First of all, let me say thanks. I’m so grateful for the honest questioning of a convert to Christianity who seems to intuit Jesus’ radical politics. Your story is such good news to me. I grew up among good Christian people who put our hope in Ronald Reagan while we prayed for the souls of atheists like you. It’s so refreshing to know that God opened your eyes to the kingdom movement despite our wayward piety.
Second, let me try to correct a misunderstanding that was probably the result of my poor communication. I did not mean to say, “No, I think we’ll stay local now” when I wrote that the authenticity of our public witness, which must be transnational, depends on our faith that God has already given us a new way of life in local, everyday practices. I only wanted to say that I’ve learned we can’t really say much to the state house or the White House if we’re not repenting of the evil in our own house. Jesus said it like this: Before you try to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye, take the log out of your own.
Realists and radical democrats have criticized the “resident alienation” of intentional communities that separate themselves from society to maintain their own purity apart from the world. I think they’re right, and I pray that new monasticism will never fall into this temptation. We cannot get away from this world’s systems to carve out a utopia. But God has interrupted history to make a new creation possible right in the midst of the old. We’re called to interrupt the world with signs of a new humanity right where we are.
You are right to say that the gospel has leavened society to some degree by democratizing it. This is a result of radical Christian witness. Though it has not ushered in the kingdom, democracy is better than its alternatives. But we are always susceptible to self-deception. And we can easily confuse the pursuit of happiness with the desire for God’s beloved community.
This is, I’m afraid, the failure of the success of the civil rights movement. A movement that was inspired by a vision of beloved community where all people have dignity because they are children of God was “democratized” into a civil rights movement that promised the American Dream to the "talented tenth" of the black community. This meant that most of those who could leave black communities did, leaving neighborhoods without the resources of educated and professional people. Without any connection to the local community, the young men and women who gained access through the movement achieved some political power but effected little change.
People like John Perkins of the Christian Community Development Association have helped me to see that the political hope of the God movement is both more radical and more effective when it stays committed to the grassroots and to the practice of entrusting everyday people with the tactics of Jesus. You’re right: We ought not let the empire hold our imaginations captive by believing that the gospel is only personal. But neither should we imagine that we can jump to good national and global policy without being transformed ourselves. The call to conversion is total. We desperately need new imaginations as well as a whole new world. The good news is that God has already made all of this possible in Jesus. I hope we can struggle to live into it together.
Peace to you,
Jonathan
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today's Church (Baker).
Sojourners’ June issue features a cover story by Amy Green and a column by Jim Wallis about the new paths of Christians in their 20s and 30s, plus a set of mini-interviews with 10 next-gen Christian leaders. Here’s a taste: part of Sojourners’interview with Mariama White-Hammond, the 29-year-old executive director of Project HIP-HOP (Highways Into the Past—History, Organizing and Power), a youth-led, secular, nonprofit organization.
Sojourners: What's the biggest challenge you see facing young Christians/the church now? In the years to come?
I think we basically always face the same problems: 1. Can we shut up long enough to hear God? 2. When God speaks, can we be obedient? 3. Can we be loving enough to non-believers that they will ever believe that our God is love?
I believe that the world knows that things are bad and they are searching for a prophetic voice, but even more they are searching for people who believe so much that they are willing to put their own comfort on the line. If we could do that, we could take the world by storm.
We hear often that young Christians'—particularly evangelicals'—perceptions of Christianity are changing, that their concerns are broadening to encompass more social justice issues. Do you see this happening in your own experience?
I do see that young Christians are beginning to shift. I think that, particularly around the issue of the environment or issues of war, it is clear to my generation that the way we are living is unsustainable. We are faced with the reality that we are going to pay for some of the short-sightedness of our parents. I think that many of us have never wanted for anything and we see that consumption is not just killing our planet, but that it often creates emptiness.
We want to be more connected to each other—that's why we all live on Facebook. So I know we don't have all the answers, but I think we are beginning to ask the right questions.
What one thing would you most like to tell Christians?
The same thing that I am always needing to tell myself: The God that we serve is so big that we don't have to be limited by the world that we now see. We serve a God who parted the Red Sea, brought my ancestors out of slavery, and was willing to give the ultimate sacrifice. If we could remember that—we would have the kind of hope that would allow us to live boldly for Christ. Not just trying to get other people to accept Christ, but being willing to live our lives like we really trust him to do what he has said that he will do—to change us and this world.
What gives you hope?
The young people that I work with in my organization and in my church give me hope. When I see them stepping out of faith to achieve things that other people don't believe they can do, then I know that God is good.
My niece, who was born at 24 weeks at 1 pound, 8 ounces. They were going to pronounce her stillborn when one nurse believed that he could save her. She has defied all the predictions and, every time I see her running or hear her speak, I remember what the doctors said, and I am reminded that God is still performing miracles every day. I want her and the teens that I work with to see that I am working hard to make the world better for them so that they too can have hope.
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For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.
[W]e see that our poverty is as absolute as that of the poorest of nations. We have attempted to deny the human condition in our quest for power after power. It would be well for us to rejoin the human race, to accept our essential poverty as a gift, and share our material wealth with those in need.
I’m in the U.K. this week on a speaking and book tour. It’s always good to be here. My wife, Joy Carroll, is a Brit, and we frequently get across the pond. Both of my children are “bilingual,” speaking both the English of the English and the English of the Americans, and we love both countries.
The U.K. edition of The Great Awakening is titled Seven Ways to Change the World, and these commitments are already well under way in the U.K. The British people are generally much more globally aware and concerned than many Americans, and they have a strong sense of “the common good” in their social life together, which is a central theme of this book. The “Jubilee 2000” movement at the turn of the century around global debt relief and the recent “Make Poverty History” campaign in 2005 are discussed in the book as models for how people of faith can help catalyze social movements in society.
After being here again, I am still convinced that Britain’s leadership on issues of global poverty, climate change, human rights, and a better path to security could significantly influence U.S. policies and offer a better kind of leadership “by example,” rather than “by empire.” This morning’s news of more 100 countries reaching an agreement to ban cluster bombs reinforced that belief, as the news stories reported:
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose personal intervention Wednesday led to final agreement among representatives of 111 countries gathered in Dublin, called the ban a "big step forward to make the world a safer place."
I’ve spoken to a variety of audiences this week in London, Manchester, and Edinburgh, Scotland. There have been book launch events at several churches, World Vision leadership breakfasts, and media appearances. Here are reports on the book launch in London and the World Vision breakfast. I was on one of BBC Radio Five’s most popular broadcasts, the Simon Mayo Show – here’s an audio link where you can listen to the show.
It’s been a good tour so far, with more to come next week, including Liverpool and a Parliament event.
I have heard that the Chinese symbol for crisis means both danger and opportunity. The political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe and the crisis brought by xenophobic violence in South Africa present both danger and opportunity.
For many citizens from both countries, the crisis has become an opportunity to express their values of compassion and generosity. In the past week, there has been an outpouring of aid from many local citizens in the form of provision of clothing, food, and shelter for people displaced by the recent spate of xenophobic violence. Faith-based organisations, communities, and individuals have joined forces to give a different message to victims of violence. There are reports of some communities making a stand against xenophobic violence. The crisis has created opportunities to express one’s values.
In Zimbabwe, individuals, communities, and faith-based organisations continue their efforts at addressing practical needs and struggling for justice. Further, there are cross-border support groups. So opportunities exist and are being taken up by many.
However, real danger exists. If the root causes of xenophobic violence are not addressed, the danger of more violence is real. The humanitarian crisis created by the violence continues and requires immediate and long-term solutions. There is already a health crisis in the temporary shelters. Similarly, if violence continues in Zimbabwe and elections are not free and fair, the danger of a political collapse and escalating violence is real.
The prominence of violence in these interrelated crises is disturbing. The "weapons" that are needed to counter violence are unlike military weapons. These "weapons" of wisdom, knowledge, justice, and visionary leadership translate into practical strategies that address short- and long-term political, economic, and social needs -- particularly those of the poor.
Prayer is one of the primary sources for these "weapons," and the starting point that will inevitably lead to creative action, support, and partnerships, etc. Thank you, too, for your prayers – the incidents of xenophobic violence have gone down, but the humanitarian crisis has grown to unmanageable proportions. The political and economic situation in Zimbabwe continues to cause hardship and suffering. Please continue to pray for this region.
Nontando Hadebe, a former Sojourners intern, is originally from Zimbabwe and is now pursuing graduate studies in theology in South Africa.
... this conservative Christian college is showing signs of a real shift in perspective. Being overtly Christian is no longer linked to Republican policies. In fact a real re-alignment is, I think, taking place.
So what does this mean?
First, it is important for liberals to be open to the "conservative" Christians -- their political alignment may not be conservative or Republican, but rather may be very progressive, idealistic. This is a time for openness, for creating new alliances, new linkages.
But almost more fascinating were the reader comments. Compared with the criticism from our more conservative reader comments on this site (that claim Jim is pro-abortion, etc.), these snippets are a fascinating journey through the looking glass to a place where people think Jim is too conservative:
... So when he calls for a "post-religious right," let's bear in mind that he is not a progressive. For example, he is anti-choice ....
... When we look to Jim Wallis as a progressive leader (when he is in fact a conservative) we disempower ourselves ....
... we should simply learn to recognize that he is a leader of the religious right ....
... Wallis is a flaming anti-abortion zealot ...
What would be really fun is to get their commenters and our commenters in a room together, and let them have a moderated debate about which side is "right"—or rather, correct.
Personally, I think it only helps our credibility when criticism from both Left and Right is equally vociferous, and demonstrates that we're more interested in finding new -- and more nuanced -- positions and common ground rather than adhering to ideological litmus tests from either side. Jim and Sojourners simply don't fit those tired categories, no matter how hard our critics try to mash us into them. It's also nice to know that we have friends on all sides as well.
Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the Web editor for Sojourners.
One aspect of serving others is listening to the call within to express your gifts—those talents you have that make you feel infinite when you are doing them. When we express those gifts, the Holy Spirit works through us in ways we may never know directly, touching the lives, hearts, and minds of others.
- Joanna Bates Environmental scientist, dancer, and writer
[God] makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
[God] breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
[God] burns the shields with fire.
"Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations,
I am exalted in the earth."
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The genocidal situation in Darfur continues to worsen, with more killings and increased attacks on peacekeepers. All the efforts to date by the U.N., the U.S., and other governments have failed to stop the atrocities.
In this morning’s New York Times, the Save Darfur coalition ran an ad with the message: “We stand united and demand that the genocide and violence in Darfur be brought to an end.” It was signed by the three remaining presidential candidates – Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama. The statement, We Stand United On Sudan, concluded:
Today, we wish to make clear to the Sudanese government that on this moral issue of tremendous importance, there is no divide between us. We stand united and demand that the genocide and violence in Darfur be brought to an end and that the CPA be fully implemented. Even as we campaign for the presidency, we will use our standing as Senators to press for the steps needed to ensure that the United States honors, in practice and in deed, its commitment to the cause of peace and protection of Darfur’s innocent citizenry. We will continue to keep a close watch on events in Sudan and speak out for its marginalized peoples. It would be a huge mistake for the Khartoum regime to think that it will benefit by running out the clock on the Bush Administration. If peace and security for the people of Sudan are not in place when one of us is inaugurated as President on January 20, 2009, we pledge that the next Administration will pursue these goals with unstinting resolve.
An Associated Press story called it a rare show of bipartisan unity. It is that, and it is also a hopeful sign that on this moral issue, there are indeed no Democrats or Republicans, conservatives or liberals, only compassion and a commitment to do everything possible to bring an end to the horror in Darfur.
I don’t want to assume that readers automatically know who Steven Curtis Chapman is, but if you’ve been surfing the Web recently, it’s very likely you may have seen the name. Chapman is one of the most visible and influential figures of the Christian music genre. As of 2007, he has sold more than 10 million albums, has nine gold and platinum albums, and won five Grammy awards.
Chapman and his wife, Mary Beth, have six children – three biological and three adopted young girls from China. On Wednesday, May 21, the Chapman family received the worst of news. In what was meant to be a celebratory week for the Chapman family, their youngest daughter – 5-year-old Maria Sue Chapman – was killed in a tragic car accident.
“Just hours before, this close-knit family was celebrating the engagement of the oldest daughter, Emily Chapman, and [was] just hours away from a graduation party marking Caleb Chapman’s completion of high school. Now, they are preparing to bury a child who blew out five candles on a birthday cake less than 10 days ago ..." said Jim Houser, Chapman's manager.
As a parent of three myself, my heart absolutely aches and mourns for Steven and Mary Beth and their entire family. What makes this story more gut-wrenching was that their daughter was accidentally struck and killed in their driveway by an SUV driven by their younger teenage son. Tragic.
I’ve been surprised at how Maria Sue’s death has impacted so many. I figured a handful of Christian news sources would cover the story, but it’s been very widespread and still remains one of the top items on search engines. The last time I checked, 18,301 well wishes, blessings, condolences, and prayers were left on a tribute blog titled, “In Memory of Maria.” Perhaps it speaks to the many ways Chapman has ministered to so many people through his music. Or perhaps it speaks to how Steven and Mary Beth have demonstrated the beauty of the gospel through their lives – not just through his music but their advocacy for adoption through Shaohannah's Hope, “a charity organization which offers grants to qualifying families to help defray the cost of adopting, at home and abroad,” along with numerous other expressions of justice and compassion.
No parent ever wants to be in the news because of a tragedy, but nevertheless, it is good that so many have been drawn to the Chapman family story and the loss of their child. While we lift them in prayer and celebrate Maria’s life and the hope that is found in the gospel of Christ, let’s not stop there.
Be mindful of the millions -- especially children -- whose lives are as precious in the eyes of God. As a result of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar and an idiotic military junta government, at least 80,000 have perished with about 56,000 still missing. About 2 to 3 million people are homeless. Relief groups estimate that at least one-third of the perished are children. Do not forget them.
Be mindful of millions impacted by the earthquake in Sichuan, China, where, as of this morning, these were the “statistics:" 67,183 confirmed dead, 361,722 injured, 20,790 missing, and approximately 5 million people homeless. About 5,000 children have been orphaned. Do not forget them.
According to UNICEF, 27,000 to 30,000 children die each day due to the complexities of global poverty. It is true that last year UNICEF reported worldwide child deaths at a record low: 9.7 million per year. For the first time in modern history, the number of children dying before age 5 fell below 10 million per year. But that’s still 9.7 million children.
