By Caroline LeGrand
In early March, a small delegation from CBF traveled to Washington, D.C. to learn how to put our faith into action and advocate for others. During the week, I kept thinking about power: who has it, who wants it, why they want it, their plans for it or how to obtain it.
I noticed it most on Capitol Hill one weekday afternoon, as bustling crowds walked up and down, left and right—whether to simply get a glimpse of the symbol of power, snap their picture with it or to get their foot in the door of someone more powerful than them. And there were those who walked to take their place in the highest seats of power.
I felt my lack of power as a new generation of lofty professionals walked past me toward their destinations in their fashion sneakers paired with blazers and slacks. I struggled up the hill, regretting my choice of heels and wondering if I was going to make it.
They knew the game. I did not. They might get through a door into a “room where it happens.” I would get 15 minutes in the hallway with a 28-year-old executive assistant. Old power met new power in a generational conglomerate designed to keep the tradition going. Father met son and passed the torch. The scene was like a Ferris wheel endlessly turning, but not one anyone can get on. How do you hitch a permanent ride on the wheel of power? That’s Washington’s secret.
But it’s not a secret. While the landscape of Washington continues to diversify into 2023, it remains mostly white, male, upper-middle class and Protestant. According to the Pew Center of Research, as of January 9, 2023, 75 percent of Congress is white, even though only 59 percent of the U.S. population is white. Similarly, women only make up 28 percent of this 118th Congress, even though women have had presence in Congress since 1916.
Power of any kind can never be taken lightly, and I must turn my own question onto myself: How am I using the power I have? One element of the many privileges I’m afforded is the choice to walk away from issues of social and economic inequality that don’t concern me. When the work of racial or other kinds of justice gets “too hard” or too exhausting, I can tune it out and pretend like it’s not happening, which I’ve done more often than I can explain away. But, as a colleague painfully reminded me that week, that is not the Christian’s calling. The path that Jesus trod was not one of avoidance or escapism. It was one of advocating for individuals and groups of people whom society did not allow to stand in his place and speak for themselves.
Change will be slow on Capitol Hill. But there is a different kind of power on the ground—the power of the urgent, of the intimate, of the face-to-face—a Jesus kind of power. Jesus did not effect change from the top down, but from the ground up. His was a grassroots power. He spent his days meeting with and listening to the needs of the most underrepresented people in society, often those of differing religions, races and social class, as well as those whom society deemed unclean and impaired. He had little interest in bureaucracy. While he could see the bigger picture—the societal ills that caused poverty and violence—he addressed these issues by encountering the everyday people that make society turn—the tax collector whose heart he changed; the 5,000 hungry people whom he fed with little means; the people on the margins he brought to the foreground by healing their ills or simply befriending them when no one else would; his friends whom he taught daily through his words and actions about love, compassion and justice; through the small groups of people around him whom he inspired and mobilized to join his cause.
I felt powerless on Capitol Hill. Nobody knew my name, and nobody really cared. But they know my name at my church. They know my name at work. They know my name at the local coffee shop. They know my name in the choirs in which I sing. Many of them listen when I speak. They tune in to the things I write. They pay attention to my actions. That’s power.
Think about the places in your own community where they know your name and value your voice. Those are the places, amongst your own people, to strengthen relationships and build trust, partnerships and alliances so that together you can organize and assemble around common causes that are affecting your community and its people. This is the power of the personal and immediate—of seeing struggle in your own backyard and being led by empathy and conviction to advocate for change at the local level. Often the most immediate and visible change happens through local and state governments and nongovernmental organizations. And change at the local level creates momentum for change on a larger scale.
This is an opportunity to involve people on the margins of your community in the political process so that Washington will continue to look more like the American populace. Mobilize a group of people—diverse people. Go together to visit the offices of your local and state officials, or even the district office for your U.S. representative, and speak about the issues that are most affecting the people of your community. Advocacy is fruitless if we are not actively involving those for whom we are advocating in the process. We must be in direct collaboration with the people who are struggling with the issues for which we are fighting. Consider how Jesus befriended those others would not go near, how he went into areas considered “off-limits” to Jews and how he crossed social boundaries. When you meet with government officials, don’t shy away from sharing with them how your faith in Jesus informs your advocacy[2] .
In today’s firestorm political and social climate, it’s easy to feel powerless. When we are bombarded daily with strangers arguing to no avail on social media and with politicians who say and do inconceivable, inhumane things, it’s easy to resign ourselves to believing that there is no point to our efforts, and to check out entirely.
I’m guilty of this. If I can drown out the noise and go about my day, it’s almost as though none of it is happening. Doing that keeps me protected and leaves others defenseless. I imagine that Jesus has watched me cower safely in the corner for years while his people suffer, and he is begging me to come out and look alive, to see the people and be with them, to fight with them. This engagement in the world that Jesus is calling for is not doomscrolling through Twitter and Facebook and picking fights to make myself feel better. He is calling me to think strategically, plan collaboratively and act accordingly with empathy, consistency and conviction.
For Christians who walk through the world with an abundance of power that we didn’t ask for, the call to follow the footsteps of Jesus is pressing, and the responsibility to advocate for the oppressed and suffering is urgent. Our power can be wielded for justice like swords are forged into plowshares.