Toward a Moral Center

Last April I attended the annual conference of the Council on Foundations. Jim Wallis, CEO of Sojourners and author of God’s Politics: why the right gets it wrong and the left doesn’t get it, spoke at the conference-sponsored ecumenical, interfaith service. He condemned politics for failing to identify solutions to horrors like extreme poverty, AIDS and genocide. He called on Philanthropy to help identify “common good” that we can all support.

The gist of his message was that our country is hungry for a better way. We all - collectively - want to provide a solution. “It’s not left or right,” Wallis preached. “There are more than two sides. The country doesn’t want to move left or right but deeper toward a moral center.”

Wallis rightly stated that “religion does not have a monopoly on morality.” I can think of numerous examples of atheists and irreligious people with high moral standards, and just as many if not more examples of people of faith whose personal moral standards fall far short of society’s expectations.

The service was opened with a challenge by a rabbi: “Imagine what we could accomplish,” she said, “if our faith communities would work together.”

Lynn Hybels, co-founder of Willow Creek Community Church (located in the northwest suburbs of Chicago), has been moved to organize people around the AIDS crisis in Africa. “I was holding my grandson; he was six weeks old, and his belly was full, and his cheeks were getting chubby because he is well-fed. He is loved and cared for,” she told Sojourners magazine (April 2007 issue, page 35). “And it hit me – this is what every baby deserves. This should be the reality for every child on earth.”

Because of the overwhelming scale of the crisis, Hybels believes evangelicals must work with people with whom they might otherwise disagree. That message is echoed by Rick Warren, co-founder of Saddleback Church in Southern California and author of The Purpose-Driven Life. Several high-profile conservatives criticized Senator Barak Obama’s appearance at Saddleback’s AIDS conference last December. “We do not expect all participants in the Summit discussion to agree with all of our evangelical beliefs,” Warren said in a statement. “However, the HIV/AIDS pandemic cannot be fought by evangelicals alone. It will take the cooperation of all – government, business, NGOs, and the church. That is the purpose of this Summit – to marshal the policy of the government; the finances of business; the expertise of the health organizations; and the compassion, volunteerism, and reach of the church in order to care for the sick and save lives.”

Right and left, religious and secular, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and the rest – we all have our faults. Could it be that here, in our shared weaknesses, we can finally identify common ground? Perhaps by working together with this realization, we can move toward solutions that foster peace and prosperity for all.

Copyright © 2007 Richard M. Potter. All Rights Reserved.