The Churches at the Crossroads
WALLIS, JIM
The Churches at the Crossroads The Gospel comes alive in new and unexpected ways BY JIM WALLIS On Pentecost, in May 1983, 3,000 clergy and lay leaders gathered in Washington, D.C., to protest...
...The new wave of activism in the churches provides a very different image of Christians from that presented to the public by big-time television preachers and their New Right allies...
...The last warning was the return to a more aggressive and violent foreign policy, especially toward Central America, raising the specter of U.S...
...We are beginning to discover what it means to wage peace with the discipline, sacrifice, and willingness to suffer with which people have traditionally waged war...
...Such a movement could prick the conscience of the nation and the world, change our way of thinking and living, and break our trust in nuclear weapons...
...Indeed, something is stirring in America's churches, in every region of the country and in every sector of the church's life...
...military intervention...
...We were dragged away by the police for praying for peace, in what was the largest mass arrest in Washington since the Vietnam war...
...On important dates of the church calendar, increasing numbers of Christians have become involved in prayer, worship, and civil disobedience at nuclear facilities around the country...
...For more than twenty years, the White Train has carried its deadly cargo in silence...
...Events in the years since that conversation have underscored the watchman's warning...
...Our biblical paradigm was Ezekiel 33, in which the watchman on the wall who saw the sword coming was to warn the people...
...They call for unrestrained economic growth in a world where resources are running out...
...The evangelical awakening in Nineteenth Century America also stirred the yearning for radical change...
...These places harbor a great evil, hidden in secrecy and darkness...
...His Administration's loose talk of fighting and "winning" nuclear wars rang alarm bells, and deep cuts in social programs signaled a dangerous shift in priorities...
...What began as a few lonely voices crying in the wilderness has become a strong and vocal movement in the life of the church...
...We turned the Rotunda into a sanctuary filled with Gospel songs and prayers, while—within earshot—Congress debated funding for the MX missile...
...Total disarmament may seem like a distant goal, but we should recall that the original abolitionists struggled against slavery for almost half a century, and were often considered absurdly idealistic...
...Begun in December 1983, the Witness for Peace is an experiment in nonviolent action in which Americans stand prayerfully with Nicaraguans on the front lines to block hostilities by the U.S.-backed contras...
...Nuclear weapons are an intolerable evil, and Christians everywhere are embracing the conviction that their faith requires an absolute refusal to cooperate with the nation's preparations for war...
...That night on the NBC Nightly News, Bob Abernathy reported in the lead story, "The protesters are Christians...
...To pray at such sites is to break the silence, making public what has been invisible and bringing evil into the light—the light of public scrutiny, the light of conscience, and the light of God...
...We have now moved through the period of the watchman's warning, past the time for consciousness raising...
...We also must go further in our work than traditional political organizing...
...The church could point the way with a disciplined and prayerful movement of nonviolent action...
...The Churches at the Crossroads The Gospel comes alive in new and unexpected ways BY JIM WALLIS On Pentecost, in May 1983, 3,000 clergy and lay leaders gathered in Washington, D.C., to protest the nuclear arms race...
...We are not just demanding the reduction of atomic weapons...
...Like slavery, the arms race is a spiritual issue...
...The new Christian peace movement is deeply ecumenical...
...The military buildup that began during the Carter years and accelerated with the onset of the Reagan Administration provided further warning...
...Call it renewal, revival, or conversion, the gospel is coming alive in new and unexpected ways...
...Catholics are working beside Mennonites, evangelicals with mainline Protestants...
...The new abolitionists may not have as many years to solve the nuclear crisis, but we must undertake the mission with the same long-term commitment...
...Today, we are building a movement of nonviolent direct action—a mass movement of public refusal, noncooperation, and civil disobedience...
...Building on last year's action at the U.S...
...They extol the virtue of wealth and power when most of the world is poor and powerless...
...The first public demonstrations against nuclear weapons had already begun—many undertaken by small Christian communities practicing nonviolent civil disobedience...
...But the train has been discovered, and a network of churches and local organizations has sprung up as a community of faith, joined together by the hope that comes from breaking the silence...
...Capitol, this year's Pentecost protesters will focus on the White Train, which transports nuclear warheads from the Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas, where they are assembled, to deployment points around the country...
...These evangelical nationalists exalt America at a time when we need to be humbled...
...We have seen a new generation of nuclear weapons—including the MX, cruise, and Pershing II missilesbrought on line for research, development, production, and deployment...
...As such, they have corrupted the original Gospel message and the radical impulses of Christian movements throughout history...
...Ronald Reagan himself—his personality, ideology, anti-Soviet rhetoric, and aggressive military posture—further startled the American people...
...Christians are remembering that the Gospel is to be good news to the poor and that the children of God are to live in the world as peacemakers...
...convinced [that] legal protests against the arms race are no longer enough, that there must also be nonviolent civil disobedience like that of the civil rights movement twenty years ago, and that the church should lead it...
...While confronting the war machine at home, Christians are traveling to Nicaragua to engage in the grass-roots, church-based Witness for Peace...
...For them, slavery was an evil so great that it challenged the very integrity of their faith, and they became abolitionists...
...I remember a conversation with friends almost a decade ago...
...To date, more than 300 have gone to Nicaragua to participate...
...Charles Finney shook the nation with his preaching against slavery, greed, and unrighteousness...
...One by one, Protestant denominations, religious orders, and Catholic bishops raised their voices in opposition to nuclear weapons and increasing U.S...
...In the Eighteenth Century, the Wesleyan revival brought the power of the Gospel to an English society riddled with spiritual corruption, religious apathy, and social injustice...
...we are calling for their elimination...
...Never have leadership and vision been more desperately needed from the churches...
...Strengthened with song, prayer, and scriptural exhortation, 242 of us entered the U.S...
...Our task requires a deeper level of sacrifice, a powerful movement of conscience and direct action spurred by the vision and resources of faith...
...Their actions have forced the Government to shift the cargo's routes—and to consider making it a felony, punishable by up to twenty years in prison and a $100,000 fine, to track the White Train...
...Together, these events sparked the church's conscience...
...In the 1840s and 1850s, many Christians came to understand slavery as immoral...
...Jim Wallis is the Editor of Sojourner's magazine...
...We wondered then whether the threat of nuclear war might galvanize the churches to new activism...
...The movement hastened the end of the slave trade and bettered the lives of industrial workers, women, and children...
...As the crisis we face becomes ever more clear, so do biblical passages about the oppression of the poor, the arrogance of power, and the idolatry of military might...
...They fan the national frenzy of fear and hostility by calling for more military spending when we are already on the brink of destruction...
...We are the new abolitionists...
...At the heart of this awakening is the joining of faith and history...
...From widely divergent traditions and denominations, the Christian community is uniting to address the urgent matter of peace...
...The struggle to abolish nuclear weapons must be rooted in spiritual commitment...
...A decade ago, a few of us felt that it would be a divine irony if an evil as great as the prospect of nuclear war became an occasion for the renewal of the church...
...Capitol to make a witness for peace...
...militarism, and in support of the nation's poor...
...The government's nuclear strategy shifted from deterrence to counterforce and first strike, culminating in Jimmy Carter's Presidential Directive 59, which publicly articulated the new policy...
...But because there was little awareness at that time of the atomic threat, these protests seemed strange and extreme...
Vol. 48 • July 1984 • No. 7
