Feature Story from civilrights.org
Lauren Marsh
October 12, 2006
In recent years, Christianity has come to be associated with a number of divisive, socially conservative issues championed by the religious right, a phenomena a new book says threatens to overshadow the rest of the faith community.
At an event to promote his new book, Middle Church, former Pennsylvania Representative Bob Edgar, the general secretary of the National Council of Churches, responded to the great deal of attention that the religious right has gathered, and insisted that this stereotype does not in fact reflect the views of most true Christians.
The book serves as a call to action for members of the faith community who are not on the left or the right, the "Middle Church," to re-establish the moral values of the Christian community and push for a progressive agenda.
"My goal is to challenge them to read deeply their entire religious texts, to discover God's prophetic call to all humanity, and to work collaboratively and be faithful stewards of our limited resources," Edgar writes in the book.
Edgar expressed a desire to see the religious community promote a political agenda that places emphasis on aiding poverty, promoting peace, and taking measures to protect the environment and curb global warming. Reassuring his audience that even fiscally conservative Republicans care about these issues, he called on faith leaders to bring out the voice of non-violence and compassion.
He said that these are the true fundamental moral issues, and that the right's decision to ignore these matters while using the Bible to justify their position is purely hypocritical. Edgar conveyed his hope that the religious community will move beyond "private piety issues," and focus more on social justice issues as a whole.
Edgar urged his audience to "understand that we can't move forward if we don't focus on these bigger issues." Without the help of the people "in the middle," he fears that the religious right will continue use its radical beliefs to represent the Christian community as a whole.
In his discussion, Edgar placed some of the blame for the right's monopolization of national attention on the "Middle Church." He claimed that the middle has done nothing to convince the rest of the country that the extremely conservative views held by the religious right are not supported by all Christians.
Edgar also expressed his belief in the separation of church and state. While asserting that he did not want the church to meddle in the affairs of the government, he made clear that, as he writes in his book, the "faithful majority must have the courage to confront their government when it makes bad decisions."
