Due to our common interest in overcoming poverty, I knew Mike Gerson before he became George Bush's speechwriter. I recently had lunch with him to reconnect since he's left the White House, and heard some of the stories he's now written about in his new book, Heroic Conservatism.
For Michael Gerson, the pattern became discouragingly familiar. A proposal to help the poor or sick would be presented at a White House meeting, but Vice President Cheney's office or the budget team or some other skeptical officials would shoot it down. Too expensive. Wrong priority.
By the time he left the White House as President Bush's senior adviser last year, Gerson by his own account had grown weary of the battle, becoming an irritable colleague disillusioned by the conventions of a political party and a government that seemed indifferent to the plight of the downtrodden.
The article quotes from Gerson's book
"Traditional conservatism has a piece missing - a piece that is shaped like a conscience," he notes in Heroic Conservatism. His ambition, he says, is to help "save conservatism from its worst instincts" and build "a conservatism elevated by a radical concern for human rights and dignity."
Now an op-ed writer for The Post, he has a column today making the same point. He says there are two competing belief systems in the Republican Party – libertarianism and Catholic social teaching, and writes,
The difference between these visions is considerable. Various forms of libertarianism and anti-government conservatism share a belief that justice is defined by the imposition of impartial rules - free markets and the rule of law. If everyone is treated fairly and equally, the state has done its job. But Catholic social thought takes a large step beyond that view. While it affirms the principle of limited government - asserting the existence of a world of families, congregations and community institutions where government should rarely tread - it also asserts that the justice of society is measured by its treatment of the helpless and poor. And this creates a positive obligation to order society in a way that protects and benefits the powerless and suffering.
Gerson is right – how any society treats "the least of these" is God's measure. And by that measure, our society is sorely lacking.
Last week I wrote about the possibility of waking up to war with Iran. My fear that we are sleeping now, and should be in the streets and taking action, turns all of my anxiety into a feeling of profound nausea.
But at the very moment of nausea, I see a glimmer of hope. A group of 138 Muslim leaders from around the world and across the various denominations of Islam have come together to reach out to Christians through a statement entitled "A Common Word Between Us and You." In this document, they affirm that they share the same commitment to the great commandment of Jesus that we hold dear: the call to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. This command, they make clear, means that they see Christians as their neighbors, and to be faithful to their faith and values, they want to reach out to us in our faith – in love, as neighbors.
They acknowledge the obvious truth: Christianity - with over 30% of the world's population - and Islam - with over 20% - together comprise over 50% of the world's people. In light of those numbers, unless Christians and Muslims learn to get along as neighbors, nobody in the world will be secure. Our world's great religions must either allow themselves to be manipulated by political and corporate interests as agents of fear and distrust that predictably lead to war, or they must be converted into agents of peace, justice, and love.
This is not simply another mushy, gushy, least-common-denominator, "I'd like to teach the world to sing" style of feel-good "can't we all just get along." The Muslim leaders acknowledge, "… Islam and Christianity are obviously different religions—and … there is no minimizing some of their formal differences." But then they go on to say, " ... it is clear that the two greatest commandments are an area of common ground and a link between the Qur'an, the Torah, and the New Testament."
Thankfully, a group of Christians that includes evangelical theologian Miroslav Volf has responded with a beautiful reply. This emerging dialogue represents to me a tremendous opening, a needed alternative to terror and counter-terror, a gesture and counter-gesture of peace - the makers of which, Jesus said, will be blessed indeed (Matthew 5:9). Thank God for these signs of good hope amid spreading fear. Let us throw our prayers and energies behind them.
Part five in a series of posts by Bob Massey, a Los Angeles screenwriter who is currently traveling to India with a team from Ecclesia Hollywood hosted by a faith-based human rights organization whose work in Mumbai concentrates on rescuing girls from sexual slavery. + Click here to read previous posts
Bob experiences the big righteousness comedown …
At the offices of Ishmael's organization, we were schooled on the ins and outs of rescuing girls from brothels. We talked with the legal team, the investigators, and the undercover guys. It's real spy vs. spy stuff. But the stakes are real.
So that night we took a little tour of Mumbai's red light districts. To the American eye, they're no seedier than anywhere in the city, and if you weren't paying attention you wouldn't notice the prostitutes. They don't dress flashy or sexy (other than wearing too much eye makeup). But they stand around in the same way that prostitutes everywhere stand around. Pimps loiter nearby. But otherwise it's merchants, tons of people in Muslim dress, street kids - buying, selling, talking, eating, walking, honking, biking, avoiding this or that, etc.
So it was in that context that I was looking at the girls-we-were-told-are-prostitutes and I caught myself noticing one in particular and thinking, "Hm, she's cute."
And, in a flash, there it was:
You're a guy, you're stressed and lonely, maybe you're single (or maybe not), you come equipped with a sex drive, and there she is - some cutie standing there - waiting, available. It's a transaction, no one gets hurt (right?). She gets what she wants (you tell yourself), you get what you want (you tell yourself) …
Probably most of you saw this insight coming a long way off. But it's disturbing to realize there's no great space between cop and perp. It's so weird to be a guy, a male, wrestling with this notion of righteousness. Especially where women are concerned. I mean, there are Russian guys who've written thousand-page novels on this very epiphany, but it's different to feel it push through your own skin.
Not that Ishmael's crew has time to parse the finer points. They prod the cops to rescue girls and arrest pimps and traffickers. But they think about this stuff and pray about it. And they know that, individually, none of them is holy.
There is a cruel link between poverty, race, and abortion in America. Unfortunately, many pro-life advocates fail to meaningfully address this connection.
Aside from age (the abortion rate is highest among girls under the age of 15) the most predictable indicator of whether or not a woman will have an abortion is her income level and ethnic background.
Before Roe vs. Wade decriminalized the procedure, many American women still had abortions, though the procedure was radically unequal in its accessibility and application. Those with available resources traveled abroad for safe procedures while low-income women relied on dangerous illegal clinics operating in the poorest neighborhoods in America.
As someone who lives and works in such neighborhoods in Washington D.C., I can tell you that simply making something illegal does not keep it from happening if there is a serious demand for it – as evidenced by the rampant drug, weapons, and prostitution trades still plaguing these communities.
I strongly believe in the sanctity of human life from conception until natural death; that all human beings are created in the image of God and are therefore of immeasurable worth. However, I also believe that we should spend more energy advocating policies that might actually reduce the abortion rate and spend less time challenging a judicial precedent unlikely to be overturned.
This is especially true if criminalizing the procedure does little to reduce the abortion rate and actually puts more lives at risk, as a recent study and the personal experiences of those who have lived and worked in these district neighborhoods much longer than I have would suggest.
Tackling poverty, providing healthcare for all low-income women and children (especially for prenatal and postnatal care), reducing teen pregnancy by promoting abstinence and making contraceptives widely available, and increasing the child tax credit for low-income mothers and families—all represent solutions that, as part of an integrated approach, would curb unwanted pregnancies and reduce the number of abortions.
Americans on both sides of the argument have been trapped in an endless debate. Continuing liberal and conservative politicking has failed to meaningfully address the issue. Meanwhile, the abortion rate essentially stays the same.
This tired exercise continued as the entire lineup of Republican presidential hopefuls addressed the Values Voter Summit in Washington D.C., an event co-sponsored by the Family Research Council Action, Focus on the Family Action, and other conservative Christian organizations.
In a room filled with the would-be kingmakers of evangelical politics, the candidates touched on issues ranging from gay marriage to the future of federalism, but the single issue gaining the most traction with the crowd was clear. Candidates hoping to do well with this audience had to address abortion—specifically, offering their best plan to eliminate it once and for all. I was disappointed to hear the same old polarizing terms that have gotten us nowhere in the past 30 years.
Many people agree that the estimated 3,500 abortions taking place in America every day are unfitting for any caring society. Significantly reducing the number of abortions in this country—ideally to zero—should be an urgent moral priority for those of us who take the sanctity of life seriously.
As we move into the 2008 presidential election cycle, let's quit demonizing each other and get to work meaningfully addressing the cruel connections underlying America's heartbreaking abortion statistics. The most important debate is not between "pro-life" and "pro-choice," but between those who will continue to be demagogues on this issue and those who will choose to pragmatically work together to save unborn lives.
J. Christopher LaTondresse is the special assistant to the CEO at Sojourners. For the most recent U.S. abortion statistics, visit: U.S. Center for Disease Control.
Genuine forgiveness is not an easily cultivated art. Especially when we have been gravely wounded by another person, our basic human dignity affronted, it is no simple task to forgive. Nor should it be done lightly. For we need also to recognize and affirm the anger, the pain, the betrayal, or the sense of injustice that we feel when genuinely hurt.
All my bones shall say, "O Lord, who is like you? You deliver the weak from those too strong for them, the weak and needy from those who despoil them."
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Since the publication of my book, The Practicing Congregation, in 2004, when I first wrote about my research on vital mainline churches, hundreds of clergy groups and church leadership gatherings have invited me to share with them insights on what makes for a good congregation. At every gathering, I include the project's key finding: "Congregations that intentionally engage Christian practices are congregations that experience new vitality."
The sentence combines three components: intentionality, practice, and vitality. Further defining them, I point out that intentionality involves choice and taking responsibility for individual and communal spirituality; that practice is not a program, rather it is a meaningful way of life; and that vitality cannot be measured in terms of numbers, as it means spiritual health and maturity. A vital congregation is one where all people—including the pastor—are growing members of an organic community of spiritual practice.
Inevitably, someone asks: "How does this relate to a Willow Creek strategy for church growth?" Most every pastor knows about Willow Creek and its wildly successful seeker-oriented, market-driven church growth program—and many pastors have labored to recreate such programs in their own churches or denominations.
Until recently, my answer has been, "Not very well. They focus on numbers, on getting people into church, and on 'one-size fits all' programs for the spiritual life. That isn't bad for them; it is their path. And it is different from what my team found in small and medium-sized mainline churches. We found the programs don't make Christians. Practices do."
Now, however, I can answer in the words of Bill Hybels, the founding pastor of Willow Creek, as reported on the Leadership Journal blog. After an extensive study of their congregation (and several similar churches), Willow Creek's leaders concluded participation in programs did not inculcate Christian discipleship and that they had spent "millions of dollars" on programs thinking that they would help people grow—only to find that there was no real increase in parishioners' love for God or their neighbor.
"We made a mistake," says Hybels: "What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become 'self-feeders.' We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own."
Notice what Hybels says is missing: intentionality, practice, and vitality. Or, as the Leadership blog put it, "Spiritual growth doesn't happen best by becoming dependent on elaborate church programs but through the age old spiritual practices of prayer, bible reading, and relationships. These basic disciplines do not require multi-million dollar facilities and hundreds of staff to manage."
To point this out is not "I told you so." Rather, this is a profound development in North American congregational life. When one of the nation's leading programmatic churches says that programs do not work and that their vision of spiritual maturity was "wrong," we best all sit up and take notice.
For more than a decade, a quiet renewal has been spreading across American religion and is changing the way faith is experienced and practiced. Willow Creek's self-doubt is indication of that change.
As I have traveled across the U.S. and Canada, I have found that many congregations—including mainline churches, progressive evangelical communities, and synagogues—are rebasing their life on spiritual practices including prayer, theological reflection, doing justice, generosity, storytelling, discernment, shaping community, hospitality, and leadership. These faith communities have developed a healing sort of grassroots wisdom and have grappled successfully with the very issues that Willow Creek is now seeking to address. Their modest wisdom may be the very thing that mega-churches like Willow Creek need in order to experience a deeper way of life—the maturity in faith that they admit is alluding thousands of their members.
In all of this, we may well feel the Spirit's tug toward a different kind of congregational cooperation. What if we begin to see other faith communities as pilgrims on a journey to God, instead of competitors in a religious marketplace? Can we share with and serve each other as we walk a new—yet very old—road of shaping communal faith as a way of wisdom?
I do not read Bill Hybels' confession as a moment to shout that the emperor has no clothes. Instead, I read it as an invitation to open our collective imaginations—to rethink congregations, form new relationships, and encourage one another on a journey of transformation. We all, even Willow Creek, need friends along the way of learning to love God and love our neighbor.
Scripture is taught so that persons may become formed and transformed into faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. The aim is for learners to claim the life of Jesus as their own and to embrace an identity in the fullness of their lives. But the formative and transformative processes must not ignore the cultural context through which identity emerges or faith is expressed. Culture is the container of a community's experience and the agent of the community's expressions of faithfulness and faithlessness.
- Joseph V. Crockett Teaching Scripture from an African-American Perspective
Though the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher.
