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| PCU E-Newsletter |
April 17, 2017 |
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Dear Progressive Christian Acvitist:
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In a nondescript warehouse building in the Bergamot Station arts center in Santa Monica, an unusual progressive church meets for worship and fellowship every Sunday. Named for Thaddaeus, the most nondescript of Jesus' disciples, PCU partner congregation, Thad's Church, fills an unadorned assembly space with about 100 souls of all ages, wages, and backgrounds. Clutching coffee cups, people happily drift inside as the band plays original music. The lyrics lightly evoke Christian tradition, inviting multiple interpretations. Jon Dephouse, the casually-clad pastor, sits on a stool to share a pensive, soulful message that raises more questions than it answers, inspiring people to quest further in their practice of spirituality and service. Thad's is an Episcopal ministry, but there are no "smells and bells". It has the look and feel of an evangelical mini-mega church. But the theology and social commitments are progressive.
So many evangelical churches have lively, contemporary styles of worship that deliver an old-school, oppressive dogma. So many liberal Protestant churches have formulaic, old-school worship with new-school theology and social engagement. Thad's bridges these two cultures, making it a community that is especially welcoming for "recovering" evangelicals, mainline liberals, and total newbies alike.
Right after the November election, Carlyn Von Oeyen, a member of Thad's, was listening to Jihad Turk on NPR. He is a leader of the Muslim community of southern California, and was talking about an increase in bullying of Muslim children. Carlyn reached Jihad and asked how Thad's could be helpful. Jihad suggested that the church partner with the Islamic Center of Southern California's food pantry for the working poor in LA's Koreatown. Thad's sent a team of volunteers to work alongside the members of the Islamic Center community at the food pantry, and they've been going every last Saturday of the month ever since. Another major focus of service and community engagement for Thad's is Laundry Love, a movement nationwide in which groups of people "adopt" a laundromat and pay to wash low-income people's clothes, while engaging with them in friendly conversation.
"We are building the kingdom, not a church," reads a line from the church's "value statement". Progressive churches have a lot to learn from the way that Thad's is doing it.
-- Rev. Jim Burklo, PCU activist and board member, Associate Dean of Religious Life at USC
(If you would like to have your church profiled in the PCU E-News, let me know!)
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Action & Events
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Taxes are the way that people of faith care for the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens, by funding our government's social safety-net services. Charity through faith communities and other groups is a vital supplement, but no replacement, for the role we must give our government in meeting critical human needs.
As the President and Congress plan major changes in the tax codes, threatening massive giveaways to rich people and corporations and huge cuts in government services for children, the disabled, and the underemployed, our vigilance and activism is more important than ever at tax time.
PCU's
Blessing of Taxes in worship on the Sundays near tax time is a sacred re-affirmation of the blessings that flow from the taxes we pay: services to the poor and ailing; schools, roads, sanitation; public safety and defense; protection of the environment; and promotion of a healthier economy - to name a few. It is also a moment to recommit ourselves as citizens to shape the priorities that determine how our taxes are spent.
Some congregations place tax forms on the altar; some pastors focus their sermons on the sacred duties of citizenship and on their visions for the ways that tax money should best be spent. Some congregations plan special discussions related to citizen activism and social issue awareness following worship.
The form of the blessing differ, but the essential message is the same: we give thanks to the Love that is God for the good that comes through our taxes. They are a special form of our "offerings" in worship. Many blessings flow from them, and divine guidance is needed for us to have the wisdom to see to it they are spent for the best purposes.
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Quote of the Week
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"Taxes are the price we pay for civilization." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr
Quoted in DEEPER LOVE: Faithful Rhetoric for Progressive Social Change - by PCU, 2015. Buy the book
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