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From Passion to Politics: What Moves People to Take Action?

The 2007 Princeton Colloquium on Public and International Affairs

The Demands of God: Perspectives from the Evangelical Movement

By Donna Liu
Apr20, 2007
Moderator: The Rev. Paul B. Raushenbush, Associate Dean of Religious Life and the Chapel, Princeton University Panelists: The Rev. Richard Cizik, Vice President for Governmental Affairs, National Association of Evangelicals Allen D. Hertzke, Director of Religious Studies, College of Arts and Science, University of Oklahoma E. Anne Peterson, M.D., Senior International Health Advisor, World Vision International
Allen D. Hertzke:  A new movement burst on the scene in the 1990s to push a human rights agenda through the foreign policy machine.  The movement has pursued a number of actions through remarkable and striking coalitions.  What has moved this community to action?  

First, the rise of global Christianity.  By the year 2000, at least two-thirds of the world's Christians live in the global South.  Over half of sub-saharan Africa is Christian.  What this means is that the Christian church is increasing nested amidst poverty, exploitation and violence.  It is increasingly a suffering Church.  This is important because American evangelicals identify with this suffering Church.

The second factor is the advent of global communications and travel, which has created heightened awareness of and personal connections to those suffering.  Mission trips are an increasing phenomenon.  Around one and half million Americans have gone on an overseas mission trip.  They generally go to places where they are nested in Christian communities.  The advent of communication means they can keep the links long after returning home.  

The third factor is the rich social networks, which Bob Putnam described this morning.  These provide venues for people to interact...for participation.  These networks have put in service of human rights and international humanitarian concerns.  

A final factor in this mobilization is focus.  Legislative campaigns provide a focus for mobilization and effort.  Success, for example the Religious Freedom Act of 1998, inspires further efforts.

So taking this challenge to heart, what go me involved?  So to give you a sense of my own motivation, let me introduce you to some of the folks I've gotten to know through the course of my work.  Francis Bock, a 20 year old Dinka man from Sudan.  He speaks in Biblical cadences for ten years he was a slave.  Aswaldo Madrigal, known universally as Pastor Wally, a filapino arrested, tortured and ultimately given a death sentence.  Only international pressure resulted in his release.  Or Norto Alexander, a Cuban prisoner who was put into sewage pits overnight as punishment for preaching the Gospel.  Or a young women I met in China 7 years I call St. Joan of Chian, who said to me after a lecture that she belong to a "fellowship" which means an underground Christian fellowship.  In order to rise in the Chinese ranks, she would have to join the communist party and profess atheism.  And she said she couldn't do that.  

There is a saying.  If you were charged of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict?  These people have been convicted/persecuted.  As I studied this movement for human rights, I found myself surrounded by activists who had made the jump from awareness to action.  I was so struck by their dedication.  I identified with this movement immediately.   In a sense I allowed myself to become an independent variable in the movement I was studying.  

Let me conclude with a profile of one of these activists.  A man named Gary Haugen who in the Clinton administration was appointed to the war crimes tribunal.  He went on to form the International Justice Mission.  He had heard of a village in Cambodia devoted entirely to trafficing children for the sex tourism trade.  He sent an undercover agent to film one of these transactions and showed the video to Cambodian government, then U.S. governement (resulting legislation).  Finally a raid was organized, and Haugen went in with the raid to free the children.  One of the girls was the little girl caught in the video being sold for sex.  Because of people like Gary Haugen, this little girl has been set free.

Anne Peterson:  (Powerpoint Presentation)
When we talk about what brings us to dealing with these issues, it is personal relationships.  
So what is our calling?  My daughter recently graduated from William and Mary and had Archbishop Desmond Tutu come speak.  We have a God-given compassion for suffering.  We have a long historical heritage both in faith and in government to work for justice.  The children of the world are still dying, but we don't see it.  There are people who go hungry.  
I became a Christian in my fourth year of medical school and I went on one of those mission trips.  I saw a young children whose problems could not be taken care of, but could have been prevented.   I set my focus on prevention.  
I worked a long time on HIV/AIDS.  High HIV prevalence rates are finally just beginning to turn around.  We are still to face the wave of orphans and vulnerable children who will be coming to us for help.  We worked in schools.  Educational poster of a sugar daddy soliciting a young school girl who can't say no--use to start a discussion of how they might handle this situation.  
Out of the blue I get the call to take a post with the State of Virginia to run the state health program.  A persistent call that I could make a difference.  My next post was at the US Agency for International Development.  This give you a voice in global policy dialogues.  I could speak from my years of field experience.  The opportunity to to travel to Afghanistan to discuss a program on maternal and child health was an incredible affirmation of the difference we make.
A leader and model for me has been a young Anglican bishop in Kenya.
What is it that moves us to act?  For me it is the children.  They are incredibly resilient.  
There is an additional calling.  The issue of childhood mortality still does not have a voice.  
I am now working with World Vision, the largest NGO in the world.   Bringing expertise and hope.  Create dialogue with the community.  
How do we retain our passion?  Many things make us weary:  politics, corruption, resistence to change.  Social networks are a key source of support.  

