The monologue of the Religious Right is over and a new conversation has begun! Join the God's Politics dialogue with Jim Wallis and friends Brian McLaren, Diana Butler Bass, Becky Garrison, Gareth Higgins, Shane Claiborne, Mary Nelson, Gabriel Salguero, Tony Campolo, and others.
The problem with using the Bible as the basis for running a society is that it would always be somebody's interpretation of the Bible, and a worst-case scenario is that it might be your interpretation, Mr. Klinghoffer.
I too have read and studied the Bible all of my life, and I just can't recognize the Bible in so much of what you have said in our "dialogue." I really work at finding common ground with people across the political spectrum on moral issues that transcend ideology and politics. But we have been unable to find much common ground in this dialogue. I still find many of the things you have said absolutely astonishing.
I still can't get over your contention that most of what the Bible says about the poor doesn't apply to America because our poor people are so well-off here. I replied that most Christian clergy and Jewish rabbis that I know would find that statement incredulous, but got no direct reply from you. In your latest post you say, in an equally unbelievable way, that wealth is the most consistent test of whether a society is righteous in God's eyes. I read the Hebrew prophets in a totally different way -- that the best test of a nation's righteousness is how it treats the poorest and most vulnerable. That is always how God judges a society. Read Isaiah, Amos, and Micah.
Then you say that war is just a "tool of statecraft." Really? The Hebrew scriptures warn against militarism -- "not trusting in horses and chariots" -- and Jesus calls we Christians to be peacemakers and love our enemies. In fact, you note in your book Christians who believe that:
Quakers, Amish, and Mennonites, among others, can point to the teachings not only of Jesus himself but of ancient and medieval sages -- Tertullian, Origen, Francis of Assisi, Menno Simons, down to a twentieth-century figure like Thomas Merton.
It's interesting that "Jesus himself" and the earliest church fathers were all opposed to war. So, what happened? You say, quite correctly, "With the conversion of the Emperor Constantine (324 C.E.), all that changed." Indeed, it did. And you then cite such esteemed theologians as Oliver Cromwell and Gen. George S. Patton. When you say in your latest post that war is merely the normal tool of statecraft, does that mean all wars? Every time a nation decides to go to war as an expression of its statecraft is justifiable? What about when one nation with Christians and Jews decides to go to war with another nation with Christians and Jews? Are both nations justified? Is there any religious critique or discrimination possible here? Let me guess: You support all the wars America has fought. I could never get you to tell me what you think about the war in Iraq.
I could go on, issue after issue, but I don't think that would be productive. We just disagree, profoundly, on what biblical imperatives suggest about society and politics. I am very glad that America has a separation of church and state and that people who would prefer a more theocratic vision of society (as I interpret you to prefer) don't get to run things they way they would like. We both have to convince our fellow citizens that what we believe is best for the common good. That's a good thing, and I welcome that debate. Thanks for this one.
"Don't shoot -- I want to grow up," read the protest sign an 11-year-old boy held in the wake of 30-plus shootings of Chicago schoolchildren this school year. The Supreme Court's recent assertion of the individual's right to own a gun for self-defense stands in sharp contrast to the anguished pleas of the father of one of the schoolchildren to stop the tragic gun deaths in our community, and to get rid of the guns so available on our streets. His pleas reminded me of Jeremiah's account of Rachel weeping for her children.
We are a violent nation. Forty-nine percent of U.S. households have guns in the home (Just Facts, 6/08). The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence reminds us that 80 Americans die from gun violence every day in America. The Supreme Court decision is a blow to the scourge of gun violence in our communities and probably will be used to seek to block passage of common-sense gun laws that require background checks, forbid bulk sales of handguns, and other efforts. However, the decision as reported did not give license to "any gun, any time, for anyone" (Brady Center), and those of us who want to eliminate readily available guns have a lot of work to do to see that reasonable restricting laws are enacted.
