Tonight at All Saints the Bridges program of the Quest for Social Justice and the Bay Area Women’s Coalition will present Melanie Jeffcoat’s documentary Open Secret. The documentary is a reenactment of the 1901 Alabama Constitutional Convention based on actual transcripts of the convention. It sheds light on how conscious decisions were made to institutionalize white male supremacy. We in the state of Alabama, because of our regressive and racist constitution, are still paying the price in economic and social justice, in education, in health-care, and our state legislature has still not shown the moral will to lead Alabama into the twenty first century. The status quo, no matter how overtly wrong, is still a powerful thing…something that stridently resists for its own sake….the ugly head of self-interest. Until the structures of our institutions are changed to uphold the dignity of all our citizens, the great divide between the wealthy and the disadvantaged will only widen. We are already seeing the violence on our streets and in our schools that such a sorry state of affairs begets.
What does this have to do with the church. The short answer is: everything. Our vocation as people of faith, and by people of faith, I don’t mean just the religious….I mean people of conscience who practice the high art of acting for and speaking for the good…the ones who are able through the enlightened practice of bearing dignity to our world to name what is wrong and how such wrong might be set right, we are the ones who matter for the world’s sake… People of faith do their homework, employ their gifts and intelligence… It is a full time job to be sure, and it requires savvy and grace and goodwill and humility…The tactics of hate so common in the present day will bear no fruit….Certainly as Christians, the moniker of our faithfulness, we have to be about changing things for the better….the life and ministry of Jesus and those who follow him, the model… healing, including, dignifying, providing, forgiving…we are to en-flesh intelligent and loving compassion… As conscious decisions were made for injustice in the past, then conscious decisions must be made for justice now….the way things are in this state cripples us unto death, and they must change….they must change.
Perhaps the most poignant revision in the 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer is the addition of the Baptismal Covenant (p. 304) in which we profess a practicing faith, not just a believing faith…In truth, I think, it is the practice of the faith that informs our belief…through our enacting the good we come to know the good deep within us and around us in collaborative community. Tonight will be an important conversation among people of faith across socio-economic, racial and ethnic lines…perhaps in our conversation we will discover a critical mass of how effective change might be brought about…I hope so, because things aren’t right…they just aren’t right…and if not us, then who to make them so.
Beautifully stated, my friend. Now please explain to me how most of the “Christians” in Mobile and on facebook can think this is just liberal, godless BS?
The short answer is: willful ignorance, the modus operandi of kitsch christianity.