Lift Up Your Voice Like Trumpet

"Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet!"

- Isaiah 58:1

I remember when I was in college as an undergrad at Bucknell University, my response to learning about mass, systemic injustice and oppression was revulsion. I had grown up believing that the United States is a nation founded and maintained by Christian values. Then I learned about so many programs that continue to oppress ethnic and religious minorities, women, and poor folks who were an awful lot like my neighbors in central Pennsylvania.

So I tried to remove myself from the system, and I called myself a Christian anarchist. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I still admire intentional communities that practice radically counter-cultural lifestyles.

However, I soon also learned how transforming bad policies, especially government policies, can have an enormous, positive impact on people. For example, imagine how the country would benefit if all immigrants could confidently join our political systems without fear of detention and deportation. Friends, that’s a beautiful vision.

The hard part is how we get there. Over the past 30 years, across the nation it has become unpopular to stand on our Christian, and yes, our Methodist values to advocate justice for the oppressed. I was a product of that movement, but now I stand firm on Christian scripture, church tradition, human reason, and my personal experiences to confidently advocate for justice.

US-2 peer Marjorie Hurder and I in front of
the Supreme Court during the Ecumenical
Advocacy Days.

I attended the Ecumenical Advocacy Days in Washington, D.C. as a United Methodist young adult missionary and future seminarian. We were unafraid in speaking the name of Jesus in the same breath as “health care” and “budget.” We were unafraid in praying for our elected and appointed government leaders.

And we were unafraid to talk about our faith in Jesus Christ even in the offices of our elected leaders. I shared my personal story of how my neighbors on the South Side of Chicago joined with a campaign to shut down one of the dirtiest coal-fired power plants in the United States. I shared how my sisters and brother in my local parish could not stand to sacrifice our neighbors’ health to the god Mammon, which in the United States is denoted with a dollar sign. I shared how we won that fight—that power plant will stop polluting the South Side by the end of 2012.

Sisters and brothers, God gives us a voice to sing praises for God has done, is doing, and will do. But God also gives us a voice to speak up when others are silenced. This is what advocacy is. We use our voices in worship services, bible study, and in one-on-relationships with one another.

We also use our voices in public. I think it’s so appropriate that the Ecumenical Advocacy Days came one week before Palm Sunday, when we celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry in Jerusalem. Jesus was making a Daily Show-style mockery of the political system of the day, and a lot people tuned in. When the powerful people from Capitol Hill demanded that his followers stop shouting and show some respect, Jesus answered, “If these keep silent, the stones will cry out” (Luke 19:40).

Sisters and brothers, why should we let the stones have all the fun?

Fer da neighborhood: why I'm staying in Chicago for seminary

"It's not what you're doing, and it's not how you're doing it. It's that you're doing it to us."
- retired cop in Bridgeport, Chicago


"Would you like to hear the good news or the better news first?", asked Howard, the admissions officer. I like it when people begin a conversation like that.

I had that conversation three weeks ago when I found out that not only was I accepted to Chicago Theological Seminary, but they were also offering me a merit scholarship of 80% of tuition. CTS was my top choice seminary. Case closed.

View of downtown Chicago skyline from U.S. Cellular Field

But maybe that begs the question, "why Chicago Theological Seminary?" CTS has a great reputation in Chicago for academic rigor and social involvement, but it's not one of the dozen or so United Methodist-affiliated seminaries that the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry (GBHEM) pushes so hard. And I had heard from several people that it was unlikely that CTS would be able to offer a very good financial aid package. I even have to admit that prior to November of last year, CTS wasn't even in the top 5 of my seminary choices. So really...why Chicago Theological Seminary?

Confession--it has less to do with CTS and more to do with my adopted home neighborhood. The only way to stay in Bridgeport was to go to CTS.

Bridgeport is located about four miles southwest of Chicago's downtown, the Loop, and about two miles west of the lakefront. The Chicago River/canal makes the northern border of the neighborhood, separating it from the predominately Mexican neighborhood of Pilsen. It has working class roots with a mix of Irish, Italians, Lithuanians, Polish, and Germans making up the white population in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Irish were there first, building the canal for 10 cents a day--and whiskey. The Germans came in as bricklayers who built the Lutheran church that I attend now. On certain days I can smell the wafting fumes of a meatpacking plant, somehow leftover from the now razed Union Stockyards that were just south of Bridgeport.

