Searching for God, Ignoring the Issues?

I have at times teased my life-long friend, Fr. Gerald Waris, about the time in the late 60s when he fled from the front door of an irate resident of the north side of Kansas City who drove him away with a broom.

We were in the seminary at the time, and volunteered to go with a group of seminarians to that area of Kansas City, not known for its tolerance of people of color. We knocked on doors to get petitions signed for a proposed Fair Housing act.

I was on one side of the street and Gerald on the other when I saw him running from a front porch. He was the only one to have fled violence, as far as I know, but all of us encountered hostility from residents opposed to fair housing for people of color.

A couple of years later, in April 1968, shortly after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., Kansas City became one of 37 cities in the United States to be the subject of rioting. It was sparked when the police department tear-gassed student protesters outside city hall. Subsequent rioting resulted in the arrest of over one hundred adults, left five dead and at least twenty admitted to hospitals.

The Kerner Report

That same year, President Johnson appointed Otto Kerner, then governor of Illinois, to form a commission to determine the cause of the riots and try to prevent a recurrence. Called the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, it simply became known as the Kerner Report.

“The report became an instant bestseller,” according to Wikipedia, “and over two million Americans bought copies of the 426-page document. Its finding was that the riots resulted from black frustration at lack of economic opportunity.” The report’s most famous passage warned, “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal.”

A new study building on the Kerner Report, called Healing Our Divided Society: Investing in America Fifty Years after the Kerner Report, notes that poverty and the inequality gap between white America and Americans who are black, brown and Native American have increased.

The gains children of color made when efforts continued to desegregate schools in the 60s began to reverse by 1988, according to the National Public Radio (NPR) web site. “…In 1988, almost half of all students of color went to majority-white schools. Today that number has plummeted to 20 percent. Poverty is such a problem, the study concluded, that if it is not mitigated, America’s very democracy is threatened.”

Produce a Yawn?

These data would produce a yawn in many people. Others would say, “This is political and has no place in a blog about faith and religion.” I disagree. This post is not about politics, but about Christian values – the same values to which so many Christians appeal when talking about abortion or assisted suicide. And people searching for God, it seems to me, can’t ignore the issues.

Faith, after all, is not just a matter of belief. It’s principally a matter of relationships, between us and God and between each other. In other words, the search for God begins with our attitude toward, and treatment of, others.

People searching for God who ignore or oppose efforts to create a more just society, where people of all colors and beliefs have equal opportunity, are on the wrong road, in my opinion. You simply can’t separate social justice issues from the search for God because, besides prayer and study to bolster belief, the search for God means becoming more God-like.

Some would say that such efforts are strategies in class warfare, pitting the rich against the poor, and that inequality is a staple of history that will always be with us. That later part may be true, but it’s also a convenient way to avoid our obligations toward the poor which nearly all religions, including Christianity, demand.

Nothing to Fear

As for class warfare, if it exists in the U.S., the rich have already vanquished the poor and middle class so have nothing to fear from advocates of equality. Liberal or conservative? Democrat or Republican? When it comes to caring for others, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that people searching for God show that they’re serious by advocating for people who need help.

The new study shows that doing nothing has proven ineffective in improving the lives of our fellow citizens. People searching for God should advocate for the poor, especially poor people of color, at every opportunity. This would include advocating for more and better mental health programs, addiction prevention and treatment, and employment and training opportunities. (In my experience, people who say that the poor are poor because of their own incompetence or laziness know very few poor people.)

For people searching in the Christian tradition, it’s mandatory. Christian love can’t be abstract and vague but evident in concrete action.

“A new command I give you,” said Jesus in the Gospel of John. “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”