Religion News Service cites a recent article by Obama.
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What does build trust, because it builds relationships, is people banding together to get stuff done. Whether it’s a mosque and a synagogue joining forces to help victims of a natural disaster, or a Black community linking up with a traditionally hostile white community in Chicago to try and stop a highway from running through both neighborhoods.
Megachurches don’t start off peppering you with questions about whether you’ve accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. They don’t quiz you on the Bible. They invite you in, introduce you around, give you something to eat, tell you all about the activities and groups you can be a part of, from the young adult social club to the ballroom dance group to the men’s choir.
Megachurches are built around ‘let’s get you in here, doing stuff, meeting people and showing you how you can participate and be active’. Once that happens, then they can have a deeper conversation about faith in a way that folks aren’t spooked by.
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ON THE DOT. Trust is about USEFULNESS. Every living thing, every animal and plant and cell and mitochondrion, wants and needs to be USEFUL and WORKING. Alienated and lonely people don’t need “more democracy” or “more Jesus and him crucified”, whatever the fuck those word-salads mean. Alienated and lonely people need to WORK and feel like the work is USEFUL. We need to be needed.
The New Deal accomplished this goal and saved the country. WPA/CCC and a thousand other projects gave unemployed and alienated people REAL WORK, from planting trees to building schools to entertaining in small towns. Their work had a lasting effect. Their trees and parks and schools and history books are still here and still serving. They rebuilt the country and the community from scratch after Wall Street had bombed it down to bedrock.
Wall Street puts normal people out of work and makes them totally useless. Wall Street ruins civilization. Civilization is bad for Share Value.
Obama worked with Wall Street, so I’m not going to trust him as a fixer. Nevertheless, what he’s saying about the METHODS, not the ENDS, is correct and important advice for every religious and political movement, including those who are working FOR civilization. Nobody is working for civilization right now, but this would be the correct METHOD if anyone ever decides to do the right thing.
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