{"id":687,"date":"2016-11-04T16:37:49","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T16:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.brethren.org\/messenger\/?p=687"},"modified":"2018-09-24T16:40:08","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T16:40:08","slug":"ezekiel-and-the-politicians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/from-the-publisher\/ezekiel-and-the-politicians\/","title":{"rendered":"Ezekiel and the politicians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in another election year, 1932, an article in\u00a0<em>Messenger<\/em>\u00a0generated enough letters that the editor wrote a response. The original article was written by Rufus D. Bowman, secretary for the Board of Christian Education, who outlined the issue at stake (bonus points if you know what it was). He said he couldn\u2019t tell readers how to vote, but observed delicately that \u201cthere is weight in favor of\u201d the incumbent.<\/p>\n<p>The follow-up editorial, by Edward Frantz, explained that the criticism fell into three camps: The article expressed an opinion. It didn\u2019t prefer a different candidate. It didn\u2019t express the opinion decisively enough and urge it on the church. These responses were \u201cinteresting,\u201d he observed with remarkable understatement.<\/p>\n<p><em>Messenger<\/em>\u00a0in 1932 was more willing to state a political position than\u00a0<em>Messenger<\/em>\u00a0of 2016 is, but people still disagree on where to draw the line between religion and politics. How should religious conviction influence public policy? One might expect more convergence between the Christian admonition to care for the least of these and the political goal of caring for the common good, but that\u2019s not the case.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. William Barber, a prominent civil rights leader and Disciples of Christ pastor, is urging people of faith to see where these two must intersect. Our country is in pain, he says, and needs a new heart to replace its heart of stone (Ezekiel 36:26). Barber provides this context from a few chapters earlier:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"well\"><em>The leaders among you became desperate, like roaring, ravaging lions killing indiscriminately. They grabbed and looted, leaving widows in their wake. Your priests violated my law and desecrated my holy things. They can\u2019t tell the difference between sacred and secular. They tell people there\u2019s no difference between right and wrong. They\u2019re contemptuous of my holy Sabbaths, profaning me by trying to pull me down to their level. Your politicians are like wolves prowling and killing and rapaciously taking whatever they want. Your preachers cover up for the politicians by pretending to have received visions and special revelations. They say, \u201cThis is what God, the Master, says . . .\u201d when God hasn\u2019t said so much as one word. Extortion is rife, robbery is epidemic, the poor and needy are abused, outsiders are kicked around at will, with no access to justice (Ezekiel 22:25-29 The Message).<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Prophets sure don\u2019t worry about being popular.<\/p>\n<p>As we emerge from a particularly bruising and divisive campaign, a word from 1932 is worth repeating. In a Nov. 5 editorial titled \u201cAfter the Election,\u201d Frantz writes, \u201cLife will still be worth living after Tuesday.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Where do we draw the line between religion and politics?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":688,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[49,38],"class_list":["post-687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-publisher","tag-from-the-publisher","tag-wendy-mcfadden"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":689,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions\/689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}