Year: 2011

We Must Become the Shire: American Spring, Dr. King, and Please, God, Something Different

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment

Last week’s post, “How Broken are OurPolitics? Will Gen-X Save the World?” generated a lot of discussion and creativity.  A good friend of mine, one of those Boomers who do amazing things for their communities and in the lives of people, suggested (via Facebook) a new political model based on the communal virtues of JRR Tolkien’s Hobbits:

 Here’s an idea: why not pool say, 5 candidates (of differing political philosophies) randomly every 2 years, have them write an essay about what needs to be done in DC, vote on them, and send the winner to DC for a non re-electable 2 year term, repeating the process every 2 years.  Those who wield power best are those who don’t seek it. It’s why hobbits carried the seductive ring of power better than all others. We need hobbit rule. (Btw, this won’t happen bc those who love power (our elected reps ie Sauron) would have to amend the constitution and voluntarily relinquish power. One can dream, though).

Yes. We all can dream.  Which reminds me when some people dream, amazing things happen.  Today, the public gets its first glimpse of the new Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial on the National Mall in Washington.  It stands between the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials and is, to paraphrase one observer, the only monument on the Mall to a man of color and a man of peace.

Think about that.  All of our other monuments are to men who have administered wars.  Observing that is not to disparage them, (there are other reasons for that in most cases) but to recognize King’s unique voice and prophetic place as an American  leader committed to waging change by waging peace.  The centerpiece of the MLK memorial is his form on the “Stone of Hope,” and I hope his memory will stand there on the Mall as an indictment of a system that has long since given up on the work entrusted to it.  I hope it stands there like a scandal, preaching peace to national bodies who tear our body politic apart with their addictions to power, their allegiances to lobbies, their cynical crocodile patriotism and two-party no-choice  horseshit rodeo.

As the Arab Spring becomes, even as I type, the Late Summer of Gaddafi, I wonder what we’ll do a year from now.  Will we be in the process of nominating, again, two clowns from two circus parties to pantomime a contest between competing visions for the future?   Will someone from the left have come to save us from Obama?  Will a libertarian deliver us from Perry?  Will we, the pissed-off Middle, flock to our party primaries and rummage through that discount bin again?  God help us. Can Spring 2012 please be something different?  Can we start planning now our own little process of renewal?  We have free speech and the freedom to assemble.  We have the right to demand better options, better leaders, better people.  An American Spring would cost us nothing, but what might it accomplish? What would it look like? Who would even show?

How about families with their kids? How about college students? How about the  homeless, uninsured, and unemployed?  How about conservatives, progressives and libertarians who, it will have turned out, are united around the issues of government reform more than they’ve been driven apart by nonsense party lines and structures? How about people of all faiths and people of no faith all committed to being people of goodwill?  How about veterans and pacifists?  How about immigrants?

Imagine meeting at the Mall at the great scandal of a monument. Imagine finding poetic, sublime irony in the fact that yes, it’s made from Chinese granite, and that yes, the oppressive Chinese government, eager to own us all,  financed part of its construction.  Oh confused and frustrated body politic, oh 20-45 demographic, take your place, for God’s sake! And for your children’s.

How Broken Are Our Politics? Will Gen X Save The World?

~ Chris Cocca ~ 9 Comments
Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United ...
Knew something about this.

A good friend engaged me about this via email this week.  I think it’s just about beyond question that our national political structures are utterly, fundamentally broken at the macro level.  A broad survey leaves little to the imagination: special interests, Big Whatever…in too many ways our politicians are not our own and are accountable first to their fundraisers and donors.  There are exceptions.  There are micro-level organizations of integrity, there are good candidates and great public servants.  But the system itself exists for itself in perpetuity.  Don’t believe me?  Try running for Super Congress.

Are our politics broken beyond repair, or can they be fixed according to the rules they’re governed by now?

How anxious are you?  If you’re between 18 and 100, are tech-savvy and engaged, your answer should be very.  If you’re between 30 and, say, 45 (the Upper Cusack Limit), you might also consider the total refusal of anyone to move a sane agenda forward as an unprecedented opportunity to lead.

Babyboomers, heel-graspers that they’ve been, have been uncannily quiet in all of this at the national level.  Sure, they’ve been the public face of so much chicanery since the Clinton Administration, but they’re not seizing any real opportunities to create something new or leave us with much. Barack Obama, young Boomer that he is, out to be the virile head of some great movement.  Alas, there is nothing.  If I’m being fair, and I do want to be fair, Obama has lead on a few key policy issues, but the wither, blister, burn, and peel of support from the progressive base is not news.  It happened for reasons.