Let that sink in … deep. And do not forget them.
I grieve, mourn, and hope with the Chapman family. I’ve found myself randomly crying for their family -- even while I am convicted of the great hope of the gospel of Christ. But it’s also my hope that the outpouring of care and compassion for the loss of their child also compels each of us to be more HUMAN. By this, I am simply suggesting that we live as God intended -- to care not only for ourselves [our kind, our nations, our families, and our children] but for the many -- locally and globally -- that need the compassion and kindness of fellow humans.
Let’s not just be in love with the idea of compassion and justice. Let’s do our part to change the world.
Eugene Cho, a second generation Korean-American, is the founder and lead pastor of Quest Church in Seattle, Washington, and the executive director of Q Cafe, an innovative nonprofit neighborhood café in the city with only a handful of cafés. You can stalk him at his blog at: eugenecho.wordpress.com.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers announced Friday that after a prolonged and often heated campaign, Burger King has agreed to award tomato pickers 1.5 cents per pound of tomatoes picked, the equivalent of a 71 percent increase in wages.
Sojourners has been involved with the campaign since June 2007, and in little less than a year, more than 25,000 of our activists sent more than 125,000 letters to the fast-food chain and its supporters. Given the slavery indictments in regions of south Florida, the agreement also includes zero tolerance guidelines for unlawful activities of any grower from the Burger King supply chain.
While Burger King’s agreement is a long-awaited victory, their stalling and obstructing other companies from coming on board over the past year is unconscionable. In the end, the second-largest burger chain estimated that the agreement will cost it $300,000 annually, yet last year the company made $2.23 billion in profits.
We must continue to demand justice for workers at all levels of our economy, and we applaud the Coalition of Immokalee Workers for this victory on that path.
To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation. When we do it knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, destructively, it is a desecration.
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O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger,
or discipline me in your wrath.
Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
O Lord, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror.
My soul also is struck with terror,
while you, O Lord--how long?
In the back and forth concerning the role South Africa must play in the crisis of human rights abuses under the reign of Robert Mugabe and his cronies, it is my belief that we must see some form of serious intervention.
I understand the need for diplomacy, which always calls for "you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours." But when endless reports have been publicized of the atrocities that the people of Zimbabwe are facing, South African President Thabo Mbeki must engage ways to ensure that we as a South African people do not repeat history in our failure to act for justice -- as Bishop Tutu rightfully pointed out in the tragedy of Rwanda.
Mbeki can use people like Dr. Gerrie Lubbe, Dr. Allan Boesak, Bishop Tutu, and many other social activists who should be strategically commissioned to have a round-table discussion with Mugabe and his crew.
While the world, and even South Africa, remains largely disengaged from this crime against humanity that is occurring in Zimbabwe, people are dying. Must someone declare that there is genocide taking placing before the United Nations, the African Union, and world leaders will make a stand?. If this is the case, let me proclaim, "There is genocide taking place in Zimbabwe!" -- a genocide that may be ethnic, it may be cultural, but most definitely political.
For all that Mugabe has seen in his lifetime, one cannot understand how elder Mugabe can allow his people to suffer at his hand. At one time in our not-too-distant history, Mugabe was one of the most celebrated African leaders. How has this former champion of his people become the enslaver and dictator?
Let us work to mobilize our networks and resources, and our power and influence to aid the people of Zimbabwe. Do what you can to see this hypocrisy and abuse of human rights come to an end.
Seth Naicker is an activist for justice and reconciliation from South Africa. He is currently studying and working at Bethel University, in St. Paul, Minnesota, as the program and projects director for the Office of Reconciliation Studies. He can be reached at: seth-naicker@bethel.edu or smnaick@hotmail.com
We know that the government of Sudan responds to civil war by targeting innocent civilians—a strategy based on its weakness as well as its evil. This is the strategy the Khartoum regime used in southern Sudan until the international community pressured it into a 2005 peace accord. It’s what the regime is doing now in Sudan’s western area, Darfur.
So it’s not surprising that, after one of Darfur’s rebel groups attacked targets on the outskirts of Khartoum two weeks ago, the regime has responded by rounding up civilians from Darfuri ethnic groups living in Khartoum, killing some, torturing others, and hiding many God knows where.
Instead, we’re letting even the agreement in the South slip through our fingers: Khartoum has repeatedly and openly broken its 2005 commitments about the oil-rich region of Abyei, and has instead been arming ethnically targeted militias there. Recently, the situation has escalated into fighting between Sudan’s army and the SPLA in the oil-rich region of Abyei, fighting that has driven at least 30,000 people from their homes, according to a U.N. bulletin this Wednesday.
Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.
But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
Nothing is so important as human life, as the human person. Above all, the person of the poor and the oppressed... Jesus says that whatever is done to them he takes as done to him. That bloodshed, those deaths are beyond all politics: They touch the very heart of God.
- Oscar A. Romero March 16, 1980
What does it mean to be a Christian in these times? The works of mercy knock on our door. The hungry, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner demand our compassion -- but more, they demand our action.
I am thinking of the prisoners especially as I prepare for trial in Washington, D.C., tomorrow. There are the 2 million men and women who crowd U.S. prisons -- many for nonviolent offenses. Then there are the tens of thousands shoved in the dark corners of the U.S.'s vast but hidden archipelago of "war on terror" detention. Guantanamo -- perched on the tip of Cuba -- is the most visible and the most vulnerable.
Since walking from Santiago de Cuba to Guantanamo as a work of mercy -- to visit the prisoners and appeal to the humanity of their imprisoners -- with friends in 2005, I have been particularly concerned with what has been called the "gulag of our time."
And so tomorrow, 35 of us go to trial for an action at the U.S. Supreme Court. On Jan. 11, a day that marked six years of torture and abuse at the U.S. Naval Base, 80 of us were arrested there. In the statement we read there, we explained that "We are here to bring their plight and the plight of all prisoners from this current war, to the 'highest court in the land.' We are here to make their suffering visible, to make their voices heard, to make their humanity felt." And we continued that after we were arrested -- many of us were taken into custody under the name of a Guantanamo prisoner. And in a new twist on traditional protest, we will continue to carry those names into the courtroom on Tuesday.
This act symbolically grants the Guantanamo prisoners their day in court, which the Pentagon has denied them for years. For example, Christine Gaunt, a grandmother and third-generation hog farmer from Grinnell, Iowa, will carry with her into the courtroom the name and the memory of Abdul Razzaq, an Afghani man sent to Guantanamo in 2003. She reflects: "Abdul Razzaq continually claimed his innocence. He died in Guantanamo in 2007 of cancer, leaving behind children and grandchildren. He never had a chance to make his case in a court. I will take his name to honor his right to justice before a proper court, a right cruelly denied him at Guantanamo."
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
Story re-orders, sifts through experience, and allows others, young children and adults alike, to hear what we think truly matters. We are constituted by the stories we tell ourselves and others. Thus stories serve an ontological purpose. Story connects us with that which lies beyond ourselves and this process makes us ask questions about the meanings of our lives. It is, in fact, a way we can begin to define what we mean when we use the term "spirituality."
- Barbara Kimes Myers Young Children and Spirituality
Over the last few years, I've gotten acquainted with a movement of Christians that is vibrant, enormous, and yet refuses to let itself be named or to take credit for any of its accomplishments. Some have named subsets or aspects of the movement -- for example, "The New Monastics," "The Emergent Church," "Ordinary Radicals," and even "Revolutionaries." But there are millions of people swept up into this movement who have never even heard those phrases.
I grew up an atheist and a left-wing activist/organizer. I got a view into this movement only when I married a Christian and started going to church (the only way it was ever going to happen) a few years ago. When I first saw thousands of upper-middle-class, white, Southern suburbanites respond passionately to a sermon titled "Two Fists in the Face of Empire," I knew that something incredible must be going on. Afterward, a minute of Googling revealed that the U.S. was already full of churches preaching that same "anti-empire" gospel -- both mega- and mini-churches, suburban, rural, and urban. The movement is invisible to people outside the church (and to liberal mainline Christians) because it is strongest among "born-again" Christians -- the kind who believe Jesus is really coming back, raise their hands in the air, weep in worship, and study the Bible every day because they believe it's true. These folks have learned that most of their coworkers and classmates think all that stuff is bizarre, and so they keep it to themselves. In some ways, born-again Christians are as different from mainstream America as the Amish, but there are 100 million of them and they're almost totally invisible.
I started weeping in worship services myself when I started to see what this movement was actually doing in people's lives. It was taking very isolated, individualistic middle-class suburban people like me and breaking them open in all kinds of ways. Even though I had spent a lot of time working as a community and union organizer, I had always been careful to keep my life totally unentangled by the immediate needs and troubles of the people I was organizing -- that's what I was most comfortable with, and it's also what I was taught to do by all my mentors.
I was organizing for "big" solutions and staying away from all the "little" stuff that to me just seemed too messy and complicated to ever solve anyway. But these young Christians I was meeting were "falling in love with each other across class and racial lines," and wrestling with demons of poverty, addiction, community violence, family violence, sexual abuse, depression, hopeless schools, and all the other troubles that plague American life. They were "making redemptive history" by healing wounds and repairing families and communities one at a time. It's really the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, and I've had the opportunity to witness it up close in a dozen states and scores of giant mega-churches and tiny house groups.
And so it is with great hesitation that I have been trying to make a suggestion for an amendment to this movement.
As this movement has radically embraced "relational" one-on-one or neighborhood-level social change, it has just as radically shunned any kind of big-picture national and global collective social change. I've been arguing in a series of posts at my blog Revolution in Jesusland that the movement should not limit its imagination to only small and local modes of change, but should allow God to work through them at a national and global level too.
For many of us young evangelicals, the Moral Majority and its demise unveiled for us the deceptions of power. We walked away from politics as we knew it because we didn't like who it made us. But we believe there is a better way, and we've tried to learn that Way from Jesus.
As I understand it, new monasticism is trying to learn what it means to live by the power of the Spirit in a world of competing powers. This means, first of all, that we give ourselves to prayer, trusting that there's time to listen in a world of urgent needs. The most radical thing we can do in a world wrecked by injustice is to open our imaginations to prayer. If we want to transform the world, we have to begin with our own conversions. As Gandhi said, "We must be the change we seek."
... New monasticism is not against political organizing, or, as Dr. King said in 1968, "taking the nonviolent movement international." ... But our witness there will only be credible if we've taken the time to be converted ourselves and to build communities of justice and peace where it is easier to be good. We won't end global poverty until we learn to care for the poor in our communities. Our cries for world peace will fall on deaf ears until we learn to live peaceably as Christians.
But when I read the story of the Way of Jesus in the Bible, I don't see him or his disciples limiting themselves only to prayer. I don't see them waiting to perfect themselves before engaging their national community politically. The Jesus movement as presented in the Bible did live differently, but it didn't set itself aside separately and neatly to live only as an example. Jesus didn't lead his followers to form an intentional community set apart; he sent waves of disciples strategically all around the country to deliberately ignite a national movement -- of highly imperfect people -- that shook the foundation of empire. He didn't only walk around saying profound things and hoping that people would get the point; he created intolerable confrontations with authority.
After Jesus, the Bible records the disciples organizing a networked movement of insurgent communities spanning the empire. In some ways, that movement was the inverse of the empire that it was trying to subvert: e.g., practicing enemy love in the face of state terror. But it also was a mirror image of the global reach of empire: e.g., it organized itself at lightning speed and on a global scale using the communication and transportation networks of the empire. (The New Testament itself is mostly made up of the equivalent of interoffice organizational e-mails written by first-century jet-set Christian organizers, constantly pushing, pulling, and teaching far-flung communities.)
On those points, the movement answers: "Okay, maybe, but Jesus never taught us to 'take power.' And so we must limit ourselves to witnessing from the 'bottom' and never try to put ourselves on 'top' in positions of power."
In college, I had friends who went off to join a weird little secretive Maoist party that was active on campus. It was a crazy thing to watch as they transported themselves back in time to the China of the 1940s. All their calculations about making social change here in America were messed up because their paradigm was based on the regime that Mao Zedong's communists lived under as young persecuted revolutionaries. I think there's a bit of that going on with this movement of Christian revolutionaries today. Too often, they're applying the Way of Jesus to our modern-day world as though nothing has changed since the first-century Roman Empire.
But haven't 2,000 years of redemptive history taken place since then? Yes, many places in our societies still look a lot like Rome and many people still suffer violence at the hands of the state on a regular basis -- and we can't forget that. But thousands of years of resistance and subversion has borne fruit. There is something new. Most Christians today live in societies where we can remove, replace, and even become our own political leaders in peaceful elections. Is that an accident? Is it to be ignored? How tragic would it be if the body of Christ opened up new ways for humanity to work together, but Christians were too discouraged to try them? Yes, our democracies are flawed. But maybe the biggest problem with them is our lack of imagination in using them, and our lack of faith in ourselves as leaders. What if the disciples had approached Rome with a similar lack of imagination and faith in themselves? Reading the story of Jesus and the disciples, how often do you hear God telling us, "Hold back! Watch out! Be careful!" I don't hear that at all. I hear instead, "Have faith in me, allow me to work through you, and go for it!"
Jesus lived under an empire that ruled primarily by the cross and the sword. Today we live under an empire that also tortures and kills -- but that is not its primary mode. Our empire neutralizes its citizens with an idea -- one so fundamental to our thinking that we often mistake it for a law of nature: that any attempt by humanity to determine its future intentionally and collectively will always result in failure. Of all people, Christians should not allow that modern ideology of empire to limit their imagination.
Zack Exley is a writer, organizer and recovering political consultant. He blogs at RevolutionInJesusland.com.
It's a slim, illustrated book, less than a hundred pages, and it presents the title character with the same mixture of affection and mockery with which Ned has been portrayed in the series for nearly two decades. What is interesting, however, is that the credited author is Matt Groening, the series creator, and the publisher is HarperCollins, a division of Fox. Together, this puts an imprimatur on the basically favorable view of believers that The Simpsons' irreverent writers have been running away from for years. That is, Ned Flanders is an exemplar of good-natured and (literally) muscular Christianity.