The affirmation of the individual's right to bear arms must also be countered by us, as people of faith, with what is in the interests of community, of public safety, and what makes for the common good. We shouldn't be silent about this tension.
Mary Nelson is president emeritus of Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation on the west side of Chicago. She is also a board member of Sojourners.
Last week's headlines blared the news: The Supreme Court has ruled that there is a constitutional right to gun ownership. I'm not surprised -- disheartened, dismayed, disappointed, yes -- but not surprised. The photo accompanying the headline was of jubilant gun rights supporters carrying signs saying "Guns Save Lives." "The Great Object: Every Man Be Armed." "If guns kill people, do pens misspell words?"
And that's the real problem with gundamentalism (and I do see this ruling as an offshoot of gundamentalism). Its adherents believe that nothing is as important as the right to own a gun. Or many guns. Or many kinds of guns. The fact that 30,000 people a year, 80 a day, are killed by guns is not nearly as important as the right to own a gun. The day before the Supreme Court announced its decision, a worker in a Kentucky plastics plant shot and killed himself after shooting five coworkers and wounding a sixth.
What are the responsibilities that go along with this newly bestowed right? The Court's ruling does make room for sensible gun control. But as people of faith we must ask deeper and more difficult questions: Where do we place our trust -- in God or in guns? Who do we serve -- God or the second amendment? Where do we find our sense of worth and purpose -- from God or from guns? How do we bring about God's reign - with an open heart or with a gun in hand?
"All things are lawful," but not all things are beneficial. "All things are lawful," but not all things build up. Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other.
In the days of my childhood, summer was the season of the big-tent revivals. More than any other of the myriad things that summer could be and was, it was the revivals that were for me the major descriptor of what a complete and proper summer was. This rather peculiar fixation was, no doubt, due in large measure to the fact that I was forbidden to even get near the things. For my Ph.D., Presbyterian father, everything that happened under those tents was suspect, and most of it was downright dangerous.
In those pre-air-conditioning days, we would often get in the car after supper and go for a drive simply to cool off enough to go to sleep. Windows down and breeze blowing, we would drive up and down the wider streets and most of the back roads surrounding the university town where we lived. And we would pass them. We would pass those great, gray-brown interruptions staked out like monoliths on empty city lots and in unmown fields. Always the naked lightbulbs swung by the dozens from strings of overhead wiring. Always the sawdust ... oh, I loved the sawdust and ached to be barefoot in it. Always the metal folding chairs in "discobbobalated" (my mother's word for them) rows, like snaggled teeth in the mouth of a 6-year-old. But more than that, more tantalizing and more forbidden ... always there was the music that passed through the windows of our passing car.
I don't like music particularly, at least not in the popular sense of having an iPod or a fine collection of CDs or even a favorite radio station. Music gets in my head, if I let it get near me, and then it takes over. I can't hear the words of my profession for all the nonverbal conversation of the music. But when I was a child, I didn't know that. I just knew that that music, that 1930's revival music, was my soul fulfilled and still feasting. This reaction was, of course, no doubt the precise reason why my father forbade our going to the things in the first place. The only time I can ever remember his breaking his rule, in fact, was one summer night in my seventh or eighth year when I was weepy with longing. To pacify my mother who, undoubtedly, was desperate to pacify me, he stopped the car, took me by the hand, and let me stand just inside the ring of sawdust and listen for perhaps five minutes. It was heaven, or as near as I had, at that stage of life, ever thought to be.
But World War II brought a lot of changes with it, as well as a lot of misery and a lot of goodness. No war is ever without a mixed bag of consequences. One of the war's consequences was increased urbanization and much better technology. Both of them forever changed the tent revival, or if not the revival per se, then certainly its music. The men and women who belted out or wept out or crooned out the glories of my childhood had not grown up on electricity, much less on electrified instruments. No, not at all. So they had played instead the acoustic instruments of their own childhoods -- the guitars, fiddles, mandolins, harmonicas, and guitars of their own past. And it was this sound, I later realized, that I so loved.