Richard Cizik:
If you want to move people to action:  1.  cast the vision 2. give them a strategy and 3. give them the tactics.  I believe that Climate Change will be a gateway issue for the evangelical community.  How do we do this.  100 million people attend an evangelical church on a weekly basis.  How do we challenge 100 million people to take action?  We said all of the issues matter, including climate change.  
People are saying we shouldn't do climate change because we've never done it for.  My mission is cognitive liberation--make people believe that they can do.  Surveys and focus groups show not one sermon on climate change ("care of the creation").   It's never been preached.  It's never been taught.  
What's the strategy.  Teach, Preach, and Move Congress to act.  
On the climate change issue, the evangelicals have made a big change.  75% now say you change the structures of society.  
We have leaders who have never been held accountable on these issues.  We are saying these are moral issues and you will be held accountable.  You cannot solve the climate change problem, these are so big that you have to answer them in moral terms.  
2005 Meeting in Aspen, we are going to talk about these issues in moral terms, the needle began to move.  Yesterday, Barbara Boxer said it's now the number two issue.  
If you do not act, you are missing God's calling.  When your vision does not match God's vision for the church and your life, you will fail.  
There has got to be that legislative hook.  
It is the new red, white and blue.  If you will not be the greenest generation, you will not be the greatest generation.  
Daniel cast to the lions.  King Darius had to choose between the man and the empire.  This administration has been choosing for their friends and not the empire.  
An evangelical statement on torture.  
Wouldn't it be ironic if the creation crowd joined with the evolution crowd to solve this problem?  These two worlds, religion and science, has to do this together.   We are challenging our leaders to solve this.  
Quote George Bush 

Question: to what extent are evangelicals in the U.S. bothered by the response of officials in India regarding conversions?  

Cizik:  the Statements of Conscience address this issue.  

Question:  I am a secular, humanist, liberal.  Can we be allies on some of the issue such as poverty, health, inequality?  

Peterson:  the key is to be very professional in my work.  Important that we recognize the common moral mandate to address these issues. Most of the political wars were in the media realm.  Much common ground in the daily work.  

Hertzke:  Secular humanists and religionists can work together.  Over time, trust developed in addressing issues of religious persecution for example. 

Question:  Hertzke said the human rights movement began in the 1990s.  Right before I came to WWS in 1974, I launched a human rights organization that was backed by many religious organizations.  Some of the points you made about the 1990s seemed to be in effect in the early 1970s.  Why didn't we have among us at that time the evangelicals?  What were the stumbling blocks that have kept the faith traditions out of various movements since then?  Running back to Bob Putnam and issues of networking.  How has the issue of identity been either an aid or a stumbling block?  

Hertzke:  Religious identity has been a stumbling block in some cases.  Some in the main line community did take umbrage when the evangelical community first engaged in the human rights arena.  We've overcome some of those.

Peterson:  The reality and perception of the separation of church and state has sometimes been a stumbling block.  There is a lot of room to work together.  We often say exactly the same things, but in different language.    We've moved the two worlds so far apart, that there is distrust.  A hesitation among religious community to engage in the political debate.

Cizik:  Evangelicals have an overiding vision according to Alan Gelser (sp?).  There are religious identities...a split that raises suspicions.  Belief and action are two sides of the same coin.  We have to find ways to bridge the differences.  

Slaughter:  I have a book coming out:  The Idea That Is America: Keeping Faith with Our Values in a Dangerous World.  I would like to end with bridge-building.  I think many Americans who are not traditionally religious have great faith.  It may not be grounded in a particular religious tradition, but part of our coming together is to restore that broader faith in ideas.  

Apr20, 2007
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