The "Simpsons" writers have managed to navigate the tricky space between animation and caricature in portraying Ned's Christian faith. He has a dual, almost contradictory appeal. College-age evangelicals see many of their own well-intentioned foibles in him. And some secular viewers outside the Sun Belt suburbs and the heartland -- who may have yet to meet an evangelical in the flesh and may even be hostile to the rise of religious conservatives -- find him to be an accessible and even sympathetic exemplar of American evangelicalism.
But telling you that was just an excuse to plug an article I did for Sojourners magazine waaaay back in 2001, titled "Don't Have a Sacred Cow, Man," in which I compare and contrast Ned Flanders and Rev. Lovejoy as representatives of incarnational vs. institutionalized Christianity. (Update to my tagline at the end of that article: My complete Simpsons archive is still up to date, but I've made the switch from VHS to digital. And though he's gotten a little grayer, my dad still kind of looks like Ned.)
Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the Web editor for Sojourners.
On May 20, The Jerusalem Post reported that "a senior member in the entourage of President Bush" said during closed meetings that Bush and Cheney "were of the opinion that military action against Iran was called for." The White House denied the story, which claims that the reservations of Secretaries Rice and Gates are the remaining levies holding back the floodwaters of war. Tensions mount as Senators McCain and Obama spar over appropriate engagement with Iran.
The elephant in the room, of course, is what Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the IAEA, calls "the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue nuclear weapons but morally acceptable for others to rely on them." Even if most Americans agree that Iran should not have nuclear weapons, we've surrendered the moral high ground with our cache of thousands of nuclear warheads, which we maintain to the tune of $16 billion annually. As Sen. Obama points out, "Iran spends one one-hundredth of what we spend on the military." What he doesn't add is that at $515 billion per year, we spend more on militarism than the rest of the world combined. And that's not including the $200 billion we will spend this year in Iraq and Afghanistan. The truth is that with the rising costs of health care, housing, gas, and food, we can't afford not to talk with Iran. After all, it's you and I who will foot the bill, along with our children and grandchildren.
Christians, however, are called to be faithful, not merely pragmatic. We must ask the hard question: What does our faith say about violence against our enemies? The prophetic book of Isaiah opens with a troubling word from God to the nation of Israel, which condemns religious charades. God is not impressed by our poignant prayers, high holy days, generous offerings, spirited worship, or sacred sacrifices. Instead, God desires righteousness, justice, and solidarity with those who suffer -- the things that make for peace. As in much of the Hebrew Testament, God addresses a nation, not mere individuals. Perhaps it is not enough, in other words, for us to do the difficult work of reconciling with our personal enemies if our nation beats the war drums. Perhaps it's our systems that God is concerned with, not simply our personal sins.
Just when it seems that God will not tolerate one more prayer from blood-covered hands, God beckons: "Come, let us reason together." Come, let us reason together. God wields power to open dialogue, rather than end it. In the United Church of Christ, we often say that "God is still speaking." And so long as God is willing to reason with us, though our sins are blood-red, then it behooves us to reason with one another.
Our scriptures do not deliver utopian heroes, families, communities, or political and religious authorities. They acknowledge the insidious nature of sin, because God's grace is most profound when it meets our broken places. Jesus' instruction to love our enemies is not simply for prosperous and peaceful times. Isaiah proclaims that precisely in the times when our "lands are desolate," God calls us to reason together. In In the Company of Strangers, theologian Parker Palmer contends that, "to let God mediate our relationships means that … one listens not with a sense of personal power … but with a sense of God's presence which alone can heal … When we allow God to be the third person in all our meetings, fear is replaced by hope."
It is our complicated task as Christians to discern what this word from God might mean in our present context when we hear of wars and rumors of war. As Christians whose faith informs our participation in public life, we are translators of biblical truth into ethical principles that can be applied to matters of public policy. God beckons us to come and "reason together." What will we choose?
Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
In arrogance the wicked persecute the poor
let them be caught in the schemes they have devised.
For the wicked boast of the desires of their heart,
those greedy for gain curse and renounce the Lord.
Creation is longing for salvation as much as we who bear the joy and burden of human creaturehood. In travail for the true response to God, may we bring forth fruits of repentance and liberation and a substantial stewardship of the round earth we share with everything God made and will yet make.
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They call him a lion. John McCain, on Tuesday, called him the "last lion in the Senate … because he remains the single most effective member of the Senate." I've always liked lions. I have a beautiful painting of a South African lion on the wall of our living room at home. My boys think it is Aslan, the lion of Narnia, of whom Mr. Beaver said, "'Course he isn't safe. But he's good."
The nation got a shock this week. Edward Kennedy, the lion who has been in the U.S. Senate for nearly 50 years, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. I know Ted Kennedy and his wife, Vicki, and have enjoyed personal conversations with them on a number of occasions over a wide range of issues, including the application of Christian faith to public life. I've found them both to be serious Catholics. And I have worked with Sen. Kennedy on a variety of issues, including legislation for a long-delayed increase in the minimum wage and for comprehensive immigration reform.
When it comes to fighting for economic justice, civil rights, health care, and education, and to opposing unjust and mistaken wars, there has been no greater champion in the Senate, no stronger lion than Teddy Kennedy, as his friends like to call him. And what has been most impressive and inspiring during these last few days since the Massachusetts senator was stricken with seizures is hearing how many friends he really has -- on both sides of the aisle. Despite being the archetypal "liberal" in the U.S. Senate, and the favorite whipping boy and consistent poster child for the right-wing ditto heads of talk radio and the egomaniacs of Fox News, the outpouring of respect and affection for Ted Kennedy from his colleagues in the Senate, including Republicans, has been just amazing.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky., Republican leader), said: "Sen. Kennedy enjoys great respect and admiration on this side of the aisle. He is indeed one of the most important figures to ever serve in this body in our history."
Conservative Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who has become a close friend of Kennedy, said: "He's like a brother to me. I love him. I love the Kennedy family. He's given so much to the country, and he has one of the greatest senses of humor of anyone I've known in my life. You can't help but like him if you get to know him."
This genuine and generous outpouring of love and concern for Sen. Kennedy proves a very important thing. It shows that one can be an advocate, a passionate and relentless champion for clear and controversial causes and yet still be a bridge-builder, a reconciler, and a seeker of common ground. The conventional wisdom says you must be one or the other, an advocate or a bridge-builder, but never both. Ted Kennedy, once again, proves the conventional wisdom wrong. It is because he is a lawmaker who genuinely wants to get things done, to find real and concrete solutions -- especially for people who really need them. Kennedy is known as a senator who truly wants to be effective and not just right, as so many others, on both sides of the aisle, are too often content to be.
As a Wall Street Journal story said:
Long known as a liberal lion, partisan warrior and scion of a Democratic family dynasty, Sen. Kennedy has, in the gridlocked environment of recent years, played a role as a key deal maker in nearly all significant domestic policy achievements. Many of the most important domestic milestones of the Bush years … could not have happened without Sen. Kennedy's role as finder of common ground between the two parties.
Ted Kennedy represents a tradition of public service almost unparalleled in American political history. Three of his brothers literally gave their lives in service to their country and the Kennedy family has consistently shown how "the haves" can decide to use their wealth and power to help change the world for the sake of the "have-nots." At 77, his colleagues will tell you that nobody works harder, day in and day out, on the nuts of bolts of lawmaking than Sen. Kennedy, instead of retiring to sail off to his beloved Cape Cod.
On a more personal note, I have met several of the Kennedy children, nephews, nieces, and cousins. Guess who always calls each one on their birthdays -- and often in-between. The youngest of the Kennedy brothers has become the patriarch of the family now, the lion who takes care of all the cubs. Hearing that impressed me as a father and an uncle myself as to the "family values" of one of the most public figures in American political life.
So pray for Ted Kennedy, Vicki Kennedy, and a family that has both given and suffered so much, as more tests, diagnosis, and critical treatment decisions lie ahead. And whatever your political views, thank God for a very human public servant who has focused his entire political career on those whom Jesus called "the least of these" and who once told me one of his favorite biblical texts comes from the book of James, who reminds us all that "faith without works is dead."
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
- William Butler Yeats, from his poem, "The Second Coming"
When I listen to stories of victims of the xenophobic violence in South Africa and compare those with the stories of victims of electoral cleansing in Zimbabwe, things fall apart because the experiences of violence are similar. How can this be? How can the experience of violence in a democracy be the same as that in a dictatorship? For the victims of violence -- most of whom are the poorest of the poor -- their experience blurs the distinction between a democracy and a dictatorship. Similarly, for the perpetrators of violence, democracy has not changed their material condition and has no real value. Are they the only role-players in this violence? What about our leaders and institutions dealing with welfare, immigration, housing, etc.? What about regional leaders' responsibility to challenge dictatorship? The violence is a collective shame that requires collective responsibility.
The violence is spreading like wildfire and is unstoppable. The headline in all the newspapers is "flames of hatred," with pictures of the latest act of brutality -- namely, pouring petrol on victims and setting them alight. The spirit of hatred and violence has taken root and it is unlikely that the violence will stop. Listening to talk shows on the radio, it is alarming to hear some of the hate speech. A friend phoned me last night and she was terrified because she narrowly missed being attacked. She lives in the centre of Johannesburg and locals told residents in the block of flats where she lives that they will be returning with enough petrol to set the building on fire and burn them all. The police have lost control. It feels surreal, and as I lie in bed -- safe for the moment -- I challenge myself to make my temporal safety an opportunity to do something. I am not sure what at the moment, but I am sure that I can find something to do -- join those trying to do something. I know that the starting place is prayer, because that is the only hate-free zone!
We need prayers for South Africa. Please include these requests in your prayers:
actions to bring an end to the violence, as it is now spreading to other parts of the country
visionary leaders who will "make concrete" the values and benefits of democracy for the poor
healing and restoration of victims of violence
justice and rehabilitation of perpetrators of violence
new spirit and revival of African humaneness of "ubuntu"
churches and individuals who have responded to the plight of the victims of violence to continue and find the resources they need.
In Zimbabwe, the date of the presidential election has been set for June 27, 2008. The violence is continuing and spreading across the country. There have been calls for the establishment of a government comprising both the opposition and "ruling party" so that the political situation can be stabilised first before an election. I doubt whether the "ruling party" will accept this -- they will insist on elections. In this context, prayers are needed -- please include the following requests in your prayers:
for regional leaders to have the wisdom and courage to come up with alternative strategies toward resolving the deteriorating situation
for victims of violence and their families
for military leaders behind the violence
for the leadership of the opposition -- for courage, vision, and perseverance that will strengthen the resolve of their supporters who face violence and torture
for the biggest miracle of all -- the birth of a new democratic Zimbabwe!
Thank you all for your support and I hope that one day when things turn around for the best, we can pray for you too!
Nontando Hadebe, a former Sojourners intern, is originally from Zimbabwe and is now pursuing graduate studies in theology in South Africa.
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On Christmas Day a few years ago in Dallas, Texas, Socheata Poeuv's parents called a family meeting to tell her that her sisters weren't really her sisters, and her brother was not her full brother. After 25 years of attempting to live a "normal American life," her parents revealed a shocking family secret that would draw them all back to Cambodia, the home they fled and struggled to forget during the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. As she packs for her trip back to Cambodia, Socheata turns to the camera and confides, "I knew more about the Holocaust than the Khmer Rouge. I knew even less about my own family."
Socheata Poeuv documents the unfurling of her family mystery in a beautiful, strong film called New Year Baby. After arriving in Cambodia, Socheata narrates the film through a series of interviews with her parents, relatives, and even the former Khmer Rouge leader who supervised the labor camp where her parents were forced to work. In one exchange that filled me with both dread and loathing, Socheata asks the former KR district manager, now a poor farmer, if the thousands of dead weigh upon him. Chillingly, he explains, "No. They do not come to conscience," and "I have forgotten so much." Shocked, Socheata presses him for more but the only thing he has left to say is, "I am sorry for the mismanagement of my district." He shifts on the dirt floor as his wife fries some fish for Socheata's mournful, exhausted Pa.
Ma and Pa Poeuv emerge as heroes by the end of the film. Ma's compassion for orphaned children and Pa's courage as he leads his family through minefields, gunfire, and across borders are stories that Socheata calls "remarkable, but common." When you watch the film, you'll find yourself marveling at how simple, ordinary people can be fiercely courageous, unconditionally loving, and self-sacrificial -- and you'll wonder about your own capacity to "go and do likewise."
For Socheata, what had started as a "glorified home video" turned into a 90-minute film, which in turn led to a significant human rights effort to document and archive testimony of what it was like to live under a regime some call "the most controlling government in history." Socheata's latest project is Khmer Legacies, a nonprofit whose goal is to videotape testimonies of thousands of Cambodian survivors by having children interview their parents. Socheata knows firsthand the importance of storytelling through the generations: After New Year Baby was screened at a film festival in Dallas, Texas, Socheata brought her parents and entire extended family up to the stage. Upon seeing the 300+ audience give Ma and Pa Poeuv a standing ovation and wait in line to shake their hands, Socheata recalls, "It really was that experience of having the audience affirm their story that transformed their relationship to their past. More than anything, they had never been honored like that before in their whole life. These are broken-English immigrant people who are invisible in our society." Socheata's film and new nonprofit shed some light and heart on the Cambodian genocide and the importance of "Never Again."
Anna Almendrala is the marketing and circulation assistant for Sojourners. To learn more about Khmer Legacies, visit their Web site: www.khmerlegacies.org
Zack Exley over at Revolution in Jesusland has been offering some careful thought and excellent questions about Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw's new book Jesus for President. His questions are well worth reading in depth, but for the sake of this short response, I'll summarize his concern as this: If new monastics focus on the small and local, how are we ever going to achieve large-scale social and political change? If people with power make the rules, why would Christians of goodwill give up power? Why not organize for shared power so that no one gets left out?
If there is a new monastic movement in North America, then I'm convinced that we can only understand it in the context of America becoming the world's "last remaining superpower" following World War II. For many of us young evangelicals, the Moral Majority and its demise unveiled for us the deceptions of power. We walked away from politics as we knew it because we didn't like who it made us. But we believe there is a better way, and we've tried to learn that Way from Jesus.
As I understand it, new monasticism is trying to learn what it means to live by the power of the Spirit in a world of competing powers. This means, first of all, that we give ourselves to prayer, trusting that there's time to listen in a world of urgent needs. The most radical thing we can do in a world wrecked by injustice is to open our imaginations to prayer. If we want to transform the world, we have to begin with our own conversions. As Gandhi said, "We must be the change we seek."