After the war, when music began to electrify and musicians began to entertain, instead of speak for, their audiences, there were apparently more folk than I who yearned to go home to the sound of the old ways. Bluegrass was born. Wonderful, fulsome, acoustic, down-home bluegrass. Lord, how I loved it. In fact, my great claim to fame (if you will forgive my bragging a bit here) is that once I was on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry as a guest of a friend and was standing just back of the wash of the stage lights and adjacent to the corner of the band's dais. Bill Monroe had just finished a set when, in turning from the front of the stage toward its back, he somehow caught his foot on the corner of the dais and fell straight into my arms, mandolin and all. It is not an immodest exaggeration to say that once upon a summer night, I saved Bill Monroe from some kind of nasty discomfort and his mandolin from certain destruction.
All that digression aside, however, the truth still is that bluegrass was and is just the revival glory of the '30s come into the 21st century. Blessedly, it still wrings out its sweetness with acoustical instruments and alternates its leads and riffs with egalitarian elegance. If it doesn't include so many hymns now, it still sings the certainty of goodness that those hymns were about. And it is that certainty, I now understand, that drew me as a child and still draws me now. I realized this -- in the sense of at last perceiving it at a level I can articulate -- last Saturday.
That day, Sam and I left Lucy, Tennessee, where we live, and drove about 60 miles southeast to Williston, Tennessee. Neither of those places is what anybody would call a major geographic site or a strong economic center. But that doesn't matter. What matters is that the Harrison Crawford Bluegrass Festival is held every June on the old Crawford farm just south of Williston. There's no tent, of course, but there is a huge metal-roofed, open-sided shed that Mr. Crawford built for the festival long before he died. And there is a stage of sorts -- adequate certainly for bluegrass needs. And all the straggly rows of mismatched chairs. And the concessionaires and the porta-potties and the campers and the two-acre parking lot and the music ... Oh, Lord, there it is, rolling over dozens of acres and who even knows how many people as set after set is played, and people clap and sway and clog and, then, transport to that place they all came hoping to go to in the first place. That place where goodness dwells so fully that nothing other than goodness could ever be there.
Ah, the goodness. And I left that afternoon of bluegrass and of swaying, clogging, clapping people knowing, yet once again, that my father was right about two things: The music is untamed, and the music can seduce you. He was wrong -- my beloved father -- only in that he himself was, by time and circumstance, forbidden to see or say that the Lord of the Dance calls by many tunes and many means. It is a good and joyful thing for me this summer Sunday to be able to know and understand that.
A friend of mine recalls a dinner-table conversation one day when she was a schoolgirl. Her dad had come home unusually frustrated from his job as a city planner. "D#@*$% environmentalists!" he said over dinner. "Dad, I thought you were an environmentalist," she said. "Why are you so upset?"
"All day long," he answered, "environmentalists come to me with problems and complaints, and business people come to me with ideas and projects. Why can't the environmentalists be proactive and come to the table with some creative ideas to make things better, instead of just trying to get in the way of things they don't want to see happen?"
This city planner would be encouraged to read the Sierra Club's first-ever report on faith communities engaging with environmental activism: "Faith in Action: Communities of Faith Bring Hope for the Planet."
So would all of us who remember -- not that long ago -- when too many people of faith considered the environment a political concern rather than a spiritual and moral one. Back then, those of us for whom faith and environmental concern were as integral as faith and church-going felt pretty alone. But the tide is turning -- in no small part due to the efforts of Sierra Club activists such as author/project manager Lyndsay Moseley and her co-author, Anna Jane Joyner.
