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Progressive Christian

God Commands Compassion, Not Evangelism

October 05, 2011 by Greg Garrett

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Recently, I attended a Southern Baptist church in America's heartland. The service was typical: about half an hour of praise music, a lengthy sermon, an altar call, and an offertory. The choir and musicians were skilled and enthusiastic. The sermon, drawn from Psalms, centered on our call to praise God at all times, not just on Sunday morning. During the hour and a half service, a charitable appeal was made in connection with the 200-bed vacation cabin the church wants to build at the state youth camp. The price tag for this state of the art facility, I was informed, was seven million dollars, cheap for a building that will help bring youth to Christ.

I am convinced that these good people cared about the souls of others, but nowhere in the service or in the bulletin were there charitable appeals to help feed the hungry, house the homeless, or care for the sick.

Meanwhile, as Marketplace notes, millions of Americans are dealing with the loss of their jobs, economic security, community, even their homes; one in four young American children are living in poverty; and according to the World Health Organization, millions of people across the globe are dying of preventable diseases.

It occurs to me that seven million dollars—or the slightest bit of interest in justice on the part of these and other similar American Christians—could have an impact on these issues. Yet some of those who willingly dig deep to find money to evangelize their children, or preach to the larger world, seem to have little or no interest in helping the Children of God through the trials of their lives.

I'm speaking at a Theology on Tap event tonight at Austin's great BookPeople bookstore, and our topic is why justice is a gospel imperative. I plan to argue it may be the gospel imperative.

I've been in many churches, both as worshipper and speaker, and I accept that Christianity looks and feels different from denomination to denomination, church to church. That's not what I'm talking about when I take some traditions to task.

Julie Clawson, author of the fine book Everyday Justice, is on the panel with me tonight; she is evangelical and emerging, I am an Episcopalian.

But both of us would agree that Christian faith calls us to do more than just make more Christians.

In my book The Other Jesus, I talk about how Christians are called to do more than praise God, although I believe we are called to do that. We are called to do more than tell people what God has done and is doing in our lives, although I believe we are called to do that. We are called to do more than invite other people to be in relationship with that loving God, although I believe we are called to do that.

The larger message of the Bible is about participating in the reality that God wants to bring into being to replace the sinful mess we have made, and a large part of that participation is about reaching out to those who are in need. God's advocacy for the downtrodden against the powerful is clear throughout the Hebrew Testament. A wonderful way to read the Old Testament's sections on the patriarchs, the subjection of their ancestors in Egypt, and their deliverance in Palestine is through the lens of God's choice of the poor, the outcast, and the unexpected to be the recipients of His love and grace. Youngest children (not the oldest sons, expected to inherit everything), women (of no social value), and exiles (not even part of a society) are chosen by God for special roles.

The Hebrew prophets, later, call out to the established nation of Israel to care for the widow, the orphan, and the alien. Amos and Jeremiah both say that you can praise God in regular worship and still be ungodly, because you ignore God's command of love and compassion, God's call for the formation of a more justice and equitable society. On my Southern Baptist Sunday morning, I didn't have my staff or hairshirt handy, but there was a part of me that wanted to open the pew Bible to Jeremiah 7, stand up in my pew, and proclaim

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10/5/2011 4:00:00 AM

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About Greg Garrett

Greg Garrett is (according to BBC Radio) one of America's leading voices on religion and culture. He is the author or co-author of over twenty books of fiction, theology, cultural criticism, and spiritual autobiography. His most recent books are The Prodigal, written with the legendary Brennan Manning, Entertaining Judgment: The Afterlife in Popular Imagination, and My Church Is Not Dying: Episcopalians in the 21st Century. A contributor to Patheos since 2010, Greg also writes for the Huffington Post, Salon.com, OnFaith, The Tablet, Reform, and other web and print publications in the US and UK.

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