If there's time to listen to God, then there's also time to listen to our neighbors. I agree wholeheartedly with Exley that Jesus was an organizer, building a movement in first-century Palestine. His organizing philosophy, so far as I can tell, was the same the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) employed in Mississippi during the early 1960s. It consisted of sitting on porches, listening to people, becoming the beloved community with them, and helping all people to know that God loved them. The real power of Jesus' tactic was that it transformed rich and poor alike, setting them free for life together in a new community. It made possible a community that no one could have imagined before.
When we read the gospels closely, Jesus is obviously concerned with timing. Though he does not lay out a grand strategy for social change, he is a master tactician who obviously knows when to wait in Bethany and when to march on Jerusalem. There is a time for the beloved community to take its message to Washington. But you have to get the timing right, Jesus seems to say. The public witness is always dependent on the existence of a new community that points to another way.
New monasticism is not against political organizing or, as Dr. King said in 1968, "taking the nonviolent movement international." In an age of increasing globalization, it is more important than ever that we witness Christ's way to nation-states, corporations, and international organizations. But our witness there will only be credible if we've taken the time to be converted ourselves and to build communities of justice and peace where it is easier to be good. We won't end global poverty until we learn to care for the poor in our communities. Our cries for world peace will fall on deaf ears until we learn to live peaceably as Christians.
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today's Church (Baker).
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One of the few high points of the Bush administration has been its commitment to aid for Africa -- especially in combating HIV/AIDS. The president recently proposed an increase in funding for PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.) But it's not going anywhere. Why?
Columnist and former presidential speechwriter Michael Gerson answered the question. Seven Republican senators -- Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint, Jeff Sessions, Saxby Chambliss, David Vitter, Jim Bunning, and Richard Burr -- have placed a hold on the reauthorization.
It is the nature of the Senate that the smallest of minorities can impede the work of the majority. But it takes a conscious choice -- an act of tremendous will and pride -- for members to employ these powers against an AIDS bill with overwhelming bipartisan support. The seven, led by Coburn, complain that the reauthorization is too costly. They object to "mission creep" -- the funding of "food, water, treatment of other infectious diseases, gender empowerment programs, poverty alleviation programs" -- as though people surviving on AIDS treatment do not need to eat, work or get their TB treated. And the senators are concerned that AIDS funds might be used for things such as abortion referrals and needle distribution, though the legislation doesn't mention these possibilities. So they are pushing for the extension of a superfluous spending mandate requiring that at least 55 percent of PEPFAR resources be used for treatment, on the theory that this will starve "feckless or morally dubious" prevention programs.
He also points out that presidential politics is at play. Gerson writes that some Democratic senators have no interest in passing something that would give credit to the president. But adding up all the obstacles, he concludes:
[S]upporters of the PEPFAR reauthorization now estimate a 50 percent chance it will be shelved until next year. Without a five-year U.S. commitment on AIDS funding, other countries would be reluctant to put new people on treatment. And lives would be lost.
Surely this is one place where saving lives should outweigh politics. It's time for something Washington knows less and less of: bipartisan politics on key moral issues.
Please check out this moving video shot and edited by our own on-the-ground correspondent, Sojourners Web assistant Matt Hildreth. Matt researched, made calls, and then stopped through Postville, Iowa, last Friday and got some great footage. It features Sister Mary of St. Bridget’s, who has been ministering to immigrant families affected by the raid.
Our allies have been spreading this video around among activists all over the country and they’re thrilled to have some interviews with real people telling their stories. Watch it:
Patty Kupfer is the Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform campaign coordinator at Sojourners.
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See how they conceive evil,
and are pregnant with mischief,
and bring forth lies.
They make a pit, digging it out,
and fall into the hole that they have made.
Their mischief returns upon their own heads,
and on their own heads their violence descends.
President Bush's remarks, made last week in Israel, suggesting that anyone who wishes to talk with a violent enemy is the contemporary equivalent of a Hitler appeaser, are so wide of the mark, patronizing, and simply untrue that they must be challenged.
The fact that he used the emotive context of Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations as the background for these comments is an abuse of an already misused people. And implying that Sen. Obama wishes to appease terrorism is not only factually inaccurate, but morally troubling.
Why? Because this is to suggest that the only two options available to "good people" in responding to terror are to terrorise the terrorisers, or to cower in fear or denial. This has never been true. It does not become the president of the United States, a self-affirming follower of Jesus, to endorse the sport of violent revenge and the belief that there are certain people in the world who are so irredeemable that we should not talk to them. This aside, it is not politically efficient to suggest that terrorism can only be defeated by beating its proponents down.
I live in a place -- Northern Ireland -- where the government is now stewarded by two parties, both of whom could be caricatured as representing ancient warrior traditions. Their most recent manifestation, in the form of Irish Republican terrorism (the IRA) and militant Protestant fundamentalism, contributed to the horrors of my childhood, where political murder was a near-daily occurrence. After decades of terror, we did exactly what President Bush denounced last week -- we negotiated with each other and arrived at a settlement that sees former terrorist leaders share political power with those who consider themselves to be their victims. Successive U.S. administrations did not condemn this. In fact, the negotiations between terrorist leaders and constitutional democrats were chaired by former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. President Bush has visited Northern Ireland to endorse the process. He has shaken the hands of former terrorist leaders. He made a video appearance at an investment conference in Belfast two weeks ago, encouraging U.S. businesses to set up shop here and to work with, among others, the current representatives of the organizations responsible for our violent conflict.
His suggestion, therefore, that anyone who wishes to sit down and talk with terrorists is automatically the moral and political equivalent of a Hitler appeaser is not only historically false (in that we know for a fact that such negotiation at least sometimes actually does produce peace), but so absurdly detached from the reality of his own administration's practices that it suggests either a malevolent and politically expedient attention-grabbing propaganda opportunity, or that President Bush simply does not know the truth about Irish politics.
I imagine I will be criticized on at least two fronts for writing this. One, that I am singling out President Bush for no reason other than my personal antipathy toward him. To that I respond with the following: I believe President Bush is a human being in need of redemption, like the rest of us. I do not share much of his politics, but I have been willing to offer praise when he has made good decisions, such as his progressive engagement with HIV/AIDs in Africa. I also believe that his predecessor made terrible errors of judgment regarding violent conflict, not least in Rwanda, and might have been likely to make similar remarks had he been in office and in Israel last week. I hope I would have had the integrity to write this article about President Clinton were he seeking to make the same dishonest political capital.
The second criticism is more nuanced -- the suggestion that the Northern Ireland conflict is not comparable to that in the Middle East. To which I can only reply that the sectarian political divisions on this island have lasted for at least 800 years, and that the violence has at times been at least as barbaric as anything done by Hamas or al Qaeda. I think the real reason that people don't consider my home conflict comparable to others is quite simply racist: They think that Northern Irish Christians are more capable of persuasion than Middle Eastern Muslims. Or, more practically, they don't want to acknowledge that the distasteful and difficult journey traveled in Ireland may have broken the path that the rest of us need to travel too.
What is even more likely, President Bush's remarks mask what might be called another inconvenient truth. When historians uncover the background story to this moment in international relations, they will discover one of two possible facts -- either that the Bush administration is already secretly negotiating with terrorists, or that they really do believe their own propaganda. British military intelligence had a secret back channel to the IRA from at least the early 1970s. Without this, alongside the contribution of politicians, business and church leaders, and other forces, there would be no peace in Ireland today. It would be unthinkable if the U.S. authorities are not already, in some sense, talking to representatives of Hamas, Iran, North Korea, Hugo Chavez, Raoul Castro, and all the other members of whatever "axis of evil" we are told is most threatening at present. For to be honest, if the Bush administration is not engaged in dialogue with such as these, President Bush is both failing to heed the lessons of the history of conflict resolution, and, more seriously, to protect the American people.
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.
However, we must put pressure on the government to address this matter of xenophobia. President Mbeki needs to speak out against it, without delay of or need for investigation. The news reports are definitive enough and cannot be denied, so our president must stand up and condemn these acts of violence.
The complexity of South Africans acting out in frustration of their own circumstances, as people who are agitated by the non-delivery of democratic promises, can and must be understood, but not to the extent that we take out our frustration on our fellow African brothers and sisters who are need of our support, understanding, and love.
It is my hope that businesses, nonprofits, churches, mosques, temples, and any form of organized religion in the townships, suburbs, and all over South Africa make a stand for justice and play a major role in bringing these acts of violence to an end. It is my hope that government will quicken its steps and intervene. It is not enough to say this xenophobia must stop; we must see action by way of a national state of emergency to stop this nonsense immediately!
Let us do whatever it is we can to stop these human rights abuses in South Africa, where our own history does not allow us to forget the days when our comrades were being housed in exile by countries such as Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Kenya. The collective memory of our people must be reminded of those days within apartheid and that this violence must stop!
We need not grow weary in this time. Neither must we grow less Afrocentric or become pessimistic about our continent, our people, our motherland, our beloved South Africa. Instead we should call for peace, and stand for justice. The "I am African-ness" of our people, our continent, and our South African nation must be called upon to remember that we are African.
I am disturbed but I am African.
I am discouraged but I am African.
I am perplexed but I am African.
Our collective memory as an African people must rise again with a consciousness that reminds us of our centeredness in "I am because we are."
Seth Naicker is an activist for justice and reconciliation from South Africa. He is currently studying and working at Bethel University, in St. Paul, Minnesota, as the program and projects director for the Office of Reconciliation Studies. He can be reached at: seth-naicker@bethel.edu or smnaick@hotmail.com
This past weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the historic action of the Catonsville 9. On May 17, 1968, nine men and women entered the Selective Service Offices in Catonsville, Maryland, removed several hundred draft records, and burned them with homemade napalm in protest against the war in Vietnam. The nine were arrested and, in a highly publicized trial, sentenced to jail. Listen to the words spoken by Father Daniel Berrigan on that day:
Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.
It is acts of courage like this that the prophets were known for. And jailed for. They are an invitation to interrupt injustice with grace. They are an invitation to live with prophetic imagination. These are the kind of prophets who don't just try to predict the future - they try to change it.
One of those contemporaries of the Catonsville action is here with us in Philadelphia -- Sister Margaret (we tell her story in our new book Jesus for President). Sister Margaret is one of our wisest -- and wildest -- elders. Some years back, she and some other Christians felt moved by the Spirit to enact some of the prophecies in the Bible. They drew their own blood, which they planned to pour on the war machines as a symbolic lament of the bloodshed they create. And they had a bag full of hammers and other tools with which to begin the conversion of the things of death into the things of life. Then they showed up for a tour of a navy ship. Sister Margaret was designated to carry the tools, since she was the older nun, the least suspicious. It's hysterical to hear her so innocently tell the story of how she just went through the strict security with metal detectors and bag checkers, praying and trusting God. As she went through the checkpoint, her bulky bag got stuck on the gate, and a guard came to her aid. He took the bag from her and lifted it through the security check, and then he helped Sister Margaret, who just thanked him over and over like an innocent granny. They went onto the boat and began climbing up the ladders, up to the top of the ship. There they poured their blood onto the side of a Tomahawk missile launcher. She said it looked like a giant star. Then they prayerfully began beating on the hollow metal of the launcher. The sound of each hit of the hammer seemed to echo across the entire creation. It was sacramental. It was as if time stopped. They continued to hammer together, thud after thud reverberating. Sailors began to surround them -- confused, paralyzed. Officers told the nuns to lay face down with their hands above them on the deck. And they gladly obeyed. It reminded Sister Margaret of the times the sisters would lie prostrate, face down, with outstretched hands in prayer before God. As they lay there, it began to rain, and Sister Margaret says it was like God was crying.
One thing that's clear in the scriptures is that the nations do not lead people to peace; rather, people lead the nations to peace. There's a beautiful text in both Micah and Isaiah where the prophets say that the people will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And it ends by saying that nations will not rise up against other nations, and they will not study war anymore. Peace begins not with nations but with the people of God. It is people who humanize the nations, people who follow the Human One that Daniel spoke of rising from the beasts -- the Son of Man, the gospels proclaim. The end of war begins with people who believe that another world is possible and that another empire has already interrupted time and space and is taking over this earth with the dreams of God. Those dreams begin with people of faith and hope who are audacious enough to be certain of what they do not see. We believe so much that we cannot help but start enacting the prophecies. As our brother Jim Wallis says, "We believe despite the evidence, and we watch the evidence change."
What if we got our best scientists to figure out a plan for converting all our B-52s into tractors?
What if people began to prayerfully take household tools onto military bases and beat the war machines into farm tools?
It has been done. And it will be done again.
We are people who believe in conversion. We believe things can be transformed into new creations.
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Our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation.
Four years ago, Call to Renewal conducted a 12-day "Rolling to Overcome Poverty" bus tour to say that poverty was a religious and electoral issue. Despite our best efforts, the word was rarely spoken in either campaign, or in the presidential debates. This year, it's already different.
On Wednesday, John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama, which, of course, made headlines across the country. But at the Grand Rapids, Michigan, rally where the two men spoke, something even more important happened. Both spoke eloquently about the reality of poverty in the United States, and both reiterated their commitment to cut poverty in half in 10 years in the U.S. Obama pledged again to make that a central feature of his administration if he is elected.
Edwards said:
There is another wall that divides us. It's the moral shame of 37 million of our own people who wake up in poverty every single day. In a nation of our wealth, to have millions of Americans who work every single day and still can't pay their electric bill and pay for their food at the same time. There are mothers out there working two jobs every day to try to keep their kids from going to bed hungry. There are men and women who have worked hard all their lives, so that they can try to buy a home. And they're living in a tent city, because they got nowhere to go. This is not OK.
Obama responded:
Poverty isn't an issue that's talked about on the news or in Washington. It's not always the kind of issue that polls well. But John Edwards decided to talk about it anyway. He decided to center his campaign around it. He came up with new ideas to solve it. He pushed the rest of us to talk about it and debate it. And he did it, not because it was popular, but because it was right. Well, it is still right. It is still worth debating. It is still worth talking about. ... We're going to have to change things around, because we need to lift up every American out of poverty.
The other candidates have also spoken strongly about poverty.
Hillary Clinton, in the recent Compassion Forum, said:
… in my Judeo-Christian faith tradition, in both the Old and the New Testament, the incredible demands that God places on us and that the prophets ask of us, and that Christ called us to respond to on behalf of the poor are unavoidable. And it's always been curious to me how our debate about religion in America too often misses that. You know, his holiness, the pope, is going to be coming to America next week, and he's been a strong voice on behalf of what we must do to deal with poverty, and deal with injustice, and deal with what is truly our obligations toward those who are the least among us.