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Last weekend my wife Amy and I were in Baltimore and attended Joel Osteen's event. Joel pastors the largest church in America with more than 38,000 people, and his latest book has already hit number one on many bestseller lists. Joel is selling out stadiums across the country preaching a gospel of healing, victory, promotion, and increase to people filled with sickness, defeat, depression, and debt.
Unlike some people, I do not think that Joel Osteen is a heretic. While I do believe that he needs a deeper theology of suffering, he is not like most prosperity preachers that completely undermine Jesus' teaching. Joel's teaching may only be an inch deep, but he certainly reaches a lot of people with words of hope.
The crowd went wild when Joel stepped on stage. He kept the crowd engaged throughout the evening with his message about the power of positive thinking. "We are to be victors, not victims," he said repeatedly. His mother shared a testimony of being healed from liver cancer 26 years ago. Joel shared his testimony of how he served at his father's church for 17 years in video production before responding to the call to preach. It was a story people could relate to because many have sensed God's calling on their lives, but have either run from that call or felt inadequate for the task at hand.
I went into this gathering as a critic of TV evangelists and superficial gospel messages. I could list a number of things I find problematic about the Joel's ministry, but rather than just criticize a brother, I thought I would focus on how we as a Christian social justice movement can learn from him:
The power of personal testimony: Joel shared about how he avoided the pulpit for so long and had only preached one sermon before he inherited his dad's church. We would do well to be more active in sharing our motivations for doing social justice ministry.
The importance of engaging hearts and not just minds: Joel was not afraid to cry when speaking about his father's death. Too many in the social justice movement have a strong intellectual understanding of Christ, but lack the passion or personal vulnerability to fuel the mission of God's justice for the poor.
The importance of racial and socioeconomic diversity: Joel's event had more poor people and racial diversity than most churches or even social justice gatherings I have experienced. This is likely a result of not just his broad appeal but his vast reach through television.
The challenge before Joel Osteen, as well as us in the social justice movement, is similar. We are called not just to be spectators, but active participants in God's mission in this world. The temptation is just to sit back and watch TV or intellectualize about social justice. The challenge is to go beyond mere observation to active participation in order to begin sacrificing our time and resources in response to the gospel so that we can change the direction of our country and world.
Aaron Graham is the national field organizer for Sojourners.
The cover story of yesterday's New York Times Magazine is a long feature by reporter David Kirkpatrick on The Evangelical Crackup. It's a comprehensive look at how the evangelical landscape is changing – theologically and politically. He begins by noting:
Just three years ago, the leaders of the conservative Christian political movement could almost see the Promised Land. White evangelical Protestants looked like perhaps the most potent voting bloc in America. They turned out for President George W. Bush in record numbers, supporting him for reelection by a ratio of four to one. Republican strategists predicted that religious traditionalists would help bring about an era of dominance for their party.
But now,
another confluence of factors is threatening to tear the movement apart. The extraordinary evangelical love affair with Bush has ended, for many, in heartbreak over the Iraq war and what they see as his meager domestic accomplishments. That disappointment, in turn, has sharpened latent divisions within the evangelical world — over the evangelical alliance with the Republican Party, among approaches to ministry and theology, and between the generations.
Contributing to this change:
a younger generation of evangelical pastors — including the widely emulated preachers Rick Warren and Bill Hybels — are pushing the movement and its theology in new directions. There are many related ways to characterize the split: a push to better this world as well as save eternal souls; a focus on the spiritual growth that follows conversion rather than the yes-or-no moment of salvation; a renewed attention to Jesus' teachings about social justice as well as about personal or sexual morality. However conceived, though, the result is a new interest in public policies that address problems of peace, health and poverty — problems, unlike abortion and same-sex marriage, where left and right compete to present the best answers.
Kirkpatrick notes the theological importance of these changes:
Ever since they broke with the mainline Protestant churches nearly 100 years ago, the hallmark of evangelical's theology has been a vision of modern society as a sinking ship, sliding toward depravity and sin. For evangelicals, the altar call was the only life raft — a chance to accept Jesus Christ, rebirth and salvation. Falwell, Dobson and their generation saw their political activism as essentially defensive, fighting to keep traditional moral codes in place so their children could have a chance at the raft. But many younger evangelicals — and some old-timers — take a less fatalistic view. For them, the born-again experience of accepting Jesus is just the beginning. What follows is a long-term process of "spiritual formation" that involves applying his teachings in the here and now. They do not see society as a moribund vessel. They talk more about a biblical imperative to fix up the ship by contributing to the betterment of their communities and the world. They support traditional charities but also public policies that address health care, race, poverty and the environment.
And the political implications:
Today the president's support among evangelicals, still among his most loyal constituents, has crumbled. Once close to 90 percent, the president's approval rating among white evangelicals has fallen to a recent low below 45 percent, according to polls by the Pew Research Center. White evangelicals under 30 — the future of the church — were once Bush's biggest fans; now they are less supportive than their elders. And the dissatisfaction extends beyond Bush. For the first time in many years, white evangelical identification with the Republican Party has dipped below 50 percent, with the sharpest falloff again among the young, according to John C. Green, a senior fellow at Pew and an expert on religion and politics. (The defectors by and large say they've become independents, not Democrats, according to the polls.)
I could quote much more – it's a carefully-researched and well-written piece, but that's enough to give the general theme. Everywhere I speak, I come to the same conclusion as Bill Hybels told Kirkpatrick: "People who might be called progressive evangelicals or centrist evangelicals are one stirring away from a real awakening."
Part four in a series of posts by Bob Massey, a Los Angeles screenwriter who is currently traveling to India with a team from Ecclesia Hollywood hosted by a faith-based human rights organization whose work in Mumbai concentrates on rescuing girls from sexual slavery. + Click here to read previous posts
One of the genius moves of this anti-trafficking program in Mumbai is that they don't just bust bad guys and rescue girls from sex slavery. They spend as much effort helping those girls recover.
The girls are set up in a group home where they're cared for, educated, trained for the workplace - but primarily loved. Most of them were sold into slavery by impoverished parents. So you can imagine (actually, no you can't) some of the feelings they must deal with.
In the morning we went to meet the staff and share some prayer time with them. They start the workday as a team, reading and pondering Jesus's words about love and justice, praying, and singing. Gotta say, I've never before been in an office where that happened. You realize: these people aren't just lawyers and such; they're on an actual mission from God.
Which seems like just a bunch of words until you meet the girls. They are between 15 and 18 years old, all rescued from lives of abandonment, rape, and abuse. They look about 10 to 13. They are so cool. Hilarious, talented, sweet, goofy, curious, shy, polite, utterly enamored of Bollywood musical stars and showing us their Bollywood moves. Lucky for us we had David, our heavily tattooed co-pastor who has no shame on the dance floor. David wiggled around in waves. The girls giggled hysterically. It was a blast.
We spent the rest of our hours with them getting to know names, getting impromptu Hindi lessons and then butchering it, making weird little fuzzy muppetish critters out of glue and sticks and fuzzy colorful balls, doing conga lines, and generally being ridiculous. It was wonderful. And then we had to get back in the van to leave.
That's when it sinks in for the first time. We'd just joined a bunch of girls to horse around and be goofballs (polite, well-mannered, sweet-natured goofballs, in their case), which - and let me emphasize this point - is what little girls should get to be.
Here's one thought shared by all the men in the van: men - males - have a lot to answer for.
[Right here is the place to insert Bob's kneejerk impulse to legally mandate slow, painful castration of perpetrators of sexual crimes against girls, for which Bob happily volunteers to hold the sharp knife on every one of the bastards, twice. But then take a deep breath and replace all that with some standard Christian boilerplate about forgiveness yadda yadda, and then to go cite some scripture verse so you people at home can wrestle with the tension between justice and mercy on your own time. But Bob's not actually in the mood for grace at the moment and it'll take him a while to come around, so let's just pretend it happened so Jim Wallis doesn't come put Bob the guest blogger in a wicked headlock. Thanks.]
Okay, but, seriously: someone SOLD these girls. Maybe the parents were conned into their girls would go to the city to work as domestic help or whatever. But, people, what measures would you NOT take if guys paid to rape your daughter/sister/niece/girlfriend?
Malicious talk, therefore, is a serious and troublesome matter, for it is the sustenance and recreation of some people. You should not, however, accept empty hearsay, lest you become a receptacle for other people’s evils. Keep your own soul unlettered. For, by accepting the foul-smelling garbage of words, you will introduce stains to your prayer through your thoughts, and without cause you will hate your associates.
- Life of Syncletica Quoted in Essential Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life by Hugh Feiss.
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Part three in a series of posts by Bob Massey, a Los Angeles screenwriter who is currently traveling to India with a team from Ecclesia Hollywood hosted by a faith-based human rights organization whose work in Mumbai concentrates on rescuing girls from sexual slavery. + Click here to read previous posts
Whew. Landed at Mumbai Airport after 20-some hours on the plane. Customs, change money, exit to the madness that is Bombay traffic. (Bombay traffic probably warrants a more lengthy description than I have time for here, but picture the Mississippi River full of large metal honking flotsam and yet somehow everyone but you knows how to get across.)
As we were waiting for the van to take us around this little street kid came over to beg. He's the "before" picture for what was to be our day and our week. He was dirty, not real happy looking, but not especially extraordinary in Bombay. Take a look at his photo. I'll come back to this.
We all trekked out to the church that our host and his family attend. It's called the Church at Powai and it was shocking in its unexoticness. We knew all the songs, it was entirely in English, and it was clear that most of the congregation were educated and basically middle class. The church also does a traditional service earlier in the day and a Hindi service later in the day, so the experience was probably wider than what we saw. Some of you will be thrilled to know you can get Michael W. Smith CDs in Bombay, should you need them.
I should mention Vishnu here. Vishnu is the 22-year-old driver who came with our rented van. We have been watching him drive and we can't figure it out. We should all be dead based on the incomprehensibility and sheer velocity of the traffic here but we haven't even had a scrape. Vishnu is a choreographer. Amazing.
And I should also mention our host, who must remain nameless becuase of the nature of his job. Those that work for his organization are lawyers and others who risk their lives to rescue women from sex slavery around the world. So our host is from the U.S., ex-military, and clearly the right man for this job. Call him Ishmael.
Ishmael kindly hosted all 10 of us at the flat he shares with his wife and kids. We also got to meet 10 boys rescued from homelessness and parentlessness by a friend of our hosts named Solomon. He and his wife started a ministry to take care of these lost boys. They taught us how to play cricket and we made balloon animals and such. See the photo of the 10 little goofballs wearing balloons here.
They are the "after" picture to the kid we met in the morning.
Many other thoughts that I'll update later. Must go now. Please keep praying.
"Our best option is to leave Iraq immediately." This is not from a Democratic pundit or a Christian pacifist like myself. It's from 12 former Army captains who served in Babil and Baghdad, Najaf and Ninevah, and beyond.
Even with 'the surge, we simply do not have enough soldiers and marines to meet the professed goals of clearing areas from insurgent control, holding them securely, and building sustainable institutions. Though temporary reinforcing operations in places like Fallujah, An Najaf, Tal Afar, and now Baghdad may brief well on PowerPoint presentations, in practice they just push insurgents to another spot on the map and often strengthen the insurgents' cause by harassing locals to a point of swayed allegiances. Millions of Iraqis correctly recognize these actions for what they are and vote with their feet - moving within Iraq or leaving the country entirely. Still, our colonels and generals keep holding on to flawed concepts.
When Pisistratus (the "Tyrant of Athens") used unjust force and illegal maneuvers to take Athens, the great lawgiver and defender of democracy, Solon, responded. He took his helmet, spear, and sword, and laid them in the street in front of his house. "I can do no more," Solon said to the people. "I have done all that was in my power to help my country and uphold its laws. You would not listen to me. There are my arms, my weapons. They are no longer of any use."
The words of these 12 Army captains stand in an ancient tradition.
Rose Marie Berger, an associate editor of Sojourners, is a Catholic peace activist and poet.
People are bowed down, everyone is brought low, and the eyes of the haughty are humbled. But the Lord of hosts is exalted by justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy by righteousness. Then the lambs shall graze as in their pasture, fatlings and kids shall feed among the ruins.
The name "Red Letter Christians" is catching on! Increasingly within the Christian community (and even in the general public), people are becoming aware of the growing number of us who are basically evangelical in our theology but who shy away from designating ourselves as "evangelicals." They know us to be Christians with a high view of scripture, who affirm the doctrines of the Apostles' Creed, and who believe that salvation comes from surrendering our hearts, minds, and souls to the resurrected Christ — but are reluctant to call ourselves evangelicals. They realize that is because the label "evangelical" has come to be almost synonymous with the "Religious Right." While holding to the same theology as evangelicals, we do not want to be known as being anti-gay, anti-environment, pro-war, anti-feminist, and pro-gun — all of which have been pinned on all evangelicals (perhaps unjustly) by the secular media.