It has a reputation for being one of the most racist neighborhoods in Chicago, which in its own right is one of the most racially segregated cities in the United States. I've heard stories about how Chicago police would pick up some unfortunate African American for some minor infraction or other, but instead of booking him, they would just drop him off by one of the Irish bars. Back in the 1990's an African-American man was beaten to death by a group of Catholic schoolboys in Bridgeport.

It's also home to the quintessential Chicago political machine. Bridgeport has produced mayors that have ruled the Windy City for a combined 68 years since 1933. The Mayors Daley (Richard J. and Richard M.) were mayor for 21 and 22 years respectively. Whereas most ward offices occupy a small storefront, the 11th Ward of Bridgeport has its own 2-story building on corner of 37th and Halsted.

21st century Bridgeport is a little different than the one Mike Royko described in his columns, however. Whites make up less than half of the population, while Chinese from Chinatown and Latinos from Pilsen and Little Village move into the houses that the whites abandoned. All but one of Daleys--a Cook County Democratic committeeman, of course--has left, and now more chic restaurants, bars, and art galleries open every day. It's one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the city.

I landed in Bridgeport by accident back in late summer of 2010. Two North Side co-ops had rejected me with less than a month before my cross-country move from central Pennsylvania. Luckily, the office manager of my organization, Interfaith Worker Justice, found a Lutheran church that rents rooms in an apartment and the old parsonage. I didn't expect to stay there, but something happened. I fell in love with the community.

It really happened while I was organizing to shut down the nearby coal-fired power plant. As I had conversations with folks in the neighborhood, I saw that Bridgeport was really a lot like the small town I had grown up in back in Pennsylvania--just on the South Side of Chicago. However, it's a changing neighborhood, and judging by the TIF districts, it's going to change faster soon.

Bridgeport is a place that I can call home as I deconstruct, reconstruct, and synthesize my theology at seminary. There's no bubble to hide in, and I love that. I can apply the principles of liberation and incarnation as I do community organizing with Bridgeport Alliance, my neighbors' answer to the largely ineffective 11th Ward machinery. I have no choice but to look at my neighbors in the eyes, because they won't accept anything else.

2011 Oktoberfest worship service at First Trinity Luthehan Church

I recently had a great one-on-one conversation with a retired cop who is very active in First Trinity Lutheran Church. He gave me great insight into the cultural and political underpinnings of the neighborhood. A week later he mentioned to me that a "great philosopher" had once told him something that had a great impact on him: "It's not what you do, and it's not how you're doing it. It's that you're doing it to us." After a long pause he muttered, "whatever the hell that means."

But that just the thing. Theology, politics, and other contact sports happen in places like Bridgeport a lot more often than in the laboratory of the academy. Bridgeport folks can be some of the most forgiving and gracious folks you could ever want to meet, but they are who they are. If they don't like you...well, you won't stick around long in that case.

What better place to prepare me for the itinerant nature of Methodist parish ministry?

Running to win: victory in the clean power campaign

Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it.

-          1 Corinthians 9:24

I love long-distance running. Ever since I started doing cross country during my junior year of high school in the mountains of central Pennsylvania, running has been one of the ways that I reconnect with the earth and my body. However, I occasionally run competitively as well, and that’s a different kind of running. I watch my pace more, put my head down as I ascend hills, and always save just a bit of extra energy for the “kick” in the last 400 meters.

I often compare long-distance running to organizing for social change. They’re both endurance sports, so don’t get involved unless you’re willing to commit a substantial amount of personal time, emotional energy, and physical activity to the point of exhaustion. Once you’ve gone on for a while, the fastest way home is just keep running. Victories usually come in the form of personal records, not headline-making races.

However, I recently saw a huge victory that made headlines in all the news outlets in Chicago. The Chicago Clean Power Coalition has been working to shut down or clean up Crawford and Fisk coal-fired power plants for 10 years. The group includes the environmental groups, student organizations, labor unions, and community based organizations. Bridgeport Alliance, the neighborhood group that my neighbors and I started with the help of the South Side network SOUL, officially joined the coalition as soon as we settled on a name last December.

