An American perspective

Douglas L Chial

As a citizen of the United States, I am aware that very often my government and the business interests of my country create injustice for many people around the world. Unfortunately, many people in my country do not understand that the ways they live their lives frequently have negative effects on the ways other people around the world are able to live theirs. The US does not have a sufficiently global ethos to allow most of its citizens to understand, eg, how what happens in the United States impacts life in the Philippines and vice versa.

The American dream is one in which a poor boy becomes rich through his own industrious hand. Though this is a simplification, it does illustrate the mentality behind a great deal of US culture. We are raised to believe there is nothing we cannot do, no place we cannot go. While this has certain advantages, it also has its limitations. Not only does it lead to a near-sighted view of global life, it tends to produce injustice within our borders as well.

Still the greatest forms of injustice in the United States are poverty, racism, sexism, and violence. What all these have in common is that they are methods of exclusion, economic, ideological, or physical. Exclusion is also the effect of the injustices experienced by children, youth, and young adults in the US. The particular forms of injustice vary greatly depending on where they live, what sort of family they come from, and their cultural heritage. However, three of the injustices facing all young Americans are the Aids crisis, exclusion within the church, and the inheritance of a dying planet.

Aids and the dying of American youth

In January of 1996 the US Center for Disease Control, which tracks the spread of Aids in the US, announced that Aids had become the number one cause of death among Americans between the ages of 25 and 45. Traditionally the number one cause of death for people in this age group has been accidents: being hit by a car, falling from a ledge, or even being shot. Today the number one cause is a disease that slowly destroys the body’s ability to ward off illness until one day you can’t fight any longer.

Among youth below the age of 25, Aids is a leading cause of death, and the rate of incidence for teenagers is among the highest. Sadly, it is not uncommon to know young people who contracted HIV the first time they had sex.

For nearly a decade the US government, and to a large extent the US churches, turned their backs on people living with Aids. The fact that Aids, in the beginning, effected primarily gay men, drug addicts, and Haitian refugees led the Reagan administration to consider it a low priority and many Christians to boast it was God’s punishment for sinful living.

Though many churches have become more pastorally responsive since the mid 1980s, the stigma associated with being HIV-positive remains strong. The same Christian attitudes which helped create that stigma continue to impede effective prevention programmes among teenagers. The power of conservative Christian movements in local school systems has limited the focus of school-based programmes. Most educators are not permitted to teach their students, most of whom are sexually active, that using a condom can save their lives. Those educators who are allowed to teach that condoms help prevent the spread of Aids are rarely allowed to make condoms available to their students. The results are obvious: teenagers and young adults are dying.

The injustice of the Aids crisis is not merely that young people are dying, but that they are dying needlessly. They are not being educated about all the ways in which they could avoid contracting the virus. Ignorance becomes the cause of death. The time has come for young people to demand full access to information concerning the prevention of Aids and free and ready access to condoms. Having lived in the shadow of Aids, fearing its contraction and watching it take its toll on family and friends, young people have learned to reject the dominant culture’s judgmental attitude towards people living with Aids. Many young people see increased international cooperation, exchange of knowledge, and sharing of funds as the only promise of discovering a cure.

The injustice of intolerance - even in the church

For all of its talk of freedom, liberty, and justice, the United States is increasingly an intolerant society. As a group of university-aged youth at Peoples Church in East Lansing, Michigan explained, ‘There is a general milieu of intolerance in our society for people who are not white, Anglo-Saxon, middle class, Protestant, heterosexuals’.¹ Not only do young people encounter the stereotypes and prejudices already prevalent in American society, they experience additional ones based on criteria as mundane as the way they dress.

I saw how this works while on a church-sponsored intergenerational work trip to the Appalachian mountains. John, an adult, was uncomfortable around a sixteen-year-old boy named David because he had pierced ears and wore loose- fitting clothes. David is a normal American teenager. He is a talented dancer and member of a local rap-music group. His way of dressing merely reflects his identity, his interests, and his talents. Although by the end of the trip John realized the error of his prejudgment and the two developed a friendship, the story shows the way young people are often treated just for being who they are.

Even in the church young people experience exclusion. They are seen more as ‘youngsters’ who are becoming adults rather than as the young adults they already are. But seeing youth as the ‘future’ instead of as partners in the present means there is very little tolerance for the gifts they might contribute to the liturgical and theological life of the church. Youth help lead worship only occasionally and are perhaps responsible for the whole of worship one Sunday per year. Churches rarely elect youth elders to their governing bodies. Most irritating is that the theological reflection of young people is often seen as naive, not informed by valid experience, nor sufficiently based on church tradition.

The truth is that young people have their own hymns to sing and teach, their unique prayers to offer, their own ideas about mission and outreach, and even their own ways of asking profound theological questions. Interested adults need only to listen to a few popular songs to have an idea of what is on their minds. The Cranberries, an Irish group, sing, ‘To all those people doin’ lines [cocaine], don’t do it, don’t do it. Inject your soul with liberty, it’s free, it’s free. To all the kids with heroine eyes, don’t do it, don’t do it... Salvation, Salvation, Salvation is real!’ Joan Osbourne, an American singer, asks, ‘What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on a bus, tryin’ to make his way home...?’ Didn’t Christ share the same conviction about salvation and didn’t his coming as fully human pose the same question about God?

Inheriting a dying planet

Among the most relevant issues facing young people in the United States is the continuing degradation of the environment. Young people understand this as an injustice perpetrated against creation as well as themselves and their future. What is most frustrating for ecologically-minded young people in the United States is that US environmental policy is controlled by politicians who are more concerned with protecting business interests than the environment. Routinely, decisions are made that sacrifice the integrity of the environment for the interests of profit. For young people this is unacceptable.

Though unable to vote before the age of eighteen, young people are not helpless. In many places it is the youth who take initiatives to protect the environment, often leading to recycling programmes in schools and churches. In East Lansing, Michigan, one teenaged girl was able to start a paper, glass, and aluminum recycling programme in the public high school.

Though they are small steps toward averting ecological disaster, youth initiatives do have a direct and positive impact on the environment. More importantly they raise awareness by alerting people to the reality of the crisis and instilling a sense that individual efforts can make a difference.

The relationship between creation, justice and youth has been important in the work of the World Alliance. In 1989 the 22nd general council meeting in Seoul, Korea issued ‘A Letter to the Children and Young People of the Planet’. Many churches in the Reformed family have worked hard to reverse the damage and to challenge the mentalities that condone it. The fact remains that the crisis is getting worse and young people, in particular, are growing impatient. Perhaps it is time for Reformed children and youth to issue a letter of their own. Would the 23rd general council consider giving voice to the concerns, demands, and ideas of young people by sponsoring a letter from the children and youth of the Reformed family to the leaders of today’s world?

A final word

Jesus Christ. He was an Israelite youth. He began his public ministry at the age of 30 and was crucified by 33. His experience as a young person informed his message, our gospel, of love. The religious leaders of his day did not listen to him. They dismissed him as young, disruptive, and as one who spoke of things that could not be.

Is today’s church listening to, and hearing, its younger members? Is the church a place where young people can talk frankly about their lives and struggles. Is the church willing to include youth as partners in the present and not merely as fixtures of the future? They are the future but also the present. They are the ones who would love those we have learned to despise; they are the ones who witness to the living Christ among us; they are the ones who, if given a chance, might turn the world upside down in order to bring it right side up.

Douglas L. Chial, a lay member of the Presbyterian Church (USA), is a graduate of McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago and the Ecumenical Institute, Bossey. He is currently working with WARC as Intern for general council Preparations.

Notes