I have a big mouth. And sausage fingers.

Hi. I'm Frank. I'm addicted to arguing about stuff on Facebook. I've been clean for about two weeks, and I have to admit that I don't miss it much.

I also must acknowledge that I have a tendency to go way too far in defense of a point. Aggressiveness and rudeness are never justified, even if it's a *really* good point. I also confess that I have a near-pathological aversion to trick questions or "I'm going to straighten you out" kind of language. As soon as I detect either one (and both are commonly aimed at pastors), I go after that poster with all the powers of intellect and persuasion at my command. It's not very nice, and I shouldn't do it. All that to say, there are some very good reasons for me to steer clear of forums like Facebook and confine those kinds of discussions to one-on-one encounters.

There's something bothering me though.

There's an implicit expectation on the part of many of the Christian people I know that we should never engage in any controversy of any kind, that no issue is worth standing one's ground over at the risk of being divisive. In his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King Jr. said "so often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound." I agree with him. In his day the issue was racism. Most denominations refused to take a stand for fear of alienating their more conservative members (who were frequently the biggest givers as well). They talked a big game about "unity," but it was really little more than rank cowardice. For the sake of unity, the church was complicit in a heinous, systematic sin.

That's the way I have come to view huge portions of the American evangelical church today. They're all about the love of God, so long as we limit it to people who are like us. We're all about the poor so long as it's about minimal sacrifice and good feelings and not about addressing political and economic institutions that oppress them (because that might cost us middle-class white folks a lot more).

This position is chuck-full of double standards. Fighting for health care for everyone? DIVISIVE! Fighting for a constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage? That's fine. Arguing against the next war? INSENSITIVE AND UNLOVING! Agitating to make abortion illegal or picketing a clinic? Not only is it not wrong, it's our DUTY! Moreover, it seems that the disunity comes only from the liberal side, but the conservative side is protected by a blanket of piety and patriotism. It's funny how some Christians are all about the Gospel being a "sword" until they're on the pointy end. Then it's all petulance and whining about the meanness of it all.

I conducted an informal experiment last week. I listened to the most conservative Christian radio stations I could find for seven days in a row. I found that they were, between infrequent songs, little more than a medium by which conservative political values are propagated. They talked politics not once or twice, but EVERY SINGLE DAY, multiple times per day. It wasn't about abortion either. It wasn't about gay marriage (this week). It was about "Obamacare," which is in the Supreme Court for oral arguments this week. Every DJ was clear about his or her message, too. No ambiguity there. They wouldn't even use the title "President," instead derisively, disrespectfully referring to the president by his last name only as though he were a football coach. Christians have to pray for "Obamacare" to be repealed in the name of American Freedom! The worst part was when they'd pray that God would grant wisdom to the Justices so that his will would be done here on earth.

God's will? forty to fifty million people un- or under-insured to the extent that they can't see a doctor when they're sick is God's will? When is that ever God's will?

Beyond the hypocrisy and callousness of it lies the church's revolting capacity to be the "archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are" ("Letter from a Birmingham Jail" again). I'm not the first one to notice it. People like Washington Gladden, Robert Ely, Caroline Crane, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Bishop Francis McConnell, Charles Stelzle, Shailer Matthews, Walter Rauschenbusch and Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote extensively on it.

I will admit that Facebook is probably the wrong forum for these kinds of discussions, but I utterly reject the notion that the church should take no public stance on issues of injustice. Political injustices require a political remedy; economic injustices require an economic remedy, and the church can and should have a voice in all of it. Where one side pushes a gospel of bigotry, cruelty and exclusion, the other side must push back to bring balance to the message.

Enough damage has been done by a Church full of silent, compliant pastors. I'm not one of them. I hope you're not either. Harry Emerson Fosdick said

"A man who says that he believes in the ineffable value of human personalities and who professes to desire their transformation and yet who has no desire to give them better homes, better cities, better family relationships, better health, better economic resources, better recreations, better books and better schools, is either an ignoramus who does not see what these things mean in the growth of souls, or else an unconscious hypocrite who does not really care so much about the souls of men as he says he does." (Christianity and Progress, 48)