I learned about Fisk power plant last July when a couple of Sierra Club organizers came to my near South Side church.  I learned about how Fisk and Crawford put deadly levels of particulate matter into the one of the most densely populated areas in the country—and Fisk was only about a mile away from my doorstep. I checked out the peer-reviewed articles from Harvard, and, having been sufficiently convinced of its evil, I started gathering petitions and going to actions.

Bridgeport organizing really kicked into gear when a Green Corps organizer was assigned to the neighborhood. Soon we had a visible base out in the streets, bars, and coffee shops and we were collecting signatures and photo-petitions challenging Chicago and corporate leaders to put people over their profits. Clean power came to mean more than only green energy but also a more transparent, inclusive decision-making process. Through these efforts, Bridgeport Alliance was born and was turning dozens of people to events.

It was an incredibly exciting autumn for me. Soon it became clear that we were part of marathon relay team, and we were running the last leg of the race. Today the Chicago Sun-Times broke the story about how Mayor Emmanuel and Midwest Generation had reached an agreement to shut down Fisk by December 31^st of this year. Victory.

Of course, like long-distance running, after a victory, we can’t simply stop. That invites cramps, so runners need to run a cool-down. And then we still have miles to run to stay on track for our training regimen.  Too often our elected officials claim victory prematurely, and their constituents settle back only see the problem continue. Many community organizations accepted donations from Midwest Generation essentially as hush money, but that funding will disappear without a good community benefits agreement. And of course we still have hundreds of acres of contaminated industrial property in our backyard.

Though we still have a lot of work to do, a victory gives me some time to reflect on the race. The campaign has had a profound effect on me. Because of the neighborhood outreach we did, I fell in love with Bridgeport and committed to living there for another three years as I study theology at Chicago Theological Seminary. This victory wets my appetite to continue organizing my neighbors so that we can keep our unresponsive local government accountable.

I’ll be thinking about these things when I run the Shamrock Shuffle on March 25. I’ll be running for a prize.

On power and repentance: community organizing during Lent

“Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing”

-          Joel 2:12-13

“We want to see our values in the world today. And how do we do that?” asked the trainer.

“By building power!” we responded.

“And what is power?” asked the trainer.

“The ability to act!” we responded.

“And what are the two sources of power?”

“Organized people and organized money!”

“How do we organize people?”

“Through their self-interest!”

This was an exchange that I participated in several times throughout last week at Cedar Lake, Indiana. It was probably the most intense training I’d ever done, a sort of community organizing boot camp. We came from all over the upper Midwest, and while we worked on a variety of campaigns—shutting down dirty coal power plants, fighting foreclosure of homes, divestment from the big banks—we did share a common goal that week.

We wanted to learn to build power.

The ironic part is that as I do my one-on-one meetings to identify my neighbors’ self-interest (more on that methodology here), I have ashes on my forehead. While I cut issues and do power-analyses, I contemplate my own mortality. As I plan effective meetings with my partners in the newly formed Bridgeport Alliance, I practice self-denial and penitence.

Like the season of advent, Lent is a Christian liturgical season of preparation, fasting, and penitence. It seems like an unlikely counterpoint to the community organizing that my neighbors and I are currently doing on the near South Side of Chicago. Often in organizing we tap into our anger about how the world around us is so different than the one we want desperately to see, but Lent is about seeking humility as we approach the immanent suffering of the cross of Christ.

However, Lent is also a season of repentance, or better said, metanoia, the Greek term that appears in the New Testament and for which English has no perfect, exact translation. I’ve heard that the concept goes beyond the guilt and self-correction that often goes along with repentance. Metanoia is more like a reorientation of one’s heart and mind, but it also requires action. It requires the changing of old habits so that we can begin the long sanctification process which, at least as far as I can tell, has no end.

If we look at Lent as a season of metanoia and sanctification, then really organizing for power in my South Side neighborhood is an appropriate response to the imposition of ashes. Towards what end are my neighbors and I oriented? Is this same end that the residents of the metaphorical Clout Street?