We, the USA Network demographic, don’t trust national Republicans or Democrats.  We love the idea of hope and change and progressive causes but we don’t believe in attendant hype or machines. We like the idea of populist movements but have seen them be hijacked by agendas that couldn’t be further from our ideals.

We are displeased.  What to do? (If you’re picturing Billy Zane as an evil tycoon who doesn’t give a shit, good. We’re being taunted, everyday, by people who will never want for anything, people we’ve put in power, many of whom are apathetic at best toward our well-being or future.)

One impulse is to turn local, and I believe that localism, rightly channeled in all of its healthy forms, will go a long way toward changing our communities in radically sustainable ways.  But that won’t happen without you, Generation X.  You who are parents, you who are holding down jobs, paying bills, paying taxes, you great middle class getting screwed.  I’m asking you to do more.  I know, I know.  The good news is that in places like Allentown, PA, and, I imagine, its analogs everywhere, there are indeed many Boomers doing great things and looking for help.  Your vested interest is your children’s future.  Determined as you are to make damned sure the world they inherit is better than the shit-storm left you, you don’t really have much of a choice.  If you’re not already, please get connected.  Please make a difference.  Please build communities.

But we haven’t forgotten about you, Great National Mess. You are Das Nichtige, the unchosen nothing, the aggregate mass of political sin, of omission, of shirking, of all that is wrong with our government, our economy, our budget, our laws. You are our misplaced priorities. Your time is over, we cannot sustain you, but your enablers have said that you’re too big to fail, too big to move.

But you’re not.  We know your coordinates. You thrive at the intersection of political parties and the military industrial complex.  George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower, two Citizen-Generals, warned us of you, but we were too busy moving west, killing Indians, too busy moving west, building suburbs, to listen.  We’re listening now.  We won’t support your national campaigns or your friends in Big Anything.  We don’t want Monsanto or Super Congress.  We don’t want your labels, your symbols, your platforms.  We want clean water, clean air, and safe food. We want safety nets and renewable energy.  Sustainability is our ideology, our children are our constituents, and our political leaders will answer to us.

And who will they be if not us?

Sixth Street Shelter Expansion: A Mission in Allentown, A Call to Faithful Engagement

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment

I want to thank Scott Kraus of the Allentown Morning Call for his reportage on the Sixth Street Shelter expansion. Alan Jennings, Marsha Eichelberger, Tony Sundermeier, and I are quoted in Scott’s piece in yesterday’s edition.  Please read it here, and whether you’re near or far to the locales and missions we’re talking about in Allentown, consider how you might help this project or projects like it near you.

We’re not doing this because it’s a “mission project” and churches “should do mission.”  We’re doing this because we are learning that missional living is the Gospel. The church, any church, exists for mission, and mission doesn’t merely touch everything we do.  Mission, being missional, is how we are learning to see.

 

Baffled by Resistance, the Greedy and the Blessed, and That Time Jesus Said “You Tell Me.”

~ Chris Cocca ~ 9 Comments

Most of you know that I wrote a piece last week about how the global Church could abolish extreme poverty to the ash bins of cosmic history if we only had the will.

Lots of people tweeted or liked or talked about or emailed me about that article, and I’ve been talking back to some of you on some rather personal levels.

In all of this, I think I’ll always be baffled by the Christians I know, rich by all global accounts, who refuse to do something as paltry as send a goat to Africa via WorldVision because they’re already giving to their local church and/or denomination. That’s like saying “I gave at the office,” isn’t it? Yes, yes it is.

If you had the means to buy one goat for one needy family or community for 70 dollars and you knew it could be done through a reputable, well-respected, transparent, Christian organization, why wouldn’t you do it, know matter how much you already gave at the office this week? Seriously. What’s the honest-to-God, good-enough-to-God answer?  There are none. And as long as we’re being honest, lets get real about some more numbers:  we all know a lot of people who could afford the $70 once or twice.  But if you’ve got the money, God has the crises.  Brings a new meaning to the old concept of  70 x 7, doesn’t it?

“Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?’

Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven.”

“Then Rich Christians came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how much shall I give in your name to feed and clothe and heal your children? Ten percent of of my income?’

Jesus pointed to the 17,000 children who die of hunger every day, to the billion without ready access to clean water, to the homeless, sick, and destitute. Then Jesus said ‘You tell me.’

Lord, help us.

Below is a follow-up post that should be going live on Huffington soon.

