CRM - Empowering Leaders - Prayed and Jailed

WHY I PRAYED AND WENT TO JAIL

Ministry Division: InnerCHANGE
Location: San Francisco, USA
Staff Members: Nate & Jenny Bacon

In December, I participated in an act of prayer and protest in Washington D.C., sponsored by the groups Sojourners and Call to Renewal. We prayed for a moral budget, and we went to jail.

Hundreds of Christians (mostly evangelical) gathered on the steps of the Cannon House office building, to call on Congress to do the right thing. We came outraged by the recent House version of the Budget Reconciliation Act, which would slash $50 billion worth of services to the poor: Medicaid, food stamps, child care, foster care, student loans, and child support enforcement. We were further outraged that the House would then turn around and offer nearly $60 billion in tax cuts to the rich - 45% of those benefits going to those making over a million dollars a year!

But why would we respond in such a radical way? Isn’t this mixing religion with politics?

We did it for love. Most of us are people who minister among the poor. We stood, knelt, and got arrested on behalf of our friends whom we love.

As people of faith, we looked to the Scriptures. We listened to the Prophet Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor..." From the Gospel of Luke we heard the Magnificat, where Mary rejoices and says, "God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty-handed."

Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners trumpeted, "But the House of

Representatives would fill the rich with good things and send the hungry away empty-handed!"

People chanted, "Help the needy, not the greedy!"

We denounced the spirit of Scrooge that would literally snatch crutches from the Tiny Tims of this land through Medicaid cuts. Preachers insisted that the real debate on Christmas had little to do with shopping malls saying "Happy Holidays" vs. "Merry Christmas," and everything to do with good news finding its way to the poor.

We sang Christmas hymns, we read Scripture, and we prayed in the freezing cold.

In the end, 115 of us were arrested for praying and blocking the entrance to the Cannon building. John Perkins of the Christian Community Development Association, Ron Sider (Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger) and Jim Wallis of Sojourners were among those arrested. It was our Christmas present to our friends on the margins.

In InnerChange, we are missionaries among the poor and
marginalized, but we are also contemplative and prophetic. We carry our friends to Jesus in prayer, but we will tear a hole in the roof to ensure that the poor have access to the basic necessities of life.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said that to remain neutral in a state of oppression is to take the side of the oppressor. "If the elephant has its foot on the tail of the mouse, and you say you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality!"

Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. "We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people."

For me, joining this peaceful Christian act of civil disobedience was an attempt to reject neutrality and silence as Christian options, and join with others in prophetic prayer.