There are critics who do not like our name, nor agree with our progressive social agenda. In the October issue of Christianity Today, there was an editorial in which the columnist explained what he thought was wrong with becoming Red Letter Christians. What was interesting in his critique was that he got us right! He grasped what we were all about – and with great effectiveness. First of all, he described us as people who, when we go to the voting booth, ask whether or not a candidate's tax policies serve the interests of the rich to the detriment of the poor, whether or not there should be policies to stop global warming, and if he or she supports Bush's war policies. See what I mean? He understands us perfectly! They are exactly the kind of questions we believe Red Letter Christians should be asking when they vote.
The second criticism leveled at us in that CT editorial was that by calling ourselves Red Letter Christians, we were giving priority to the words of Jesus, suggesting that what he taught makes earlier teachings in scripture secondary, if not inferior. Again, he has us right!
We believe that the Sermon on the Mount presents a morality that is superior to the justice proposed by Moses. But then, Jesus himself said as much. He is the one who said that while Moses allowed for divorce and remarriage that he had a higher law, and that while the retributive justice of the Hebrew Testament proposed "an eye for an eye" and "a tooth for a tooth," that his new commandment was to love our enemies and overcome evil with good.
Surely, the CT columnist does not intend to put the purity codes of Moses, with all of their kosher regulations, on par with the morality of the red letters in the Bible.
I think we're on to something, and it may be soon that those evangelicals who do not want to be lumped together with Religious Right ideologies soon will be adopting this new name. There is a growing number of evangelicals who, when they find out what we're all about, will say, "That's what we think, too!"
Helpers should be provided for those who are weak so that they will not find their work depressing. In fact, let all have help according to the size of the community and the nature of the place. The rest should serve one another in love.
- Rule of Benedict Quoted in Essential Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life by Hugh Feiss.
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"This is what heaven must be like," I said to my wife Joy on the cell phone. I was between home and first, about 15 rows up from the field at FenwayPark for the opening game of the 2007 World Series - and my nine-year-old son Luke was sitting right next to me. The "most beloved ballpark in America," as some call it, looked absolutely fabulous last night. The grass was the same dazzling emerald green color that I still vividly remember from the first time my Dad took me to Tiger Stadium in Detroit when I was just about Luke’s age. The base paths were in immaculate condition, the lights were almost sparkling, the atmosphere was electric, and the smell of great food was in the air. This is baseball.
We were there two hours early watching the Colorado Rockies take their batting practice. Luke, proudly wearing the brand new Red Sox jersey I had splurged to buy him that afternoon, just kept saying, "Wow," as Rockie hitters kept putting balls over the "Green Monster" wall in left field. "Dad! Did you see that one? Awesome!" We talked about the only other time Luke had ever been to Fenway, in his mother’s womb when I took my new English wife, Joy Carroll, to her first baseball game in America. Luke was soooo glad to be back, and we kept talking to Mom on the cell about how amazingly COOL everything was. She and four-year-old Jack were at home in Washington, glued to the television set and trying to spot us. A wonderful friend had given me and Luke two priceless tickets to the Series opener. It just doesn’t get any better than this.
I don’t think I’ve written about my "other life" much on this blog, as a Little League baseball coach every weekend for Luke and 13 other fourth graders whom I’ve had now for the last four baseball seasons, beginning with t-ball. My first instructions were things like, "Throw the ball overhand." They’re the veteran AA Astros now, and are undefeated again this season (but we all know that, as Christians, winning and losing doesn’t matter). I also would never brag about my son’s play - like ever tell anyone about the recent game where he went four for four, with a double and three homeruns (including a grand slam), or that he is an Little League All Star first basemen who backhanded a smash ground ball that would have gotten through on the right side of the infield and then outran the other kid to first base, winning the game. I would never talk about such things.
Those batting practice hits over the Wall were about the only ones the Colorado team got all night, as the Red Sox cruised to a 13-1 victory. The whole night looked like batting practice for the hometown boys like our favorite David ("Big Papi") Ortiz, Manny Ramirez (I love the fan’s sign from the last playoff series—"Don’t worry be Manny"), Kevin Youkilis (whose every at bat gets the fans yelling "Yoooouk, Yoooouk, Yoooouk,!"), captain Jason Varitek (who showed how a captain ought to play last night) and Dustin Pedroia (the sensational rookie who shows that little guys can play this game too). We were also amazed by starting pitcher Josh Beckett who got nine strike outs last night (and who also inspires my son because Luke’s baseball role model is Babe Ruth, BOTH a power hitter AND a pitcher, just like he wants to be).
On Sunday, one of the other kids from our team gets to go to Denver (he’s an enthusiastic Rockies fan) for game four of the World Series. His grandfather is dying of cancer and this may be one of the last times that grandson and grandpa will do something special together. Very special indeed. Baseball is like that. "Take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd, buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack, I don’t care if I never get back…!" Yep, just like heaven is going to be.
I am afraid, but not for the reasons our government is telling me to be afraid. I am afraid that I may wake up one morning soon to discover that our government has launched a preemptive attack on Iran. While our government is issuing national orange alerts about "them," I wonder whether we Christians should be issuing global orange alerts about our own government.
I am disgusted, concerned, appalled, and furious about the current saber-rattling of our government - so reminiscent of the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. My feelings intensify in many of our presidential candidates' forums, where each candidate seems to be in a hissing contest, declaring that he or she is the loudest hisser against terrorism - as if the only danger in the world is posed by an evil "them" and not by evil resident within us. Our Congress' bipartisan vote last month, which labeled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, seems to me to be handing our president a "go to war free" card, another rather frightening development.
Meanwhile, our media are becoming an echo chamber of fear: after all, fear keeps people tuned in, which means better ratings, and thus more advertising income. Fear pays - economically and politically - but sadly, we haven't reached the point yet of fearing fear itself and what it may do if it keeps accelerating.
On top of these fears, I suspect that many of my fellow Christians will, in the name of God and Jesus and Christianity and the Bible, support and justify a preemptive war on Iran before and after it happens - no matter how unprovoked, no matter how brutal, and no matter how foolish and costly, both financially and morally. Forgetting even the traditional Christian criteria for just war, and forgetting the falsified "intelligence" used to justify our last preemptive war, we Christians in the U.S., I fear, will once again be high on credulity and low on scrutiny - all too eager to believe what our government tells us to legitimize a pre-emptive attack and feed our growing fears. We Christians who cannot follow this path into another war must ask ourselves two kinds of questions:
What will we do if we wake up and find our government has attacked Iran while we were sleeping? What actions - public and private - would be appropriate?
What can we do now to decrease the possibility of that occurring? What will we wish we would have done in the weeks and months before the morning after?
Dr. Marvin A. McMickle delivered the following sermon on the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) at a public witness and rally during Sojourners' "Reviving Our Spirits: Transforming Our Politics" conference in Cleveland last weekend. Dr. McMickle is pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio.+ Click here for the full sermon text.
Who made the following statement in a recent television interview?
I'm not sure that that group in Washington is really representative of evangelicals across the spectrum. This is the Family Research Council and some of the James Dobson supporters, I just think that's just a narrow slice of evangelical thought.
A) Jim Wallis
B) Pat Robertson
C) Hillary Clinton
C) Rick Warren
D) Rudy Giuliani
Drumroll ... the answer is B) Pat Robertson! Dan at FPL will soon tell me to do my own research and stop ripping off his posts, but I just couldn't pass this one up. In the context of the original video segment it's a little unclear exactly what Pat meant by this statement - though my guess is that he's saying the FRC Summit represents only a slice of evangelical thought about which Republican candidate to support.
Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the web editor for Sojourners.
I'm grateful to Tony Perkins and FRC Action for hosting the Oct. 19 dialogue focused on the "values" for values voters. I also thank Richard Land, my frequent dialogue partner and friend. I believe we found areas of real agreement and also healthy disagreement - and that is good.
We both agreed that the issue is not whether faith should help to shape our public life, but how.
I believe that Christians across the political spectrum might have more common concerns than people think - and potential common ground - on critical issues.
First, there are biblical principles of the kingdom of God on which we can agree.
Second, there are prudential judgments on policies where there is room for disagreement and deeper dialogue
Third, we must make sure our faith trumps ideology. For me, that often means making sure that my faith challenges the Left. And as I said to you on Friday, most of you probably don't have that problem! But how can you make sure that your faith challenges the Right?
And together, as Richard and I both try to do, we should challenge those who wish to banish religion from the public square.
On what do we agree?
We all agree that faith plays an important role in public life; faith is personal but never private. But as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The church should not be the master or the servant of the state, but the conscience of the state." King also never endorsed a candidate but made them endorse his agenda. There's a lesson for us in that.
Red and blue, Left and Right, are not biblical categories. They are political ones, and religious people don't easily fit the labels - nor should we. God's politics resists ideology and often calls us to transcend our narrow political categories and place our commonality as Christians above any political allegiance or identification with a political party.
God is not a Republican or a Democrat. The people of God must not be in the pocket of any political party. There is a great danger in being too close to either side and not maintaining our critical prophetic distance. We should be the ultimate swing vote, judging all the candidates by our moral compass.
Presidential candidates were at your conference seeking your vote, and you took a straw poll which became the center of media attention in their coverage of your gathering. But let me suggest that if your favorite candidate wins (whoever that turns out to be), they will not be able to really change the biggest moral issues of our time unless there is a movement from outside to continue pushing them. Remember, Lyndon Johnson did not become a civil rights leader until a faith-based civil rights movement made him one.
When politics fails to resolve the great moral issues, social movements often rise up to change politics - and the best social movements have spiritual foundations. We have been divided, but perhaps we can find ways we might work together in the future on the greatest moral issues of our time.
In the spirit of the great social movements that Christians have helped to lead—abolition of slavery, child labor laws, women's suffrage, and the civil rights movement—we might do it again.
The more we look like our evangelical foreparents, the more we see our faith as the spark for social justice, the more faithful and united we could be.
And this is the key: The biblical prophets tell us that God judges societies not by their gross national product, their military strength, or their cultural dominance, but by their justice and righteousness - especially how they treat the weak and vulnerable.
We know there are multiple threats to human life and dignity that suggest a new moral agenda that could bring us together:
Strengthening marriage and families
Renewing the moral fabric of our culture
Overcoming extreme global poverty and disease, as well as unnecessary poverty at home
Ending human trafficking
Healing the wounds of racism
Protecting God's creation
Finding a better path to national and global security
Advancing a consistent ethic of the sanctity of life
If those we could agree on these basic principles, we could reshape American politics - and, with God's help, we might change some of the big things that politics has been unable to.
As for politics in an election year, the Catholic Bishops have some good advice for us. They counsel Christians to be:
political but not partisan
principled but not ideological
clear but also civil
engaged but not used
Because, above all, (back to where we started) we are called to be faithful to the principles of the kingdom of God.
An open letter to Condeleeza Rice regarding her recent diplomatic trip to Israel/Palestine in an effort to re-ignite the peace process.
Dear Condi,
I couldn't help but wonder what was going through your mind as you stood in the midst of some of the "living stones" of the Holy Land last week. Hearing the stories of fellow Christians who have carried on the teaching and ministry of Christ since antiquity – holding firm and weathering the elements of history for the sake of the church's witness. For what it's worth, I commend you for breaking from your diplomatic meeting schedule to sit down with top religious leaders – Christian, Jewish and Muslim. I read that you listened as leaders spoke about "real life" complaints such as the failure of Israeli authorities to recognize the Greek Orthodox patriarch.
But were you surprised to find that so many of your own Christian brothers and sisters are Palestinian – and suffering as a result of the occupation, and less than enthusiastic about the U.S.'s role in the matter? You don't often hear about these folks in American media.
I caught one photo of you and your entourage ducking to get into the church of the nativity (traditional site where Jesus was born) by entering through the low and narrow Door of Humility. Was the irony lost on the U.S. delegation? You remarked to the media that "being… at the birthplace of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, has been a very special and moving experience." I hope that you were able to make some connections between the Jesus of history and the Jesus of the present. As I blogged about last year, were you aware that Bethlehem, a town once consiting of a Christian majority, is being choked because the new Israeli "security wall" does not exactly encourage tourism – Bethlehem's economic lifeline? Or that the U.S.'s foreign policy stance in the region (since it is so often framed in religious/moral language) sometimes makes Muslims suspicious of their own Protestant Christian neighbors and confuses for them the image of Christ?
