WELCOME & A WORD ON WHY TEC INVESTS IN GUN COMPANIES

Friends, old and new, welcome to my new blog. I wanted to step out of my old blog that led off with the word "Bishop" and write without the weight of so much (apparent) authority. I'll check in here not so much with any original ideas -- I don't have many of those -- as to share what I am learning in retired life. I hope to do some serious reading of Augustine and Shakespeare, looking for how they might inform each other's perspective. Along with that, I expect to explore the theology of how they church engages the world and the tension between the inner and outer lives of faith. 

For example, today's burning issue in social media is The Episcopal Church's decision to invest in gun manufacturing companies in order to engage in shareholder activism to engage the manufacturers in working to reduce gun violence. 

Not surprisingly, some are outraged, railing at the Church for beings "stupid." But the Church is acting as directed by resolutions of the General Convention. I was on the committee that processed those resolutions. We recommended them after hearing extensive testimony on the efficacy of shareholder activism specifically in the context of gun violence. On the basis of what we learned both the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies overwhelmingly agreed to take this course. 

Shareholder activism has already persuaded Dick's Sporting Goods to stop selling guns at all. It has persuaded Smith & Wesson's mother company to launch a major study of how gun violence can be reduced. 

Our boycotting gun companies will not close them. It will not shrink them. It will only preserve our moral distance. We are faced with the option of keeping our hands clean like the Essenes, who lived apart from Romanized Jewish society,  or to be like Jesus eating with the publicans and sinners. The first way helps us feel morally superior to the world. The second saves lives. 

As I engage Augustine and Shakespeare, I see our call as to be Christians in the world, getting our hands dirty for the sake of the Kingdom. It's our way of living into the Incarnation. The adage in broad based community organizing goes, If you're not at the table, you're on the menu. In the way of Jesus, Paul, Augustine, and so many of the worldly saints, I hope we will always be at the table.