The Sierra Club, it turns out, isn't a bunch of secular leftist anti-God nature-worshippers, as some folks might have tried to paint them in the past. Nearly half of the club's 1.3 million members attend worship regularly, and Sierra Club leaders like Moseley and her boss, Melanie Griffin, are deeply committed to -- not to mention thoughtful and articulate about -- the intersection of faith and environmental activism. Americans in general, it turns out, are further along than many of us realized: 67 percent of all Americans, when asked why they care about the environment, explain that it is God's creation. Their love for God and their love for God's creation are inseparable -- naturally.
"Faith in Action" is a colorful, easy-to-read booklet and after a brief introduction, it is pure stories -- stories of Baptists and Catholics, Quakers and Congregationalists, synagogues and mosques, Vineyard churches and Buddhist communities, creatively expressing care for God's beautiful earth. They're launching projects as varied as their backgrounds -- fighting mountaintop removal, protecting watersheds, changing light bulbs, tithing C02, building energy-efficient buildings, promoting energy conservation, sponsoring local agriculture, sponsoring retreats and bike rides, and in scores of other ways building deep commitment to "keeping the faith by keeping the earth."
I got tears in my eyes as I read these stories of faith and care for God's beautiful earth. I imagine my friend's father would have felt pretty moved too: people of faith, committed to the environment, not just preaching or complaining, but putting faith into action in positive, proactive ways. If you want to inspire your congregation (or yourself), consider using this one-of-a-kind resource -- printed on mixed-source paper, of course! You can download a copy and get more information at www.sierraclub.org/partnerships/faith.
Nobody has said it much better than Sierra Club founder John Muir: "All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go, to highlands or lowlands, woods or plains, on the sea or land ... or high in a balloon in the sky; through all the climates, hot or cold, storms and calms, everywhere and always we are in God's eternal beauty and love."
Brian McLaren is an author and speaker and serves as Sojourners' board chair. You can learn about his books, music, and other resources at brianmclaren.net.
Comedian George Carlin died this week. While his humor could often be profane, there was one of his standard pieces that I loved the first time I heard it and have ever since. It was titled "Baseball and Football," and hilariously summarized the difference between the two sports. For a lifelong baseball fan, it confirmed my passion. The piece ended with:
In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.
In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! - I hope I'll be safe at home!
As a convert to Orthodox Christianity, I have come to appreciate the strong connection in our tradition between spirituality and creation. Many of our great feasts, minor celebrations, and daily prayers involve joining prayer, blessing, and the material world. Unlike Western Christians who remember the three kings on Jan. 6, 13 days after Christmas we celebrate Theophany, the feast of the baptism of Christ in the Jordan. Part of this feast includes blessing water in our churches or processing to a nearby pond, sea, or ocean where a priest will toss a cross into the water, transforming the whole body into a holy water font. We annually commemorate our loved ones who have fallen asleep in the Lord by making and blessing koliva -- boiled wheat with fruit, sugar, and spices. The wheat recalls the words of Christ, that "unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain," while the cinnamon, clove, and pomegranate remind us of the sweetness of the resurrection to come. And each liturgical day begins in the evening with vespers and the chanting of Psalm 102, a hymn of the goodness of the natural world: "The trees of the Lord are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon which he planted, where the birds make their nests ...."
Because of this intertwining of spirituality and sacred materialism, environmental awareness can be easily encouraged by our spiritual leaders. His Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew I (whom The Guardian has named "The 'pope' of hope" and elsewhere has been called the "green patriarch") in particular has become a leader among clergy who are dedicated to rallying people of faith to care for the environment. He has organized environmentally responsible cruises for political leaders, journalists, and scientists on the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, and the Amazon river in an effort to use his ecclesial rank to change attitudes and policies related to the environment. The patriarch also gave new significance to Sept. 1, our church new year, by calling for prayer and supplication for the environment on this day.
In his book Encountering the Mystery, the patriarch writes, "In the Orthodox liturgical perspective, creation is received and conceived as a gift from God. The notion of creation-as-gift defines our Orthodox theological understanding of the environmental question in a concise and clear manner while at the same time determining the human response to that gift through the responsible and proper use of the created world. Each believer is called to celebrate life in a way that reflects the words of the Divine [Eucharistic] Liturgy: 'Thine own from Thine own we offer to Thee, on behalf of all and for all.'"
