That the GOP seems stone faced determined to ignore the actual budget and simply repeat the same failed allegiance to the myth that the tax cuts for the rich create jobs,  serves only to increase  revenue to the rich and siphon UPWARD money from the rest of us,  which grows the already record gap between rich and poor. People worry about a “gilded age”. Oh, we’re there, folks.  The “MATH” tells us that.  We have surpassed the models often held up for that “gilded age” and for “oligarchy”. To some,  this sounds like “demagoguery”;  but the statistics are increasingly bearing out the awful trend that fewer and fewer hold more and more,  and the very rich are thriving while the “lower” 99% lose ground, and this time the middle class is joining in the suffering along with the poor.  (Not that the latter fact is something we SHOULD have been waiting to happen before we took action.  But nonetheless,  more people are going to be noticing the pinch,  and the stronger the numbers,  the more effective the protest.)

The more firmly entrenched the mechanisms of our economy tilt toward the rich,  the more distant it seems the church in its accommodation mode becomes.  They/we may consider that “safe” and “politically non-partisan”, but that is merely being the nice, tame, “compliant” citizens the oligarchy wants,  especially from their “spiritual shepherds” who bring up their people to be good citizens.  But it is becoming increasingly clear that there is a calling being neglected here.  The Kingdom of God is NOT America.  We may want to see it be more like an uplifting,  justice-oriented,  community as a vision for what America could and should be,  but when it comes to allegiance,  it’s not “The United States of America” that is our guide.  It’s the “People of God”, the church,  whom we join as fellow citizens of a Kingdom that is not the vision of one particular nation.  Further,  this  does not discount the importance  of what our vision for this particular nation might be.  For Christians and the church in America,  it is a deeply important question that confronts  us with how we as a people of a distinct Kingdom are to “be” as a citizens of a particular nation called America. 

This is where technology and media are crucial tools for the church to wield as a mechanism to bring that conversation to several fronts.  Our ecclesia and our distinct vision of what an American citizen is to be,  and on the “public square” as US citizens seeking to articulate not what people fear from some Christians (and usually call it “theocracy”),  but how Christians and the Church can contribute to enabling a sense of American community and social justice that is faithful  to our calling as citizens of THE Kingdom.

America needs a more healthy representation of what I can only best describe as something like a “Progressive” faith,  but I have frustrations with the limitations of that term or label. The Church may well “sound like Progressives” on many fronts,  but I have to think there are many  distinctions between a Progressive Politics and a Church mission.  But there are shared emphases of social justice that are strong enough to enable collaboration between the church’s efforts to provide  some “safety net” efforts and that of what is being called for by secular political movements.  In fact,  many people are in secular movements rather than church-based movements focusing on social justice issues precisely because they have been formed to believe that the church doesn’t really care about many of the justice issues that they do.  But as Al Sharpton once said:  “People need to quit looking at the Christian Right and start looking at “The Right Christians”,  because there are many many faithful followers of Christ whose commitments to following Christ have them gravitating to some of the same social issues.

We need a good “media” to make that known.  We need to get out the stories of Christians whose commitment  to justice  would renew the faith of those who had given up on the church.  And we need to find ways to invite more of the public to join us in conversation about what is worth doing and what needs to be brought to light about America in 2011.

More  to come re: a new media