c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) I was 10 when Rosa Parks sat down in a white man’s seat. I was a white Northerner bound for college and career when the civil rights movement transformed the Deep South and headed north.

Education changed everything. I couldn’t get away with childhood politics. I had to think for myself. I saw the world through additional eyes. I studied our nation’s history in more detail. I thrilled to our founding ideals and saw how they had been set aside in chasing privilege, wealth and power.

I know that many victims of prejudice were offended when people like myself joined their anthems of protest and hope. Were we just dabbling? But over time, I came to accept Martin Luther King’s “dream” of justice and tolerance as my own.

On a recent Sunday, Congressman David Price, a Democrat from North Carolina, preached about being 15 when Rosa Parks sat down, being a Senate staffer when the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, seeing his native South change, and coming to believe in what politics could do for America.

Last fall he attended a memorial for Rosa Parks and noticed that the congressional delegation was made up of mostly older people like himself, who had been formed in the 1960s. Where were the young? Then, he said, Congress spent December debating a tax bill that gave to the rich, took from the poor, and used Hurricane Katrina as an excuse. Not a dream worthy of America.

Organist Tom Bloom concluded worship with a powerful improvisation on “We Shall Overcome.” I wanted to stand, lock arms and sing. For I believe we are called to do better than the current atmosphere of pinched hyper-moralizing, hogging by the wealthy, closing our borders to dark-skinned immigrants, hiding in gated suburbs, and pursuing comfort and safety at any cost, even human rights.

We cannot go back to 1963 and resume a march that was interrupted by violence, self-indulgence and an Asian war, then was sidetracked by our sprint to prosperity, and now languishes as a vaguely remembered movement bearing less urgency than moralizing and real estate.

What we can do is read the book of Jonah. The prophet wrote during a time like our own, when the nation’s leaders were insisting that the future lay in ethnic intolerance, rigid moralizing and religion that guarded elitist claims.

When called by God to venture beyond such narrow boundaries, Jonah ran away. But God came after him and called Jonah “a second time, saying, `Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”’ God’s concern, it seemed, extended far beyond the pious.

Now can be our “second time.” Fussing about sexuality might get out the vote, but it doesn’t come close to God’s call to freedom, justice, compassion and new life. Frightening people into giving up their rights and naming gays, pregnant women and non-Christians as scapegoats might consolidate political power, but it violates both the Bible and the founding ideals of our nation. Unleashing vigilantes and walling off Mexico might satisfy a nativist urge, but it trespasses on the dream of an open-hearted nation.

Rising real estate values won’t build a secure future. Neither will taking from the poor in order to please the rich. Neither will trampling the Bill of Rights in the name of safety. Neither will quoting stray Scriptures to justify bigotry.

Our hope lies in a God who gives second chances both to those who are oppressed and to the arrogant and hateful who profit from their oppression. Our hope lies in a God who loves the entire creation, not just those who shout God’s name most loudly and proudly. Our hope lies in “liberty and justice for all.”

MO/PH END RNS

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” was published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org.)

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