Abayea Pelt is the office manager and receptionist for Sojourners.
For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.
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Last week, I posted a piece about speaking at a graduation ceremony inside Sing Sing prison in New York. I was moved by quite a few comments to the piece, so I thought I'd share some of them for those who may not have read them.
I think that seminary in prison is a good idea. I worked in a prison for 2-1/2 years, and the men need something to motivate them when they get out. Prison is not reality -- has nothing to do with the real world. If they have something to "hang on to" when they are released, especially something spiritual, it might help. The ministry might also give them a goal for when they are released. Transitional housing, and transitional programs to help offenders transition from prison to reality, are sorely needed. May I say God bless them, one and all. (Posted by: Anita)
Thank you for reminding us of the wonderful potential of those most downtrodden in our society. As an elementary teacher in Minneapolis Public Schools I saw with great sadness these children who never had a chance. I am sorry they had to go through those years of dispair and violence and imprisonment. But I am so thankful that someone gave them the opportunity to learn and grow and become a blessing to others. They will do it in ways I never could! Praise the Lord! (Posted by: Jean Eittreim)
Thank you so much for your article bringing that wonderful program at Sing Sing to public attention. I am one of dozens of people in Kentucky working to expand jail and prison ministry to be a channel of hope while they are incarcerated and to help "to-be ex-offenders" see desirable options for their lives upon release. Sing Sing's Seminary gives one more model to hold up. (Posted by: Sr. Dorothy Schuette)
I also was really moved by this post. I found myself sobbing in my office this a.m. -- at work, no less. My daughter is incarcerated in Beaumont, Texas. She is a Christian who, like the rest of us, made some serious mistakes. I am so thankful that Jesus loves and forgives her -- and all of us. (Posted by: Betty Ann)
So pleased to hear that those who go inside to minister to the incarcerated come out more blessed than they! Mr. Wallis, as the wife of one with whom you spoke that evening at Sing Sing, as well as a friend of Darren's, thank you. To have one come in with the respect and appreciation for the hard work these men have put forth, and with the faith you brought with you that night, changes the "inmate" to a human. The opportunity for college education is transforming for these men. To have their convictions to go forth bringing healing to the society they'd once harmed taken seriously, and to be given the open door and tools their education provides to do so, is an unimaginable blessing. Couple this with a God encounter and the recidivism rate is near zero! Just FYI, there is a KAIROS OUTSIDE which ministers to the female relatives of the incarcerated, addressing the special emotional and spiritual needs of those who have an incarcerated loved one. I have been involved in the Mid-Hudson chapter for over three years and have seen miracles there also. Check out the Web site! (Posted by: Lauren Young)
In so many prisons throughout this country education departments and college providers are working to provide opportunities for people who are incarcerated. They are the unsung heroes whose real satisfaction comes from such seeing such graduation ceremonies. There is nothing more powerful than seeing a person get a GED and then a college education in prison. Your story was very powerful Thanks, Jim, for reminding me that God can always do something good with any situation. Praise God for those who have this opportunity and those who are blessed to serve in this way. (Posted by: Lin Smallwood)
Last week, I blogged about Dr. Alfredo Quiñones Hinojosa, a former migrant worker and now world-class brain surgeon. This man and the topic of immigration have sparked some heated conversations in our blog community. I invite you to find out more about Dr. Quiñones in Hopkins, a new miniseries on ABC that features Dr. Q and his colleagues inside and outside the operating room. Check out the clip below where he talks with his kids and the camera about being "illegal" and his path to citizenship. Hopkins airs tonight at 10 p.m./ 9 p.m. central.
Allison Johnson is the policy and organizing assistant for Sojourners.
