San Diego Cathedral Offers Moment of Worship to Republicans at National Convention
Episcopal News Service. August 22, 1996 [96-1540]
Rev. William F. Dopp, Communications Officer for the Diocese of San Diego
(ENS) In the midst of the staged media events, rallies and protests that swirled around the Republican National Convention in San Diego, the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. Paul offered a more reflective and decidedly Episcopal moment.
On August 11, the eve of the convention, the special Eucharist and a following forum on faith and politics drew a capacity crowd of nearly 1,000 people to the cathedral, including many convention delegates and national Republican leaders.
The idea of Dean John Chane of the cathedral, the event was intended to offer a non-political Episcopal response to the gathering of delegates, and was followed by a series of daily services for the convention's duration. Bishop Gethin Hughes of San Diego presided at the Eucharist, and Governor Stephan Merrill of New Hampshire served as a lector.
Dean Nathan D. Baxter of the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., who preached at the service and then answered questions from Chane at the forum, urged Christians attending both the Republican and the upcoming Democratic conventions to "do what is just" in their political deliberations. "That is not always clear and simple," he acknowledged, "but it is what we must do as Christians."
Christians "may embrace different ideologies, have commitments to different causes, and we may be moved by different issues," noted Baxter, who served as preacher on behalf of Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning. "To be Christian does not define us as liberal, moderate or conservative. But we must be clear about what distinguishes our faith from our politics. We must be able to distinguish the Lord who has called us from the ideals that inspire and the causes that impassion us."
Even Christians attempting to "do justice," he said, may be so committed to particular political ideals and social causes that they become "idols that demand such blind allegiance that we forget the loving nature of God and our subsequent vows to that God."
Politics exist because "God will not work out all or our problems," he said. "But God does expect and empower Christians in our politicking to remember that we are sisters and brothers."
Toleration, a word the Republican convention wrestled over in developing its platform of positions on issues, is "really only managed hostility," Baxter observed. "At its worst, toleration is resentment or disregard of persons who hold certain views. But the converting grace of Christ enables and compels us to deal with one another as persons loved by God."
Christians will not "all agree on how the great problems of our times should be addressed," Baxter said. "But how we treat one another in struggles in political arenas, including the church, says more about the meaning of our faith than the rightness of our causes."
While since the 1980s positions on political issues have tended to be polarized, he said, justice should be sought through "the greatest gift of democracy, discourse."
Divisive issues -- such as abortion, which threatened to split the convention delegates -- can undermine that search for common ground, he cautioned. "We should be seeking ways to prevent teenage pregnancy, to reduce poverty and to educate people," Baxter said. "The answers are not easy but we have to struggle to find them or we will never come to a solution."
On a more congenial topic to the Republican convention -- welfare reform -- Baxter agreed that change is needed. "Welfare as we have known it has been an indignity to recipients and a cop-out for the rest of us," he said. But, he said, "no reform will be effective if it does not demonstrate clear measures to identify, protect and respect the vulnerable. If welfare reform is only about saving tax dollars and not about enabling independence and dignity for the poor, it will prove itself a sin and not an act of justice."
Christians also must show concern in addressing immigration policies, a sensitive issue in the Southwest, he said. According to the baptismal covenant, he noted, "we promised to 'seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves' and we pledged ourselves to 'strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being.'"
Baxter concluded: "Be faithful in the political storm, my brothers and sisters. We are not alone. God is with us."