What’s Hot? Politics!

By Steve Matthews, Senior Missional Consultant, FaithX

In July, our FaithX blogs will highlight current hot topics and discuss how our organization is adapting to support faith communities in navigating today’s challenges.

Let’s start with the one hot topic that we all love to discuss with our neighbors, friends and when we gather for family reunions – POLITICS!  Good times, right?  Here are a few lighthearted quotes… just to get the ball rolling:

  • “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” (Groucho Marx)
  • “A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.” (Winston Churchill)
  • “Politicians should list ‘Olympic gold in promise juggling’ in their resumes.” – (Unknown)

All kidding aside, we are in a pickle in the way we relate to one another on the political spectrum these days.  It is so easy to fall into the “us” and “them” way of looking at the world.  We forget – there is only “us.” It seems the differences are insurmountable sometimes and that conversations can quickly become toxic. Whether we are talking about taxes, the environment, immigrants, the poor, national security, foreign policy, or sexuality and gender, we can get from 0 to 60 at warp speed.

Add to this quagmire the reality that government is shrinking.  Whether you are talking about assistance for social programs or about reduced staffing for existing governmental agencies such as Education, the CDC, or Veteran’s Affairs, there will be cuts in funding.  How severely these cuts will impact our communities remains to be seen.

Regardless of how you feel about these changes, they remind us that we need each other to nurture and grow the vitality of our communities.  No matter what is happening on the governmental level, the call to Christians is still to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit the prisoner, and welcome the stranger (Matthew 25).  Author and scholar, Karen Armstrong, has done extensive research on the common threads of the world’s major religions, and the major practice all these religions have in common is compassion. We have work to do, and we need each other to do it now more than ever.

Based on her research and in collaboration with religious and world leaders, theologians, historians, and many others, Armstrong introduced the Charter for Compassion in 2009 as a means to invite us all into deeper practices to sustain and grow our relationships and our communities across the planet.  You can find the Charter here – perhaps it’s a good time to dust it off and read it again.

One of the final invitations in the charter invites us to “Commit to collaborating locally, nationally and globally so as to create a shared vision of a compassionate society, to working within our spheres of influence to build compassionate systems and cultures, and to openly sharing information and resources, so as to highlight best practices.”

FaithX does not have the solutions to these entrenched political differences, but we can help people come to know their communities better, and we can coach churches, non-profits and businesses into deeper conversations that build resilience, social capital, and increased capacity for interdependence.  Today, more than ever we need to be focused on working together to create the compassionate and thriving communities we all yearn for.  It is up to us!

For more information about our consulting services and/or our resources for data-based community discernment, contact us at info@faithX.net.