[Vision2020] Leonard Pitts Jr.: The fierce urgency of now: justice

[keely emerinemix]

This is one of the finest posts on the subjects that I've ever read.  The last two paragraphs are a sermon, and a Spirit-blessed one, in themselves.  

Keely
www.keely-prevailingwinds.com




From: deco at moscow.com
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:40:37 -0700
Subject: [Vision2020] Leonard Pitts Jr.: The fierce urgency of now: justice

















Posted on Sun, Mar. 21, 2010 

The fierce urgency of now: justice
By LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts at MiamiHerald.com
`B lessed are those who 
hunger and thirst for righteousness.'' -- Matthew 5:6 
Ultimately, I suppose, what we're talking about is a clash between the sweet 
by and by and the fierce urgency of now.

The former is the refrain from a venerable gospel song that meditates on the 
bliss of life after life. The latter is a phrase from Martin Luther King's ``I 
Have A Dream,'' a passionate demand for justice, equality, and freedom, 
now.

Into the tension between these two disparate views of Christian mission 
stumbles one Glenn Beck. The Fox News showman recently ignited an uproar in the 
world of Christian ministry by attacking churches that preach a gospel of social 
and economic justice, i.e., a gospel that doesn't just promise relief in the 
sweet by and by, but seeks to effect change in the hard here and now. If your 
church preaches that, Beck told his radio audience, ``run as fast as you can.'' 
Social and economic justice, he said, are ``code words'' for communism and 
Nazism.

In response, the Rev. Jim Wallis, a preacher of the social gospel and 
president and CEO of the liberal religious activist group Sojourners, suggested 
on his blog that what Christians should run from is Beck himself. Beck, he 
wrote, attacks the very heart of their faith.

``When I was in seminary,'' he says, ``we made a study of the Bible and we 
found 2,000 verses in the Bible about the poor, about God's concern for the left 
out, left behind, the vulnerable and God's call for justice. If I were ever to 
talk to Glenn Beck, I would hand him that old Bible from seminary where we cut 
out of the Bible every single reference to the poor, to social justice, to 
economic justice, and when we were done, the Bible was just in shreds. And I 
would hand it to him and put a sticker on front and say, `This is the Glenn Beck 
Bible.'''

I ran Beck's comments by two other preachers of my acquaintance, and they 
seconded Wallis. But Beck, says the Rev. R. Joaquin Willis of Miami's Church of 
the Open Door, is not alone. Many others, he said, ``would like to see many of 
us as pastors just come to church and deal with the spiritual needs of the 
people and not address those difficult day-to-day issues that make life so 
hard.'' 

Beck, adds Willis, ``speaks from the perspective of the entitled and the 
relatively well off and they don't see a need for social improvement. Anybody 
that's trying to improve the society is a communist to him.''

``It's hard,'' says Rev. Tony Lee of Community of Hope in Temple Hills, Md., 
``for a church to sit and talk to somebody about how to change their lives and 
how to turn things around when the institutions around that person are broken. 
It's hard for me to talk to young people about how God can make a way and how 
they can move forward and be all they can be through God -- but their 
educational system is in pieces. What Glenn Beck is saying is, `Don't have a 
role in the shaping of the educational system.'''

For the record, Martin Luther King preached a social gospel. Even the 
preachers in the anti-abortion movement preach a social gospel.

And the idea that such people are enemies of the state is as visceral a 
reminder as you're likely to get of the paranoia and intellectual discontinuity 
that afflicts extremist conservatism. Fifty years ago, they saw communists 
behind every movie marquee and schoolhouse door. Now, Beck sees them in pulpits, 
too.

And I suppose the way not to be a communist in his eyes is to embrace a 
gospel that promises uplift in the sweet by and by -- and only then. But that's 
a lazy, complacent gospel, a gospel of self-satisfaction and I got mine, of 
egocentricity and look out for number one -- and it doesn't square with the 
gospel of feed my sheep and love your neighbor as yourself.

He thinks we should flee the church that preaches social and economic 
justice? I think you should flee the one that does 
not.


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/21/v-print/1539820/the-fierce-urgency-of-now-justice.html#ixzz0ivN5hFMv
 		 	   		  
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