Safe Place Network
In my book Moral Values: What I Learned Growing Up in Church, I call on people in the churches to create a network of "safe places" where people can freely talk and tell their stories — and where people will experience the compassion, grace, and generosity Jesus taught and lived. I am convinced that this Safe Place Network needs to move beyond the churches.
Many people in our nation, and throughout the world, no longer feel safe. In the United States an increasingly powerful loose-knit group of religious and political conservative leaders want to abolish separation of church and state and create new laws and policies which would enforce their value-system. The more religiously passionate of those leaders speak openly of how this nation should be governed under the rule of God’s law (their version, of course). [See Theocracy Watch for more details.]
I am a Christian by faith and life-commitment, but my understanding of the Scriptures does not agree with their system of values and certainly not with their political persuasion. They support the neo-conservative principle that the richest and most powerful should rule the world, and I find that abhorrent to the teachings of Jesus. But current U.S. foreign policy and domestic laws and policies now being followed or proposed would turn this country into that kind of a nation. And I believe that is contrary to God’s desire.
