I MAKE MY STAND: A PERSONAL MANIFESTO AND CALL TO ACTION - Introduction

Over the next couple weeks, I will publish a series of blog posts on this theme:  "I Make My Stand."  This first post provides some personal background and explains what I intend to do in this series.  If you are reading this post, I hope that you will feel invited to read the series and that you will find in these reflections inspiration for articulating and acting on your own "stand" in helping create a better world.

Events brought me to a dramatic turn in my life direction in 1980.  For several years prior, my search for an authentic Christian faith had led me to the Reformed Church in America, a conservative but historic and mainline denomination.  The short-sightedness of my fundamentalist upbringing gave way as I discovered and reveled in being part of a faith community that traced its ethnic heritage and theological roots back almost five centuries and connected fearlessly to the rich, 2000-year trajectory of the Christian church. For the first time in my life I was also interacting with a group of folks who were not shackled by a narrow and strict fundamentalist vision.

A “shaking of the foundations” took place in my experience of what it meant to be a Christian as I began to grasp that grace (in contrast to the “cheap grace” I had learned growing up) is all about unconditional love.  I was also coming to understand that the Biblical story points us to a God who is concerned not only with personal salvation, but perhaps more importantly with community, and that God expresses a particular allegiance to those on the margins of society.  This God makes a stand on the side of the Hebrew slaves over against the despotic economy of the Egyptian Pharaohs.  The Jewish prophets give voice to this God's deep commitment to justice for the poor and oppressed (e.g. Amos 5:24).  And in the Christian scriptures, Jesus makes his first appearance on the public stage declaring that his mission is to bring “glad tidings to the poor, liberty to the captives, sight for the blind, and freedom for the oppressed” (Luke 4: 16-21).

It was in this context of personal growth and change that I would hear the words of then candidate for President, Ronald Reagan.  And the more I heard him speak - of cutting programs for the poor, shifting the tax burden from the wealthy and corporations to the backs of the average citizen, rolling back the Voting Rights Act, and on and on – the greater the dissonance that grew between his proposed platform and the new-found values shaping my own sense of life and purpose.  It was during this time that I came to the decision that I could no longer stand by as part of the “silent majority,” but that I had to make a stand and let my voice be heard.

Fast forward to the present moment in time – 2017 and the present administration of #45 here in the United States.  Although the dissonance has sounded and I have responded in varying degrees over the last 30+ years, the dissonance has now reached a pitch of earth-shattering (in some respects, literally) proportions.  In her most recent book, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, activist and author of The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein, summarizes well in my view the situation we currently face.  She writes:

           

                        “The main pillars of Trump's political and economic project are: the

                        deconstruction of the regulatory state; a full-bore attack on the welfare

                        state and social services (rationalized in part through bellicose racial

                        fear-mongering and attacks on women for exercising their rights); the

                        unleashing of a domestic fossil fuel frenzy (which requires the sweeping

                        aside of climate science and the gagging of large parts of the government

                        bureaucracy); and a civilizational war against immigrants and radical

                        Islamic terrorism (with ever-expanding domestic and foreign theaters).”

As I listen to the news (and the bizarre tweets emanating almost daily from somewhere in the White House) I am struck by the fact that my values and vision for my country and for our world stand in diametric opposition to every piece of this administration's project.   Even though the U.S. president may be one of the most vulgar, in-your-face and - because of the power he wields -  most dangerous examples of the problem, I do not think that the problem is him.  Rather he is simply one of the most grotesque but one of a growing number of manifestations of a global system that favors corporations and the wealthiest at the expense of the average citizen, other life forms, and the health and very existence of life on our planet Earth.  And so, I am compelled to MAKE MY STAND -  to say that I DISAGREE, that I RESIST this project.  In these next blog posts, I seek to give voice to a radically different vision for my country and our world.  And I commit to put my hand to the plow, my foot to the road, and my shoulder to the wheel, working and fighting to make this vision a reality.