Please forgive my boldness. I don't mean to be a downer. You are a fellow sister in the body of Christ and I do believe that you are a person of faith and integrity. You come from a lineage of spiritual people whose faith sustained them through their own season of oppression – both your father and grandfather were Presbyterian ministers in the segregated south of Alabama. You referenced this experience on your trip as a gesture of empathy. You can relate. This is positive.
I also know that you are a member of National Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C., sponsor of the annual Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation conference that I attended last year where Christian leaders from the Holy Land come to plead with their American brethren for support and acknowledgement of their existence in the body. In fact, it's going on again this weekend.
So then, Condi, do you feel the tension? The tension that all Christians should feel, if they are living out of a healthy theology? That to be a Christian is – above all else – to be a sojourner, a pilgrim: in the world but not of the world? That no matter what our national stripe, our allegiance is ultimately to Christ and his church for the purposes of redeeming all of humanity?
My prayer for the church in America and everywhere is this: God, until your kingdom comes, help us feel the tension.
Deanna Murshed is director of integrated marketing for Sojourners.
O house of David! Thus says the Lord: Execute justice in the morning, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed, or else my wrath will go forth like fire, and burn, with no one to quench it, because of your evil doings.
There are lots of different people saying lots of different things, and some of them put us off with their craziness and there are lots of points to argue with them about, but at their best they seem to be acting out of a single profound impulse, which is best described with words like tolerance, compassion, sanity, hope, justice. It is an impulse that has always been part of the human heart, but it seems to be welling up into the world with new power in our age now even as the forces of darkness are welling up with the new power in our age too. That is the bright side, I think, the glad and hopeful side, of what Jesus means by "The time is fulfilled." He means the time is ripe.
- Frederick Buechner from Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons
On Friday, Jim Wallis and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, engaged in a dialogue on the role of faith in politics at the Family Research Council’s “Values Voters Summit,” tackling such issues as abortion, poverty, the environment, and national security. Below is a video with some of the highlights.
No doubt there are critics who will dispute Jim's description of the Religious Right as having an overly narrow agenda. Case in point: Witness this dynamic observed by Faith in Public Life's (former Sojourner intern) Dan Nejfelt, live blogging from the FRC Summit on Friday:
Earlier [FRC head Tony] Perkins said "values voters" aren't single issue voters. Brownback - "you're right, I care about two issues." [Okay, that's a paraphrase, but he said it. Those issues are abortion and "restoring decency" to America's culture.]
"Restoring decency" - I guess that's a shorthand way of letting listeners fill in the blank with their favorite cultural boogeyman. But even with that deliberate ambiguity this narrow assertion is surprising given Brownback's outspoken concern for poverty. But, like any good politician, he knows his audience, and when speaking to this crowd, he knows which buttons to push.
Then again, Brownback is dropping out of the race, which may say something about how much appeal either an agenda focused on abortion and "decency" - or one that includes a strong concern for poverty - may have within the Republican party. Discuss.
Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the web editor for Sojourners.
For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.
Curiously, the most serious religious people, or the most concerned
scholars, those who constantly read the Bible as a matter of
professional or pious duty, can often manage to evade a radically
involved dialogue with the book they are questioning.
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There is a good deal of contention about President George W. Bush's reasons for vetoing the SCHIP legislation that would have provided a much needed expansion of medical coverage for America's poorest children. Bush's supporters assert that the legislation would extend coverage to middle class families with incomes up to $83,000 a year, while hundreds of thousands of poor children would remain uninsured. They also share his argument that the bill would be a major step toward "socialized" medicine and government-run health care.
Those who opposed Bush's veto, including several prominent members of his own party, dismiss these reasons as specious and disingenuous. Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, calls Bush's claims "flatly incorrect." Republican Senator Orrin G. Hatch contends that rather than covering "rich" children, upwards of 92 percent of the children covered will be from families with incomes less than 200 percent of the poverty level – less than $41,300 for a family of four. Bush's opponents also contend that his stated concern that expanding medical coverage for poor children will result in government-run healthcare makes little sense, especially since there have been government-run healthcare programs for Americans for decades – namely, Medicare and Medicaid – yet America is no closer to becoming a socialist state than it has ever been.
If the reasons President Bush has given for his veto are not his real reasons, what might those real reasons be?
Read the full entry »
Sunday we had the big sendoff at church. David Batstone (author of Not For Sale) spoke about his findings on slavery worldwide and here in California. It's completely NUTS. Like, the world should be embarrassed. People, didn't we sort this out a century or two ago? But evil is innovative. It seems there are endless ingenious ways to exploit one another. And they say there's nothing new under the sun...
On a completely shallow note, one of the clips they played from the forthcoming Concert to End Slavery film featured a solo piano song by Imogen Heap, which serves to confirm my devastating crush on her kooky six-footness. What, I'm the blogger here; I can't deviate from misery for just one second? The woman's got crazy hair and a thing for social justice. What's not to like?
Anyway.
As this blog goes forward, in case you start to wonder, people and organizations will not be cited by their proper names. Some of them could be harrassed or threatened or worse if their identities were publicized.
Today we meet at LAX for the flight to Mumbai, which, oddly, lays over in New Jersey. Weird. TRENTON, NJ: GATEWAY TO THE ORIENT! You know, one C. Columbus was searching for black pepper from India when he bumped into this here continent. Kinda makes you wonder what he'd make of New Jersey.
Onward...
Bob Massey is a screenwriter living in Los Angeles. He is traveling to India with a team from Ecclesia Hollywood.
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Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
We take pride in our almost unique and wide-ranging learning, as if there were not many people much more learned than we whom we do not want to despise us. We enjoy ridiculing those who are less educated than we and make no effort to remember that entry into the kingdom lies open not for those who only learn the mysteries of faith and the commands of the Creator by meditating on them, but for those who put into practice the things they have learned.
- Bede Bede from Homilies on the Gospels, quoted in Essential Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life by Hugh Feiss.
I'm preparing for a dialogue with Richard Land at the FRC Action's Values Voter Summit tomorrow. This has caused me to reflect on how the definition of "moral values" has changed. Evangelical activism to protect God's creation is now publicly visible in a new way, including Christian concern over global warming. A host of other issues are now part of a broadened and deepened evangelical agenda—most connected to poverty, human rights, and social justice. Even American military and foreign policy has begun to come under critique by Christian scholars (including evangelicals), who focus on the ethics of war and the dubious morality of the U.S. response to terrorism. Slowly, even the media is reporting on the widening evangelical concern over human life and dignity.
These new leaders are pushing evangelicals to expand their agenda beyond abortion and homosexuality to include issues like poverty, AIDS, and global warming. Like other Americans, evangelicals tell pollsters they care a great deal about the war in Iraq, health care, immigration, and security. If evangelicals more and more vote like average Americans, it becomes increasingly complex for the candidates to calculate how to win them over.
Three years ago, more than 80 percent of evangelicals who attended church weekly cast their vote for President Bush's reelection, according to polls conducted for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. It was the culmination of a bond going back to 1980, when Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority helped put Ronald Reagan in the White House.
But this year's Pew polls show the Christian right's support for Republicans shrinking to 60 percent. The slide is deeper among other religious voters who supported Bush – down to less than 40 percent among practicing Catholics and 20 percent for other Christians.
"That's really quite a dramatic change," said John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron and a senior fellow in religion and politics at the Pew Forum.
Why is this change occurring?
An important dynamic, he said, is that many conservative Christians are increasingly expressing concerns about such things as the war in Iraq, AIDS in Africa, and global warming. "There's pressure to broaden the agenda ... to apply the Gospel to a broader list of questions," Green said.
This broadening and deepening of the evangelical social agenda signals a fundamental sea change in the religious community's relation to politics - a healthy change. Say a prayer that tomorrow will not just be about winning a debate, but will also begin an important dialogue.
MLK said that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." New York Faith and Justice believes that poverty anywhere is a threat to God's shalom everywhere. Which is why when we were invited by the UN Millennium Campaign to host a local event in support of the Millennium Development Goals, we quickly accepted. The MDGs are some pretty decent things. When world leaders come together in a covenant-like promise to halve extreme global poverty based on 1990 measurements by 2015, it echoes the call of the biblical prophets that are often invoked on this blog. There has been much progress, but it's still no secret that some goals are way off target, especially the one about rich countries giving a higher proportion in development aid.
Last year, the UN Millennium Campaign organized a record-making event in which 23.5 million people around the world stood up in a single day in a symbolic proclamation asking world leaders who covenanted to halve extreme global poverty to stop breaking promises. This year, New York Faith and Justice became part of the global movement by hosting our own "Stand up and Speak Out" event in St. Mary's, a historic church in Harlem.
The ripple effects of our saying "yes" to the invitation to host this event are what truly humble us. There was an impromptu "Stand Up" that took place at a local ethnically diverse interdenominational church where 1800-plus regular attendees stood up in solidarity. Bishop Paul Mususu, representing the Micah Challenge and the director of the Evangelical fellowship of Zambia, asked their church leaders to do it and explained the importance of it. The movement is bubbling when megachurches stand up against poverty.
Jonathan Mendez is co-director of the Uniting the Church Action Team with New York Faith and Justice, and also a former Sojourners intern.
I saw an "on the road" film this week that blew open my understanding of travel and confirmed my imagination of what life could look like. Into the Wild, Sean Penn's cinematic recreation of the journey taken in the early 1990s by Chris McCandless - a rich young kid - across North America to the frozen wastes of Alaska is, in the first instance, a magnificent film. It relates McCandless' story with near-surgical detail - the extraordinary central performance by Emile Hirsch would be trivialized by awarding him something so cheesy as an Oscar - and it also succeeds in portraying the character as one deserving both our admiration and critique. He was a flawed hero. On the one hand, he risked social ostracism by donating his trust fund to OXFAM and refusing to obey the death-dealing dictates of upper-middle class society – the big house, the well-paying job, the "respectable" family – so that he could pursue the objective of becoming more human through meeting the goodness in strangers and entering a John the Baptist-type wilderness. On the other, he allowed his family to believe he was missing, presumed dead, for nearly two years.
The film asks the question he asked himself: What is our responsibility to ourselves? Or, better put, what is our responsibility to the image of God to which we all are called to stewardship? Is it to live within the boundaries of commerce, social status, and the monetary value of our homes? Or are we invited to participate in something that transcends the social constructs of economics and society? McCandless knew something of the old adage that making a living and making a life are two very different questions.
I saw the film on vacation, where the closeted hotel I was stuck in due to a connecting flight cancellation seemed to exist primarily to prevent guests from ever having to leave the luxury of a resort. The cultural norms that suggest we find happiness by spending exorbitant amounts of money to have an antiseptic experience of an island thousands of miles away leave me cold. I'd much rather be camping in Alaska, asking myself what it means to be human.
Toward the end of his – ultimately tragic - sojourn in the tundra, McCandless wrote in his journal of his journey's key revelation: 'Happiness is only real when shared'. He had realized that a whole life is always a conversation – with natural surroundings, values, history, traditions, and with the fellow travelers who ground us in community. And that conversation is better held in the light of understanding that making a living and making a life are not the same thing.
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
When somebody speaks to you, you turn your face to look in the direction the voice comes from; but if the voice comes from no direction at all, if the voice comes from within and comes wordlessly, and more powerfully for being wordless, then in a sense you stop looking for anything at all. Your eyes become unseeing, and if someone were to pass a hand in front of them, you would hardly notice the hand. If you can be said to be looking at anything then, you are probably looking at, without really seeing, something of no importance whatever, like the branch of a tree stirring in the wind or the frayed cuff of your shirt where your arm rests on the windowsill.
- Frederick Buechner
from Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons
And I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one shall make you afraid; I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword shall go through your land.
Last week, the Nobel committee announced its annual Peace Prize, awarding it jointly to Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is a significant recognition for Gore, who has been transformed from a presidential candidate who lost (even though he won) into an environmental evangelist who has changed public opinion on the threat of global warming. His response to the award was that he will use it to continue his work to increase awareness of "a true planetary emergency" and press the world's nations to combat its threats. "The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity," Gore told the press.
Gore spent years slogging through presentations to small audiences with a slide show. Now the slide show has become an Academy Award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and its author has won a Nobel Prize. His deep and passionate commitment led to his persistence, and that persistence is beginning to show results.
The issue of climate change was there all along, but it took the research of an international committee of scientists and an evangelist who publicized their research to make a difference. Critics say Gore is alarmist, but that's always the role of an evangelist. There is doom to come if you don't change your ways. But redemption is always possible with conversion leading to a change of mind and heart – that leads to a change in direction and life choices. Many of our most effective social change movements have been spurred by spiritual transformation.