And John McCain, on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's death:
Some people lament privately, others are brave enough to take their call for change to the public arena. Martin Luther King III has done his father's legacy proud this week by courageously insisting that our nation's next leader do something about the poverty that ensnares over 36 million of our citizens. I will answer his call, and tell him and the American people today that I will make the eradication of poverty a top priority of the McCain Administration.
The media still sees everything in terms of the political horse race, of course, but the issue of poverty has now become a central one in the ongoing campaign. And for us, as people of faith, it's raising the moral issues that will be our focus during this election season, and poverty will be a key one.
I've remarked to a number of friends lately that there seem to be three main kinds of religious people in the world.
First, there are the fearsome -- those who like to make others afraid.
Second, there are the fearless -- those who refuse to be intimidated by the fearsome.
Then in the middle are the fearful -- those who are afraid to associate with the fearless because they might incur the ire of the fearsome.
I've noticed over the years that a favorite tactic of the fearsome is "guilt by association." A small group of the fearsome is using this tactic this week to attack Kay Warren for her participation in the upcoming Envision 08 gathering at Princeton University, June 9-11.
Kay Warren Joins Heavy-Weight Emergents at Envision 08
Kay Warren, wife of Purpose Driven pastor Rick Warren, will join several heavy-weight emergent leaders at the upcoming Envision 08 event this June. Kay Warren will share a platform with Brian McLaren, Jim Wallis (Sojourners magazine), Shane Claiborne, Jay Bakker (son of PTL Jim Bakker), Doug Pagitt, and several other speakers who share emerging church proclivities.
In my opinion, Kay Warren is a hero. I doubt she would even be aware of "emergent heavyweights," much less wish to be associated with them. She is busy helping influence thousands of Christians to care in unprecedented ways for people in need around the world -- especially for those suffering from HIV/AIDS. The fearsome critics choose to ignore the amazing good Kay and Rick Warren have done and are doing, and instead they attack Kay for attending an event that includes people like (shudder) Shane Claiborne, Jim Wallis, Jay Bakker, Doug Pagitt, and (shudder again) me.
Ironically, today's fearsome were probably yesterday's fearful who became co-opted by a mindset of fear. One can hope that more and more of today's fearful will refuse to be intimidated or play into the old politics of fear. After all, recalling Paul's words (2 Timothy 1:7), God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-discipline.
When people tell me about the latest statements of these well-intentioned but less-than-fully-informed people, I feel like Nehemiah: I have important work to do and I don't want to get involved in their debates (6:3-13). Nor do I want to waste my and others' time in the kind of arguments Paul warned Timothy about (2 Timothy 2:14). So, may God bless the fearsome with a good night's sleep and a better attitude tomorrow, and may God bless Kay and Rick Warren for their good work -- fighting HIV/AIDS and helping the poor around the world (Galatians 2:10). And may God bless all who will make Envision 08 a remarkable, positive, Christ-honoring event. May few be intimidated or discouraged by the attacks of the fearsome, but instead, may many be strengthened in their resolve to do what's right and good -- fearlessly. And may we all manifest the fruit of the Spirit through all these controversies ... love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Christine Haider, 25, is preparing for her confirmation to the Roman Catholic Church. When asked about her confirmation name, she smiles broadly and says, "Dorothy." Seventy-five years since the founding of the Catholic Worker Movement, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin continue to call a new generation of the faithful to a radical gospel of nonviolent resistance to evil and hospitality to the poor.
Started in New York City with a one-penny paper called The Catholic Worker, and eventually two houses of hospitality for homeless women and men, the Catholic Worker Movement has bloomed to at least one house of hospitality and war resistance in most states, along with houses in Canada, Mexico, England, Sweden, Germany, and New Zealand. Working both against the institutional evil of the state -- named once by Martin Luther King Jr. as the triple evils of racism, militarism, and materialism -- and for the victims of the state, the houses spring up in an organic meeting between the unique charism of the Catholic Workers involved and the needs of the community. There are Catholic Worker farms as well, according to Maurin's determination to give the poor an opportunity to work and live in dignity and find their sustenance in community and in communion with the land. There are no requirements for calling a project a Catholic Worker, no board or standards committee, and no fees. The Catholic Worker is not a franchise but always a labor of faith and love, a home built without walls.
Somehow in making room for the marginal in society, those at times marginalized in the church also found a home. When Haider, who struggled with a call to priesthood as a teenager, is asked what Dorothy's example is to women today, she says, "The way I identify myself as a woman and the way Dorothy identified herself as a woman is very different, but, nonetheless, for me as a woman in a very patriarchal religion Dorothy is a role model of both a strong female character in the church and a way to live out the Catholic faith outside of the institution in a way that is freeing to women but also a whole host of other people." And so in its 75 years, those who found no place to minister within the church as it stood -- women, married people, persons of different races and sexualities, and those who longed to build the simple communal apostolic church recorded in the Acts of the apostles -- have often been able to contribute their gifts to the Catholic Worker. In fact, there are even Catholic Workers who are not Roman Catholic.
Perhaps the requirement to being a Catholic Worker begins with a call to prophetic presence with the poor on the breadlines and those under the hail of fire brought down by military power. In the heart of this call is God's dangerous command to love one another, a call made dangerous by a world with casual and rampant individual and institutional violence against both neighbor and enemy. Dorothy reflected on the lack of this love present in the world when she said, "We have not yet loved our neighbor with the kind of love that is a precept to the extent of laying down our life for him. And our life very often means our money ... it means our daily bread, our daily living, our rent, our clothes ...." In such a world, loving one anther can have some uncomfortable consequences, both in loss of privilege and in loss of freedom. Dorothy said herself that, "Love is indeed a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us, of each of us, but it is the only answer."
Eda Uca-Dorn is a member of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House in Washington, D.C., which is a house of war resistance and hospitality to five formerly homeless families. She and her husband, Mike, are currently organizing around the issues of peak oil, climate change, and the impending resource wars. She may be reached at eda.uca.dorn@gmail.com. If you would like to learn more about the Catholic Worker Movement, check out www.catholicworker.org.
I posted last November about legal proceedings against Chiquita for protection money paid to Colombian right-wing paramilitary organizations (AUC) that had been designated terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. Two stories this week shed more light on the situation and are worth checking out.
First, last week's 60 Minutes broadcast included a segment called "The Price of Bananas," which gives a good overview, including the origins of the paramilitaries:
The second comes from Christianity Today in an article titled, "Corporate-Sponsored Terror." It describes the lawsuit against Chiquita brought by former missionaries with New Tribes Mission, widows whose husbands were kidnapped and killed by left-wing guerrilla forces (FARC) when they controlled the region where Chiquita was operating:
When Chiquita Brands International pleaded guilty last year to violating anti-terrorism laws -- and was fined $25 million for its payments to Colombian terrorists -- Tania Julin and Nancy Hamm felt betrayed and angry.
Though Chiquita's plea did not involve the group that murdered their husbands 12 years ago, the women learned through the case that Chiquita had also paid protection money to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
"I believe they need to be held accountable," said Hamm, who retired from New Tribes Mission (NTM) last year. "This affected us in a horrible way, but I think it could affect a lot of other Americans, too, if Chiquita or other American companies continue to blatantly fund terrorists." ...
While Julin said none of the widows are bitter about the dangers that ultimately ended their husbands' lives, she does hope that winning the lawsuit will pose a warning to companies tempted to do business with terrorists.
"Chiquita had a choice whether to deal with the terrorists or not. If they felt they had to deal with the terrorists or not be in Colombia at all, they could have chosen not to be in Colombia," Julin said. "They chose to work with these terrorists."
Story re-orders, sifts through experience, and allows others, young children and adults alike, to hear what we think truly matters. We are constituted by the stories we tell ourselves and others. Thus stories serve an ontological purpose. Story connects us with that which lies beyond ourselves and this process makes us ask questions about the meanings of our lives. It is, in fact, a way we can begin to define what we mean when we use the term "spirituality."
- Barbara Kimes Myers Young Children and Spirituality
Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.
Last week, I wrote about the new Evangelical Manifesto, of which I was a signatory. It's been interesting to see the news coverage that followed its release.
On the one hand,CNN implied that the statement was pro-Democratic:
For Democrats, the timing is good. The party has been pushing to overcome the "faith gap," that many feel has hurt them with church-going voters. ... Evangelicals are now leading public support for many issues dear to Democrats: global campaigns against AIDS, hunger and poverty.
The Manifesto itself, while arguing that "evangelical" must be defined first and foremost as a theological term, not a political one, went on to say:
Called by Jesus to be "in" the world but "not of" the world, we are fully engaged in public affairs, but never completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, economic system, class, tribe, or national identity. ...
Called to an allegiance higher than party, ideology, and nationality, we Evangelicals see it as our duty to engage with politics, but our equal duty never to be completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, economic system, or nationality. In our scales, spiritual, moral, and social power are as important as political power,
It's a point I have made many times: "God is not a Republican or a Democrat," and that is a good thing. There should be no religious litmus tests for politics - committed Christians will, and should be, on both sides of the political aisle. Indeed, people of faith should never be in any party's or candidate's political pocket and should, ideally, be the ultimate swing vote because of their moral independence from partisan politics.
But the media just can't help themselves and always want to squeeze everything into their old framework of left and right, Democrat and Republican. But "left" and "right" are not religious categories, and people of faith should define their political involvement in moral terms, not partisan predictability, and that's exactly what the Manifesto said. Even the media coverage of the Manifesto shows how much the statement is needed.
Let me make a prediction. In the future, we will see new alliances and campaigns led by people of faith on a wide range of moral issues - such as poverty, the environment, pandemic diseases, torture, and human rights, and a much wider and deeper focus on the dignity and sanctity of life, including war and peace and even the death penalty along with unborn children - that will involve people of faith across the political spectrum and will shake up politics. The social movements that really change politics are precisely that - public engagement defined by religious and moral commitment that defies normal political categories. Eventually, even the media will finally get it. Stay tuned.
Claiming to follow Jesus is a ridiculous thing to try and do. He's a really hard guy to follow, especially when he talks about loving the poor, loving our neighbors, and loving those who hate and oppose us. Loving people who love us is sometimes hard enough, but loving our enemies is just counterintuitive. It goes against every instinct in my body. When someone does or seeks to do harm to me or my family, it's my knee-jerk reaction, my default, to return violence with violence. I am violent to the core. To confess anything less would be a dangerous land mine to sneak over.
This is why it's so important to know who Jesus is and what he's asking us to do. And luckily, for our benefit, we have his answer recorded in a historical document. When asked point-blank, "What are the most important things we're commanded to do?" it's curious what Jesus says. And what he doesn't say. He doesn't mention all of the overwhelming issues of morality that we seem to obsess over in the Christian ghetto. He doesn't mention any of the countless issues that are dividing our churches left and right. He says, "Love God and love your neighbors," that, in fact, all of the law and prophets hang on these two commands, and that these are literally the context for all other commands we keep.
This is the work of following Jesus -- to love and care especially for those whom it is difficult. It is therefore never a political position to be on the side of the poor. Working for justice in all areas of society is not peripheral to the proclamation of the good news of Jesus; it is central. His message was not that of the individual salvation of men and women, but of the "being made right of all things." While this certainly includes the stories of men and women, that is such a small part of the whole. It's a story about our families, our environment, our governments, our neighbors, about the whole of what God has made. And proclaiming half the truth as the whole truth is no truth at all.
How do we tell the whole story of the coming reign of God, a new way of being human and relating to God and God's creation? We put our hands to it. We proclaim a day coming when there will be no more thirst by giving water to the thirsty. We proclaim a day coming where there will be no more disease and death by caring for the lives of those whose bodies are broken. We proclaim a day coming where there will be no more war by preemptively sowing the seeds of peace.
It's true: The Bible does say that there is a time to build up and a time to tear down, a time to rejoice and a time to weep, a time for peace and a time for war. But we live in anticipation of the day coming when there will be no more time to tear down. There will be no more time for weeping. There will simply be no more time for war. Soon we're going to run out of time for these things. This is the day we work for. This is the day we pray into today.
Derek Webb is a singer and songwriter. His latest album is Ampersand EP, a collaboration with his wife, Sandra McCracken.
This week has been marred by xenophobic violence in AlexandraTownship, Johannesburg, South Africa. The violent attacks targeted foreign nationals whom locals accuse of being responsible for crime, job loss, "taking their girlfriends," and other social problems. The violence meted on foreigners included murder, robbery, looting, rape, and violent assault. Most of the victims are Zimbabweans. One reason for this could be the high number of Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa.
Currently many foreigners are being sheltered at police camps and the Red Cross is providing food and blankets. The timing could not have been worse because it parallels the ongoing post-election violence in Zimbabwe that has caused many Zimbabweans to flee to neighbouring countries.
An issue that is being raised is whether there is a "third force" behind the violence or whether the violence is an unintended coincidence -- i.e., it would have happened anyway and is unrelated to the political situation in Zimbabwe. In a survey done by one of the leading local newspapers, The Sowetan, readers were divided on this issue with just over 50% disagreeing that a third force was behind the attacks.
Despite the condemnation of the violence by politicians, the situation is deteriorating and the violence against foreigners is spreading to other areas. It is an experience of double trauma for many Zimbabweans.
I am struggling to come to terms with the violence around me and to respond to the issues that are being raised. However, I believe there is a prophetic Christian response informed by justice and compassion that can address the concerns of both foreigners and South Africans in the spirit of common humanity. Pray for us that as Christians we would find this prophetic response and be part of the healing and restoration of common humanity.
Nontando Hadebe, a former Sojourners intern, is originally from Zimbabwe and is now pursuing graduate studies in theology in South Africa.
Nothing is so important as human life, as the human person. Above all, the person of the poor and the oppressed... Jesus says that whatever is done to them he takes as done to him. That bloodshed, those deaths are beyond all politics: They touch the very heart of God.
Did not your father eat and drink
and do justice and righteousness?
Then it was well with him.
He judged the cause of the poor and needy;
then it was well.
Is not this to know me?
says the Lord.
But your eyes and heart
are only on your dishonest gain,
for shedding innocent blood,
and for practicing oppression and violence.
