Onward Christian Organizers

I don't always find the invisibility comforting.

Almost any column in any progressive magazine analyzing the reactionary politics of the far right these days will at some point get around to taking a hard look at the Christian right that has given so much energy and supplied so many foot soldiers to that movement. Fair enough! It's a disturbing connection that should be teased apart. But then, it seems, the lefty columnist sometimes can't resist the temptation to lump all Christians together, as if everyone who believed in God and tried to follow Jesus cared only about preventing gay marriage and making abortion illegal.

As a Christian -- and a leftist -- myself, I can take the occasional lampooning, but it makes me wonder whether you on the secular left, especially the intelligentsia, realize I'm here, realize how many of the foot soldiers of the Left are Christians (or other religious people) whose activism springs from deeply held faith. The first recorded words of the young man I do my best to follow are that he was sent to "proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free." It's not just a liberal agenda, but a radical one.

I don't have much in common with Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr, or Cesar Chavez, except this: We all are (or were) Christian, and we've each spent much of our adult lives in the trenches of the movement for peace and justice. Most of those who have gone to prison for long sentences for hammering on nuclear warheads, or stopping nuclear trains, or crossing the line at military bases have been Christians, and they have often submitted to those long sentences because they believed their faith gave them no other option and would sustain them in the dark months of prison.

The four members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), kidnapped and still in captivity in Iraq, went to that country fully cognizant of the dangers of abduction but believing that their faith called them to peacemaking. Indeed, CPT is one of the few western non-governmental agencies left in Iraq, having been there almost continuously since before the 2003 invasion. Within three months of the fall of Baghdad to American troops, long before the Abu Ghraib photos surfaced, Christian Peacemakers were actively documenting and reporting the ways in which Iraqi detainees were being abused in prison. All because of their Christian convictions.

We're not (mostly) looking for accolades or more attention, but perhaps you should understand that not all religious people are your enemies or ascribe to us imperialist or conquering missionary visions. As a physician and writer, I've been working in the inner city of Washington D.C. for more than two decades as part of a network of institutions initiated and maintained by people from one church with less than 150 members. As part of those efforts:

* Jubilee Housing has offered low-cost housing to hundreds of low-income residents for over thirty years.

* Columbia Road Health Services has provided medical care for homeless people and other low-income people from around the city for almost thirty years.