The First Step

“Human trafficking.” The phrase conjures up kidnappings and slavery and all sorts of sordidness in far away exotic places. Outside of the sinister, sleazy types who profit from human trafficking, who wouldn’t oppose it? Truth is, we all profit from it. And it goes on all the time and in some not so very far away or exotic places. Like 82nd Street and lesser known alleys in my town. With kids not unlike my own respite foster children and classmates of my own biological teenagers.

In the movie, “Amazing Grace,” the British politician and antislavery crusader, William Wilberforce, is getting to know the woman with whom he will soon fall in love. In attempting to show how closely she has followed Wilberforce’s cause, she talks about how she has altogether given up sugar. Antislavery activists of the day, mostly staunch Christians and equally staunchly secularists, were working hard to show how such commercial treats as sugar were directly tied to the abominable slave trade. They finally won their epic battle by bringing the cause home and by learning how to understand their political opponents.

Great epic movements can be captured in ninety minutes of cinematography, as “Amazing Grace”, “End of the Spear” and “The Mission” have shown. But what is cut out and left on the editing room floor because it will only put us to sleep are the countless hours of mundane discussions, committee meetings and numbing processes that go into making the great moments of these movements screen-worthy. Rosa Parks sitting defiantly on the wrong seat of the bus is forever etched in our cultural memory. But there were a lot of far less dramatic hours leading up to that standoff that made that standoff possible.

Monday night I attended the initial meeting of a subcommittee on Human Trafficking. It was by no means a cinematic moment. Seven of us gathered in the poetic “Earth Room” of the First Covenant Church in Northeast Portland. We were volunteers summoned by the Oregon Center for Christian Values to sort out what the OCCV, an advocacy group, should be doing about human trafficking in our home state.

Brian, the committee chair, and Karen represented the board of OCCV. They, with other OCCV leaders, have been drawn into the human trafficking cause as part of the organization’s larger commitment to advocating on behalf of the poor in our state. Three others who showed up, all women, are already deeply involved in various other organizations fighting human trafficking. Juan and I filled out the group as wannabes.

I had met with Brian the day before at a local coffee shop (I drank passion iced tea with sugar). He asked me about my background – missionary in Asia, Pentecostal/Charismatic, Evangelical to the bone, thorough-going theological conservative. His eyes got big. Isn’t that some sort of an oxymoron, a Pentecostal committed to social justice?

I smiled back. He has similar roots, but as he is young can be forgiven if he is a bit out of sync with those with whom he worships. I, on the other hand, have been both committed to my community of worship and to social justice longer than he’s been alive and am now at a time in life – closing in on senior citizen discounts – when I am supposed to have life neatly sorted out. Perhaps oxymorons are not supposed to age.

Pentecostal social justice advocates are few and far between, or so it seems, as I return from twenty years overseas to adjust to the current American religious and political scene. Fact is, I’ve been waiting decades to find likeminded activists with whom I can celebrate the other half of my spiritual heritage, the heritage that was lost in the Great Divorce a century ago. [“Great Divorce” draw a blank? Stay tuned.]

As I explained to the committee, I see the cause of fighting human trafficking as a bridge between Christians who fight personal sins and suffering and Christians who fight corporate sins and systemic suffering. Girls do not get into the “world’s oldest vocation” because they “just want to have fun.” I, a cross-cultural agent, want to be a bridge builder. But it starts with nuts and bolts like extensive, boring research, endless committee meetings, and mind-numbing canvassing.

We’re still a long way from rescuing the girls down on 82nd Street. But we have, as the Chinese saying goes, made the hardest step.