Agitation

I love organizing and I love this organization.

Today, I went to a World View training hosted by Take Action, a political organizing group. I enjoyed the company of two co-workers, both "Apprentice" organizers here on volunteer programs.

The organizing did exactly what all organizing should do, at some point: it made me want to change things.

At one point, we were discussing the "staging" of the political scene. Progressive center-stage, supporting players, conservative center-stage, supporting players. And I got so angry and so frustrated, because we started to talk about the Religious Right. (In this entry, I'll focus on the Christians.)

The other day, I was interviewed about Catholic Social Teaching for a Catholic radio station. (I'll post the link here once the program airs and is archived, although that probably won't be until October.) The woman interviewing me asked how my faith informs my work. What I wanted to say was, "How could it not?"

Instead, I said something along the lines of (although probably much less articulately), "Jesus was a radical. When I think about my faith, I think about caring for the lowly. I think about working with the poor. I can't think about my faith separate from the Beatitudes."

And that's what I was thinking about today - what made me so angry. If you say that you're living out your faith in your life, how can you ignore Jesus' main message: love your neighbor?

Of course I want morality in politics. Of course I want the government's actions to align with my religion. But what I see as most important about my religion is access to a fair economy, a world where you get adequate compensation for working, where a human is a human regardless of their legal status, and if you're sick you can see a doctor without fear. A country where standing up to your boss doesn't mean you'll get sent back to political instability, where you are allowed to send money back home to your family, where you can put food on the table and watch your children grow up without worrying whether or not they'll have a home to come back to.

How about these things for a moral agenda? How about focusing on building a democratic system where citizens have a say? Where we care for one another and work towards changing our world so that all of us can lead a full, healthy life in which we spend time with our loving families and communities?

How about that?