There is more and more evidence that the warnings are not exaggerated. The polar ice caps are melting at a shocking rate. In September, the Guardian reported that in one week an area nearly twice the size of the UK had melted in the Arctic. In fact, I recently heard that over the past year, an area as large as the U.S. east of the Mississippi melted. It is indeed a crisis of biblical proportions.
I congratulate Al Gore for the Nobel Peace Prize. He deserves our gratitude and thanks. But more importantly, we need to respond to his altar call and change our lifestyles before it is too late and the doom is upon us.
So what happens when a bunch of overprivileged Hollywood folks (actors, screenwriters, a grad student, a cameraman, an IT nerd with lots of tattoos, a nurse, a full-time mom, and a purveyor of homeopathic remedies) trek through India to meet with people fighting slavery, poverty, and oppression?
What unites us is some sense of conviction that as followers of Jesus it's unacceptable to stand by while people suffer. And people aren't only suffering in India - they also are here in Los Angeles. So we hope not only to discern how to support our Indian friends, but also to return with new tools to alleviate some of the suffering that characterizes the other side of Hollywood.
In preparation, we fasted. And by "we" I mean Ecclesia Hollywood's 10-member team that's going to India, plus the men of The Lodge (the monthly men's group from Ecclesia), and anyone from church who felt so led. The point was to remember, in our hunger, to pray. The trip only lasts two weeks, but we don't quite know what we'll encounter.
Sunday evening was the last meeting of the India team before we leave on Friday. We turned in the rest of the funds we've raised, our immunizations are done, and most of us have cracked books about India or memorized some Hindi phrases. (Uh, some of us, anyway...)
Bob Massey is a screenwriter living in Los Angeles. He is traveling to India with a team from Ecclesia Hollywood.
Teaching scripture as a story allows God's story to become a guiding light for the learner. Resources for faith are provided that can support a person's character development. Images are presented that can nurture a construction of Christian identity that is faithful to the church.... Hearers become inspired and encouraged to identify their story with the scripture. Readers are equipped to relate and broaden their personal experiences in light of their social existence. Learners are empowered to judge and redefine what is meaningful in their lives.
When I tell people that I work on immigration reform, they usually laugh or say, "way to pick an easy topic." Everyday it feels like there is more fear, more hate. Raids are picking up in Nevada, California, and New York. A number of senators who supported comprehensive reform only a few months ago have jumped on the bandwagon with their enforcement-only colleagues. Even a recent C-SPAN radio caller's biggest concern about the children's healthcare plan was: "Those illegal aliens better not have access to S-CHIP money." It saddens and exhausts me. I ask myself, "Why do I keep working for a cause that is so controversial, and often so negative?"
I recently had a very clear reminder of why I do. Four farm workers–Eduviges Gonzales, Silvia Huerta, Bautista Zamora, and Estela Ferrer–came to lobby Congress for a path to citizenship for their undocumented coworkers. Three are U.S. citizens and one is a legal permanent resident. They were part of an effort organized by numerous farm worker groups, including the United Farm Workers - the union founded by César Chávez.
Each of them spoke about shortages of workers creating big problems in the fruit and vegetable fields around the country. Then, they began to share their personal stories. Eduviges proudly held up her hand to show off a large callous on her palm below her middle finger and began her testimony:
This is proof of my hard work and dedication to this country. I have worked harvesting mushrooms in Salinas, California for 19 years. I am so proud of my work because I know that every mushroom I pick goes to the mouth of someone who needs to be nourished. I feel this very strongly in my heart.
At that point, tears began to roll down her cheeks, but her voice stayed remarkably strong. She went on:
I am here today because of our children. They see ICE detaining people on the evening news. My son asks me, "Why are they taking that person away? Did they pick bad lettuce or bad strawberries?" His fear weighs on my heart and I don't know what to tell him.
The congressional staffer was clearly moved. I explained that the bill we were supporting - AgJOBS - would put qualified farm workers on a path to permanent residency. It's just one piece of an incredibly complex issue facing this country. But for farm workers who have been slaving in our fields for years, it would be a tremendous step toward personal and economic security.
As we were going to dinner, Silvia asked me if I would be going back to live in California with my family. I told her that I lived in Washington, D.C., because I was working for comprehensive immigration reform, and it's important to have strong advocates here in the capital. "Oh, yes!" she responded, "in that case, we need you to stay right here. We need all the help we can get!"
Her words have been sinking in. Suddenly, my work in this long-term struggle for immigration reform seems like the obvious choice.
Patty Kupfer is the Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform campaign coordinator at Sojourners.
Last week Jim was on The Tavis Smiley Show and talked about how the changing political landscape will affect the upcoming '08 election. Jim and Ken Blackwell, former Ohio secretary of state, debated and discussed both the impact of "value voters" on the election and what those values entail.
I have seen their ways, but I will heal them; I will lead them and repay them with comfort, creating for their mourners the fruit of the lips. Peace, peace, to the far and the near, says the Lord; and I will heal them. But the wicked are like the tossing sea that cannot keep still; its waters toss up mire and mud. There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked.
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Jesus' approach is always fresh, surprising, new, and unexpected. Consequently, it always provoked a direct reaction.... He shattered firmly formed convictions and beliefs. He often used nonreligious language, avoiding the religious language of his contemporaries, a language that had been used so long, and so often by so many people, that it had lost its meaning almost completely. He continually used examples from everyday life to express himself.
- Joseph G. Donders Praying and Preaching the Sunday Gospel
Last week, I wrote about U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon's speech to a dinner hosted by the National Association of Evangelicals and the Micah Challenge. While the main part of his speech was on the challenge of meeting the Millennium Development Goals, he closed by linking that to "another moral imperative" – acting to stop global warming.
Climate change affects us all, but it does not affect us all equally. Those who are least able to cope are being hardest hit. Those who have done the least to cause the problem bear the gravest consequences.
He cited the dependence of "hundreds of millions of people in Asia and the Americas on mountain snow and glaciers for their water," and the catastrophic threat as the ice and snow melt. Growing droughts in Africa due to climate change threaten the lives of those dependent on subsistence agriculture for survival. Then came his call:
We have an ethical obligation to right this injustice. We have a duty to protect the most vulnerable. Without a strong global effort against global warming, we will fail in achieving the Millennium Development Goals and the implicit human right to economic justice and development.
Without a strong global effort against global warming, humankind could even be wiped out, along with other species. Our earth is God's creation. We are its custodians. We can no longer look the other way.
The good news is that people and institutions of faith all over the world agree. This gives me great hope.
There is now a strong consensus among scientists and the religious community, including evangelical leaders, that while the hour is late, we still have a chance to make a difference. If we are to honor the biblical commandment to be good custodians of God's creation, we have no choice.
Perhaps I am dumb, but I had never connected flicking a switch to turn on the lights with increased asthma in children, higher levels of mercury in the Chesapeake Bay (and the need to stay away from eating too much fish), mountain top removal in West Virginia, and global warming. Over the past few weeks I have been working on a book project and had to look more closely at our use of energy as it relates to global warming. I never knew that the primary consumer of energy in the U.S., and the largest producer of greenhouse gases, is the electricity generation sector (39 percent of both). These amounts are then allocated to other economic sectors based on retail sales. I should not have been surprised to discover that we use more electricity in our homes than in any other area, including industry. Taking a step further, I found that 57 percent of the fuel my energy provider uses is coal - the most polluting of the types of fuel available in terms of greenhouse gas emissions - not only affecting global warming, but contributing to ground level ozone (air pollution). These plants also emit small particulate matter which can get into lungs, causing increased asthma and other lung disorders.
I'm not sure where my company's coal comes from, but whether is from West Virginia, Pennsylvania, or some other location, my use of electricity, as well as that of my friends and my church, are what drives the energy company to utilize this coal to produce the energy we demand. I grieve for the loss of mountain tops that change the appearance of the area where my mother was born; for the fact that some of the local people there no longer have clear drinking water because of the run off caused by coal extraction processes, that wildlife no longer has a home. I am sad that the fish in the Bay are sickening, that the climate is changing, that we have bad air days because of ozone, and that asthma rates are growing. I wonder why this area has such a high cancer rate. All these things seem out of my control. They are happening around me, generated by forces I cannot see or relate to. But then I turn on the television, the dishwasher, the air conditioner. I am part of the picture. What I do does affect how the mountains look in West Virginia. It may be a small part, but there is a definite connection.
Part of the solution is cleaning up power plant emissions; part may be in finding new fuels. But the part that I have the most control over, and responsibility for, is my own use of energy. Some suggest changing light bulbs, others using more energy efficient appliances, letting the sun and wind dry clothes outside, turning off computers and other equipment that have standby modes, and using electricity to keep tiny bulbs burning. It is, in fact, very empowering to understand that by a flick of a switch I can make a statement about how I care for the mountains of West Virginia. It may not be much of one, not sufficient for the need, but at least it is immediate and accessible to me, my friends, and everyone else as well.
Ginny Vroblesky is the former national coordinator of A Rocha USA.
Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry [people] pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.
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According to the World Wildlife Fund, each of us needs about 2.5 acres of arable land to be sustained with needed food. Then we need to add another two acres or so - enough land to sustain the plants and animals that keep our ecosystem balanced and fertile. So, each of the 6.7 billion human beings requires, at minimum, 4.45 acres of fertile land.
But the math stopped working in the latter part of the previous century. The fact is, we're using about 5.44 acres per person on average, which exceeds the carrying capacity of our planet. And these numbers are skewed by our disproportionate ecological footprint as Americans - we require over 23 acres per person to sustain us at the standard of living to which we have become accustomed.
Perhaps we can be forgiven for developing this unsustainable lifestyle because we didn't know what we were doing. But now, as the information becomes available - and increasingly incontrovertible - we have a new responsbility and opportunity. And here is my firm belief: whatever the pleasures that come from living an unsustainable, and therefore unwise, life, the pleasures of living a wise and sustainable life will be far greater.
I was speaking on these topics recently, and a woman told me she wrote a note to her husband during my talk, saying something like, "You got me up at 7 a.m. to hear some guy make me feel guilty for being a successful American? Thanks a lot!" But she told me later, with some emotion, that by the end of the talk, she felt God had spoken to her. "The Holy Spirit washed over me," she said. She was genuinely excited about the chance to learn to live better, and to seek a higher kind of success than we have achieved so far - a wise success, a good success, a sustainable success.
This is true in my own life. When I was researching my most recent book, I kept adding some small choices to my life to adjust my lifestyle to what I was learning. For example, we set a moratorium on incandescent bulbs in our house. Whenever one blows, we're replacing it with a compact flourescent, and it feels fantastic to do so. I took about an hour and built a composting bin in my back yard, and it's really enjoyable to add biodegradable kitchen scraps to it each day. These are small things, but I think if you try them, you'll agree: this isn't drudgery and painful sacrifice.
As the psalmist said, "You show me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore." I think it was Jane Goodall who said something like this: "You thought the age of reason was good? Wait until you see the age of love!" And I would add, "You thought the age of consumption and waste was good? Wait until you experience the joy of the age of sustainability and wise use!"
In Deuteronomy 15, God promised the people that if they lived according to the Lord's ways, there would be enough for everyone and "there will be no one in need among you." This is the dream: that we learn to live "in the ways of the Lord" so that there is enough for everyone and the planet is well-cared for, flourishing and green, full of birdsongs, and teeming with life, to the glory of God.
If you want to find out what it means to be a hero, you could do worse than seeing two current documentaries: In the Shadow of the Moon and The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Shadow consists of documentary footage of the space race, intercut with new interviews of most of the men who have been to the moon and back. Kong follows another race, and one of the strangest competitions of our time – the battle to be the world Donkey Kong video game champion. At first glance, these films may seem to have little in common – but they both reflect different dimensions of the same theme: that of American exceptionalism.
In the Shadow of the Moon brings parts of the politics and adventure of space travel to the attention of an audience for whom putting a human being on another planet is a historical fact rather than a mythical possibility. The astronauts are wholly charming and exude an integrity that we may associate with the post-war era, in which service to the community was perhaps considered a higher ideal than in our own cynical age.
The King of Kong relates the heroic narrative of Steve Wiebe, a Seattle native whose life story more resembles that of Homer Simpson than Neil Armstrong. A failure at high school sports, grunge music, and even being laid off on the day he and his wife signed their mortgage papers, Wiebe is an endearing figure – the kind of guy who seems far too nice to be the recipient of so much trouble. The one thing he knows he is good at is Donkey Kong, which he plays obsessively in his garage, hoping to beat the 25-year-old record held by Billy Mitchell, whom the film portrays (perhaps unfairly) as a hot sauce-hawking Darth Vader with a mullet. Steve's wife supports him in challenging the record, but his nemesis refuses to grant him the dignity of even turning up to participate in the competition, preferring to submit a taped entry. The tension mounts, and we are seduced into feeling the desperation perhaps as much as when the world watched Apollo 11 land on another world.