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I recently joined many prominent Christian leaders in signing a joint declaration on Israel's 60th anniversary. The signers are too many to list here but they include church leaders, theologians, and the heads of international missions agencies who have an intimate knowledge of the region's history, theological significance, and present reality. (To name just a sampling: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Dr. Geoff Tunnicliffe, international director/CEO, World Evangelical Alliance; Lynn Green, international chairman of YWAM; Rev. Garth Hewitt, canon of St. George's Cathedral, Jerusalem; James W. Skillen, president of the Center for Public Justice; Dr. Joel C. Hunter, senior pastor of Northland church; Rev. Kathy Galloway, leader of the Iona Community; Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire; Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary; Rev. Glenn R. Palmberg, president of the Evangelical Covenant Church; Arli Klassen, executive director, Mennonite Central Committee; Brother Andrew, author of God's Smuggler; Charles Clayton, national director of World Vision in Jerusalem on behalf of World Vision International; Dr. Vernon Grounds, chancellor of Denver Seminary; Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann; and author and Sojourners board chair Brian McLaren.)
The statement begins by recognizing the achievement and necessity of the state of Israel:
We recognise that today, millions of Israelis and Jews around the world will joyfully mark the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel (Yom Ha'atzmaut). For many, this landmark powerfully symbolises the Jewish people's ability to defy the power of hatred so destructively embodied in the Nazi Holocaust.
But as is so often the case in human history - including U.S. history - one people's escape from persecution and tyranny resulted in the suffering of others. So the statement also says:
We also recognise that this same day, millions of Palestinians living inside Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and the worldwide diaspora will mourn 60 years since over 700,000 of them were uprooted from their homes and forbidden from returning, while more than 400 villages were destroyed (al-Nakba).
The statement confesses that "To hold both of these responses together in balanced tension is not easy," and that many segments of the church - and I would add, especially U.S. evangelicals:
while extending empathy and support to the Israeli narrative of independence and struggle, many of us in the church worldwide have denied the same solidarity to the Palestinians, deaf to their cries of pain and distress.
Many Christians in the U.S. and around the world - including myself - have traveled to Israel and Palestine to learn about the geographical origins of our faith, and to meet the people whose lives are still shaped by the struggle over that Holy Land. We've heard stories of lives destroyed by terrorist violence, and lives destroyed by the violence of occupation. While it is tempting to either emphasize the suffering of one people over the other, or to impose an oversimplified narrative of false symmetry and intractable conflict, our biblical imperative remains, as the statement cites, to "seek peace and pursue it" (Psalm 34:14).
Finally and most powerfully, the declaration urges
all those working for peace and justice in Israel/Palestine to consider that any lasting solution must be built on the foundation of justice, which is rooted in the very character of God. After all, it is justice that "will produce lasting peace and security" (Isaiah 32:17). Let us commit ourselves in prophetic word and practical deed to a courageous settlement whose details will honour both peoples' shared love for the land, and protect the individual and collective rights of Jews and Palestinians in the Holy Land.
So can we authentically celebrate Yom Ha'atzmaut while we mourn al-Nakba? Can we "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep" (Romans 12:15)? Biblical justice demands it.
When I first decided to spend this semester of my college career in Washington, D.C., I did not expect to work for the Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR) campaign here at Sojourners. Sadly, I must admit that though I am Latina and the daughter of immigrants, immigration did not make my long list of worthy causes to fight for. Like many, I was ignorant about the plight of immigrants, and mistakenly saw deportation or enforcement-only policies as ideal solutions. Through her dedication, patience, and passion, Patty Kupfer, the CCIR campaign coordinator, taught me to embrace the struggle of the millions of undocumented immigrants and understand the complexities of a broken immigration system.
In these past months, I have seen appalling cases of how immigrants are blamed for the societal ills that afflict us. The scare tactics of anti-immigrant groups have been successful at instilling anti-Latino sentiment among the American populace. The media has painted a gruesome picture of Latinos, and made us all culpable.
Perhaps the worst example I've seen is the idea that undocumented immigrants are wholly responsible for lowering the wages of low-skilled and poor African Americans. In one particular briefing I attended, the low wages and high unemployment rates of poor African Americans were correlated with Latino immigration.
These scholars based their findings on research and data sets, but it left me questioning their motives and analysis. This "research" paves the way for the scapegoating of the other. Are Latinos and African Americans not working toward the same goal - that is, overcoming structural forces that prohibit social advancement? Thus, why are we not working together? My mind cannot conceive how powerful it would be - both spiritually and socially - if Latinos and African-American communities united around immigration. Instead of concentrating our powers against one another, we must unite. We will remain powerless or disempowered until we are able to fight alongside one another.
Currently, immigration is the hot issue and is therefore being used to widen the gap between these two groups of people who share a common history, struggle, and legacy. Why do we fight each other for the crumbs? The entire time I sat during this briefing, I wanted to scream, "Those brown people you condemn are my people, and we are not the root cause of poverty." As seekers of truth and justice, we must acknowledge that massive deportation will not solve some poverty or its root causes.
Let us stop finding scapegoats for complex issues and instead seek unity. Power is in the hands of those who want to make us believe lies about ourselves and others. We must begin to unite around issues like immigration. Imagine how powerful it would be if Latinos and African Americans, two of the largest minority groups in the U.S., would challenge the broken systems that afflict us both. Let us find common ground and redirect our energies toward the real struggles that will truly empower our communities.
Carolyn Delossantos is a junior at Gordon College. She just completed a semester internship at Sojourners.
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My fingers have been tapping out of control for more than a month and a half now. Don't worry, though -- I am not falling to the symptoms of my own PTSD just yet. At the completion of the Winter Soldier event, all Iraq Veterans Against the War members in attendance received a copy of the movie soundtrack compiled by Body of War subject Tomas Young, a partially paralyzed veteran of the Iraq war. It is a two-disc eclectic ensemble of major artists such as Talib Kweli, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Franti, Tom Waits, Neil Young, Serj Tankian, and Tom Morello.
I nearly threw it away but instead hesitantly shoved the CD into my computer on the plane home. To my surprise, many of the lyrics are still stuck in my head, from Brendan James' therapeutic "Hero's Song" ("in the water, in the sand ... is the blood of an ancient people in whose holy war I stand") to System of a Down's fast-paced "B.Y.O.B." ("why don't princes fight the war, why do they always send the poor?").
If you are able to handle the recurrent explicit language, other notable tracks -- especially for evangelicals -- include Immortal Technique's scathing rebuke of religious bigotry in "The 4th Branch" ("The voice of racism preaching the gospel is devilish"), and Bright Eyes' inquisitive "When the President Talks to God" ("I wonder which one plays the better cop"). However, each of the 30 tracks has proven prophetic in its own right.
The deal was made even better when we were told that proceeds from sales do not line the pockets of music industry execs, but that 100% goes straight back to Iraq Veterans Against the War. Eddie Vedder worked directly with Tomas to secure artists' contributions for this inspiring soundtrack, and he convinced Sire Records to distribute it at-cost. He also provided his own forceful track, "No More," with Ben Harper (though Harper includes his own track, "Black Rain," about the lack of resources for New Orleans), and Pearl Jam contributed their live track "Masters of War."
Body of War is playing now in theaters throughout the country. The film follows Tomas from his enlistment in the Army through his deployment and subsequent activism to end the war through Iraq Veterans Against the War. Eddie Vedder teamed up with Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue, whose show on MSNBC was cancelled due to his outspoken opposition to the Bush administration's decision to unilaterally initiate a war of aggression (as defined by Article 5.1, Rome Statute, of the International Criminal Court), to produce the hard-hitting documentary of one veteran's struggle post-Iraq.
Visit the Body of War Web site to find a screening near you and get your copy of the soundtrack. You can find Body of War: Songs That Inspired an Iraq Veteran on iTunes or maybe in the CD or MP3 player of a local veteran or service member.
Logan Laituri is a six-year Army veteran with combatant service in Iraq during OIF II and experience with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Israel and the West Bank. He is an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and has co-founded a faith-based veterans assistance initiative called Centurion's Purse, which seeks to provide financial and spiritual relief to fellow service members in need. He blogs at courageouscoward.blogspot.com.
There was a raid at a meat-packing plant in Postville, Iowa, yesterday, in which about 300 people were detained. Please keep them in your prayers. The Des Moines Register ran a moving article about the role of a local church in helping the community deal with this crisis:
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant scattered the Hispanics of Postville. About 400 found their way to St. Bridget's Catholic Church, waiting for information. Some filled out G-28 forms that allow a lawyer to represent their detained children or minors in their care.
A woman who would identify herself only as Judy said she and her husband work at Agriprocessors. The last time she saw him was before his shift Monday, about 5:30 a.m.
"No, I don't know where he is," she said in Spanish.
Judy said she and her husband came from Mexico illegally. Like many others at St. Bridget's, they regard the church as a haven from law enforcement.
Asked whether the church would indeed be a safe place, Sister Mary McCauley of St. Bridget's said, "That is our belief and hope."
...
Standing outside the Agriprocessors plant, Adolfo Calderon said he tried to put himself in the shoes of someone here illegally.
He has friends who work at the plant, he said, most of whom are in America legally, but he feared for the families who might be separated.
"They shouldn't do this," Calderon said. "I understand it's a legal (issue) and they're trying to do their job, but what happens to these poor families?"
Adolfo Calderon, 15, said his father manages apartments in the town. With the raid, those apartments could be cleared out and his father could be put out of business.
Hidie Roach, a teller at Citizens State Bank in Postville, said the raid gives the town a bad name.
The town needs the packing plant, Roach said. "I think a lot of people will leave."
At St. Bridget's on Monday night, Real, the lay pastor, fielded calls, answered questions and handed out pamphlets advising immigrants of their rights while trying to keep about 400 people clothed, sheltered and fed.
His wife, holding the phone to her ear, said a caller was offering food. Did they need it?
Real, without looking up from his desk, answered quickly.
UPDATE: Bishop Gregory V. Palmer of the Iowa Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church has released a statement in support of the workers and their families. You can download the full statement as a PDF or listen to an audio verion. Here's an excerpt:
We are called to stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers whose lives were disrupted today at the Agriprocessors, Inc. plant and who are facing unknown challenges and likely separation from their families, friends, and loved ones. As Iowa United Methodists we want to stand in partnership and community with the workers in Postville who are experiencing hardships of unknown proportion. It is our belief that we are all deeply connected to one another through Christ without regard to one’s nationality or legal status. I believe today’s raids create fear and chaos that is detrimental and harmful to communities here in Iowa and around this nation. We cannot allow the pattern of history to repeat itself where the newest migrants to our nation become criminalized and become the target of our animosity, fear, racism, and anger.
Patty Kupfer is the Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform campaign coordinator at Sojourners.
If you thought socially conscious music in the mainstream was a thing of the past, turn your ears to what Australia is listening to. A song about justice and reconciliation in Australia was the highest new entry in the charts two weeks ago - starting out at #2 on the Australian charts and #2 after Madonna on the digital track charts - and remains in the top 50. As The New York Times reported:
A song about racial reconciliation with the Aboriginal minority has become the fourth-biggest-selling recording in Australia, even though it is available only as a download from the Web.
The song "From Little Things Big Things Grow," written more than 20 years ago by Australian artists Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly, tells the story of Australian nonviolence hero Vincent Lingiari. Under the name "GetUp Mob," they have collaborated with other Australian musicians, such as Missy Higgins and John Butler, to sing of this historic moment in Australian history. And (to my knowledge) they have launched the musical career of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd by sampling his historic apology speech:
As prime minister, I am sorry. On behalf of the government, I am sorry.
Both Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly's music is richly submerged in themes of justice and in biblical poetry, from Paul Kelly's song "The Lion and the Lamb," to Kev Carmody's "Comrade Jesus Christ." In "From Little Things Big Things Grow," you can hear the mustard seed of racial reconciliation and dignity spreading. As Ambrose, one of the kids in my neighbourhood, said about the song, "It's boss!"
It seems along with little Ambrose, Australian listeners are agreeing.
Jarrod McKenna is seeking to live God's love. He's a co-founder of the Peace Tree Community, serving with the marginalised in one of the poorest areas in his city, and is the founder and creative director of Empowering Peacemakers (EPYC), for which he has received an Australian peace award in his work for peace and (eco)justice.
Answer me when I call, O God of my right!
You gave me room when I was in distress.
Be gracious to me, and hear my prayer.
How long, you people, shall my honor suffer shame?
How long will you love vain words, and seek after lies?
But know that the Lord has set apart the faithful for himself;
the Lord hears when I call to him.
This weekend Zimbabwe's opposition party announced that it would take part in the next round of presidential "elections." Violence, harassment, and intimidation of unarmed citizens continue as part of the government's preparation for the "elections." In my understanding, there are three basic rules that qualify a process to be described as a legitimate election (election 101!):
Elections are part of a democratic package that includes freedom, democracy, and peace. Without this package or context, elections cannot be expected to achieve their intended function -- namely, to elect a party or candidate of choice.
Elections presuppose political maturity, which understands that to participate in an election a party could:
a. Win or
b. lose but
c. cannot be both (a) and (b)
Acceptance of results is part of the election process. In the event of losing a party should not resort to political tantrums and attack the winner. This is a serious violation of the first election principle above and therefore constitutes a violation of human rights.
In the case of Zimbabwe, none of the above apply. Despite these serious constraints the opposition and the people are determined to use this window of opportunity to fight for democracy. The international media has played a significant role in ensuring that Zimbabwe is on the "big screen," visible for all to see. This effort needs to be supported by active participation by the international community in the "election" process as it happens. This support is critical. Violence cannot be allowed to triumph as a political tool that overrides the election process. This is our prayer and plea for support.
Nontando Hadebe, a former Sojourners intern, is originally from Zimbabwe and is now pursuing graduate studies in theology in South Africa.
Wow, you're turning 60. Incredible. Happy birthday to you!
I feel a little bit like I'm showing up at your birthday party without a gift. The truth is, you and I don't really know each other. I know we're related, but we don't have much of a relationship. That's been my choice, I realize. I wasn't sure how to feel about you, so I turned my attention elsewhere for a while.
I get frustrated sometimes by how much attention we lavish on you. I worry that an overfocus on you means we don't pay enough attention to Jewish education in the diaspora, or to the many other human dramas unfolding around the globe. Often it has seemed to me that American Jews perceive you're the only place that can be truly holy -- which does a disservice both to you and to us.
