The Church's Conscience: MFSA's Witness for a Just Democracy
By Connor Prusha, MFSA Organizing Associate
I was visiting a new church a while ago when a bulletin insert caught my eye. It announced the church's food pantry expansion, written with genuine compassion about serving families in crisis. Beautiful words about feeding the hungry and loving our neighbors. I held that bulletin while the congregation prayed for those struggling to make ends meet.
Just days before, Congress had failed to pass a continuing resolution, sending the country into a government shutdown. It didn't take long for this crisis to be weaponized. SNAP benefit cuts that would push hundreds of thousands of families toward hunger were implemented, and a renewal of a policy that would maintain low healthcare premiums for low-income Americans was nowhere to be seen. Many of those served by this food pantry would be the people directly impacted by these decisions. They were the same neighbors we were praying for.
The compassion and kindness were evident, but something was troubling me. This congregation was preparing to offer this outpouring of charity but still remained silent about the systems creating the crisis. My hands tightened around that bulletin. Something wasn't adding up. How could we claim to follow Jesus while refusing to challenge the policies that manufacture poverty, hunger, and oppression? How could we feed people on Sunday yet ignore the legislators taking food from their tables on Monday?
Harry F. Ward in 1963 | Photo: Courtesy photo, UMC.org (Enhanced)
MFSA itself was born from an expression of grief transformed into Gospel-rooted action. In December 1907, Methodist leaders gathered in Washington because they could no longer remain silent about the suffering of working people around the country. Among them was Harry F. Ward, a Chicago pastor and later co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who had conducted funerals for packinghouse workers killed in factory accidents.¹ He knew their names. He knew their families. He knew that his faith demanded him to do more than pray at gravesides. It demanded a response that would prevent the next funeral. The Social Creed he drafted, as such, was an act of pastoral care extended to an entire nation.
When Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan, he showed us that loving our neighbors crosses boundaries, challenges systems, and requires that we stop walking past the suffering we see. Justice, MFSA has always proclaimed, is the love of God made tangible in public life.
During the civil rights movement, MFSA answered with that same theological clarity. In 1939, when Methodist churches reunited under a racially segregated jurisdictional system, MFSA opposed it with everything we had. Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of Bethune-Cookman College and a four-time delegate to the General Conference, joined the MFSA Executive Committee, vigorously advocating for the elimination of the segregated Central Jurisdiction. In 1945, MFSA required all its chapters to organize regionally, completely disregarding jurisdictional separations. We integrated the Federation while the broader church remained divided. We did this because we knew segregation was a deep manifestation of systemic sin. We believed the good news proclaimed in Galatians that “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
That same prophetic courage and willingness to be out of step with the institution for the sake of the Gospel has also shaped MFSA's peace witness for peace. Peace is the vocation of all who follow the Prince of Peace. In 1963, Harry F. Ward, at ninety years old, signed an open letter to President Kennedy calling for the removal of American forces from Vietnam. Decades later, MFSA Executive Director Kathryn Johnson was arrested during an interfaith witness at the White House opposing the Iraq War. Nearly 4,000 Christians joined the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq in 2007, processing from the National Cathedral to the White House. These bodies bearing witness to the justice of the Kin-dom of God engaged in a manifested liturgy and tangible act of discipleship. Jesus taught that peacemakers are blessed, that they shall be called children of God. MFSA took, and continues to take, that teaching seriously enough to risk our reputation and institutional standing.
MFSA brought that same persistence to another struggle. We advocated for LGBTQIA+ persons when the denomination declared their very existence "incompatible with Christian teaching." We did this because we believed that God created each person with a sacred worth that could not be defined or quantified. God's love knows no exceptions. In May 2024, that long faithfulness bore fruit. The General Conference voted to eliminate the 52-year-old discriminatory language. MFSA members and our advocacy partners wept. We had lived to see the church finally repent of its sin, knowing that the work of reconciliation was just beginning.
Today, we face a situation that calls us to embrace the same moral courage that has defined our movement throughout its existence. Religious language is being weaponized to restrict voting rights, dismantle protections for workers, separate families seeking refuge, and legislate transgender people out of public life. Proposals like Project 2025 explicitly call for a system of government based on "biblical principles" while simultaneously seeking to eliminate civil rights protections and gut our social safety nets. This is a distortion of Christian life and belief. This is faith twisted to serve power instead of people. Jesus warned us about false prophets who come in sheep's clothing. He taught us to recognize them by their fruits. When the fruit of someone's theology is hunger, exclusion, and suffering, we know it does not come from the God of liberation.
Scripture tells us exactly where God stands. In the oft-quoted words of Matthew 25, Jesus identifies himself with the hungry, the stranger, the sick, and the imprisoned: "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." When religious rhetoric harms those Jesus called "the least of these," we are witnessing a betrayal of the gospel. We know that an authentic faith prompts us to stand boldly with the oppressed. We have stood with workers on picket lines, with civil rights marchers facing firehoses, with LGBTQIA+ siblings demanding recognition of their sacred worth. We do this because our Wesleyan theology teaches that love of God and love of neighbor are inseparable, and that love calls us to action in both public and private ways.
I no longer have that bulletin insert, but what it represents often lingers in my mind. It’s a reminder that expressions of Christian charity without pursuing justice risk leading us toward an incomplete discipleship. Food pantries matter and meet critical needs that save lives. But if we stop there, if we feed people while remaining silent about the policies that starve them, we are offering comfort without courage. We are practicing only half of the gospel.
Our faith cannot remain private while injustice reigns and continues to do harm in public. When voting becomes harder for Black and brown communities, when refugees are denied asylum, when workers lose the right to organize, when transgender people are erased from public life, we must recognize these as true spiritual crises that demand a proper spiritual and prophetic response.
This is what it means to be the church's conscience. Not standing apart in judgment, but standing alongside those who suffer, insisting that our prayers must shape our advocacy. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that we are all members of one body, and when one part suffers, every part suffers with it. This is the truth MFSA seeks to live out every single day. We love our neighbors through our words and actions. We speak truth to power. We defend the dignity of every person. We challenge the systems that produce suffering, and we build sacred communities that embody the agape love of God. Together, we practice social holiness. Together, we refuse to let fear or apathy define what being a follower of Christ means.
¹ Ward's legacy is not without complication. In 1928, he published an article advocating for eugenics, a position he never publicly recanted. In 2016, the General Conference of The United Methodist Church adopted Resolution #3184, formally condemning eugenics and repenting for past support of the movement by church leaders, including Ward. MFSA honors Ward's contributions to social justice while acknowledging this deeply troubling aspect of his legacy. For more information, see: umc.org/en/content/unsung-heroes-of-methodism-harry-f-ward
Connor Prusha (he/him/his) serves as an Organizing Associate for the Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA). He is a nonprofit professional with 4+ years of experience in fundraising, program administration, grantmaking, communications, and community organizing. Connor also serves as Lead, Philanthropy at United Methodist Communications. He is a Certified Candidate for Ordained Ministry in the East Ohio Conference and is a Master of Divinity student at Drew Theological School. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies from Baldwin Wallace University and a Master of Public Administration from Bowling Green State University (OH). Connor is deeply passionate about bringing people together and creating safe spaces that promote a holistic approach to Christ-centered justice and community healing.