While I'm hardly a fan of the politicization of Christianity in the last 30 years, the recent secular outpouring against social injustice by the ragtag band of protesters called Occupy Wallstreet that seems to be mushrooming across this great land has really touched my heart. If the new blog, We Are The 99 Percent, see here leaves you cold then you probably won't like what I'm thinking.
By now the sickening concentration of wealth in the hands of the top .01% of Americans is well known, almost yesterday's news. And where are our pastors and spiritual leaders while the percentage of their flocks in poverty is at historical highs? They're off ranting against gay marriage and Sharia law, fiddling while their flocks burn, to mangle an old saying.
Jesus would feel right at home with this band of broken Americans. They are the young people, burdened with student debt and no jobs, the middle aged, homes foreclosed and jobs sent overseas, the near elderly with no health insurance at precisely the time they need it the most. All this while the powerful are experiencing an explosion of personal and corporate wealth unheard of in our nations history.
Maybe it's time for those of us who've read the Sermon on the Mount to join hands with the 99 Percenters and speak faith to power, to let America know that Christ came for the weak and hungry, that this corporate christianity they see broadcast on TBN and sold out to the rich, is not what Jesus taught. I can't bring myself to urge political action in the name of Christ, I find that distasteful no matter what the cause, but millions have been turned off to Jesus by the Christian Right preaching an Ayn Rand kind of christian atheism and it's time we show the real face of Jesus to the hurting and the lost.
If we don't Satan will be glad to fill that role.
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