In the nineteen fifties in the Episcopal Church the term for the church was coined by then presiding bishop Henry Knox Sherrill that the church was a “hospital for sinners”….a sad coinage, but understandable following the catastrophic human disaster called World War Two in which seventy million people were killed….churches filled to capacity during the fifties for comfort and solace, seeking to make sense of the violence and evil in our world. Some perhaps boldly asking the eons old question: where were you God? But those were the days in which for most, other than the theological academy, we allowed God to remain aloof from our questioning….agnosticism, a dirty word. Inside the red doors of our churches we said our creeds, prayed our prayers, heard sermons about the love of God and the sin of man, and continued to stay out of the brute business of the world around us. Many felt the church should keep to itself (as some still do), a sacred shelter from the storms of the profane…. That world no longer exists.
Through the activism and upheaval within and of the socio-economic and political order of the sixties, the Episcopal Church and others have changed. Many churches awoke to the needs of the world around them and spoke out for civil rights for African Americans, for the rights of women, for a just society in which the poor and disenfranchised were given a chance at dignity. Diana Butler Bass writes that the old hospital for sinners paradigm is dying…that seekers of God and truth not only want meaning but relevance too, and agency for our world; that the believer in the so-called emerging church is not believer only but one who lives a life that changes the world for the better, agency….The church no longer the guardian of an ensconced belief system…but a gathered and growing fellowship that seeks to enact in our world the Gospel imperative of taking care of our least, bringing about a society, which is now via post-modern technology, a global enterprise….bringing about a society that is just and nonviolent in which the rubric for human life is dignity and well being.
I was thrilled to see that archbishop Rodi of the Mobile archdiocese, the Roman Catholic bishop in Birmingham, Henry Parsley, bishop of the diocese of Alabama and William Willimon, the Methodist bishop of Alabama filed a lawsuit challenging the legitimacy of the recently passed immigration law, dubbed, “the toughest in the country.” Being a resident of Florida our own bishop’s signature is not on the complaint, however he is exploring possibilities as to how he can officially endorse the action. And this is just one aspect of the pervasive injustice of our world. The recent passage of the U.S. budget was a sad commentary on the lack of imagination in our government….political brinkmanship in lieu of statesmanship the order of the day.
The reality is that it will be the least fortunate of us, the poor and the marginalized who will bear the brunt of the political dysfunction in our country, as they always have. Enlightened voices must be heard by those who make the decisions which affect the futures of generations to come. The recently passed budget bill does very little to solve the mess we’re in….too few cuts, and not enough revenue….as one political pundit put it “we’re just kicking the can down the road”….Is this any of the church’s business (and I mean the business of all people of faith)? You bet it is! because we are the stewards of God’s gracious dream for our world; we bear the vision of God’s commonweal of collaboration and equality….We are taught about this way from Sunday to Sunday and we strive to practice such a life in the daily grind. We are no longer just a hospital for sinners, but advocates of the dream…We are stewards of the vision of a world at peace in which dignity and well being are shared by all…We must demand that of our leaders, in the streets if necessary… because if not us….who?
Fr. Jim Flowers,
I’m deeply moved by this. I’m currently (as you know) in seminary, studying Ethics, listening to theologians.. And everything I’m learning points to your conclusion. You went here too, looks like you listened to all these professors and are showing the Church and the world what you learned!
I’m disheartened by the fact that we have any such immigration laws in Alabama, my home state, but reading posts like these restores my joy. I’m happy to join together with you and others in the Christian community to try to live out – in thought, word, and deed – the baptismal covenant calling to “serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself’ and “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.” Thank you!!
Blessings,
Erin
Amen!
Hallelujah!
Jim, Thanks for this. You have clarified for me why Bp. Duncan is not in the suit in federal court, but he is on record on the good side of this. As to your reference to PB Henry Knox Sherrill, your mentor and mine, Ben Meginniss, attributed this saying to Bishop Frank Juhan of Florida, the complete saying being that “The church is not a hotel for saints; it is a hospital for sinners.”
I love your writings, and I love you.
Thanks, Jim, for speaking out about the immigration issue—your messages wake us up to what is going on, often painful issues, but you always offer hope!
Again I say, Amen.
The problem is, everyone should have seen this coming. The state GOP platform for 2010, known as the “Handshake With Alabama” (an obvious riff off the 1994 “Contract With America”) included illegal immigration as one of its major pillars. Most of the provisions in the bill that eventually became law were part of the state GOP platform. You can still find the “Handshake” online at the state GOP website. If praying is the act of paying attention, then we need to get better about when, to what, and to whom we choose to pay attention. This bill wound its way through the State Legislature all spring, but we heard scarcely a peep about it until it had already passed. How come we didn’t hear about it earlier through our Alabama Arise connection?
When the bill finally passed, church leaders and others went into reactive mode and called for a “do-over.” But that’s too little, too late. Now it’s up to the courts to sort all the issues out, and the courts, rightly, make decisions based on facts and law, not public pressure.
The kind of action you are talking about requires commitment, discipline, and organization. But what are the real sacrifices that have to be made – time, reputation, financial – to meet this level of commitment? Who’s willing to do it?
Personally, on issues of public policy I think we should purge the religious moralism and rhetoric and embrace a purely secular approach rooted in empirical data and other forms of evidence. Otherwise we risk becoming like the religious right, captive to our own sense of moral righteousness, which could in turn blind us to sensible policy alternatives. Illegal immigration is more complex than the movement against Jim Crow of the 1950s and 60s. The moral choices are neither as stark nor as obvious today as they were then. Instead, let’s have a realistic look at the social and economic gains from immigration, including illegal immigration, versus the social and economic costs that might be borne by state and local communities forced to contend with swelling populations on one hand and limited resources on the other.