On Sunday, August 13, 2017, churches welcomed to Sabbath services sorrowful congregations looking for any wailing wall upon which to grieve the Charlottesville cataclysm. Another moral implosion in America’s pock-marked landscape! While we wait for national leadership, in the meantime we look to our local religious leaders. Fortunately, there are sanctuaries nearby to be found on the morning after the night before, somewhere to go for solace, insight and healing. Bless those who lead our prayers and preach the sermons on such a difficult morning.
If we weren’t public churches before, we will become such now with the public issues pouring in through our doors this last year. We are being asked to speak out. Will we do more than host a vigil? Do we know how to address a public event explicitly? Or have decades of nervousness about keeping politics out of the church interfere? Can we learn how to distinguish between partisan politics and the great politics of citizenship? Can churches seize the role of “citizen in the aggregate” and become leaders in our communities? Will we cultivate the vocabulary that properly belongs to the moral, not partisan, critique of our national behavior? How can we become proactive rather than reactive and find ways for us to raise the local public’s consciousness? And how can laypeople participate actively in this new habit of mind?
The public arena awaits our arrival.