I Hear The Stones Crying Out!

“So long as religion is quiet about society it upholds whatever is the prevailing status quo in society,” so wrote William Stringfellow in 1965. By contrast, the Christian faith is engaged in permanent radical protest of the status quo.  An authentic Christian faith is always dissatisfied with the existing state of affairs.  It does not matter who sits in the Oval Office, or what party dominates the Senate or the House.  The existing order, whatever it is, is never good enough.

I have lived through fourteen US Presidents: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (I don’t really remember FDR), Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.  Each of these “men” were fragile and wounded human beings, like all the rest of us.  

Let me digress for a moment.  The very fact that these Presidents have all been MEN is a call for radical protest by a biblical people.  Why not a WOMAN?  “There is no such thing as Jew and Greek, slave and freeman, male and female; for you are all one person in Jesus Christ” (Gal. 3:28).  An authentic Christian faith must protest the present male-dominated political realm.  Religion may be quiet about the matter, may in fact even resist it, upholding the prevailing status quo, but the Christian faith cannot be satisfied with what is and must attempt to “overthrow the existing order,” even though at times it may appear to be utterly futile.

Now, back to those US Presidents (all men).  Some were worse than others and some were better than others—but they were all human beings.  They were given enormous power to make a difference and each claimed they could and they would.  Some did and some didn’t, and some did what they could and some didn’t even try.  All faced opposition—all had supporters—and all (including the opposition and the supporters) were caught up in the principalities and the powers of this world.  

Our present situation is not unlike all previous ones.  We have a fragile, wounded human being as President (just like the rest of us) and we have given him enormous power, just as that same power was given to those  who came  before him.  When that power is abused (as in the case of Richard Nixon, and probably by most of the others, too) Christians must resist and mount a radical protest. The Senate and the House of the People, like religion itself,  is quiet now and thus upholds “whatever is the prevailing status quo,” but those who claim the Christian faith must not be silent, for even now the very stones upon which the foundation of America has been built are crying out.