July
2007
No Exit? American Christians and Today’s Surplus Powerlessness
So now we know. Congress can huff and puff all it wants. Public support for a continuing U.S. military presence in Iraq can shrink to nothing. But none of it matters. It doesn’t even matter that Al Qaeda is actively regrouping in North Waziristan, where we do not send troops. Reality doesn’t matter. General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have already made their plans to keep us in Iraq through 2009.
Can anyone wonder why so many young people–and so many older people as well–begin to doubt whether that word “democracy” means anything at all?
Or take the example of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. Here was the nation’s highest law enforcement officer, clearly and indisputably shown to have lied under oath to the Congress, yet that same Congress appears powerless to do anything but scold him.
Or how about this one: our health care ”system” is now in total free fall. Big Pharma is a big part of why we can’t get reform. Meanwhile, the fabulously profitable pharmaceutical companies are also shown to be evading taxes on a massive scale through manipulation of their offshore subsidiaries. But does anyone think that Republicans OR Democrats will do anything to stop this gravy train and insist (as we used to say) that people should come before profits?
One more putrid example before I quit. In Sacramento the DEMOCRATS who run the State Assembly end their session by slashing already threadbare programs for the poorest of the poor in this state while at the same time handing a half-billion dollars in special tax goodies to the entertainment industry. Yet in every election season we are asked to believe that the Democrats stand for “the people” and against the special interests who constitute the permanent government.
We live in a cynical age in part because we live in an age of surplus powerlessness. Our experience of public life becomes a self-perpetuating cycle in which betrayal after betrayal generates more and more withdrawal from the public square on the part of ordinary citizens. Christians are no less prone to withdrawal than others; some Christians are even more prone to withdraw, thanks to misdirected ideas about “the two kingdoms” and an equally misguided notion that God’s ultimate justice excuses us from seeking justice here and now.
We need to awaken from our torpor and cast off the bad habit of accepting whatever the system dishes out. Acting faithfully is not a matter of embroiling ourselves in corrupt political matters. Acting faithfully is sometimes simply a matter of telling the truth; it is simply a matter of standing with the poor and the voiceless when so many predators and liars are arrayed against them.
To use the old language, we who would be faithful can be “in” politics without being “of” politics. That is, in fact, the only way for us. For progressive Christians to be “out of” politics at a time like this is just not an option.
Gracious One, save us from weak resignation to the evils we deplore. Deliver us from the funk of our surplus powerlessness to a new place where we find the strength to engage unjust power in the spirit of servant leadership, so that your will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
- Peter Laarman