Methodists’ ancestor is faith, John Wesley, stressed how while Christians must be disciplined in our quest for personal holiness, we must also always be just as disciplined in our quest for social holiness.

I learned some things about that discipline at that powerful training in Indiana last week. After all, if I will return to the dust anyway, what will I lose by running the race to win the prize (1 Cor. 9:24)?

On the contrary, we have a pretty good shot at winning.

Crossroads of America: faith, labor, and "right-to-work" in Indiana

Most of the folks that I worked with in Indianapolis went through the day at an absolutely break-neck pace, but that was inside the political vortex that had engulfed the Indiana statehouse for nearly a year. Outside the vortex, I found a different pace and different perspective that perhaps was best encapsulated by a two-minute conversation with a custodian.

When my coworker and I explained our role in organizing faith-based opposition to Indiana’s “right-to-work” bill, the custodian grinned at us and said, “You know, right-to-work sounds really good, but if the politicians want it so badly, it can’t be that good.”

After several weeks of speaking with clergy, labor officials, juridical leaders, and lay members, no quote better voices the popular ambivalence to the so-called “right-to-work” law that the Indiana General Assembly recently passed.

To give just a bit of background, “right-to-work” refers to a kind of state law that bars labor unions from including provisions in their collective bargaining agreements that require their members to pay dues. It originates from section 14b of the Taft-Hartley Act, a union-reform bill which was passed in 1947 (and needed Congress to override President Truman’s veto). Since then, 22 states have enacted such laws, most of them in the virulently anti-union South. Indiana is the first state in more than 10 years to pass a right-to-work law, and it is the first Midwestern Rust Belt state to do so.

I think we can confidently say that America is at a crossroads in Indiana, just like the state motto proclaims.

I came to Indiana to help engage faith communities in the opposition effort against “right-to-work”. It can be a hard issue to explain quickly, and given the crisis-level activity in the legislature, including a 5-week walk-out by Democratic representatives in 2011, faith leaders often regard the right-to-work issue as “too partisan” to bring up in their community. The interesting part is that when I talked with “just-folks” Hoosiers, they were always very interested in the subject, even if they disagreed with my politics. However, in our sound-bite news cycle, people couldn’t find a place to talk about right-to-work without shouts or threats from either side.

For this reason, the local interfaith coalition set up several public forums where folks could learn about the right-to-work issue. We always made sure to invite representatives from both sides to participate. I, for one, am confident that in an open, honest debate people will realize how harmful and, as one South Side Indy resident put it, anti-social right-to-work is.

One of the best faith-based analogies goes like this: One day after a worship service, a man greets the pastor and tells her how much he likes the church—the worship service, scripture study, fellowship times, outreach—all of it. In fact, he likes it so much that he wants to be a deacon of the church. The pastor says, “Well, that sounds like a great idea. Let’s sit down later and see how we can make that happen.” But the man interrupts her. “Just one more thing that I think you should know, reverend. I don’t feel that members of church need to tithe, so don’t expect me to give any money.”

It’s an imperfect analogy because faith communities and labor unions obviously operate differently, but it shows the basic conflict that the right-to-work laws introduce. Right-to-work justifies the concept of a free lunch. Labor unions spend a great deal of money in organizing workers and in collective bargaining, money that comes from members’ dues. According to federal law, labor unions still must represent members even if they do not pay dues, and that slowly but surely eats away at the effectiveness of the union.

Proponents claim that right-to-work frees workers from having to financially support a union that they don’t politically support, which is superficially true. Then again, going back to the “tithing-optional” analogy, that is also like refusing to financially support their faith community for that same reason. It’s all well and good—until the building’s roof caves in.

We live in a cynical time, and unions and faith communities alike are suffering materially from that cynicism. The caretaker for one of the venues where we held a public forum was seriously afraid that the participants would “tear the place up” because there were union activists in the audience. In the public forums we held, more than once I heard someone snarkily quip about Jimmy Hoffa’s body.

The folks I worked with in Indianapolis were not all like the former Teamster president. In fact, they were very much like the church folks I worked with—honest, hard-working, compassionate, concerned for the future. Inside and outside the vortex of activity that is the Indiana statehouse, that concern for the future resonates in a most non-partisan way.

