{"id":8375,"date":"2014-09-22T10:01:10","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T17:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/?p=8375"},"modified":"2015-09-15T11:22:17","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T18:22:17","slug":"musings-faith-made-tangible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/musings-faith-made-tangible\/","title":{"rendered":"Musings: Faith Made Tangible"},"content":{"rendered":"

Faith Made Tangible<\/strong>
\nBy Nico Romeijn-Stout<\/em><\/p>\n

\"INSIGHTS_Musings_nico\"<\/a>In 1990 the United States Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, an important step forward in civil rights laws in this country. And that step forward was written by a bipartisan group of folks who met each week at 100 Maryland Ave., Washington D.C., also known as the Methodist Building.<\/p>\n

I had the extraordinary opportunity this summer to intern with the General Board of Church and Society, working in the Methodist Building. I would walk into the lobby each morning and walk by the quotes from Micah 6:8 \u201cand what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?\u201d and Isaiah 2:4 \u201cthey shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks.\u201d En route to my desk with a view of the Supreme Court, I\u2019d take a turn by the elevator to head up the stairs, passing giant copies of the 1908 Methodist Episcopal Church\u2019s Social Creed and our current Social Creed (\u00b6166 for those keeping track at home).<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re anything like me, you\u2019ll need a moment to think about all that. Or grab your Bible and Book of Discipline.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We Methodists stand rooted in a long tradition of public witness to issues of social concern. It\u2019s integral to our history and our theology \u2013 the Methodist movement was founded on beliefs that loving our neighbors means more than just caring for their souls. Our belief in the need for a public witness to the needs of society is why I walked through a lobby adorned with prophetic quotes each morning this summer; it\u2019s why in 1924 Methodists built a building on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot about \u201cwe,\u201d and I really do hope you\u2019ll take some time to read up on it all. But what about you? If Methodism is to continue as a movement, and to continue to publicly witness to the greatest needs of society, then you, and I, and that person who sits on the other end of the pew\/row on Sundays needs to continue carrying the tradition started by those trouble-making college students back at Oxford in the 1720s. And while John and Charles Wesley may have been more interested in asking you about your rules for holy living, I\u2019ve got a slightly different question for you:
\n<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your social creed?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t have one? That\u2019s ok, I didn\u2019t either. But then I challenged a congregation one Sunday to each write their own. And so I wrote mine, and now you, yes you, can write your own. Then share what you came up with: talk to someone about it, post it on Facebook, preach a sermon, or better yet, share it by living it.<\/p>\n

Make your faith tangible this fall. <\/p>\n

\n

Nico Romeijn-Stout is a student at the Boston School of Theology
and is a member of The Pacific Northwest Conference.<\/p>\n

This article will be featured in Channels<\/a> 76, October 2014.<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Faith Made Tangible By Nico Romeijn-Stout In 1990 the United States Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, an important step forward in civil rights laws in this country. And that step forward was written by a bipartisan group of folks who met each week at 100 Maryland Ave., Washington D.C., also known as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":8377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[111,6,476,112],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8375","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-channels","8":"category-conversation","9":"category-seminary","10":"category-ministries-with-young-people"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/INSIGHTS_Musings.jpg?fit=700%2C357&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-2b5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8375"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8385,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8375\/revisions\/8385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}