This week, Common Dreams reported on the federal budget outline approved with a party-line vote in the House of Representatives, noting:
Republican hardliners are also reportedly pursuing changes that could force states to end their Medicaid expansions, which would strip coverage from millions and potentially kill tens of thousands of people per year.
In its current form, the Republican reconciliation bill would inflict the largest cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in U.S. history, slashing or eliminating benefits for millions by implementing strict work requirements and forcing many Medicaid recipients to pay more for coverage, among other changes — all while giving major tax breaks to the wealthy.
Bill Leonard
The legislation’s Medicaid work requirements, which policy experts have condemned as cruel and ineffective, were slated to begin in 2029, but GOP hardliners want them to start immediately.
A culture of cruelty
There’s a lot of cruelty going around right now in the land of the free and the home of Medicaid cutbacks. The rule of law is under assault; habeas corpus is under threat; due process in the courts seems literally out the judicial window; and schools are posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms, while too many of our leaders act as if that Decalogue is optional, at least for them.
As if that were not enough, now nonprofits, churches included, are being threatened. On May 15, the National Council of Nonprofits released a report calling attention to the tax bill drafted by the House Ways and Means Committee for the pending budget. It reports on one segment of that bill:
If enacted, Section 112209 would allow the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury to unilaterally revoke nonprofit status from “terrorist supporting organizations,” without requiring the secretary to share full evidence or ensure due process. While nonprofit organizations unequivocally oppose terrorism in all forms, any such enforcement action must still be grounded in transparency, evidence, and the rule of law. This authority could enable any administration of any political party to target charitable organizations based on ideological grounds. Nonprofit organizations wrongfully designated would be irreparably harmed, losing the trust of donors and the communities they serve.
Some 200 nonprofits joined in issuing a statement declaring:
Instead of supporting those who serve our neighbors, this bill would hand any president’s administration the power to cast them as potential enemies of the state if they happen to disagree with their political agenda. This could deal a local nonprofit a potentially fatal blow with no guarantee of due process for the accused nonprofit. Whether it’s an organization providing health care in a disaster, a small rural church, or a local food bank, no organization is safe if this becomes law.
Currently, churches can lose their 501(c)(3) IRS status if they carry out undue political campaigning, seek to dictate how members are to vote or violate certain civil rights laws, but there is a clear process that can be followed for challenging such actions. The proposed tax law sets out no such process.
“Such cruelty demands voices and actions of dissent.”
Many churches and other religious organizations are able to exist because of nonprofit status and the tax benefits offered to donors. Without those benefits, their future surely would be endangered. Critics of the new law warn the loss of nonprofit status as now written could leave institutions to the whims of government officials.
For many Americans, such cruelty demands voices and actions of dissent. As Yale’s William Barber, one of the great dissenters for justice, told an April rally in Washington, D.C.: “We must reclaim our government. We must pledge ourselves to the work of a Third Reconstruction of America. We must lift every voice and sing together. We must lead with love, and we must repent of the apathy that has too often slipped in. We cannot bow.”
Reaffirming our baptism
Yet courage and dissent take their toll, compelling the search for sustaining resources; a quest for, dare we say it, spiritual anchors in a time of cruelty.
At such a time as this, we Christians can find strength in a reaffirmation of our baptism, reaffirming our commitment to Christ and his gospel, whatever outward form of baptism we received.
In the book Practicing Resurrection, the late Presbyterian pastor and writer Eugene Peterson said it like this:
Baptism marks a radically new way to understand ourselves and one another: not by race, not by language, not by parents and family, not by politics, not by intelligence, not by gender, not by behavior. All of these many ways of accounting for ourselves are significant, but none is definitive. Holy baptism defines US as holy. … Baptism is definitive.
Eugene Peterson
Then Peterson added: “We maintain our baptismal identity in the practice of resurrection, Jesus’ resurrection.”
Peterson audaciously insists:
Jesus’ resurrection is the convincing proclamation in the country of Palestine and in recorded first-century Roman history that everything revealed in our Scriptures can be lived by flesh-and-blood men and women like us. Not just assented to as true, not just admired as art, not just acted out as in a dramatic performance, but lived in the ordinary conditions of home and workplace in all kinds of weather — just as Jesus, baptized by John in the Jordan River, did. We are able to spend our lives doing this because we are saints, raised from the dead to a resurrection life.
Reaffirming our baptism can be a powerful spiritual resource, especially in times when cruelty is beyond measure and divisions are deep. Some Christian traditions do this consistently, urging participants to reflect on the continuing commitment required at baptism and beyond.
As those buried and resurrected with Christ in baptism, we are bound by his teachings, starting with his own confession in the synagogue at Nazareth:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
And, with Pentecost fast approaching, let us cultivate and celebrate the presence of the Holy Spirit, who strengthens us to confront the cruelty of our times with a determination to live out the gospel in ways that will indeed “set free those who are oppressed.”
British Methodists offer a liturgy for a “Reaffirmation of Baptismal Faith” that includes the following prayers:
Gracious God, grant that we your servants may grow into the fulness of the stature of Christ. Equip us with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, fill us with all faith in believing that we may increase in love for your people and in the service of your kingdom of justice and peace.
Generous God, touch us again with the fire of your Spirit and renew in us all the grace of our baptism; that we may profess the one true faith and live in love and unity with all who are baptized into Christ.
Let us reclaim our baptism — and our conscience. World without end, amen.
Bill Leonard is founding dean and the James and Marilyn Dunn professor of Baptist studies and church history emeritus at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, N.C. He is the author or editor of 25 books. A native Texan, he lives in Winston-Salem with his wife, Candyce, and their daughter, Stephanie.