Faith communities responded almost always in positive ways when I asked them to act in opposition to the right-to-work bill. People of faith, while not always having a deep understanding of labor law, have an intimate understanding of mutual care, what Christian traditions term loving your neighbor as yourself, and of unity through faith. Right-to-work effectively drives a wedge between workers, weakening all of them. When people of faith understand that, they respond as their faith compels them—to action.

I remember a man at one of the public forums we held—the same guy who was afraid that the union folks would “tear the place up”. When my colleagues and I went to leave for the night, Thomas held us up, sharing with us how his view of unions and the right-to-work bill had changed. He linked his new understanding  to his own testimony as a Christian and to his conviction that God empowers the weak to do awesome things.

Amen, brother Thomas. Nobody inside the Indiana political vortex could say it better.

Red Poppy Fields: Dave's Story

Since I moved to Chicago in fall of 2010 to serve as a US-2 missionary of the United Methodist Church and then started this blog, a few folks have asked me why I named it "Red Poppy Fields". A few people have also noticed that I wear a red fabric flower--a red poppy--sewn to the collar of my jacket. This post should answer those questions.


I remember the day pretty well. My then girlfriend and I had traveled down to Maryland to do Christmas with her extended family. We were hanging out in the living room in the far wing of the rather rambling house when I got a call from my buddy Rich from home. He asked if I had heard the news. I told him that I hadn't. Rich told me that he had heard that Dave Dietrich had been killed in Iraq. I stood up from the couch, now pacing the room like I do when I get anxious, and said that I hoped that it was some sort of sick joke from a spiteful girlfriend.

I don't recall anything else about that visit to Maryland. It was Dec. 29, 2006.

It wasn't a sick joke. Dave had been killed, and the shock started permeating the small, central Pennsylvanian communities where he had grown up before joining the Army. Dave had had a rough childhood, but due to his loyalty and hard work, he had managed to graduate high school, albeit a few years later than others his age, and get into the military. I knew him best from Boy Scouts, where Dave found a second family to more or less replace his perpetually in-abstentia family. I knew that he could be little mentally slow and quick to anger, but he was as strong as an ox and rarely shirked his work. He also work on stage crew for plays and musicals at the high school and was on the football team. We were proud that Dave had gotten into the military.

The military is pretty popular in the hills where I grew up, and Dave was far from the only friend who went into the armed forces. Before I recognized my call to ministry, I had flirted with military service, too. After we got news of his death, rumors started floating around that he was up for an award for bravery. However, I started noticing things that began to sour my perspective on what had happened. At a candlelight vigil to remember Dave, his father appeared, something he hadn't done in many years, even when his son was living out of a Ford Bronco. At the memorial service in Mechanicsburg, the military chaplain told a long story about how Dave had unexpectedly accepted Jesus into his heart only weeks before he was killed. It was one of the first times that I had gotten such a wretched feeling that I was being lied to.

A year and a half later the national magazine Newsweek did a long article titled "He Should Never Should Have Gone to Iraq", which recounted Dave's story in the military. It talked about how Dave had failed the military entrance exam once, and the military couldn't explain why they had let Dave in after the second time. Dave struggled mightily in basic training, and he had been killed in his first patrol away from the base in Baghdad. The quote that titled the article came from the Army recruiter who had guided Dave through the paper work of enlistment.

I only read that article during this last autumn.

In the years after Dave's death, I had changed quite a bit. After a three-year relationship, I broke up with the girlfriend in whose family's home I first received the news. I started studying the causes of poverty and oppression, sometimes by accident, other times knowing what I was doing. I became a pacifist and started describing myself as a Christian anarchist of the Dorothy Day school. And Dave's story grew more and more important to me.

I had kept the red fabric poppy that the American Legion Auxiliary had given me outside of the funeral home where Dave's memorial service was held. A few years later the flower was held to the stem by only some putty. On the evening before I left Bucknell University for winter break in 2009, I had some sort of radical, idealist discussion with my roommate, and coincidentally I found the red poppy again. I took the flower off the  stem, threw the bent stem away, and then sewed the flower to the collar of my Carhartt jacket. I vowed that any time when someone asked me about the red flower on my collar, I would answer  that "it helps to remind me of the true costs of war".

