i promised you ideas, so here are my ideas and a disclaimer (finale)

Continuing from this entry, here's the key to making my ridiculous plan for a religious left movement work.

4) Remain distanced

We are not to be an arm of the government, and the government is not to be an arm of the Church. Those aims are neither good nor theologically sound.

Earlier, I referenced the idea that we should never be about getting "our people" in power. Instead, we should constantly be scrutinizing those who are in power and those who seek power. We should be the Old Testament prophets needling the kings into doing what is right (if we learn how to call down pillars of fire, please do so responsibly).

It is important for us to remember that Church and State need to remain separate. We don't want anyone to legislate our faith, only the values that we posses based on that faith. If we somehow find ourselves in favor of a vast majority of our lawmakers, it will still not be our job to prop those lawmakers up. Honestly, we should be putting those under even heavier scrutiny. If someone from our ranks decides to seek office? They get the heaviest possible scrutiny.

So there will be no campaign contributions. Not from us as an organization. If we, as individuals, want to give money, time, or whatever to a campaign we can go nuts. But as a group, giving money or producing a commercial is an endorsement. And we're not doing that, remember?

Disclaimer

These are just ideas. I don't know if these ideas even make sense to anyone but me. I don't know that these are even implementable ideas. Even if I was 100% solid that this would be a worthwhile endeavor that made a real difference to those who feel abandoned by the church or to actual policy, I'm not sure how I would go about executing these things.

But if you see this and think I'm onto something, we should talk.