[Magdalen] Small prayer requested

[Scott Knitter]

Grace, may God guide you as you minister to parishioners in your
response to them. I like your approach and attitude about it!

I confess I've been watching a couple of Facebook friends who are
Trump supporters; I've been sort of waiting for them to say something
that will make me unfriend them, but perhaps they're showing more
restraint that I would. But one has been complaining about her RC
parish, where the priest this past Sunday was apparently "intensely
political." She's thinking about leaving the parish. I looked up their
bulletin and saw that their bishop has issued a statement of
reassurance about the diocese's support for refugees and our Christian
responsibility to welcome them. I didn't hear the "political" sermon
but wonder whether my friend heard a mention or explication of that
teaching and took it as anti-Trump and therefore political and
evidence that the clergy at her parish have "lost focus."

I don't envy the task you preachers have of speaking truth about
present-day matters without crossing that hard-to-see line into "being
political" or getting into IRS trouble by seeming to preach one side.
The thing is, Biblical, faithful preaching would be against so much
that is going on now. There's a right and a wrong, and to pretend it's
just a swing of the pendulum or some sort of normal situation would be
a failure.

On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 9:32 PM, Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Tomorrow morning I've been asked to meet with the Senior Warden and one or two parishioners of the church where another priest are doing long-term supply--we're alternating months.
> It seems that a couple of parishioners didn't like my last two sermons on the last two Sundays in January. One woman, on her way out the door on one Sunday, said the pulpit wasn't the place to express my political views. I replied that I hadn't, but she disagreed. Then a man came out and berated me for not speaking up for the unborn! I had no idea where that came from.
> OTOH, several people thanked me for the sermon, and one woman came into the office to tell me she really appreciated it.
> So there were mixed opinions, which was not a bad thing, IMO. (Of course, my favorite response is for someone to say, "You really gave me something to think about.")
> I'm always careful not to talk politics, or parties, nor to tell people how they should think or vote. But I believe it is part of our call as Christians to speak out when we see injustice or bullying, or blatant discrimination, etc. regardless of its source. That was the essence of both sermons--one the weekend of the inauguration and the Women's Marches ( which I never mentioned--and one the weekend of the travel ban.
> I've been preaching for 27 years--with lots of emphasis on social justice and always connecting to the lectionary readings--and this is the first time I've been called into a meeting because of a sermon. So I guess I should be grateful for that! I did get a death threat once because of my involvement in racial reconciliation in the community, but that came from outside the congregation, and I didn't really take it very seriously.
> The thing is, even though I supply at this church a lot and was with them for five months about 11 years ago when they were between rectors, I am still just a supply priest with no standing. I told the Senior Warden when he called me on Monday that if people were unhappy with my preaching, they certainly didn't have to have me back. He got flustered and said he certainly didn't want it to come to that. I said I knew that--I just wanted to remind him that they did have that option. I'm not actually there this month--I go back in March.
>
> Much more detail than I meant to give, but I guess I'm trying to lay everything out in preparation for tomorrow. I plan to begin the meeting with prayer and then ask what they were upset about and what they mean by "political."  At some point I will acknowledge whatever they've told me, and then I'll say I have a dilemma, because I've also gotten just the opposite feedback. So Which do I listen to? My task is to preach the Gospel in whatever way I'm being called to do it, knowing that some will probably respond positively and some negatively, and the majority will not share their opinion at all.
>



-- 
Scott R. Knitter
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA