It was in February 2001 that I first encountered the realities of a tent city. At the church I pastored, we informed the neighborhood that we would host a six-week encampment of homeless folks seeking shelter (literally) from the wet winter storms. Six weeks. That was all. Just six weeks of a bunch of people sleeping in tents.
The neighborhood went ballistic. Or, more factually, a minority of very afraid fellow citizens let loose their lesser selves to howl and scream at the insensitivity of the church. A very loud minority were fearful for the safety of their children, terrified that their property values would fall, panicked that public health standards would diminish.
On Sunday, several neighbors picketed the church, nasty letters were written and phone calls threatening to shoot me with a shotgun were made. But the six-week encampment came and went without incident, and the next year, the tent city returned without community care. Fear can make us crazy.
Now, almost 15 years later, instead of being a pastor in a particular church, I’m a superintendent of 54 churches spread throughout Seattle and King County. And no matter how often tent cities or indoor shelters or soup kitchens spring forth from churches, fear still causes a few to become their lesser self. Despite a 15-year clean track record that even the police can verify, neighborhoods still go a little bit crazy whenever a church provides sanctuary for those who embody the meaning of being an economic refugee of capitalism.
I’m tempted to ask, “What’s wrong with us?” Are Americans really so spineless and morally challenged that we cannot see that how we treat the other defines who we ourselves become? Are we good liberals of Seattle so lost in our own selfie-induced narcissism that we cannot see that the segregated wealth of a few requires redistribution so that a commonwealth might prosper the many? Have we become so cynical that we’ve given up caring for the whole? Or, in other words, have we become as nihilistic as a Republican presidential candidate?
I’m tempted to get stuck in these questions, but then I’m reminded that it is always merely a fearful minority with loud mouths and abrasive character that bully good people into compliance. The other side of tent city stories is that once moved-in, things calm down. Once the homeless actually move in, they encounter not a picket line but good people, shyly at first, who come by with food, clothing and the holiness of asking, “What can I do to help?” Let us never forget there are always more of us who are not afraid than there are of those who want to make us afraid.