A major strength of our community is the ability to engage the social ills of humanity in a competent, compassionate manner. This resonates with me because it is synonymous with my social work training to be a practitioner who uses sound strategies on numerous levels of change. For change to occur, there needs to be effective implementation directly to the people and social stakeholders, conducted by organizing, and systemic direction conducted by manipulating power. None of these can take place unless the others exist and one is not more important than another. My social work training has taught me these levels of change are not independent forces, but more of a fluid transaction in which change agents participate at many levels.
One of those levels of change is in the political process. I have had several conversations with people in our community who have made a decision to not participate in the political process. Reasons include but are not limited to: a mistrust of the process, the executive has too much power, and the power of political leaders does not have legitimacy for Christians, because our allegiance belongs to Jesus. As a result people have gravitated to participating in social movements, loving the community, and creating a lifestyle void of “the system” involvement. Most of those reasons listed above have validity and most responses to those reasons are necessary for change, but we will never escape the system. Participation is not giving allegiance and until Jesus comes back to end this thing, he won’t be on the ballot, but there are differences and it does matter. The decisions leaders make actually effect us, especially people in poverty. We are a part of this social system, we benefit from it, we get run over by it, and have the opportunity to be significant to make an impact.
It is my contention that change happens by walking a thoughtful path of objecting to the system in order to give it a shock of dissent, while being in a position to work with the system to create the change we desire. Martin Luther King Jr. is a great example. He objected to the racist policies of Jim Crow and worked with president Johnson to get the voting rights act passed. We are a spiritual community committed to caring about the oppressed who are held back by an unjust system. Engaging that system in this dichotomous approach is the best means to manipulate the systemic power and political participation as an available voice for change. I hope that my thoughts will create some dialogue about what it means to be a Christian in this historical time period, when our country, this city, and our community face a lot of significant challenges.