SS is for Some Suggestions of a practical nature on how Sunday's preaching becomes the dialogue in Monday's world.

21. Political preaching is too world-involving to leave it to preachers alone. It ought to include response from the congregation as well, that is, from the church's professional worldlings, the people. That might be done in the form of dialogue sermons or in some other multi-lateral form. (See Martin Marty's recent book on "people participating in preaching.") Naturally, the lay participants in the preaching are to be as prepared and as accountable in their subject areas as the ordained preacher is expected to be in his or hers.

22. Shouldn't the church engage in political preaching only when it has something unique to contribute which is not available anywhere else? I suppose so, but only so long as a distinction is observed between the gathered church and the deployed church. Within the Christians' gathering it is their unique Gospel and Sacraments which distinguishes what they say about society from what everyone else in the world says about it. But outside their gathering, out in the world, the same Christians' political talk is not at all that distinguishable from the political talk of anyone else of good will and good judgment. Out there what is distinctive about Christian politicizing is that, unlike other movements, it need not call attention to its own Christian uniqueness--unless, of course, it is invited to give a reason for its hope. Ordinarily, though, out in the secular politia the Christian movement is unique by being incognito. Few other movements can stand to be that self-effacing.

23. Political preaching, while it may well encourage parishioners to join this or that political cause, ought first of all explore what avenues those parishioners already have for improving society right within their existing callings, and ought to hold them publicly accountable for those callings, possibly with the congregation's weekly liturgy.

24. Political preaching dare not give the impression that Christians who do not visibly take a stand contra mundum [against the world] must by that token be cowards or a-political. Isn't it also a fact of Christian political life, as Petru Dumitriu has observed, that "whoever loves the world as it is is already changing the world?" Organized public activism is not every Christian's charism or cup of tea. But being political, somehow, is.

25. Political preaching is best when those who disagree (say, on the policy of nuclear deterrence [editor: or on addressing terrorism or approaching gay and lesbian concerns]), and disagree vocally, still feel at home with one another in the same congregation. Once they are gone, whether hawks or doves, criticizing their position becomes inappropriate. For that would mean talking behind their backs. One thing the church is not is a cozy fellowship of the like-minded, just the fellowship of the Christ-minded.

26. Political preaching will encounter political differences, perhaps encourage them. As John Courtney Murray remarked, "An honest difference of opinion is a rare achievement." Also, it is an achievement which preaching might well promote, rather than take every apparent political difference in the congregation at face value and evade it. In the end, Christians who differ honestly often feel closer than those who don't and, in the process, they acquire together that rare charism, a mutual sense of humor.

27. Political preaching must recognize what Liberation Theology is trying to teach us: the Christian gospel simply does show a "preferential option for the poor." True, there may be more than one kind of poverty. There is the poverty of not having. There is also the poverty of having but not owning, owing for what you have, being in debt. In either case poverty, however spiritual it may also be, is always also economic. Political preaching has a nose for poverty in whatever form.

28. Political preaching takes sides with the poor of whatever variety, even though the poor may have no realistic chance of ever gaining their rightful power, now or in the future. To shield itself against that bitter truth, political preaching may be tempted to ennoble suffering for its own sake and then, ironically, scorn the sufferers themselves. The preachers of Christ need no such cruel illusion. What Christ identified with was the poor, not their poverty. Their poverty he detested.

29. Political preaching calls special attention in so many words to the revolutionary new order which is being enacted in the liturgy itself, for example, in the mutual absolution which we all pronounce in the exchange of Peace and, climactically, in the Holy Communion. These transactions are in fact the revolutionizing of the economic order here and now. Nowhere else in the economy is there such an exchange of goods and services with utterly no thought of price or deservedness.

30. Political preaching, mindful of how our Lord bids us lose ourselves for his sake and the Gospel's, and bids the church lose itself in the world for the Kingdom, might occasionally conclude the Sunday service by saying, not "Go in peace, serve the Lord" but simply, "Get lost."

robert w bertram