One thing Bridge People are about is destroying stereotypes.
Who will deign to work with whom? These paradoxes of peacemaking are in part
what draw me to people who do bridge work, and I’m not referring to dental
labs.
In one of the US’s most secular cities, Portland, the openly
gay mayor, Sam Adams was desperate to meet the needs of the city’s poor and its
schools. Along came Kevin Palau, vice president of the Luis Palau Association,
known worldwide for its evangelism festivals. Palau offered to organize
volunteers from evangelical, mainstream Protestant, and Catholic churches to
mentor at-risk youth and provide food, clothing and shelter to the needy of
Portland.
Evangelicals have been addressing these kinds of needs for a
long time, but what is new here is the openness exhibited by both Palau, who is
vocally against gay marriage and abortion, and Adams, who is gay, to overlooking
their differences in order to serve their community.
In my previous post, I wrote about resistance to the idea of
bridging social, political and cultural gaps. As much as we, and I include
myself of course, give lip service to wanting to bring peace on earth, we often
seem to revel in polarization. It was an evangelical friend who called my
attention to the Adams-Palau collaboration, and I confess that I wasn’t sure I
wanted to give it coverage. After all, so many in the world, including me, have
been hurt by evangelicals’ actions. But here is something to encourage, to say
we can work together, even when we don’t share core beliefs and methods. We do
share our humanness. Thanks to that friend for telling me about the bridge in
Portland.
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