Happy Lutheran

Tish Harrison Warren has a regular column in The New York Times about faith and society; she deals with a wide variety of topics, and I almost always find it interesting. The article this week was titled “Faith Communities are Still a Force for Good,” and I really wanted share some aspects of it. [If you can assess The New York Times, here is the link: https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=230&emc=edit_thw_20230709&instance_id=97003&nl=tish-harrison-warren&productCode=THW&regi_id=60300063&segment_id=138759&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2Fa9d329e2-edba-5b83-91c3-319e19d29aad&user_id=9a36fc5cd8849e98271ae73896ba1277

One of the reasons why this article resonated so much with me is because she is talking with Eboo Patel, whose work I have engaged and admired for a long time. He is really influential in interfaith youth work, and is a powerful advocate for the positive, powerful role of religion, both in individual lives and in larger societal contexts. The gist of the article is that so many people, when they think about organized religion, focus only on the negative things without acknowledging the positive things. This unbalanced attitude creates a false narrative about the role religions play in society, both devaluing and ignoring all of the critical work religions engage in that supports the most vulnerable in our society–the elderly, those with disabilities, immigrants, the unhoused, etc., etc. This can contribute to people leaving organized religious organizations/communities because they are unaware of that important work, which, in turn weakens the ability of these communities to do that work. See the negative cycle?

So, my hope is that Patel’s observations might prompt those of us who are a part of religious organizations to make ourselves aware of that good work, and be public advocates for it.

For example, I am very proud of all of the work my Lutheran Church does, all around the world. So, did you know:

Mosaic is a Lutheran organization that serves people with disabilities: nearly 4,900 people in more than 700 communities.

Lutheran Services in America is a network of 300 health and human service nonprofits, who each year collectively reach one in 50 people across 1,400 communities in the United States.

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) has offered welcome and hope to more than half a million refugees for more than 80 years.

Lutheran World Federation is a global communion of churches in the Lutheran tradition, living and working together for a just, peaceful, and reconciled world; they strive to put our Christian faith into action through humaniarian and development work, advocacy, shared witness, and dialogue.

Added to this are the countless number of individual congregations that operate food pantries, homeless shelters, showers, meal distribution, tutoring, child care, etc., etc., etc.

I think we all would be shocked to know howmuch our entire society depends on the social services work of churches, synogogues, mosques, gurdwaras and temples for its healthy functioning. So, perhaps we shouldn’t be quite so quick to dismiss organized religion as out of touch, irrelevent, meaningless and detrimental. That is simply not the whole story; it never has been, and it never will be.

In case you can’t access the article, here are some important points Patel makes.

Eboo Patel: “Here’s what worries me: Half the time when I’m giving a public presentation, the first question about religion is a negative question. What do you think about Islam and violence? What do you think about the Catholic Church and the pedophilia crisis? Why do so many people of faith hate gay people? Particularly in the areas of America where people have higher levels of education, those are their first questions. It is considered sophisticated and educated to know only the bad stuff about religion. Of course, that’s ironic because to only know the bad stuff is to not actually be educated. So that is discouraging. I’ll tell you what I find encouraging. Catholic sisters just keep on doing what Catholic sisters do, which is taking care of poor people. There are 10,000 migrants in Chicago that leadership recently welcomed into the city. But they had not adequately prepared for where those people would sleep. Well, guess who’s taking care of them? Largely, Catholic Charities and other faith-based organizations. Our society relies on religious communities to take care of people, to do addiction counseling, to do job training, to do hunger and homelessness work, to do refugee resettlement. We just don’t often tell the story of them doing that work. And I think that that’s a big problem.”

In response to the question about engaging in constructive social change, Patel says,

“I’m a big believer in the stories that we tell. This is my understanding of religion, of pluralism, of social change: If you tell an inspiring story, people will want to move in that direction. If you only tell a terrible story about America, then people will think that terribleness is inevitable. You tell a terrible story about Islam or Christianity and people will think that terribleness is inevitable. Which is why I think that call-out culture and cancellation culture is wrong in both theory and practice. It is the wrong approach to social change. We want to encourage people — whether schools or churches or entire religions or nations — to be doing more of what we think is beautiful and healthy.”

Yes: We want to encourage people to be doing more of what we think is beautiful and healthy. At their best, religions do just that.