Today I usually just say that the flower came from the memorial service of a buddy who was killed in Iraq. Few statements take the wind out of a conversation like that one.

I am sure that Dave would disagree with my stance on the military. I can't even pretend that he would agree with me. Just like so many hard-working folks in the lower echelons of contemporary American society, whether in Perry County, Pennsylvania or South Side Chicago, Dave believed in the conservative narrative of America. If we just work hard enough, then the goodness of America will naturally come out and freedom will reign. Neither would Marysville, Dave's hometown, agree with me. Dave is a martyr there, honored with a memorial path around the town park and with a patch of state road that leads west from the town.

I think Jean Paul Sartre said it very clearly when he said "when the rich wage war it's the poor who die". This basic sentiment--that the rich and the powerful exploit the poor for their own purposes--is what inspired the protesters around the world in the last year. It's what inspired me to sew a red poppy to my collar.

So I work in the Red Poppy Fields
made of red fabric flowers
torn fathers' flags
worn women's washrags
Plough, sow, harvest
In silos' shadows
Through markets' smoke
Over churches' altars
We all work in the Red Poppy Fields

On Incarnation and Social Change

"Thus it is rightly and truly said: God is born, was nursed or suckled, lay in the crib, felt cold, walked, stood, fell, wandered, ate, drank, suffered, died, etc." 

- Martin Luther, Tischreden, VI:68, 18-40)

It is very nearly Christmas, a holiday that is quite dear to me. Not only is it a time that brings back warm memories of childhood traditions with my family in the hills of Pennsylvania, but Christmas is also a time in which I reflect on the incredible, even ineffable, nature of God's incarnation as Jesus Christ.

Which makes me think about organizing for social change. Doesn't it do the same for you?

I recently had a conversation with a friend who is an organizer at a workers' center, and after a while the subject of the Communist Party USA and the Industrial Workers of the World came up. I don't remember exactly how this subject came, but such topics are not unusual in my conversations. We both agreed that in general that we supported similar stances as the radical organizations do, but they are not viable vehicles for social change any more. Specifically talking about the IWW, or better known as the Wobblies, my friend sighed and said that the focus on the general strike as an all-encompassing strategy to bring the capitalist class to its knees just doesn't organize workers. Workers will only strike as a last resort because working is what puts food on the table, not striking.

It's a basic failure to identify with their sisters and brothers, which brings me back to the concept of incarnation.

One of the reasons that people are so moved by the gospel of Jesus Christ is that he was so human. He got angry, got sad, got hungry, and was just generally human. It is one thing to fear one is so unlike yourself--the "numinous" of Rudolf Otto--but it is something else to follow in the footsteps of that one. We may sing praises to the one we do not and cannot identify with, but we strive to emulate the nature of the one who like us in nature. Christ himself is what makes possible the fulfillment of his command to "be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). That is why Christ is Emmanuel, God With Us.

I am convinced that if we want to change the world, to make the world more like the kingdom of God, then this is the philosophy that we should live and organize by: we must understand intimately the concerns of those people around us whom we wish to draw into the kingdom of God. We must become like them. We cannot stand on pedestals and proclaim the gospel of Marxist ideology and expect the masses to sacrifice themselves for the grand utopia. People only become martyrs because the kingdom of God has already been born in them; the incarnation is already within them.

Maybe this is why Jesus commanded the rich young ruler to sell all his possessions if he truly wanted to enter the  kingdom of God. And certainly this is why Jesus said that entering the kingdom of heaven is impossible for people, but with God, all things are possible. 

So in this season so close to Christmas, let us lay us aside our ideologies and principles. It is the season of incarnation. If we want to imitate the nativity, instead of extravagant pageants, let us live as the poor, the undocumented, and the marginalized live. Let us not only marvel at the little baby in the feeding trough, but let us live as if our own newborn slept that way. Perhaps then we would not be so quick to pay our debts by selling our little ones into slavery. And perhaps then the masses would indeed cast off their chains.

I can think of no better Christmas story.