Rich, Greedy, and Blessed: God Wants to Save Us, Too
Christopher Cocca

Last week, I published a piece in this space called “Ending Poverty With Global Christianity’s Phantom Trillion,” in which I noted that the global annual income of Christians and Christian institutions worldwide exceeds $10 trillion and that a mere 10 percent of that, if given to the right kinds of direct action organizations (Christian or otherwise), could eradicate the most dangerous and preventable forms of poverty on the planet.

I’ve been very grateful for the responses I’ve received here, on Twitter and elsewhere. By and large, people in my age group (I was born in 1980) and younger are saying “amen” to idea that the time to fundamentally change the way Christians think about giving is long overdue. Folks from some of the amazing organizations I mentioned last week have tweeted or emailed their encouragement and the shared belief that we, the Church, could actually eradicate extreme global poverty if we simply had the will.

And the agreement doesn’t end with young Gen-Xers and our Gen-Y friends. Across generations, traditions, doctrinal and political differences, and other bogus barriers we so often use to keep ourselves from having to do the hard work of justice and reconciliation, many Christians understand that the time has simply come to get serious about curing the curable disease of gross inequity.

The time has simply come to say that clean water for everyone matters to us because everyone matters to God, that no child should die from mosquito bites that could have been prevented for the kind of money we don’t even bother pulling from our couches. The time has come to say that no matter what you tithe to your church or denomination, $60 to plant 10 fruit trees in a community that gravely needs them is a bargain, or that charity: water‘s $12 economic impact for every dollar given is the stuff of loaves and fishes here and now.

“But Jesus said the poor will always be with us.” I’ve heard this more than once this week. It’s one of the archetypical responses from people very much concerned with the “more spiritual” ends of the church and one of our classically tragic adventures in missing the point. I don’t believe for a second that Jesus wants anything less from us than a real commitment of our time, talent and treasure toward ending the immense human suffering and accompanying evil that gross inequality and extreme poverty breed. Do you? Is this not the same Jesus who told the rich young ruler to sell everything and give his proceeds to the poor? When will comfortable Christians realize that we’re all rich young rulers? Visit Compassion International’s Who Are The Joneses project if you don’t believe me when I say that if you can afford the device and the data plan you’re using to read this, you’re probably wealthier than at least 90 percent of the world.

“But I give through my church.” I gave at the office, too. But how good is your church or your denomination at getting money to where it’s needed most? How much of your church tithe goes to administrative expenses? How much of your special offerings for specific anti-poverty projects goes to administrative expenses? How efficient are the organs of your denomination? How much do they spend to raise every dollar? Find this information. Charity Navigator provides it for groups like World Vision (it costs them 7 cents to raise a dollar), Save The Children, Compassion International, charity: water, Children International and so on. Are your churches and your denominations more transparent and efficient than these organizations? Maybe they are, but my hunch is that they aren’t. Find out.

And look, I’m not saying stop giving money to your church. That’s important. I work in a church. I get all of that. But if you’re choosing between buying a dairy goat that might mean the difference between hunger and sustainable nourishment for a family in the Horn of Africa or the Parking Lot Fund at All Saints Mainline Evangelical Tabernacle House of God, well, the choice is clear, isn’t it? Is it? (Yes.)

The truth is that many Western Christians could give a full tithe to their churches and a full second tithe toward the eradication of extreme poverty in efficient, responsible ways without losing much of our lifestyle. Isn’t it something of a scandal that so many of us can even talk about lifestyle when so many more are barely clinging to life? (Yes.) If your tithe or double tithe knock you down a peg or two in the social strata, thank your Father in heaven for the opportunity to clothe and feed and save the lives of people you will never meet in places you will never visit with names you can’t pronounce. If bringing the Kingdom of God to earth in tangible ways isn’t a priority for wealthy Christians, what the hell is?

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.” That’s Jesus, not Karl Marx or Nancy Pelosi. In the larger context of this quote from from the Gospel of Matthew, these things aren’t options or good ideas or lofty works. They are the brick and mortar pieces of God’s Kingdom, here and now. They are what God requires, and it’s only when I begin to think about how little we do in response that the concept of hell makes any sense to me. And it’s then I also realize the real profundity of grace, that God, in God’s stubborn Godness, wants to save us, too.

And so we have an opportunity to change the world, and an obligation. Not just we the wealthy Church, but we the mingled body of marginalized and marginalizer, we the sinners and saints, we the poor and we the poor in spirit. In the sharing of our global wealth in a global context, we find a chance for our own healing, a test of our own faithfulness, and the promise of abounding grace in the lives we touch and the lives that touch us back.

