When Clergy Rah-Rah Is Yadda Yadda Yadda

Should I sign the letter endorsing a local clergy committee’s (advocacy group) “…inviting business, labor, and political leaders to work together to make this vision [for janitors and all low-wage workers to receive a ‘living wage,’ have access to full health care benefits, and cease being intimidated (when these) workers want to join a union] of a reality for the workers in our city,” or take a pass? The document ensures those who will receive it the undersigned clergy are praying that economic inequality will be overcome and that the undersigned clergy will stand up for the rights of all low-wage workers.

Leaving aside the issue about whether or not it’s right and just for me to make a personal posture – no matter how ethically, morally, and theologically right I find it – public, as in including the name of the congregation I serve, I have some other concerns. Is it right for me to make such a statement, and involve the people I serve, without having meaningful dialogue with them about the consequences of the posture?

Here are a few of the questions that I need to discuss with those I serve by leading before I get out ahead of them: [I have no problem going there after the conversation, regardless of their responses. If we differ, in the end, I’d just make certain that the public part excluded them.]

• Are those who hold jobs with companies who employ directly, or lease space from landlords who subcontract with these low-wage workers, willing to advocate their employers pay increased occupancy costs to meet these additional labor costs?

• Are those who hold stock in the companies whose costs will increase willing to see the companies’ profits, and perhaps their own stock values / dividends, decline to meet these additional labor costs?

• Are church / denominational groups who rent these venues (thus “subcontracting” with these low-wage workers) willing to pay increased prices to hold events at these venues, to meet these additional labor costs?

Clergy who want to rah-rah must come completely clean with those whom we lead by serving, unless we simply want to increase the volume of our already yadda-yadda-yadda!

I’m completely grateful that well over 45 clergy, from across the theological / denominational spectrum, are concerned about more than the Big-Three, so-called values issues: pro-life (generally limited only to gestational time-frames); sanctity of marriage (generally limited only to requiring bride and groom represent opposing genders, despite the duration and frequency of the individual’s prior vow exchanges); and, ensuring that our children abstain from any genital activity prior to marriage. Still, no one has yet asked me to join a group of clergy advocating for:
• increased student achievement
• higher graduation rates
• more enrollments in college by students of color
• reduced hand-gun sales
• stricter usury laws aimed at rent-to-own proprietors of homes, appliances, entertainment equipment, furniture, and previously owned vehicles
• greater access to supermarkets, with fresh vegetables, in inner city neighborhoods
• more banks in the same locales
• scattered site, affordable housing
• etc.

All of us socially active clergy might benefit from a group meditation on the words of Toyohiko Kagawa, a Japanese layman who wrote:
I read
in a book
That a man called
Christ
Went about doing good.
It is very disconcerting to me
That I am so easily
Satisfied
With just
Going about.

No one, here, is advocating “ready, fire, aim.” Neither am I, as Luther advocated, unwilling to sin boldly.

What I don’t need is another tee-shirt that implies that both me, and my job-title, is: Noisy Gong / Clashing Cymbal. What the people I serve by leading don’t need is a pastor who speaks against “check-book” ministry, but engages in mere signatory advocacy!