I was saddened to learn of the sudden passing of The Rev. Bob Edgar.  Kathy Gilbert, writing for The United Methodist Church,stated:

The Rev. Bob Edgar, a United Methodist pastor and a “tireless defender of the poor and an advocate for justice,” died unexpectedly April 23 of a heart attack at his home in the Washington area. He was 69.

Edgar, who was top executive of Common Cause, is the former top executive of the National Council of Churches and a former six-term member of Congress from Pennsylvania. He was president of United Methodist-related Claremont (Calif.) School of Theology from 1990 to 2000.

A defender of the poor and an advocate for justice.  In spite of the fact that these words are an excellent summary of how Jesus began his public ministry (Luke 4:18-19), the Church’s prophetic voice is often mute in the face of poverty and injustice.

I only had the opportunity to meet Bob Edgar on a couple of occasions.  Here is a review of Bob’s book Middle Church: Reclaiming the Moral Values of the Faithful Majority from the Religious Right.  His voice and witness will be missed.

This book review was written on the anniversary of the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. April 4, 1968.

Rarely, I suppose, does one have the opportunity to sit down with the author of a book and to discuss it at length before writing a review. However, that was my distinct pleasure late last year when, with the Reverend Bob Edgar, I discussed his newly released book Middle Church: Reclaiming the Moral Values of the Faithful Majority from the Religious Right. As General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ and a former six-term member of Congress, Edgar provides keen insight to many of the issues dividing our society. Edgar is also, perhaps, one of the few people who had the opportunity to listen to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who influenced his life and a decade later, as a member of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, meet James Earl Ray, the man who ended King’s life.

After signing my copy with the message “Always remember: `We are the leaders we have been waiting for’…” our conversation began. Edgar, quoting President John F. Kennedy, on being liberal writes, “If by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people–their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties… If that is what they mean by a `liberal’, then I’m proud to say I’m a liberal.’ I own that definition!”

Edgar passionately addresses issues such as the environment and global warming, war and peace, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, “Reconciling Abraham’s Children: Toward Peace in the Middle-East”, as well as global and domestic poverty. On Global warming Edgar writes, “This issue will rise or fall–and the earth with it–based on the action or apathy of the mainstream”. In a thought-provoking chapter, whimsically entitled What Part of “Blessed are the Peacemakers” Don’t they Understand, Edgar writes “…when the lies about the Iraq invasion were exposed as fiction, the White House claimed to have fought to free the people of Iraq from the horrific suffering they endured. Does a black child in Sudan or Rwanda deserve any less? There is no avoiding the uncomfortable truth that our brothers and sisters in Africa seem to have been abandoned because their skin is black and they do not have any resources we want. If Rwanda or Sudan sat atop an oil field, it is difficult for me to imagine we would not have found a pretense to save them”. Similarly, Edgar is brilliant in shining a bright light on the hypocrisy of the religious right just as he does in exposing the double standards that are too often part of US foreign policy.

Edgar is dead-on-center in the need to challenge what he calls “Middle Church, Middle Synagogue, Middle Mosque”–the many millions of faithful people who do not always connect their spiritual values with political issues and whose voices are, as a result, often drowned out by the far religious right. Yet, the influence of the far religious right does not explain, for example, why the majority of Americans including most democrats in Congress supported the war in Iraq. One wonders, however, if the same world that rejected the messages of individuals such as Dr. King, Ghandi, Robert and John Kennedy, and, yes, Jesus, is any more ready today to hear the prophetic words of Middle Church. Pray and lead the way!