It’s almost too much, isn’t it, this concept that we will be blessed by our giving? We should do the work we’re called to because we’re called to do it, yes, but on a more basic level, we should do it because it’s right. I’m almost ashamed to say that we the wealthy can find our own strains of redemption in the sharing of our wealth when our relative greed has rendered us so basically undeserving.

But powerful as we may be, we’re thankfully not the masters of God’s economy. In God’s stubborn system, God calls us from the brink with faithful service to the people God is most concerned with serving. It’s almost absurd, isn’t it, that this grace is there for we the wealthy, too? Absurd and foolish? Yes, the Gospel in a nutshell: radical grace, radical service, radical absurdity from the vantage of political, social and economic systems that keep failing. And a radical dependence on the terms of God’s radical provision.

Lord, help us.

How Should We Talk About How We Spend our Part of the Phantom Trillion?

~ Chris Cocca ~ 6 Comments

A second (in some cases third or fourth) thank you to everyone sharing and talking about the phantom trillion piece on Huffington.  Yesterday I asked people for ideas about mobilizing their share of the phantom trillion toward direct impact in places where it matters most and how to encourage others to do the same.  Brian Sun had this to share:

Initial thoughts about how to start change from the ground up:

I need to change first.

Meaning, the individual people who read, commented, shared, and agree that the phantom trillion from the Body of Christ could “feed everyone, clothe everyone, give everyone access to water, heal the land, clean the water, and clean the air in perpetuity” need to examine their individual lives’ and ask: Am I tithing?

If the answer is no (yet you still said amen to article), then why not? Then identify the barriers, talk to a friend about it, and make the next step towards giving a tenth part of your income. That’s change from the ground up.

If the answer is yes, then why? Then share why you’re tithing with one of your Christian friends who is not tithing. That’s change from the ground up.

Once we (Christians) understand “the economic power we possess and the practical implications of loving one’s neighbor as oneself, this phantom trillion would find its way to points of need.” The action step in this is if you’re tithing to your church: find out if you can be a voice in where the money is spent. Granted, the lights need to stay on, but “investing 10 percent of its (the Church’s) annual income to overcome the systems of injustice, hate, and other things we still call sin” is essential. That’s change from the ground up.

Or if you’re a Christian who is cool with tithing to charity:water, Compassion, World Vision, and other legit charities, tell your friends about them. That’s change from the ground up.

Now let’s get started.

These are important points.  Each starts with honesty in relationships.  Being honest with ourselves, being honest with friends about why we do what we do, being honest about our expectations that other Christians  wrestle with this issue (and come out on the side of ending poverty), being honest with church boards (or non-profits) and demanding honesty from them.

Immediately, I thought of tweeting something like “I just bought _X___ fruit trees and donated _$Y__ to the Most Urgent Need Fund through WorldVision. Will you match me?”  But there’s a whole lot of stuff that comes along with filling in those blanks with actual numbers, isn’t there?  On one hand, I’m of the mind that the time has long come to stop being polite about our expectations of each other.  Even so, there’s a thousand degrees of nuance I know should be reserved for that kind of statement.  Twitter is not a vehicle of nuance.  Neither are hunger or thirst or famine or war.  But using numbers invites the old charge that we’re doing this to show how good or giving we are, even though I’m saying the time has come to get serious because of how bad we’ve generally been.

I looked again at Brian’s comments, and I noticed that he said we ought to be sharing why we give.  He’s also implying, I think, some heavy one-one-one conversations where filling in those blanks isn’t boastful or embarrassing and might mean real encouragement for others.

In the context of WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc, I’d encourage everyone to talk freely about which campaigns they support and why they support them.  Tell us why you tithe or how you think about tithing.  Tell us if you believe that a tithe to charity: water, WorldVision, or Compassion International can (should!) take the place of a “church tithe” in your context.

In the meantime, I’m going to tweet my Will You Match Me? tweet with blank spaces intact.  And I’ll make a point of talking to my friends in person about why I think they should match me if they can.

No, this is not a master plan.  But we need to give with these intentions and share these intentions with others.  People already making a point of doing these things or who are just starting to also need each other for encouragement.  Please come share your experiences with me/the readers of this blog any time.

I just tithed 10 percent of my first paycheck as Director of Mission at First Prebyterian Church of Allentown, PA to buy __ fruit trees and give __ dollars to the Most Needed Fund through WorldVision.  Will you match me with a 10 percent tithe of your income this week?