Both films are stories of people struggling against the odds; and both the astronauts and Steve Wiebe may remind us of ourselves. Regrettably, the moon documentary buries the lead. A film about human beings who can genuinely be said to be unique spends too much time looking at the technical aspects of space travel, and far too little on how the travelers were changed by their journeys. Toward the end of the movie, one of the astronauts speaks of his epiphany that all of creation comes from the same source and that we are all one. It is ironic that such a pacifist (and biblical) revelation resulted from a neo-military endeavor rooted in Cold War paranoia and suspicion.
Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, the Steve Wiebes of this world go about their own, smaller adventures – the adventure of building a family, of living honestly, of seeing ourselves as beautiful imperfections. In the Shadow of the Moon focuses on something extraordinary, but manages to make it seem less than the sum of its parts. The King of Kong, however, takes something apparently absurd and suggests that the decision to try to do one thing right might actually be a key to becoming a better human being.
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com
(A) Dr. James Dobson is to Sponge Bob Square Pants (B) The new thought movement is to common sense (C) Marilyn Manson is to Satanism (D) Dick Cheney is to gun control (E) Richard Dawkins is to reasoned debate
The correct answer is C. Both Ann and Marilyn found a profitable way to utilize religion as a provocative tool to feed their cash cow. Ann appeals to the base instincts of her rabid followers that right makes (Christian) might. Conversely, Marilyn attracts the kids of control freak parents who want to rebel from what can best be described as a rigid and repressive regime. I'll let the Satanists deal with Marilyn Manson, but please, do not interpret Coulter's trademark viciousness and venom as viable Christian virtues.
I thought when I reported on Coulter's "faggot" comment that this political pundit committed career suicide. But I was wrong. But given that even Fox News condemned the latest Coulter snafu blasting the Jews, one can hope that she will be off the airways for good.
This is not to say there isn't a place for insult humor. While covering The New York Film Festival, I had the opportunity to catch John Landis' new documentary Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project. Landis took me on a journey that enabled me to sample the depth of this fearless comic and actor. In particular, I was impressed by the plethora of comedians including George Wallace, Chris Rock, and Sarah Silverman who praised him for his "take no prisoners" attack dog approach. Throughout the movie, I was reminded that to be insulted by Rickles was indeed the highest compliment. Also, Landis showed us Rickles' softer side by illuminating the kindness he shows towards his family, friends, staff, waiters, and even strangers that he encountered offstage.
Watch this documentary and you'll see how people double up with laughter whenever Rickles reams them. In fact, they jockey for position just so they can be part of the act. Coulter proclaims in her latest book, If Democrats Had Brains, They'd be Republicans, " I am the illegal alien of commentary. I will do the jokes that no one else will do." She might think she's funny, but her targets aren't amused one bit.
For Rickles, hurling insults is an act. In Coulter's case, spewing venom appears to be a lifestyle choice.
Last evening I attended a reception and dinner in Washington for evangelical Christian leaders, which is not an unusual event here. But the topic and, especially, the main speaker would seem highly unusual to many. The event, called "A Global Leaders Forum," was hosted by the National Association of Evangelicals and the Micah Challenge, a global advocacy campaign focused on achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are aimed at cutting extreme global poverty in half by 2015. The topics that brought 250 evangelical leaders together from around the U.S. and world were indeed global poverty and the urgent issue of climate change. Both issues are now firmly on the agenda of the evangelical mainstream, as last night's impressive list of leaders demonstrated.
The speaker for the evening was none other than Ban-Ki Moon, the new secretary general of the United Nations, which is driving the MDG initiative. Growing up in the evangelical world, I remember the great debate about who was the real "Antichrist" as described in biblical prophecy--it was either the pope or the United Nations. As Washington Post writer Dana Milbanks noted this morning
In the wildly popular Left Behind series of evangelical Christian novels, the Antichrist takes the form of the secretary general of the United Nations, sets up an abortion-promoting world government and becomes the Global Community Supreme Potentate. Last night, the National Association of Evangelicals met for dinner at the Sheraton in Crystal City. The keynote speaker? Why, the Antichrist himself.
Last night, the supposed Antichrist was listening to gospel music, speaking of his own faith, quoting scripture, celebrating a new alliance with "the evangelical church" on the critical issues of poverty and global warming, and bringing the conservative Christian crowd to its feet in smiling agreement with the secretary's agenda.
Indeed, leader after leader insisted this was a biblical agenda. A prominent leader from the Religious Right came up to sit right next to me, and then engaged me in an amazing conversation about finding common ground. This dramatic shift in the public agenda of the evangelical community is affecting American politics in very significant ways and promises to change them, especially if the political labels of left and right slowly slip away and are replaced by a common commitment to focus on the key moral issues of our time. Those issues are now defined more broadly and deeply than before and include the plight of God's poorest children and the fragile state of God's creation.
Mamta, a winsome, wide-eyed girl of 12 moves through her daily chores in a poor household in India. Although still a child, her life has little play, and she will too soon be bearing the full responsibilities and burdens of an adult woman: Mamta was married at the age of 7. At puberty she will quit school and move to the house of her husband, who she's had no contact with since her wedding night five years ago.
You can meet Mamta in a special hour-long broadcast tonight of the PBS weekly newsmagazine NOW. In Child Brides: Stolen Lives, NOW senior correspondent Maria Hinojosa takes viewers to Guatemala, India, and Niger to explore stories of early marriages and to show how people are campaigning to end child marriage in many of these communities - sometimes at the risk of their own lives.
On a trip to Ethiopia last year, I saw firsthand the devastating ripple effects of child marriage on individuals and on an impoverished country. Millions of girls around the world are forced into marriages long before they are grown. They are usually deprived of schooling, virtually powerless when the husband or his family is abusive, at high risk for HIV/AIDS infection from their older, sexually experienced husbands, and face disability or death for themselves and their babies when they become pregnant before their bodies are ready.
The NOW broadcast is a great opportunity to learn more about child marriage and why it's so important to stand up on behalf of these children and support community-based efforts to end this practice. Child marriage legislation is currently before the U.S. Congress - to learn more, visit the International Center for Research on Women Web site.
Julie Polter is an associate editor of Sojourners.
Two days after my blog post about the University of St. Thomas' controversial decision to bar Archbishop Desmond Tutu from a speaking engagement on campus, a letter was sent to students, faculty, and staff on behalf of university president Father Dennis Dease. Not only did Dease reverse the decision, but he also personally and publicly apologized:
One of the strengths of a university is the opportunity that it provides to speak freely and to be open to other points of view on a wide variety of issues. And, I might add, to change our minds…. I have wrestled with what is the right thing to do in this situation, and I have concluded that I made the wrong decision earlier this year not to invite the archbishop. Although well-intentioned, I did not have all of the facts and points of view, but now I do.
I believe Father Dease's words come from the heart, and I commend him for doing the right thing. Words are powerful, whether we use them to express our beliefs or voice our dissent. For example, Jewish Voice for Peace organized nationwide to send 2,700 letters in protest of the university's initial decision. Eighteen law school faculty members wrote a letter asking Tutu to be invited again, and St. Thomas' Students for Justice and Peace coordinated students and staff to take action. Social justice organizing work can be isolating, tedious, and frustrating without measurable results. But in cases like this, where the action is clear and the message is unified, our efforts can lead to victory.
Allison Johnson is the policy and organizing assistant for Sojourners/Call to Renewal.
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Children possess naturally the essential elements for having faith. The Kingdom of God is first perceived in the world children know best. Children, therefore, have as much to offer adults as adults have to offer children-perhaps more.
- John H. Westerhoff III Bringing Up Children in the Christian Faith
For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.
Earlier this week we posted an open letter from Tony Campolo in response to a Christianity Today column by Stan Guthrie, "When Red is Blue," in their November issue that was critical of the Red Letter Christians concept. CT has now posted Guthrie's column online, accompanied by an edited version of Campolo's letter. We said we'd let you know once that was online, so here it is.
In The New York Times story about the administration's secret
authorization of torture, one sentence is particularly chilling: "With
virtually no experience in interrogations, the CIA had constructed
its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi
intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods long
used in training American servicemen to withstand capture."
Copying tactics used by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the former Soviet
Union ... what does this say about our nation's trajectory? Since
reading those words last week, I can't keep Bruce Springsteen's song
out of my head. First, he echoes what many
Americans might say in response to the secret authorization of
torture:
Well I've got God on my side
And I'm just trying to survive.
But then he raises this question:
What if what you do to survive
Kills the things you love?
Springsteen then concludes:
Fear's a dangerous thing.
It can turn your heart black you can trust.
It'll take your God-filled soul
Fill it with devils and dust.
Springsteen's words have me praying for
our nation today: Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have
mercy.
As the Religious Right has diminished in influence, many are searching for a new political agenda that doesn’t fit the standard right/left battles of American politics and is more consistent with their deeply held values. That new agenda would be good news for the majority of Americans who are alienated by the political extremes and are hungry - not for a soulless centrism - but for a new moral center in our public life.
To ground that new agenda, we need a better understanding of the role of faith in public life. Political appeals - even if rooted in religious convictions - must be argued on moral grounds, rather than as sectarian religious demands, so that the people (citizens), whether religious or not, may have the capacity to hear and respond. Religion must be disciplined by democracy and contribute to a better and more moral public discourse. Religious convictions must therefore be translated into moral arguments, which must win the political debate if they are to be implemented. Religious people don’t get to win just because they are religious (in a nation that is often claimed to be a Judeo-Christian country). They, like any other citizens, have to convince their fellow citizens that what they propose is best for the common good—for all of us and not just for the religious. Clearly, part of the work to be done includes teaching religious people how to make their appeals in moral language, and secular people not to fear such appeals will lead to theocracy.
The public discussion about and between evangelicals and progressives has been dominated by too many false choices and too much mutual misunderstanding. It is time to work for common ground on some of our most critical issues. We must address a compelling vision to the many Americans who are actually more “purple,” than “red” or “blue.” What could evoke their convictions, reflect their values, summon their commitments, and change America? What would a broader and deeper moral politics or values politics begin to look like?
An important step toward those goals was taken yesterday with the release of “ Come Let Us Reason Together ” by the Third Way culture program. I applaud this effort by Third Way to develop common ground.
In a section on the role of faith in public life and politics, the paper outlines three “basic principles as a first step in bridging the divide over the role of religion in American public life:"
Respect for religious beliefs and religious diversity is vital for a healthy society.
Religion plays an appropriate public, not just private, role in American life.
All citizens have a constitutionally protected right to articulate the religious or moral basis of their political views in the public sphere, and protecting these expressions does not conflict with a commitment to the non-establishment of religion.
The heart of the paper, “Come Let Us Reason Together” provides significant common ground with a “ Shared Vision on Five Divisive Cultural Issues” – affirming the human dignity of gay and lesbian people, reducing the need for abortion, placing responsible moral limits on the treatment of human embryos, creating safe spaces for children online, and encouraging responsible fatherhood. The authors explain:
In this section, we have taken five key cultural areas and identified common ground in order to show that it is possible to have conversations even on some of the toughest issues. Beyond promoting sound policy for the nation, our hope is to help evangelicals and progressives move beyond mutual distrust on cultural issues to respectful civic partnerships that operate on the assumption of good faith even in the midst of disagreement. This reconfiguration makes a significant contribution to a more civil democratic dialogue and serves as a foundation for progress on the toughest issues.
The paper concludes:
In order for this paper to bear more fruit, both progressives and evangelicals will need to continue the hard work of reasoning together. We do not conclude that these conversations will be easy or that the paper’s proposals in themselves will resolve all the real disagreements and tensions on cultural issues. But we believe that the gap need not be as wide and the mistrust need not run as deep.
Progressives and evangelicals are people who care deeply about the justice and health of our society, and potential alliances between us on key issues could provide a genuine convergence for the common good. This paper was endorsed by a wide range of religious leaders, and I look forward to the “hard work of reasoning together” in further conversations.
If you are at your manual labor in your room and it comes time to pray, do not say: "I will use up my supply of branches or finish weaving the little basket, and then I will rise." But rise immediately and render to God the prayer that is owed. Otherwise, little by little you come to neglect your prayer and your duty habitually, and your soul will become a wasteland devoid of every spiritual and bodily work. For right at the beginning your will is apparent.
- Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers Quoted in Essential Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life by Hugh Feiss.