But this is a big birthday. And I've been feeling increasingly like it's time for me to reach out. As a rabbinic student and as a Jew, I need to know you better than I do. So here I am, saying hello. I'm even coming to spend the summer with you. I'm excited about that -- and nervous, too.
Many people I love tell me the moment they touched your soil they knew they'd come home. They tell me that one Shabbat in Jerusalem, one desert sunrise, one rousing round of "Hatikva" will be enough to bind me to you for life -- indeed, that we're already bound together, whether I know it or not.
Others look at me askance when I mention that I'd like to get to know you in a more nuanced way. They remind me about your insular religious establishment; they point to the security barrier, to the painful realities of Palestinian life, to your decisions that make me angry or sad.
I often feel caught between people I know and love who adore you, who support you without reservation -- and people I know and love who find your choices problematic at best. And, of course, everyone in between. I experience cognitive dissonance where you're concerned. To your detractors, I want to defend you fiercely; to your defenders, I want to point out every way in which you fail to live up to my hopes and dreams.
And maybe that complicated welter of mixed emotions is precisely how I know we do have a relationship after all. I wouldn't be so emotionally invested if we weren't family.
I suspect that the better I get to know you, the more I will love you -- and also the more I will question you and disagree with you. It's going to take work to make our relationship whole and holy. Maybe that's the gift I can offer: my desire to know you well enough to know what about you I want to celebrate, and what about you I want to work to change.
So hey, Israel, happy 60th birthday. I don't know what the years to come hold, but I look forward to finding out -- together.
Love, Cousin Rachel
Rachel Barenblat is a student in the ALEPH rabbinic program who blogs at Velveteen Rabbi. She's a contributing editor at Zeek, a Jewish journal of thought and culture, and author of three poetry chapbooks, most recently chaplainbook, a collection of poems arising out of hospital chaplaincy work (Laupe House Press, 2006.) She co-founded the Progressive Faith Blog Con, a gathering of bloggers of progressive faith that took place for the first time in the summer of 2006. She lives in western Massachusetts.
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.
Knowing one's self, finding one's self, and expending one's self for another are intertwined activities. Love of self, love of God, and love of neighbor are interdependent.
There are plenty of times I miss running a legitimate ministry organization like Mission Year. Like when I'm breaking down my "office" every night so my family can eat at the kitchen table, or hand-addressing the envelopes for our donation receipts. (Don't get me wrong; I love having to send out those receipts). Or when I'm desperately bribing Roman and his buddy with combo meals at Wendy's to help me move yet another apartment-load of stuff for yet another family in crisis, instead of simply assigning the job to some interns. Trust me, being small-time is hard on the ego.
But then there are those magical moments when being small-time means you get to make things up as you go along.
A few months ago I found myself sitting in the sparsely-furnished, HUD-subsidized apartment of our beloved Bobbie Williams, trying to figure out how such a tough and strong-minded woman got into such dire straights. I won't trouble you with the details, but suffice it to say that in her nearly 50 years, Bobbie has seen more than her share of bad breaks and worse men. Indeed, she feels quite certain she's better off hungry and alone in this little place than cared for and abused in half a dozen others. Still, she knows she could do better.
On that day I visited her, while Bobbie was wearily describing her latest attempt to land a minimum-wage job at a restaurant downtown, I noticed a brochure lying on her coffee table, advertising one of those big-rig truck driving schools. "Where did you get that?" I asked casually, hoping she wasn't back to entertaining men.
"Oh that," she said, her voice brightening as a big smile crossed her face. "That's my dream, which I've been dreaming from the time I was a child. All the other girls wanted to be singers or actresses, but all I've ever wanted is to be a long-haul trucker."
I laughed at first, and Bobbie laughed too, but before long we were deep in conversation about the hard life of a trucker, and about her father forbidding her to pursue it after high school, and about what kinds of resources it would take for her to pursue it now. She told me all about it, the way a lifelong sports fan tells you all about their team, but I didn't mind. In this kind of ministry, genuine dreams are few and far between.
Over the next few days, I kept thinking about Bobbie Williams and her dream of earning a secure living by driving a big rig all over the country. The more I thought about it, the more impossible it seemed.
Bobbie couldn't even pay her rent most months, let alone save $4,000 for tuition. When she wasn't taking care of her grandson, she was out hustling food for herself. She didn't even have a driver's license, for crying out loud.
You know where I'm going with this, don't you? You know Bobbie's in trucking school right now, almost ready to test for her CDL, and you know who loaned her the money (or gave it, if it turns out she can't pass the test). A ghetto grandmother with a GED and a sketchy past might not be a good enough risk for a legitimate ministry organization, and trucking school might be too expensive to build into an ongoing employment program. But none of that matters because we're just the small-time Walnut Hills Fellowship, and Bobbie's been with us since the beginning, and this feels like as good a time as any to take what any lifelong sports fan would recognize as a Hail Mary shot at giving a dear sister a much better life.
If you haven't yet stopped to ask whether or not Bobbie is a certified Christian, or to calculate the chances of us actually getting paid back even if she gets the job, then I think you're connected to the right little faith community. If what you're wondering about instead is how she felt about finally getting behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler ("Incredible!"), or whether everyone else in our fellowship is excited about her opportunity ("Hey, did you hear Bobbie got three out of four on her straight-line backing test?"), or if we're all feeling the pressure as the test day draws closer (Absolutely), well, maybe you should start thinking about moving to Walnut Hills yourself.
We don't have a real office yet. We're always having to move stuff. But we get to make things up as we go along, and take chances on people that nobody else would take chances on, and hold our breath together. And we get to do all that with the almost giddy confidence that all the love in the world is on our side.
Bart Campolo is a veteran urban minister and activist who speaks, writes, and blogs (www.bartcampolo.com) about grace, faith, loving relationships, and social justice. Bart is the leader of The Walnut Hills Fellowship (www.thewalnuthillsfellowship.org) in inner-city Cincinnati. He is also founder of Mission Year (www.missionyear.org), which recruits committed young adults to live and work among the poor in inner-city neighborhoods across the U.S., and executive director of EAPE, which develops and supports innovative, cost-effective mission projects around the world.
The following is an interview with Abigail Disney, producer of the documentaryPray the Devil Back to Hell, which recently won the award for best documentary feature at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival.
What sparked your interest in wanting to make a documentary about Liberia?
The fact that the newly elected president of Liberia was a woman was notable, especially since the continent had had so few women in leadership, and that women had been so peculiarly and sadistically targeted during their war. I knew there had to be a backstory. She hadn't just arisen spontaneously.
How were Christian and Muslim women able to come together for a common cause?
They were all so completely fed up with war that they were willing to overcome their reluctance. There was some mistrust at first, but the longer they spent time together in prayer and fasting the more they came to understand and empathize with each other. Friendships were forged on the field that will exist for a long time—it is quite possible that the nature of the relationship between Christian and Muslim was forever changed in Liberia.
Elaborate on the role that religious leaders played in helping to bring about peace to Liberia.
While it may seem unlikely, the fact is that the warlords and even Charles Taylor were quite religious. Religious leaders therefore were among the only people who could influence them, even in the chaotic atmosphere of war. But women were dissatisfied with the limited way in which the religious leaders wielded that influence. So the campaign really began with the women bringing pressure on the leaders via their religious confidants. This pressure ultimately was one of the reasons Taylor and the rebels decided to come to peace talks in Ghana.
How did prayer inform these women's social justice actions?
All of the women in this film were deeply, deeply religious and believed with all of their hearts and minds in the power of prayer to influence events and people. This was a critical aspect of their plan, and a big part of what made them so tenacious and persistent in their protests. But more than this, prayer was a source of personal strength to each of the women. They gained strength through their individual practice of prayer, but also the communal practice of prayer was an extraordinary glue that held the group together in spite of all kinds of pressures to pull them apart.
Explain the significance of the Lutheran church that you filmed for this documentary.
St. Peter's Lutheran Church was the scene of the first organizing meeting for the Christian Women's Peace Initiative, early in the film. In 1989, however, that church was also the scene of one of the most horrific massacres in the pre-war period. Samuel Doe's army, in anticipation of Charles Taylor's assault on Monrovia, went into the church and slaughtered more than 600 members of a rival ethnic group in a single night. The candlelight vigil in the middle of the film takes place on the church compound on top of the mass grave that contains most of those bodies. The church was and still is the church that Leymah Gbowee attended, and a source of great strength and counsel to her. It was also through the Lutheran Church that WIPNET, her organization, got offices and also got its first international donations.
Why is Leymah Gboweethe focal character of your story?
Everyone acknowledged her to be the leader and the face of the peace movement. But more than this, Leymah was so clearly charismatic, articulate, and genuine that I knew that a film with her at the center could not fail to be compelling. She is one of the most gifted people I have ever met.
What can we do to enable this change to continue without imposing our Western values on this culture?
I think you are precisely right here. Why do we insist on imposing "solutions" that are always at best temporary, and at worst impractical and even disrespectful to indigenous cultures? I think at heart we are sometimes deeply mistrustful of the competence of indigenous cultures to find their own answers. And when we impose programs, very often we do so in such a manner as to set them hunting for external money that is scarce, inadequate, and hard to get. The answer is to do some better listening. As people coming in from the global North we need to arrive in places with a little less confidence in our "answers" and a little more confidence in the people we are there to serve. People aren't poor because they don't have values, don't have smarts, don't have gumption—people are poor because they don't have money. We need to recognize that most of the "resources" needed to fight the world's problems are also the victims of those problems.
What's been the response when you've shown this film?
The response has been overwhelmingly emotional, connected, and positive. And this is not just from people in the U.S. We have already shown the film in many countries to women's groups and the response has been so moving. Women in Iraq wept when they saw it, and immediately asked how many copies they could make so as to make sure that it is shown in people's homes all over the country. Women from Sudan e-mailed us to say that they felt sure that lives were being changed by the dialogues the film had sparked. In Tblisi, Georgia, women sat down immediately after the film and wrote up a Peace Agenda that is now making its way around the country for women's signatures. What is remarkable is the way that so many women were already poised to work together for peace—all the film does is remind them how powerful they are when they work together. It is a spark of faith in dark times.
What are the future plans for this documentary and how can interested churches and nonprofits arrange for showings of this film?
We hope to work with churches and other religious organizations along with youth groups, women's organizations, and other interested partners to get the film seen far and wide. At the moment we are still forming distribution plans, but churches that are interested in seeing the film should go to our Web site and give us their information so that when we are set up for distribution we can get in touch with them.
For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever.
- Jeremiah 7:5-7
At the Associated Church Press conference two weeks ago in Ft. Worth, Texas, I heard Phyllis Tickle, founding editor of the religion department at Publishers Weekly, speak about Christianity's every-500-years growth spurts. In her talk (and forthcoming book The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why), Tickle emphasized that Christianity is going through one of these "spurts" right now.
Tickle calls our present historical moment (read: the last 100 years) "Emerging Christianity." (This is not precisely the same thing as the self-identified "emergent church" networks, but there may be similar characteristics.) Historically, these great emergences are sometimes symbolized by a rose blooming forth from the rubble.
"Emerging or emergent Christianity is the new form of Christianity that will serve the whole of the Great Emergence in the same way that Protestantism served the Great Reformation," she said.
Emerging Christianity, posits Tickle, brings together – rather than divides - the best practices of the Christian traditions, practices that have been divided in the church and held within denominations for 500 years. It also looks back at ancient church practices and tries to apply them in fresh ways in the post-modern era.
Brian McLaren's newest book Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices, also examines Emerging Christianity as a "way of life" rather than a "set of beliefs." McLaren reclaims ancient Christian spiritual practices -- fixed-hour prayer, fasting, observing the Sabbath -- for use today. Dallas Willard has been playing with this same idea in his call to move the Christian church away from "sin management" and toward "discipleship" (see The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God).
Williams opens his remarks by quoting U2's Bono: "I'm not into religion. I am completely anti-religious. Religion is a term for a collection, a denomination. I am interested in personal experience of God."
Williams brilliantly unpacks the "spiritual, not religious" conundrum:
The Christian alternative to the post-religious spirituality outlined earlier is not simply "religion" as some sort of intellectual and moral system, but the corporately experienced reality of the kingdom, the space that has been cleared in human imagination and self-understanding by the revealing events of Jesus' life.
… Faced with the claims of non-dogmatic spirituality, the believer should not be insisting anxiously on the need for compliance with a set of definite propositions; he or she should be asking whether what happens when the Assembly meets to adore God and lay itself open to his action looks at all like a new and transforming environment, in which human beings are radically changed.
I've been at Sojourners for 22 years. At its best, Sojourners (in all its manifestations as ministry, Christian intentional community, church, magazine, Christian communications nexus, movement mobilizer, etc.) has been an experiment in Emerging Christianity.
We are evangelical in our roots and ecumenical in our expression—drawing on the best of Christian practices that are held denominationally. For example, when we are operating at our best, we try to take scripture as seriously as Protestants, understand communion as deeply as Catholics, rely on the Spirit as passionately as Pentecostals, preach a prophetic word of good news as zealously as evangelicals, and live a contemplative life rooted in the ever-present Imago Dei as humbly as Orthodox.
As a cluster of Christians, we strive to practice "open-source" spiritual leadership, or "priesthood of all believers," or authority rooted in gifts of the Spirit. Additionally, we understand following Jesus as a "way of life"—the Tao of Jesus, the Jesus Road. This "way of life" leads us also to take the doctrinal teachings of the church very seriously -- because we've lived them, not (necessarily) because we signed a contractual arrangement or took a loyalty oath with the church.
I'm grateful to Phyllis Tickle, Brian McLaren, Archbishop Rowan, Karen Ward, the New Monastics, and others who are keeping our rosebush tended.
As the 15th-century hymn celebrates, "Lo, how a Rose e're blooming from tender stem hath sprung!"
Rose Marie Berger, a Sojourners associate editor, is a Catholic peace activist and poet.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
To watch is to be prepared for the unexpected. It is to give up the illusions of straight-line extrapolations, the silly assumption that current trends will continue. It is to abandon the calculations of the pundits about the swinging of some invisible pendulum. In this time, particularly, it is to accept the fact that life will not go on as it has. A change is in the offing, but no one knows what direction it will take. History is the realm of contingency, the unexpected. The proper eschatology is watchful expectancy for the Abba's work and will, and a wary guardedness about the rebounding perversity of humankind. The danger is to preempt the future with our own agenda and our own eagerness to be proven right by history.
