Organize This

I'm a fan of structure. Things begin to make sense to me, life makes sense, when I can see the system or context of which it is a part. I sometimes tell the story of when my family last moved - I didn't really feel like I was home until the boxes were at least in the rooms where they would (soon) be unpacked, until the pictures stood near the walls where they would be hung, until I could reliably find my way to and from church, the grocery store, and my daughter's school without getting lost, until I found a regular running route. I needed the structure to show me where I fit in this new place.

I've been fascinated by the structure of politics since high school. That interest took a variety of forms for me. In the public world, it meant serving as a legislative intern and working on a number of political campaigns. As a student, I found my way into common student ventures like the Student Senate and Model United Nations and - yes, I'll admit it - speech team. (I should say here that the speech team and my speech classes probably helped me in more ways than almost anything else I did in college.) With each of these aspects, I looked for ways to try to make the world a better place. I tried to see the system, and its message, and the implication it might have on the broader world. And sure, the thing about changing the world was naive and probably arrogant, but it was also true. I wanted to find ways to alter the structure so that it better served the people, so that Good would come.

I’m also a Christian. And I’m the kind of Christian who grew up thinking that We Don’t Talk About Such Things As Politics in church. So there was a disconnect for me in my Monday to Saturday life, where I worked for candidates and issues that aligned with the values I supported, and life in church on Sunday where I heard about a Jesus who challenged the established powers, who broke the rules, who spent time with untouchables. I heard in church about Jesus, who in his life, death, and resurrection, brought about the real change for which the world continues to cry. It seemed like those two aspects of my life ought to be closer than I had grown up to believe.

So now I’m in seminary, preparing for ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church. I continue to ask the question of where faith and politics intersect. I’m not talking about partisanship, about drawing as close to the line as I can to advocate for a particular candidate without losing the tax-exempt status the church enjoys. I’m talking about politics as a process by which decisions are made about who is given what from commonly held resources. That, I believe, is a moral question. That, I believe, is a question of integrity. And that, I believe, is a place where people of faith have the responsibility to engage.

Community organizing makes a great deal of sense to me because it involves politics in the best sense, and it helps people within a community work together to create meaningful, systemic change. In the days and weeks to come, I’ll talk more here about what that means and how it looks. It’s not a cause, not a singular issue being advocated. Organizing, to me, means building the connective tissue within a community. It means changing the structure within that community, person by person, so that the world moves one step closer to the way it should be.