A committee of the U.S. House of Representatives is holding hearings on whether to establish a federal commission to study reparations proposals for African-Americans. Naturally, at least one mainline denomination, the Episcopal Church, sent someone (Bishop Thomas Shaw of Massachusetts) to testify, not wanting to pass up an opportunity to demonstrate their current moral superiority by bewailing the manifold sins of their beknighted great-great-great-great-great-grandfathers. The really funny part came when an ECUSA bureaucrat proclaimed the enormous importance of this testimony:
Jayne Oasin, social justice officer of the Episcopal Church, said of the testimony: “The importance of the Episcopal Church being present to testify at this hearing on H.R. 40 cannot be overstated. Our church must call itself and our country to repentance. Since we have always held and still hold great power in this country, we are duly bound to follow St. Paul’s admonition in Roman’s 12 to not ‘conform’ but to ‘transform’ the country by the power of the Holy Spirit working through us. Studying the issue of reparations for slavery is a key way to begin to transform ourselves our church, and our country.” [Emphasis added.]
Paul’s exhortation in Romans 12 is not about transforming the country, but ourselves by the renewing of our minds. But I wouldn’t expect an Episcopal bureaucrat at know anything about Scripture. Nor do I have any idea how studying reparations, an proposal that has absolutely, positively no chance of ever being passed, will transform anything. But my computer almost got a Diet Pepsi bath when I read that the Episcopal Church holds great power in the United States. Power to do what? Hector the rest of the population? Proclaim the gospel of the Millennium Development Goals to empty pews? Humiliate itself in public by its complete inability to agree on even the most basic elements of its beliefs and mission? If that’s the kind of power she’s talking about, I’m with her. If she thinks that ECUSA has the power to influence public policy, she needs to talk to the AARP, or the NRA, or the Chamber of Commerce, or the National Education Association, or even the Human Rights Campaign or the ACLU, and find out what real influence looks like in the halls of government.
Posted by David Fischler 
