Skip to main content

Why This Pastor Will ... March, Pray, Reach Out, Resist

On January 21, the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration as President, I will march in the Women's March here in San Diego. I want to explain why.  

Like many pastors,  I feel conflicted because the people I serve are profoundly divided when it comes to politics. At the (mostly white) congregation where I serve on staff, some people are pleased with the outcome of November's election, others are apprehensive, still others are genuinely upset.  Meanwhile, at El Faro: the Border Church, the unique community I convene on the US-Mexico border, almost everyone finds Mr. Trump’s election deeply distressing, especially that he won while vilifying Mexican immigrants and threatening to implement policies that would disrupt millions of families. 

Finding myself pulled in many directions, I am trying to respond with integrity to the division that characterizes both our public landscape and my own pastoral predicament.    I am not seeking to sow further division; rather,  I am trying to follow the Apostle Paul's admonition that we "speak the truth in love." (Ephesians 4:15)

In the wake of Donald Trump's inauguration, 
I will march, I will pray, I will reach out and I will resist.

I will march. I will march here in San Diego on January 21 in solidarity with the many women I know - my own wife among them - who are deeply offended by Donald Trump's proven pattern of disrespecting and objectifying women.  More generally, our President-elect displays almost nothing of what Paul called the "the fruit of the spirit ... love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." (Galatians 5:22) I know this list does not represent a job description for President of the United States, but it explains my deep concern.   We have elected a spiritually impoverished man whose behavior I would not tolerate in my teenage son, and I feel called - both as a person and as a pastor - to join the millions of people who are marching on January 21 as a pledge to hold him accountable. 

I will pray. When I pray in public I will aspire to pray prayers that could be shared by all people who claim the Christian faith.  This is no easy task, given the circumstances, but I know it can be done. On the day before the election last November, I prayed this prayer with our (divided) congregation in mind.  And in 2003, I shared these prayers with a congregation I knew was deeply divided as our nation prepared to go to war in Iraq.  Moving forward, I will try to pray prayers like these, prayers that I hope will stand the test of time. 

I will reach out. I will seek to understand more fully why so many people voted for Donald Trump.  That people voted against Hillary Clinton, or voted in protest of the status quo, or voted out of party loyalty - all these I can understand.  But Mr. Trump's candidacy generated enthusiasm beyond all this. I see some sources of this enthusiasm quite clearly, both noble (for instance, resistance to government policies that undermine community) and ignoble (for instance, racism).  But I know there is more going on than I am presently able to perceive. Because I know I have much to learn, I will extend a hand of reconciliation and listen respectfully to those with whom I disagree.

I will resist. In my tradition, whenever I participate in a baptism, I reaffirm the vows of my own baptism. The first two vows are these: "Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?  Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?" I know I often fail to live out these vows completely in my own life, and so I return again and again to renew them, trusting that God is not finished with me yet.  Because I remain committed to the vows of my baptism, I will continue to "resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves," and that includes when I perceive them to be present in our public life.

These are my intentions - to march, to pray, to reach out, and to resist.  In declaring them, I am trying to act responsibly in light of my own calling, in light of my many and varied responsibilities as a pastor, and in light of the inauguration as President of a man who has yet to earn my respect.



Labels:

Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 10, 2017 at 7:35 PM

    Pastor John, I have so much respect for you and your ministry. Your thoughts and words always make me think and look beyond myself. Thanks be to God for your life and ministry. DJ

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE HUBRIS OF INCLUSION: Thoughts on the Future of the United Methodist Church

The United Methodist Church was born in a specific time and place, in the mid-twentieth century in the United States of America. Protestant denominations were ascendant, and with them a brand of "ecumenism" that would only decades later be recognized by those who championed it as culturally bound to the white "mainline." Mergers were all the buzz, including the one that created the UMC in 1968, and Methodists embraced their new denomination as partial fulfillment of a dream of "Christian unity." As the historian Robert Handy noted in his wonderful little 1971 book,  A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities , leaders of the new denomination thought of it as "a kind of unofficial national church." Because they sat at the midpoint of mainline American Protestantism in so many respects -- ecclesial, theological, liturgical -- it was easy for them to assume that as all churches became one, pretty much everyone else would eventua...
3 comments
Read more

Methodism's Many Pasts and Futures

From the time the brothers John and Charles Wesley first convened a "holy club" of friends at Oxford University in 1729, Methodists have declared theirs a pursuit of “holiness” or “Christian perfection.”  For early Methodists, the pursuit of Christian perfection led inevitably to disagreements about what it meant to live a holy life.   As early as  1741 the Wesleys distanced themselves from their closest collaborator, George Whitefield, over his Calvinist teachings.  And while Wesley proclaimed himself to possess "a catholic spirit," his practices - not least, his own refusal to conform to the conventions of Anglican parish ministry - were widely perceived by his contemporaries to be divisive or even "schismatic." Methodism on the other side of the Atlantic retained this same spirit, which should come as little surprise since it was born in an act of separation - in 1784,  Wesley consecrated Thomas Coke as Superintendent, setting in motion the cre...
2 comments
Read more

On the 40th Anniversary of Friendship Park

Imagine the First Lady of the United States punching a hole in the fence on the U.S.-Mexico border.   Imagine her publicly lamenting that there was a border fence at all. In fact this scenario doesn’t need to be imagined … because it happened forty years ago right here in San Diego County.   The date was August 18, 1971 and the location was “Friendship Park,” the small cement plaza on the U.S.-Mexico border, at the southwest-most corner of the continental United States. The First Lady was Pat Nixon, who had been a prominent champion of our state’s public parks when her husband Richard Nixon was Governor of California, before being elected President of the United States.    She came to Friendship Park to inaugurate the surrounding area as California’s Border Field State Park.    After planting a tree as part of the inauguration ceremony, Mrs. Nixon approached the large stone monument which sits at the heart of Friendship Park.   The monument commemo...
Post a Comment
Read more