I urge you, brothers and sisters, to keep an eye on those who cause dissensions and offenses, in opposition to the teaching that you have learned; avoid them. For such people do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the simple-minded. For while your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, I want you to be wise in what is good and guileless in what is evil.
Normally I'm a big fan of science fiction, but I nearly swallowed my teeth when I heard America Abroad's recent program on the World Bank on my local NPR affiliate, WAMU, last Sunday. My choppers would have been a lot easier to stomach than the show's assertion that, in the 1980s, policies pushed by the World Bank and U.S., "had succeeded in solving the [developing world's] debt crisis."
Tell that to the African nations today that have to spend more on debt interest payments than on health care – in the middle of the AIDS pandemic. If that isn't a crisis, what is?
Tell it to the Jubilee activists around the world who really won the debt relief which has happened so far. Tell it to Rev. Duncombe and the other Jubilee USA activists, who are currently praying, lobbying, and participating in a rolling fast to support the Jubilee Act, which would expand debt relief to the 67 countries that need it in order to have any hope of meeting the anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals.
In another apparent foray into a galaxy far, far away, America Abroad's show claimed not only that the debt problem had been solved, but that it had been solved by the market fundamentalist "structural adjustment" policies pushed by the World Bank and the U.S. (often under the paradigm dubbed the "Washington Consensus.") In reality, these policies not only shredded social safety nets and left millions of peasant farmers out in the cold, but also dramatically slowed economic growth.
Not to mention that market fundamentalism is not at all how China and India achieved rapid economic growth in recent decades, as one Harvard professor puts it:
With high levels of trade protection, lack of privatization, extensive industrial policies, and lax [sic] fiscal and financial policies through the 1990s, these two economies hardly looked like exemplars of the Washington Consensus.
Where did I find this radical anti-establishment propaganda? Actually, by entering the search term "Washington Consensus" into the World Bank's own website. But you won't hear such information on America Abroad, which attributed the Washington Consensus-driven policies' failure largely to local corruption.
In many cases, I enjoy cheesy fantasy on the airwaves. I kind of like that new television show about a vampire who fights crime. But America Abroad's straight-faced defense of "structural adjustment" – which has been such a resounding economic, moral, and social failure that even the IMF tried to hide it under a different name – is way too bizarre a foray into alternate reality for anyone to swallow.
Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.
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I remember about eight years ago when then presidential candidate George W. Bush repeatedly claimed that he would restore honor to the presidency, soiled as it had been by our previous president's infamous affair. I remember hoping he would succeed. But a new kind of shame has come to the office and to our nation as reports surface about our government's secret authorization of torture. We all share in this shame.
Conservative columnist and blogger Andrew Sullivan expresses what many of us feel. He reminds his readers:
... my first response to reports of abuse and torture at Gitmo was to accuse the accusers of exaggeration or deliberate deception ... It struck me as a no-brainer that this stuff was being invented by the far left or was part of al Qaeda propaganda. After all, they train captives to lie about this stuff. Bottom line: I trusted this president in a time of war to obey the rule of law that we were and are defending.
Sadly, he laments, that trust was betrayed:
And then I was forced to confront the evidence. He betrayed all of us. He lied. He authorized torture in secret, and then, when busted after Abu Ghraib, blamed it on low-level grunts. This was not a mistake. It was a betrayal.
The word "betrayal," of course, recalls Moveon.org's Sept. 26 ad. Many considered the pun childish at best, politically unsavvy at least, or worse. There was a rush to condemn anyone who failed to condemn the ad. But Sullivan's use of the word strikes me as anything but childish.
Our nation's reputation, not to mention that of the presidency, has been dishonored by this betrayal of trust. Honorable people - conservative and liberal, Republican and Democrat - need to follow Andrew Sullivan's example, coming together to express our grief and outrage about the political hypocrisy and betrayal to which we have been subjected by people we elected.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, recently returned from a visit to Armenia, Syria, and Lebanon. While there, he met with politicians, Christian and Muslim leaders, and visited with Palestinian and Iraqi refugees.
In an interview with BBC radio, Williams shared some of the observations he gathered, particularly in Iraq and Iran. He spoke movingly about the Iraqi refugees he met, saying, "the stories we heard were, I have to say, really hair-raising." He went on:
We heard of the firebombing of houses and shops, we heard of abductions, and of murders, and we heard stories - for example, one about a young woman who was travelling in a car with her father (a Christian family). Her father had been shot and killed in the car, she had been left for dead because she was covered with his blood, and when she got back to her home afterwards she had further threats - 'next time we'll finish the job …' - and so she had to leave. When you add those stories up by the hundred and by the thousand you see something of the fantastic human cost of what's going on in Iraq at the moment.
When the questions shifted to the war in Iraq as the cause of this situation (which Williams clearly thinks it is), he then had this to say about Iran:
When people talk about further destabilizing the region, when you read about some American political advisers speaking about action against Syria and Iran, I can only say that I regard that as criminal, ignorant and potentially murderous folly. … I mean that we do hear in some quarters about action against Syria or against Iran. I can't really understand what planet such persons are living on when you see the conditions that are already there. The region is still a tinderbox.
Strong, but true words. The region is still a tinderbox, and a U.S. attack on another country would be throwing gasoline on the fire. Williams is an exemplary church leader, a deeply respected theologian and scholar, a poet, and, I would say, genuine contemplative—all rare these days. He has never been prone to overstatement, and clearly his recent experience in the Middle East affected him deeply. What one hears in his strong words is, indeed, the authentic voice of prophetic criticism (again rare among church leaders these days). Bless you, Rowan Williams, and may our leaders in Washington take notice of your warnings.
The last time I saw Rami, we were at the beach near Gaza City. A group of us were in the water and I was trying to force Rami underwater. Rami was a big man, weighing at least twice what I do. Needless to say, I did not manage to get him to budge. When he in turn came after me, all I could do to protect myself from suffocating under him was flee. Eventually I was able to sneak up on him under water, pull his legs out from under him, and escape again.
There are around 3,000 Christians living in Gaza today. Rami was the office director of the Teacher's Bookstore, a Christian bookstore in downtown Gaza City. The store sells Christian books and offers computer and language lessons, which are attended by Palestinians from across the Gaza Strip. When I would visit the place, Rami was always there on his swivel chair cracking jokes. Few people entered that did not already know him. Gaza can be a place of sadness, and Rami always reminded me much more of the mentality of Egyptians - laughing and joking no matter how depressing life becomes.
On Saturday afternoon, Rami closed his shop as he always did at 4:30 p.m. He had told his brother that three days earlier he had sensed he was being followed home after work, but had not made much of it. Two hours after closing up, he called his wife and told her with much uncertainty that he hoped to be home in two hours and not to worry. He was not able to say where he was or why he was there. Rami never came home. Friends and family searched for him until late into the night. At 5:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, his body was found beaten, a bullet through his head, another through his chest. His wallet, ID, and watch were gone.
No one has made any statements, no group has taken responsibility. This is the first time in Gaza's recent history that a Christian has been kidnapped and killed. Sadly, such incidents do occur in revenge killings - usually of political nature - but never with religious causes. In Gaza, Muslims and Christians live and die side by side, sharing every element of the Israeli occupation - a reality for as long as most Gazans alive today can remember. Rami had no political or factional involvement, nor was his family implicated in any feuds. Rami's boss was quoted in The Independent saying, "We don't know who was behind the killing or why. Was it for money, or was it because he was selling Bibles?"
Gaza is a place overrun with violence. Readers of this blog have followed the complexities of the makeup of Gaza's social and political makeup, I will not repeat again what I have so often said before. Violence here has deep roots in injustice and occupation, but beyond this, every individual, every political grouping, and every community makes the choice of projecting their experience outward and returning violence for violence. In Gaza, victims of bloodshed often themselves become shedders of blood.
Rami experienced the harshness of occupation, the limitation of curfews, Israeli military incursions, civilian targeted sonic booms, restrictions on travel beyond the 365 square kilometer confines of the Gaza Strip, and the strife of civil war. Rami chose to respond to violence with laughter, love, and peace. The strength to live such a life is what I hope for Rami's killers. It is what I hope for every Palestinian living and born into the living hell of Gaza today.
Philip Rizk is an Egyptian-German Christian who lived and worked in Gaza from 2005-2007. He blogs at: tabulagaza.com
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In two recent posts, The Global Church and America's War, and Iraq and Christian Identity, I talked about the difference between the perceptions of U.S. Christians and our sisters and brothers around the world. I recently received a powerful e-mail from a Pastor Kuruvilla Chandy of Grace Bible Church, Lucknow, India, who describes himself as "a born again Christian" who supported the Cold War and "as a believer in prophecy, [is] in general agreement about supporting Israel." Hardly the profile of a left-wing Bush-basher. I'd like to share some of what he wrote.
President George Bush is the darling of most born again Christians in the US of A. But in India many regard him as a liability to the Christian cause. His identification as a believer and his advocacy of the war that the rest of the world regards as unjust has embarrassed Christians who are in a minority in India.
He is not just critical of Bush, but has strong words of both challenge and encouragement for believers in the U.S.:
People will never agree on whether or not Bush is an aggressor. That really depends on political views.... Christians living in America, suffering from fear aroused by 9/11 and desiring their own self-preservation and prosperity will approve of Bush's war against Iraq and look for ways to justify it even from a biblical viewpoint. It is heartening though to see that there are born again Christians, even in the U.S., who are opposed to the warmongering and see the war as something they have been unable to support precisely because of their faith in Christ. However the vast majority of Americans, especially those who describe themselves as born again Christians, are solidly in support of Bush, and even question the Christian identity and commitment of those who disapprove of Bush.
He further describes the connection between Bush's faith and Bush's war:
In effect, Bush has given Christ a bad name. As a Christian writer in India, I wrote an article arguing that Bush's war had nothing to do with his being a born again Christian, and all to do with his being the American President (Times of India April 7, Lucknow, April 21, 2003). The only problem is that somehow his aggressive American-ness has been identified with his being a Christian. But we in India cannot see the war as the work of a Christian. In this regard, I represent the view of most Christians in India.
In my article I essentially defended born again Christianity as what is practiced by Christians who are committed to Christ and take His teachings seriously. I am myself a born again Christian. I did not deny that, just because Bush had made being a born again Christian unpopular. Being a born again Christian has nothing to do with Bush. It has all to do with following Christ faithfully with a desire to make Him known. In the Indian context it was necessary to show what born again Christianity really stood for. I had to demonstrate that being a Christian did not mean approving Bush's war.
Perhaps even more sad than the damage Bush has done to the cause of Christ globally is the response of Christians in the U.S.:
I also circulated the article among Christian friends in the U.S., to share my concern as a Christian from a country where Christians are a minuscule minority. I shared it with my friends in America trying to somehow influence Christian opinion in the U.S. Suddenly I lost friends—not just Americans, even Indians settled in the U.S.
As I reflected on my loss of some of my Christian friends living in America, I sadly noted the great divide that has occurred among Evangelical Christians. I know that Evangelicalism is not White Christianity, but somehow I get the impression that the agenda of White Evangelical Christianity is being thrust on Evangelicals around the world. It would seem that if one is to be accepted as a born again Christian, then one is required to approve of the world's only born again Christian statesman. If you don't approve of Bush, you're not okay.
Most American Christians have put their faith in Bush imagining that he will ensure their safety. If anything, he has made the world more unsafe for Americans and even for those who side with Americans.
Will Christians in the U.S. hear the prophetic challenge from their global sisters and brothers? Or, like the friends Pastor Chandy has lost, will they value their political allegiances above their allegiance to Christ, and to his body in the worldwide church?
Though I own several Bibles with the words of Christ in red, I've always found the concept a bit iffy. After all, we evangelicals believe in the plenary, or full, inspiration of Scripture, don't we? Setting off Jesus' sayings this way seems to imply that they are more holy than what is printed in ordinary black ink. ...[I]f all Scripture is God-breathed, then in principle Jesus' inscripturated statements are no more God's word to us than are those from Peter, Paul, and Mary - or Ezekiel.
While we, like you, have a very high view of the inspiration of Scripture and believe the Bible was divinely inspired, you are correct in accusing Red Letter Christians of giving the words of Jesus priority over all other passages of Scripture. What is more, we believe that you really cannot rightly interpret the rest of the Bible without first understanding who Jesus is, what he did, and what he said.
Likewise, we believe the morality in the red letters of Jesus transcends that found in the black letters set down in the Pentateuch, and I'm surprised you don't agree. After all, Stan, didn't Jesus himself make this same point in the Sermon on the Mount, when he said his teachings about marriage and divorce were to replace what Moses taught? Don't you think his red-letter words about loving our enemies and doing good to those who hurt us represent a higher morality than the "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" kind of justice that we find in the Hebrew Testament? Is it really so hard to accept that, as God incarnate, Jesus set forth the highest law in the Bible, and therefore that law is more important than the Kosher dietary regulations we find in Leviticus and Deuteronomy?
