Preaching as Speaking Truth to Power

By Mark Roberts

In response to the IRS case against All Saints, Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches said "I'm outraged. . . . Preachers ought to have the liberty to speak truth to power."

Of course he didn't quite complete the thought, since all preachers have the freedom to say whatever they want (apart from illegal speech such a slander), including telling people how to vote. According to current law, however, preachers must give up a tiny bit of this freedom if they want their churches to be tax-exempt institutions. So what Rev. Edgar didn't say though he surely implied it was, "Preachers ought to have the liberty to speak truth to power and their churches should continue to be free from paying taxes." Watch the debate about the All Saints case, and you'll find that many of those who speak in defense of All Saints talk as if the government stepped in to censor what the Rev. George Regas had said. This is not the case, of course, but it makes the whole issue sound a whole lot more sinister if you talk about it this way.

Rev. Regas, who preached a sermon that was modestly and indirectly critical of John Kerry and at the same time stridently and directly critical of George W. Bush two days before the 2004 election claims he was not intending to influence the vote. This makes me wonder why he chose to preach that particular sermon at that particular time. If his goal was not to get his listeners to act upon his sermon by voting for John Kerry, what was it?

Rev Regas's "Jesus" chewed out the President and other right-of-center politicians in no uncertain terms. Did Rev. Regas imagine that Mssrs. Kerry and Bush would actually hear his sermon? If not, why preach a sermon with them as the rhetorical audience? If he wasn't trying to influence the actions of the congregation when it came to the election, why bother? Was he just blasting away at "power," speaking over the heads of the people who were actually present in church that day? Personally, I'm inclined to think that if Rev. Regas was not trying to influence the behavior of the congregation – i.e., their voting – then he should not have preached this sermon. How odd for a preacher to preach a sermon that doesn't intend to influence the actions of the listeners. Sometimes it seems that preachers on both the right and left who "speak truth to power" end up missing the very people they should be addressing, namely, their own congregations. Of course this is also true of preachers who never touch upon politics, and also rarely touch upon the heart concerns of their people.

All of us who preach do in fact have the chance to "speak truth to power." In my congregation, for example, there are leaders in business, education, media, and government. But even if my church had quite different demographics, there would still be people of power present in worhsip: parents, employers, neighbors, consumers, voters. So every time I stand up to preach, I am "speaking truth to power," at least to some extent. My next question is: What does "power" need to hear from me?

There I seem to part company with folks like Bob Edgar and George Regas. I'm not at all sure that "power" needs to hear my personal political convictions, at least not as my main point. Even if I had the chance to preach to George W. Bush, or Hillary Clinton, or Donald Rumsfeld, or Howard Dean, I doubt I'd start hammering away on obviously political issues. There are so many other things these people – and the rest of us as well – desperately need to hear from preachers. Moreover, these other things are the things we preachers are called primarily to preach. They also end up having a profound impact on politics, but this impact has little to do with the opinions of the preacher.

What sorts of things am I talking about? What do Bush, Clinton, Rumsfeld, and Dean need to hear most of all? What parts of truth do these people of obvious power need to hear from their preachers? Here are some starters:

• The gospel of God's love in Jesus Christ;

• The challenge to imitate God's love in our own lives;

• The call of Jesus to a life of discipleship;

• The consistent concern of the biblical God for the well-being of the poor;

• The power and presence of the Holy Spirit;

• The call to be part of the living body of Christ;

• The invitation to be in a community of kindness, grace, and mutual forgiveness;

• The lordship of Christ over all of our lives and over the whole world;

• The nature of evil and the tools God has given to combat it;

• The presence of the kingdom of God and the promise of the future kingdom.

Now if you don't know much about Christian theology, you might accuse me of dodging the tough issues, of skipping politics to deal with esoteric religious truths. But, in fact, the issues I've listed here have profound impact on one's life in the world, including one's politics. I happen to believe that if George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Donald Rumself, and Howard Dean had a better grasp of these issues, their politics would be significantly impacted . . . not by me and my political convictions, but by God's truth and its implications.

So, though I'm not doubting the call of the church to "speak truth to power," and though I would agree that sermons should address the issues of our lives in the real world, I'm not persuaded that preachers should regularly focus on "speaking truth to power" in the sense of addressing political issues in their sermons. I many preachers on both the right and the left disagree with me. But I fear that we preachers too easily lose the center of our calling, authority, and message: the good news of Jesus Christ and its implications.