Everywhere I turn these days, I hear about "The Purpose-Driven Life," the mega-best-selling book by a California minister named Rick Warren. Members of my church are asking me about it, nearby congregations are running the 40-day spiritual program based on its precepts, and because of all the interest, I've decided to use it for my own daily reflections in this Lenten season.

But as I think about the book's message and its huge impact -- more than 11 million copies sold last year -- I admit I'm a little confounded. The book challenges people to focus on personal change. It promises people that discovering their purpose in life will reduce their stress, simplify their decisions, increase their satisfaction and prepare them for eternity.

Personal change is an admirable objective. Yet I look around and see a world in flux -- war in Iraq, the disruptions of globalization, the societal changes brought by immigration -- and I wonder if a focus on the personal is what we ministers should be emphasizing. Is it enough to preach sermons that center on individual struggles and offer guidance along the path to a more meaningful and fulfilling personal life? I can't help thinking this is a time when we should be challenging our people to move beyond the personal to the public -- indeed, the political -- and commit themselves to transforming the world.

A generation ago, American religious leaders were not afraid to step into the intersection between personal faith and public life. In the 1960s, the eminent Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr influenced the Kennedy administration, bringing his tough-minded "Christian realism" and anti-communist views to bear on debates over the Berlin crisis and the use of nuclear weapons. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. linked passionate preaching to leadership of the civil rights movement. And Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr. used his university pulpit to oppose the Vietnam War. These men didn't hesitate to bring their faith to bear on public policy, and what they perceived as society's injustices or government's errors.

Today, religious leaders generally tend to concentrate on private, not public, life. Even Christian activists such as Pat Robertson or James Dobson focus chiefly on the family or on issues, such as abortion or gay marriage, that touch people in the realm of their private lives, rather than talking about using theology to shape a better world. Most of us are pastors, quietly tending to our flocks and their internal needs, rather than prophets, challenging our people to look outward and commit themselves to creating a more just society.

There's no denying the appeal of the pastoral approach to the people in my pews. Warren's book "has reached out to people like my wife, with whom I've never before discussed topics such as our life's purpose," says Dennis Carlton, an elder at Fairfax Presbyterian. A father of three, Dennis puts his family responsibilities first and says he cannot think of a single social issue that would inspire him to head downtown and join a rally on the Mall. I think a lot of my church members feel the same way.

Denise Giacomozzi May, the minister and director of United College Ministries in Northern Virginia, encounters similar views. When she tried to push her campus group to support a program of Bread for the World, a national anti-hunger lobbying organization, one of her volunteers bristled and said, "That's politics." This volunteer was committed to feeding Fairfax County's homeless through hands-on charitable work, but was not convinced that people of faith have a role in calling on government to care for the poorest members of society.

I remember encountering the same kind of resistance in my last parish, Calvary Presbyterian in Alexandria, when I strove to integrate African immigrants now living in the neighborhood into our church community. My intent was to be inclusive, but it was hard to work with a group of needy immigrants -- many of whom asked for help with the naturalization process -- in a politically neutral way, and this made some of my longtime congregants uncomfortable.

Is it possible, though, for religious leaders to be prophetic without crossing the line into politics? I don't think so. When Isaiah cried out, "seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow" (Isaiah 1:17), he was making a political statement. But due to the fragmentation of our culture, our churches and our public policies, "the prophetic voice is quieter today because we don't know what to say," observes my colleague Jay Click , the pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Springfield. "Many of us decry the growing gap between rich and poor, but there does not seem to be a consensus about how to address that." We pastors are struggling with a disconnect between what the Bible teaches and what constitutes an effective political statement, having discovered that the scriptural mandate to help the poor does not translate easily into federal welfare programs.

On top of this, many pastors are afraid of stirring up controversy, or causing division. Ken Kern, an activist lawyer and member of a Unitarian church in Indianapolis, tells me that he tries to bring challenging programs on public issues -- the administration's foreign policy, or elimination of the estate tax -- to his fellow congregants, but "church members seem much more comfortable with issues that do not involve challenging the 'system.' " He believes today's church leaders "are concerned about their jobs so they tend to reflect the composite view of their congregations." For most of us, the key to job security is pastoral care, not prophetic pronouncements.

I worry about this tendency in myself and others, because I believe the role of pastor is incomplete without a prophetic dimension. We ministers sometimes forget that Jesus, our role model, not only cared for hurting individuals, but also shattered the cultural conventions of his day and turned his society upside down. In a new book about her father, Niebuhr's daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, criticizes the big preachers of her father's day, men like Norman Vincent Peale and Billy Graham, describing them as men who "never risked their tremendous personal popularity by broaching a difficult spiritual subject, and rarely lifted a finger to help a social cause." This is a harsh judgment, and I think it needs to be said that there is value in the kind of preaching the Peales and the Grahams of the world do, inspiring people to deepen their relationship with God.

But the Bible is clear about the need to "do justice" (Micah 6:8). This call echoes to me in today's world, and I want to make an effort to avoid being seen as a pious, do-nothing pastor.

So what is a minister to do? The challenge, as I see it, is to expand our definition of spiritual growth, which goes beyond the personal and has a societal component as well. We have seen this in various national struggles: with fascism during World War II, with race relations in the civil rights movement, with gender issues in the women's movement and with communism during the Cold War. Such periods of conflict shaped our understanding of freedom, justice and equality. They contributed to our spiritual growth, and as such were rightly part of any pastor's prophetic agenda. A minister didn't have to be with Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany or Dorothy Day in the slums of New York to take a bold, socially active stand for the faith.

The issues we face today -- welfare reform, immigration, globalization -- may prove to be equally significant, and it will be a challenge for religious leaders to use theology to help shape a better society. People like Jesse Jackson or Ron Sider, the founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, an association that promotes Christian involvement in social, cultural and public policy issues, are making an effort in this area.

But every pastor is challenged to take prophetic action, whether it be marching in a protest or working quietly for affordable housing. Ralph Weitz, the stewardship pastor of Immanuel Bible Church in Springfield, is deeply concerned about the damage that credit card debt does to individuals, families and society, so he conducts seminars and workshops to teach people how to avoid this burden. My seminary classmate John Lentz is the president of NOAH, a faith-based organizing group in Cleveland that has stood up against predatory lending. It has helped people move more than $500,000 to lending institutions that have signed a document declaring they do not engage in this practice.

We pastors have an obligation to speak and act from the perspective of our faith. The voice of religious leaders has made an important contribution to past political debates, and this voice is needed today. So the next time I step into the pulpit and make a pronouncement with a political dimension, I hope my congregation will understand that I'm not trying to be controversial -- I'm trying to make a contribution.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Henry Brinton is pastor of Fairfax Presbyterian Church.

Author's e-mail: hgbrinton@aol.com

Link to Henry Brinton's Washington Post Articles Index Page

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