You got us RLCs right again when you suggested we were anti-war, pro-environment, and deeply committed to ending poverty primarily because we believe Jesus is anti-war, pro-environment, and deeply committed to ending poverty. The only mistake you made was to imply that thinking this way - or trying to influence our government according to these values - makes us the Religious Left:
Unfortunately, the platform of Red Letter Christians always seems to come out of the wash blue, just as some other "nonpartisan" Christian groups consistently align with the Republicans.
That you think asking questions such as, "Do the candidates' budget and tax policies reward the rich or show compassion for poor families?," or "Do the candidates' policies protect the creation or serve corporate interests that damage it?," is partisan saddens us. We believe these are the questions that every Christian should be asking, no matter which political party or candidate has the better answers at a given time in history.
I'm sorry you don't want to be one of us, Stan. In the struggle to convince our fellow believers to think, act, give, and vote according to the teachings of Jesus, we Red Letter Christians could really use a bright, articulate guy like you.
I received an e-mail today from a progressive Jewish organization titled “Let Desmond Tutu Speak at a Minnesota University.” It referred to my alma mater, the University of St. Thomas, where administrators recently snubbed the archbishop by refusing to allow him to speak at a PeaceJam International conference on campus. Based on the opinions of a select group of local Jewish leaders who claim Tutu made anti-Semitic remarks in a 2002 speech, the university decided to pass on the opportunity so as not to potentially offend members of the Jewish community. Officially, Doug Hennes, vice president for university and government relations at St. Thomas, had this to say to the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages:
We had heard some things he said that some people judged to be anti-Semitic and against Israeli policy.... We're not saying he's anti-Semitic. But he's compared the state of Israel to Hitler and our feeling was that making moral equivalencies like that are hurtful to some members of the Jewish community.
Hennes stops short of calling Tutu anti-Semitic, but the speech he cites caused the Zionist Organization of America to target college campuses and lobby them to ban Tutu from speaking engagements. A Jewish member of our own St. Thomas community, instructor Marv Davidov, told City Pages:
As a Jew who experienced real anti-Semitism as a child, I’m deeply disturbed that a man like Tutu could be labeled anti-Semitic and silenced like this.... I deeply resent the Israeli lobby trying to silence any criticism of its policy. It does a great disservice to Israel and to all Jews.
It became even more personal for me when I read that my former advisor, Cris Toffolo, was removed from her post as department chair by the administration over a letter she sent to Tutu expressing her dissent over the decision. This kind of secrecy and censorship on my university’s campus is upsetting and discourages freedom of expression in academia. I am embarrassed that my role model for social justice is being smeared by my own school, and that a professor was demoted in the process.
Most schools would bend over backward to host the moral voice of the anti-apartheid movement. St. Thomas is missing the opportunity to have Tutu inspire its students to “act wisely, think critically, and work skillfully for the common good,” as its mission so boldly states.
It is true that Tutu has been an outspoken critic of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians and has used language on occasion that is less than sensitive. What University of St. Thomas leaders seem to overlook is that he uplifts, inspires, and motivates people of all faiths to end poverty and oppression through nonviolence. Tutu stated in the infamous 2002 speech, “God waits for you, for you to act.” As an alumna who takes the mission statement of St. Thomas seriously and as a Christian working for peace and justice, how can I not?
Allison Johnson is the policy and organizing assistant for Sojourners/Call to Renewal.
Christ, in sending the [people] to the scriptures, sent them, not merely to read them, but carefully to search and ponder them. And did he not say, "Read the scriptures," but "Search the scriptures." ... Their meaning is not expressed superficially or set forth in their literal sense, but, like a treasure, lies buried at a great depth. And those who seek for hidden things will not be able to find the object of the search if they do not seek carefully and painstakingly.
- St. John Chrysostom Homily 41 (John 5:39-47), A.D. 390
You must not distort justice; you must not show partiality; and you must not accept bribes, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of those who are in the right.
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Bono was in town the other night and had a small thank-you party for friends and allies to celebrate some successes in Africa with regard to poverty, AIDS, and other pandemic diseases. Joy and I went along, and it was nice to connect with him again. He gave a few remarks about signs of hope, even in the midst of so much still to do.
But there was another speaker. Agnes Nyamayarwo is a Ugandan nurse who has become an amazing activist in the battle against AIDS. She is HIV positive herself, lost her husband to AIDS, and unknowingly transmitted the disease to her unborn son, who also subsequently died. But Agnes is a woman full of hope. Joy and I got to spend some time with her and heard her story.
Agnes is an extraordinary woman and a person of deep faith. "When I had nothing else left," she told us, "I learned to walk with God." She is very grateful to the American people for the aid that made possible the HIV/AIDS treatment that saved her life. There are 1.34 million Africans now on lifesaving drugs, thanks to U.S. efforts—the most important thing the Bush administration has done. Here is a woman who has lost her husband and two sons, yet she has become a powerful activist and bright beacon of hope—all of which she attributes to her faith. When George Bush visited her country, the leader of the free world gave Agnes a big hug. And she whispered in his ear, "What about the global fund?" (the international AIDS fund that still needs more investment). Agnes has an agenda and a faith and both are very substantial.
As expected, President Bush yesterday vetoed legislation that would expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
At our religious leaders' news conference on Tuesday, I spoke of the issues at stake here.
Jesus made healing a principal sign of his ministry and of the presence of the kingdom of God. From a biblical point of view, it is simply wrong when health becomes a commodity and accessibility depends upon wealth. Until something is done to make universal health care a reality in America, millions of families will remain poor. SCHIP is one bill – one program – to help fix the health care problem. No bill is perfect. But a bipartisan group of legislators think it is a good bill in the right direction.
To veto the bill, with no alternative plan instead - to simply abandon millions of poor children, to leave them to a market system that is failing to provide health care to enough people - is simply morally unacceptable. We must not allow this to become an ideological battle over the larger issue of health care systems. This is about a specific program for poor children that a bipartisan majority believes is working. This is not about health care theories - this is about children. And now, overriding a presidential veto will become the next faith-based issue.
Also speaking to the media were the heads of two denominations who also serve on our Sojourners Board. Sharon Watkins, general minister and president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) said:
Mr. President, members of the House and Senate, 9 million American children are without health care coverage this day. Those children are
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But at the very moment of nausea, I see a glimmer of hope. A group of 138 Muslim leaders from around the world and across the various denominations of Islam have come together to reach out to Christians through a statement entitled 
Brian McLaren(
Diana Butler Bass (
Last weekend my wife Amy and I were in Baltimore and attended Joel Osteen's event. Joel pastors the largest church in America with more than 38,000 people, and his latest book has already hit number one on many bestseller lists. Joel is selling out stadiums across the country preaching a gospel of healing, victory, promotion, and increase to people filled with sickness, defeat, depression, and debt.
One of the genius moves of this anti-trafficking program in Mumbai is that they don't just bust bad guys and rescue girls from sex slavery. They spend as much effort helping those girls recover. 
As we were waiting for the van to take us around this little street kid came over to beg. He's the "before" picture for what was to be our day and our week. He was dirty, not real happy looking, but not especially extraordinary in Bombay. Take a look at his photo. I'll come back to this.
Ishmael kindly hosted all 10 of us at the flat he shares with his wife and kids. We also got to meet 10 boys rescued from homelessness and parentlessness by a friend of our hosts named Solomon. He and his wife started a ministry to take care of these lost boys. They taught us how to play cricket and we made balloon animals and such. See the photo of the 10 little goofballs wearing balloons here.
The name 
"This is what heaven must be like," I said to my wife Joy on the cell phone. I was between home and first, about 15 rows up from the field at 
I am afraid, but not for the reasons our government is telling me to be afraid. I am afraid that I may wake up one morning soon to discover that our government has launched a preemptive attack on Iran. While our government is issuing national orange alerts about "them," I wonder whether we Christians should be issuing global orange alerts about our own government.
An open letter to Condeleeza Rice regarding her recent diplomatic trip to Israel/Palestine in an effort to re-ignite the peace process. 
Deanna Murshed is director of integrated marketing for Sojourners.
I saw an "on the road" film this week that blew open my understanding of travel and confirmed my imagination of what life could look like. Into the Wild, Sean Penn's cinematic recreation of the journey taken in the early 1990s by Chris McCandless - a rich young kid - across North America to the frozen wastes of Alaska is, in the first instance, a magnificent film. It relates McCandless' story with near-surgical detail - the extraordinary central performance by Emile Hirsch would be trivialized by awarding him something so cheesy as an Oscar - and it also succeeds in portraying the character as one deserving both our admiration and critique. He was a flawed hero. On the one hand, he risked social ostracism by donating his trust fund to OXFAM and refusing to obey the death-dealing dictates of upper-middle class society – the big house, the well-paying job, the "respectable" family – so that he could pursue the objective of becoming more human through meeting the goodness in strangers and entering a John the Baptist-type wilderness. On the other, he allowed his family to believe he was missing, presumed dead, for nearly two years.
Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful 
Last week Jim was on The Tavis Smiley Show and talked about how the changing political landscape will affect the upcoming '08 election. Jim and Ken Blackwell, former Ohio secretary of state, debated and discussed both the impact of "value voters" on the election and what those values entail. 
Ginny Vroblesky is the former national coordinator of 
According to the World Wildlife Fund, each of us needs about 2.5 acres of arable land to be sustained with needed food. Then we need to add another two acres or so - enough land to sustain the plants and animals that keep our ecosystem balanced and fertile. So, each of the 6.7 billion human beings requires, at minimum, 4.45 acres of fertile land.
If you want to find out what it means to be a hero, you could do worse than seeing two current documentaries: In the Shadow of the Moon and The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Shadow consists of documentary footage of the space race, intercut with new interviews of most of the men who have been to the moon and back. Kong follows another race, and one of the strangest competitions of our time – the battle to be the world Donkey Kong video game champion. At first glance, these films may seem to have little in common – but they both reflect different dimensions of the same theme: that of American exceptionalism. 
Becky Garrison's further critiques of Ann Coulter can be found in her Amazon short, 
Last evening I attended a reception and dinner in Washington for evangelical Christian leaders, which is not an unusual event here. But the topic and, especially, the main speaker would seem highly unusual to many. The event, called "A Global Leaders Forum," was hosted by the National Association of Evangelicals and the Micah Challenge, a global advocacy campaign focused on achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are aimed at cutting extreme global poverty in half by 2015. The topics that brought 250 evangelical leaders together from around the U.S. and world were indeed global poverty and the urgent issue of climate change. Both issues are now firmly on the agenda of the evangelical mainstream, as last night's impressive list of leaders demonstrated. 
Mamta, a winsome, wide-eyed girl of 12 moves through her daily chores in a poor household in India. Although still a child, her life has little play, and she will too soon be bearing the full responsibilities and burdens of an adult woman: Mamta was married at the age of 7. At puberty she will quit school and move to the house of her husband, who she's had no contact with since her wedding night five years ago.
Allison Johnson is the policy and organizing assistant for Sojourners/Call to Renewal.
In 
As the Religious Right has diminished in influence, many are searching for a new political agenda that doesn’t fit the standard right/left battles of American politics and is more consistent with their deeply held values. That new agenda would be 
I remember about eight years ago when then presidential candidate George W. Bush repeatedly claimed that he would restore honor to the presidency, soiled as it had been by our previous president's infamous affair. I remember hoping he would succeed. But a new kind of shame has come to the office and to our nation as reports surface about our government's secret authorization of torture. We all share in this shame.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, recently returned from 
The last time I saw Rami, we were at the beach near Gaza City. A group of us were in the water and I was trying to force Rami underwater. Rami was a big man, weighing at least twice what I do. Needless to say, I did not manage to get him to budge. When he in turn came after me, all I could do to protect myself from suffocating under him was flee. Eventually I was able to sneak up on him under water, pull his legs out from under him, and escape again.
Philip Rizk is an Egyptian-German Christian who lived and worked in Gaza from 2005-2007. He blogs at: 
In two recent posts, 
In response to Stan Guthrie's article in the October 2007 Christianity Today, 
I received an e-mail today from a progressive Jewish organization titled 
Bono was in town the other night and had a small thank-you party for friends and allies to celebrate some successes in Africa with regard to poverty, AIDS, and other pandemic diseases. Joy and I went along, and it was nice to connect with him again. He gave a few remarks about signs of hope, even in the midst of so much still to do.