"The promise has been broken" was the phrase religious leaders and lay people reiterated Sunday as members of AMOS - A Mid-Iowa Organizing Strategy - kicked off a campaign to spread the word about social justice issues to several thousand people over the next two months.
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Roughly 200 people from two dozen of the 28 faith-based institutions that make up AMOS gathered at Our Lady of the Americas Parish, 618 E. 18th St., to discuss issues such as health-care accessibility and youth education, and to pledge commitments toward the AMOS campaign.
The various religious leaders committed to 468 conversations with 3,021 people in central Iowa over the next two months. Conversation totals for the handful of organizations not in attendance have yet to be added.
I took issue with the whole thing, because the idea of "having conversations" as part of an organizing strategy is, well, gee I don't know the word I'm looking for here.
How about "silly". "Ineffectual". "Nonsensical". "Doomed to failure". I suppose the list is endless.
The truth is, as I point out in the discussion thread, there are all sorts of resources available to do the work AMOS wants done. They are called the various mainline denominations. Rather than use all those resources, all those people, all that potential and actual capital, it is so much more interesting to think we are actually engaged in something productive by "listening".
Posh.
One does not "build community". It hasn't succeeded yet. Communities exist. They should be utilized, exploited, not so much listened to as heeded. This is the kind of thing that makes me absolutely stark raving crazy, to be honest. This is the kind of political masturbation the left engages in as a substitute for real action. What makes it all the more galling is the simple truth that there are structures available to do the work, to get the word out, to organize. They aren't used because "activists" would rather "lead" (of course, they insist they are "servant-leaders"; you know what, I've met too many ego-laden servant-leaders in my time to be jazzed about them now). Of course, "organized religion" is declasse now, so why use the structures of the mainline churches?
I realize it is something akin to heresy to disparage Jim Wallis and Sojourners and all that. I realize it is something akin to heresy to point out that all his work has failed, so it might behoove us to consider the possibility that following his lead isn't necessarily a good idea. But you know what? I really don't care.
