More thoughts on occupy wall street...

Earlier today a post came across Facebook that I found interesting.  It's called, "10 Things Christians Should Know and Do About Occupy Wall Street" by Roger Wolsey.  (Check it out @ http://www.patheos.com/community/mainlineportal/2011/10/14/10-things-christians-should-know-do-about-the-“occupy”-protests/) 

One point was particularly insightful...

Critique (the Occupy on Wall Street) Movement...
Here’s an example. I get it. Corporate greed needs to be challenged and corporations need to be taxed and regulated. The gap between the haves and the have-nots in the U.S. needs to be reduced. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy need to be repealed. Student loans need to be forgiven. Banks that were bailed out by the taxpayers shouldn’t keep on screwing their customers over. And the USSC ruling that decreed that corporations are persons and can thus buy off our politicians and get them to do their bidding needs to be rescinded.

I agree with all of those aims of the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters. But even if all of those sensible demands somehow come to pass (including the many other ones that I didn’t mention), in the big picture it may not be all that meaningful. Much ado about nothing.

You see, if all of those reforms were to happen, it would effectively put things back to the way things were 15-20 years ago. Though it would mean resuming our upwardly mobile middle class and reducing the gap between the wealthy and the poor, it would simply allow us to blindly press on with pursuing “the American Dream” where each generation does better than the one before it. And it would allow us to obliviously maintain the unjust global status quo where 5% of the world’s population (the U.S.) consumes nearly 1/3 of the world’s natural resources and disproportionally spews out more trash and pollution than the other nations do.

It would mean returning to a situation where the U.S. gives only a paltry 1/10^th of 1% of our GDP to humanitarian aid to other countries. We could cut hunger in Africa in half in 15 years if we were to tax every American 1 penny per day. But we don’t and apparently aren’t about to. No one is protesting or occupying on behalf of the many millions of people in the world who are actually being screwed over the most. To the extent that the Occupy movement is nationalist, myopic, and insular, it’s merely rearranging the deck chairs on an economically segregated and unsustainable Titanic!

There's something happening here - but what it is ain't exactly clear.  It seems to me that more than at any other time since the 60s, Americans are beginning to realize that not only is our current culture bankrupt, but that the values that have sustained it are wounded, too.  A deep sense of betrayal - and hope - are bubbling up from below that offers challenges the culture of greed that has become the land of the brave and home of the free.  But the Occupy Wall Street critique is incomplete -  it needs depth and gravitas - something that those in the progressive and creative Christian realm might offer so that we seize the moment.

In the GDR before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, progressive people of faith kept in deep communication with their counterparts throughout the world - offering critique and support to their secular friends within Germany.  And when the time was ripe, a nonviolent and rich movement for social change exploded throughout the Eastern Block.  What looked spontaneous, however, had been nurtured by Christian people of faith for decades.  Same, too, when Rosa Parks decided that her feet hurt too much to move to the back of the bus. Progressive people of faith had been praying, planning and organizing to move into action.

I look forward to being in dialogue and solidarity with the creative and brave young people who kicked Occupy Wall Street into action.  Dr. King put it best:  When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.

It seems to me there is a clear place for progressive people of faith who sense they can es and advisers to this young movement.  Just like Oui3 took the old Buffalo Springfield song and made it new, so too this moment for the church?