This morning plunged me headlong into thoughts about justice, persecution, pacifism, loving one's enemy, and the like.

A friend's Facebook today: "I'm taking a stand for my faith - Obama has gone too far and must be stopped!" She proceeded to link me to this excerpt from the economic stimulus package that apparently limits the ways in which schools receiving stimulus funds can use them. Educational institutions cannot use federal monies for the

modernization, renovation, or repair of facilities — (i) used for sectarian instruction, religious worship, or a school or department of divinity; or (ii) in which a substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission

This article calls Obama an "enemy of Christian liberty" because of this clause in the bill. An enemy.

Even if one perceives Obama to be his enemy (I don't), what was it that Jesus asked his followers to do about their enemies? I seem to recall the word "love." Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. (And by the way, elsewhere Jesus encourages us to pray in humility and compassion, not out of self-righteousness and with a desire to see others fail so we are lifted up.) Turn the other cheek. A non-violent, non-confrontational approach to dealing with persecution. And then, of course, there's Romans 13:1-7.

My Facebook friend is worried that her church will be forced out of it's meeting space, a public school cafeteria that it rents on the weekend. My faith community also meets in a school's cafeteria on the weekends. I think it's a bit rash to conclude that schools that rent out their cafeteria on Sunday mornings wouldn't be able to use stimulus money to renovate that cafeteria (or auditorium, or classroom, etc.) The clause is intended to prevent federal funds from going to the renovation and construction of places of worship. Which is, I believe, as it should be. Our government shouldn't be building sanctuaries, cathedrals, temples, and the like - even if they're built as part of a school of divinity, etc.

Nevertheless, even if this clause does mean that schools across the country have to evict their religious weekend tenants in order to receive stimulus money (again, a pretty far-out notion since the churches are paying the school to rent the space to begin with), the type of vehement response that seems to come so naturally to conservatives is so far off-base and out of line with the way of Jesus that, once again, I feel the church misses the mark and ceases to represent God's love, compassion, humility, and long-suffering to a world that is simply not moved by picket lines and angry signs. If we can't meet in schools, meet somewhere else. Meet in our homes if we must. That's more akin to the early church than anything else anyway. Life will go on, the church will go on, we will continue to worship together.

Can you imagine what it would look like if the church in America responded universally with "Ok, we get it. We see why federal money shouldn't be used to construct or maintain places of worship, and we will gladly and voluntarily find other places to worship so that our nation's schools can accept funding that will assist them in providing better campuses in which to educate our children." Can you imagine the positive PR associated with that kind of response? And doesn't that feel like Jesus more than picket lines and angry epithets?

-M