Nor does it mean using scriptural language as an illegitimate shortcut to conclusions, thereby avoiding ethical deliberation. What is so heart-breaking is that, in a world of pain crying out for change, so many American churches today are basically down to management and therapy.Ī politically engaged spirituality does not call for theological sledgehammers bludgeoning people into rigid orthodoxy. The Christian church doesn’t have a social ethic as much as it is a social ethic, called to respond to biblical mandates like truth-telling, confronting injustice and pursuing peace. I believe Christianity is a worldview that undergirds all progressive thought and action. Urgently needed for our time is a politically engaged spirituality. In many faiths some are very profound while others, particularly these days, appear to be a mile wide and one inch deep. Therefore, the most urgent religious question is not ‘What must I do to be saved?” but rather “What must we all do to save God’s imperiled planet?” We seem more intent on fighting God’s will than doing God’s will. The “blood-dimmed tide” loosed in the last century claimed more lives than all wars in all previous centuries, and the present century is filled with violence and cruelty.

I feel the same way about religious faith it should want to change the world.

Arthur Miller, of blessed memory, once wrote “I could not imagine a theater worth my time that did not want to change the world.”

To walk the night william sloane