abused”,  by the various representations of the Religious Right’s message.  While what Jim Wallis has brought to more “media awareness” is much needed,  I tend to look “on down the road” to where what I think they’re envisioning as “a more just society” in the sense of God’s shalom; recognition of  “Kingdom of God realities”.  One of the major things I see missing in the Radical Orthodoxy dialogue (and Hauerwas often mentions it),  is the lack of talk about some embodiment of what this ecclesia looks like.  Like where does the theology of ecclesia get “flesh”? It seems to me that between the activism of Sojourners,  and the robust ecclesia theology of Radical Orthodoxy,  there is a lack of integration of what it means to BE ecclesia (ie. what to DO)  with the recognition of WHO we are (how to identify ourselves).   It seems that what I have seen in the journey of The Church of the Saviour communities,  this Journey Inward, Journey Outward,  these poles are being kept together in ways I feel are woefully missing in the life of the church.