The church has a serious image problem. A recent book, unChristian, by Barna pollster David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons reveals much about how Millennials, the emerging generation - both those inside and around the church - view Christianity. The results weren't good. An overwhelming majority of young people view Christians as hypocritical, too judgmental, too focused on the afterlife, and too political in the worst sense of the word. And that image is often particularly true of evangelicals. That's a lot of baggage we're carrying around.
But other studies show that when you ask people what they think about Jesus, you get answers like: compassionate, loving, caring, hung out with sinners and poor people, for peace. We have a serious image problem. People think that we should stand for the same things as Jesus did. So it's time to change the image.
A substantial group of evangelical leaders are trying to do just that. This morning, a new statement, An Evangelical Manifesto: A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment, was released in Washington, D.C. The statement has two purposes - to address the confusion about who evangelicals are and to clarify a view on evangelicals in public life.
On the first point, the manifesto says:
Our first task is to reaffirm who we are. Evangelicals are Christians who define themselves, their faith, and their lives according to the Good News of Jesus of Nazareth. (Evangelical comes from the Greek word for good news, or gospel.) Believing that the Gospel of Jesus is God's good news for the whole world, we affirm with the Apostle Paul that we are "not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation." Contrary to widespread misunderstanding today, we Evangelicals should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally.
It then goes on to identify seven "beliefs that we consider to be at the heart of the message of Jesus and therefore foundational for us." They are primarily theological affirmations, including:
We believe that being disciples of Jesus means serving him as Lord in every sphere of our lives, secular as well as spiritual, public as well as private, in deeds as well as words, and in every moment of our days on earth, always reaching out as he did to those who are lost as well as to the poor, the sick, the hungry, the oppressed, the socially despised, and being faithful stewards of creation and our fellow creatures.
On the question of public life, the manifesto recognizes that the political categories of left and right simply don't fit religion, and it is a big mistake to try to fit religion into them. The people I meet across the country are yearning for a moral center to our public life and political discourse, with a fundamental emphasis on the common good. They want to understand better the moral choices and challenges that lie beneath our political debates. More and more people want to see a common-good politics replace the politics of individual gain and special interests.
The manifesto affirms that:
We must find a new understanding of our place in public life. We affirm that to be Evangelical and to carry the name of Christ is to seek to be faithful to the freedom, justice, peace, and well-being that are at the heart of the kingdom of God, to bring these gifts into public life as a service to all, and to work with all who share these ideals and care for the common good. Citizens of the City of God, we are resident aliens in the EarthlyCity. Called by Jesus to be "in" the world but "not of" the world, we are fully engaged in public affairs, but never completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, economic system, class, tribe, or national identity.
I very much affirm the views expressed in the manifesto and was happy to accept an invitation to be one of the charter signatories. Click here to read the statement, a helpful study guide, and to see who the charter signatories are.
Journalist Andrew B. traveled from South Africa to Zimbabwe to gather firsthand accounts of the violence perpetrated by supporters of Robert Mugabe (ZanuPF) against opposition supporters (MDC). The stories and photos he gathered are graphic and disturbing, but they are important documents in expressing the depth of the crisis there and the vital need for resolution.
Tandi,
Kotwa, Mudzi North province:
Four of us were walking together and we saw the ZanuPF Youth approaching. We ran but they caught me and forced me to the water. "You have to surrender your information to us. You are a son of ZanuPF. We baptize you in the name of ZanuPF."
I was drowning. My mind started to go dark as I prayed to God. I do not know what happened but suddenly the men holding me under the water were gone and my feet found the ground. I lay on the bank of the river coughing and choking. My friends found me and took me to Harare in a man's car.
We are punished because we do not accept ZanuPF as God. This is why we are punished. Many days in a row we go without food. Sometimes we are forced to drink standing water. They take. They burn Zimbabwe. We are dying.
"Arise, then, women of this day!" goes the Mother's Day proclamation. But this is not your wake-up call to french toast and flowers. Instead, this phrase was the rallying cry for the first "Mother's Day of Peace" back in 1870—back before the day became laden with Hallmark and guilt. Julia Ward Howe, the creator of Mother's Day, pleaded with women to speak out against war, not only for the sake of their sons, but for the sons of mothers across the globe. Today, mothers must not only seek peace for their sons, but for themselves.
Studies are showing that warfare brings significantly increased incidents of rape and domestic violence. Soldiers are taught violence in war and that violence is then turned upon innocent civilians in the country of conflict, fellow soldiers during wartime, or it returns home in the form of spousal and child abuse. Think the war is taking place thousands of miles away? Think again. Wartime violence is happening in living rooms across the country.
Americans may remember the four women murdered by their military husbands within a six-week period at Fort Bragg army base in North Carolina near the beginning of the Afghanistan invasion. While this caught the media's eye for a brief time, the violence at the hands of military personnel continues to rise.
A 2003 study financed by the Department of Defense found that nearly one-third of female veterans who sought health care through the Veterans Affairs reported that during their military service they experienced rape or attempted rape. Another set of figures from 2004 and 2005 showed a 40% increase in the number of sexual assaults reported by female soldiers—which may mean women feel safer in reporting the attacks or that the numbers are on the rise.
60 Minutes did research in the 1990s that found that domestic violence was five times more common in U.S. military families than civilian families. And that was during "peace time." During war, the numbers become far more gruesome. During the Rwandan genocide, UNICEF estimates 150,000 women were raped in the 100 days of conflict. Today, the remnants of that violence have ventured into the Congo and 27,000 sexual assaults were reported there by the United Nations -- in just one year, in just one province.
So, arise, then, women of this day! Forget the french toast. Forget the flowers. Arise and speak out against war. Spend this Mother's Day writing letters, calling congress, or finding another way to help stop the war. It is just a few hours of your life. And you might just end up saving one.
Nicole Sotelo is author of Women Healing from Abuse: Meditations for Finding Peace (Paulist Press) and is a contributor to Weep Not for Your Children: Essays on Religion and Violence, edited by Rosemary Radford Ruether and Lisa Isherwood (forthcoming from Equinox Publishing). She holds a master's degree from Harvard Divinity School and does workshops and retreats for Christian women healing from abuse. To learn more, visit www.womenhealing.com
Give ear to my words, O Lord;
give heed to my sighing.
Listen to the sound of my cry,
my King and my God,
for to you I pray.
O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice;
in the morning I plead my case to you, and watch.
Whenever someone feels anger, there is a potential for powerful dignity, a sense of responsibility, and the expression of some deep personal value that has a universal rightness. This value needs acknowledgement.
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One of Jesus' most in-your-face stories, and a personal favorite of mine, is the Parable of the Dishonest Manager in Luke 16. I would loosely paraphrase its central insight as follows: "If you have the sense God gave a dog, you will realize that you can't hold onto money very long anyway, but you can keep the friends you make by giving it to those in need. You do the math." The passage doesn't say anything about burning sulfur, just about priorities and how to take the long view.
An attractive feature of this parable is that it sets a really low bar for divine commendation. The manager doesn't have sense enough to stay out of trouble to begin with. What's more, even after he has his "friends are friends forever" epiphany, he starts backsliding almost at once: He quickly gives his master's first debtor a 50% markdown, but for debtor number two the manager gets pointlessly stingy and only takes off 20%. He still gets praise for knowing what side his bread is buttered on.
And, because the kingdom of God is so often about taking things way over the top, the final verses go on to radically redefine what honesty and faithfulness are. Good stewardship is supposed to be about accurate accounting and careful saving, right? Not here. Money is inherently "dishonest," and impromptu unauthorized debt forgiveness is "faithfulness." (In fact, the master fires the manager before even seeing his accounting - the grounds for dismissal appear to have been less fiscal irresponsibility and more that he made enemies willing to accuse him).
The Protestant Work Ethic is not invited to this party, and you can virtually hear the groans of the prodigal son's responsible brother if he happens to look ahead from his seat in chapter 15.
Despite this parable, other parts of the Bible suggest to me that it's reasonable to save something for retirement. But I want to combine this conventional form of stewardship with long-view social accounting, which is why I'm excited about the special Web extra to our May issue about faith and finances. In it, my colleague Julie has accumulated a heaping helping of Web sites that can help you figure out how and where to invest retirement savings for the common good (and also where to free your mind with Bible study, teach your teenage kids about money, and plan - and pray over - your household budget).
Check it out – and e-mail it to a friend to share the abundance!
Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.
During the New York City leg of Brian McLaren's empowering Everything Must Change tour, Jay Bakker and I were asked to give a short reflection based on Brian's talk on "Which Jesus?" When I saw Brian's insightful slideshow presentation that contrasted the empire of Caesar with the kingdom of God, I had a sudden flashback to my Jan. 2007 trip to Israel.
In an ironic twist of fate, when I arrived in Jerusalem I learned that Condoleezza Rice, her entourage, and I would be staying at the same hotel. For the next three days, a slew of black SUVs headed off to the West Bank while I toured the sacred spots in Jerusalem and nearby Bethlehem. By now, I had gotten accustomed to armed soldiers parading around the sacred spots of Israel. Still, every time I saw guns in the hotel lobby or had to pass through a rather intense security check just so I could go to my hotel room, the clash of empires hit me in the gut.
Lest anyone think such actions are a thing of the past, several documentaries I just saw at the Tribeca Film Festival serve as visceral reminders of the ensuing carnage that still happens when the church becomes too closely aligned with the state. I sat through Milosevic on Trial, transfixed as the trial and excerpts from the graphic video and photographs that were introduced as evidence unfolded before my eyes. One montage I cannot get out of my mind involved snippets from a ceremony in which an Orthodox priest blesses the Scorpions, followed by a brutal sequence of atrocities committed by this Serbian paramilitary group. Also, in Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris highlights the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse through interviews and gripping photographs. While I'm aware that Morris has come under some criticism for paying for his interviews, the intensity of seeing this array of photos almost brought me to tears.
However, I found a glimmer of gospel hope in Pray the Devil Back to Hell. This documentary tells a compelling story of how Christian and Muslim women of Liberia joined forces to combat the violent warlords and the corrupt Charles Taylor regime. During a press conference, I learned from Leymah Gbowee, the leader of this movement, that Roman Catholic bishop and former president of the Liberian Council of Churches Michael K. Francis became her spiritual rock. The behind-the-scenes prophetic presence of Francis and other religious leaders gave these women the faith fuel they needed to walk the walk.
Armed with white T-shirts, the power of prayer, and their Bibles and Qurans, these women won a long-awaited peace that led to the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female head of state and Liberia's first elected female president. In one scene that had the audience cheering, these women barricaded the site of the stalled peace talks in Ghana. The men could not leave the room even to eat until they drafted a workable peace plan. When the guards tried to arrest these women, they evoked the most powerful nonviolent weapon in their arsenal by threatening to remove their clothes. This strategy worked, as the guards chose not to bring shame upon themselves by forcing the women to expose their naked bodies. The women kept their clothes on but they also kept their promise that if need be, "they'll be back."
When I saw the trailer for Jamie Moffett's documentary The Ordinary Radicals, I caught other glimpses of the kingdom of heaven here on earth. I know that the radical words of Jesus can empower ordinary citizens here in the U.S. to transform their own communities because I've seen it in action. The Everything Must Change weekend with Brian made me realize the urgency of the global need for us to set aside our denominational differences and work together as the body of Christ to bring forth God's kingdom into the world. That's why I'm joining forces with Shane Claiborne, Chris Haw, and others to support Jesus for President.
No abyss of evil can hide from [Jesus] through whom the world is reconciled with God. But the abyss of God's love encompasses even the most abysmal godlessness of the world.
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today's Church (Baker).
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Sojourners’ June issue features 
I don’t want to assume that readers automatically know who Steven Curtis Chapman is, but if you’ve been surfing the Web recently, it’s very likely you may have seen the name. Chapman is one of the most visible and influential figures of the Christian music genre. As of 2007, he has sold more than 10 million albums, has nine gold and platinum albums, and won five Grammy awards.
Eugene Cho, a second generation Korean-American, is the founder and lead pastor of 
Seth Naicker is an activist for justice and reconciliation from South Africa. He is currently studying and working at Bethel University, in St. Paul, Minnesota, as the program and projects director for the Office of Reconciliation Studies. He can be reached at: 
What does it mean to be a Christian in these times? The works of mercy knock on our door. The hungry, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner demand our compassion -- but more, they demand our action.
Some fun for your Friday: Mark Pinsky, author of 
Rev. Amanda Hendler-Voss is the faith communities coordinator at Women's Action for New Directions (WAND), minister of Christian education at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Asheville, North Carolina, and recent author of 
On Christmas Day a few years ago in Dallas, Texas, Socheata Poeuv's parents called a family meeting to tell her that her sisters weren't really her sisters, and her brother was not her full brother. After 25 years of attempting to live a "normal American life," her parents revealed a shocking family secret that would draw them all back to Cambodia, the home they fled and struggled to forget during the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. As she packs for her trip back to Cambodia, Socheata turns to the camera and confides, "I knew more about the Holocaust than the Khmer Rouge. I knew even less about my own family."
Anna Almendrala is the marketing and circulation assistant for Sojourners. To learn more about Khmer Legacies, visit their Web site: 
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 
As a South African, it is a downright shame that brothers and sisters from other countries in 
This past weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the historic action of the 
Shane Claiborne is the author of 
Brian McLaren also blogs at (
Christine Haider, 25, is preparing for her confirmation to the Roman Catholic Church. When asked about her confirmation name, she smiles broadly and says, "Dorothy." Seventy-five years since the founding of the Catholic Worker Movement, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin continue to call a new generation of the faithful to a radical gospel of nonviolent resistance to evil and hospitality to the poor.
When I first decided to spend this semester of my college career in 
Carolyn Delossantos is a junior at Gordon College. She just completed a semester internship at Sojourners.
My fingers have been tapping out of control for more than a month and a half now. Don't worry, though -- I am not falling to the symptoms of 
Logan Laituri is a six-year Army veteran with combatant service in Iraq during OIF II and experience with 
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Bart Campolo is a veteran urban minister and activist who speaks, writes, and blogs 
The following is an interview with Abigail Disney, producer of the documentary 
Becky Garrison will be featured in the upcoming documentary 
At the Associated Church Press conference two weeks ago in Ft. Worth, Texas, I heard 
Tandi,
Nicole Sotelo is author of 
During the New York City leg of Brian McLaren's empowering