The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA.org) was launched in 1979, in response to growing concern "over an increase of [sic] questionable fund-raising practices in the nonprofit sector." As their Web site explains, Sen. Mark Hatfield challenged "a group of key Christian leaders" to begin policing their own mission agencies as a kind of "Christian Better Business Bureau."
Perhaps 30 years later, evangelicals, because of "an increase in questionable rhetorical practices in the nonprofit sector," need to form the ECRA: The Evangelical Council for Rhetorical Accountability. Those of us who have a lot of pew time know ... not to mention those who listen to religious broadcasting and partake of religious literature, Web sites, and blogs (!) ... that such accountability is sorely lacking.
The need for an ECRA became clearer than ever to me this week when a beloved elder in the evangelical broadcasting community spoke out against Sen. Barack Obama. What is evident to me in this interchange is not just a difference in policy, but also a ...
Whenever I hear those three little words -- "the latest poll" -- I generally tune out. Pollsters and survey-takers seldom ask the right questions, I've found, so the responses they get are less than reliable. One exception is the surveys conducted by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, and the organization's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, released Monday, June 23, proves why.
The Pew survey not only asks highly specific and carefully worded questions but also asks participants to provide detailed information about themselves. Demographic breakdowns go well beyond, say, the evangelical/mainline divide to subgroups such as Baptists in the evangelical tradition, the mainline tradition, or the historically black church traditions; mainline Christians who pray daily and regularly attend church services; and Catholics who consider religion to be very important in their lives.
So we know who Pew talked to, and that makes the results of this survey particularly compelling -- and encouraging to those of us who stubbornly hold on to the hope that we can effect political and social change by building on the common ground that unites us as Christians. And the meticulous wording of the survey enabled Pew analysts to recognize such nuances as the indirect influence of religion on political life.
Here's what I see in the survey as cause for hope:
Seventy to 87 percent of all Christians expressed dissatisfaction with the political system and the direction the country is taking. Imagine what we could accomplish if we turned that level of dissatisfaction into action.
Even though 48 percent of evangelicals prefer a smaller government that provides fewer services, 57 percent believe the government should do more to help the poor, even if it means going into debt. That may seem incongruous, but I don't think it is. To me, it indicates that evangelicals place a higher value on helping the poor than on some other governmental services.
Fifty-four percent of evangelicals believe stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost. That's compared to 64 percent of mainline respondents, which dispels the long-held myth that mainliners and evangelicals are clearly divided on this issue.
While only 48 percent of evangelicals favor diplomacy over military strength as a means of ensuring peace, I have to believe that's an improvement. (38 percent favor military might over diplomacy, with 16 percent responding "neither," "both," or "don't know.")
The gap between evangelicals and mainline Christians is also much narrower than was once the case with regard to foreign affairs. Fifty-four percent of evangelicals and 52 percent of mainliners believe we should pay more attention to domestic problems than to international problems.
That last question is one of the few I think could have been better worded. The alternative response was, "It's best for the future of our country to be active in world affairs." Given that wording, I would have also opted for paying more attention to problems at home. But the question makes no distinction, for example, between involvement in Iraq and involvement in Darfur. If it had, the responses likely would have been different.
In any event, the survey results indicate, among many other things, that Christians of all stripes are far more united on some social and political issues than our politicians and religious leaders would have the American public believe. And that's good news -- no, great news -- for everyone who favors working together to solve problems over battling it out along partisan or denominational lines.
I arrived in the West Bank the afternoon of Saturday, June 7, and hit the ground running. The next morning we starting filming for a film on Palestinian nonviolent resistance I am working on this summer. That Sunday, we did a long interview with Daoud Nassar, whose family owns a plot of land in the Palestinian village of Nahalin, just a few kilometers south of Bethlehem. The legal documents to the land date back to 1916, yet the family has been battling in Israeli courts for more than 15 years to have their ownership recognized by the Israeli state. The land lies on a hill surrounded on all sides by Israeli settlements. The neighboring settlement of Neve Daniel already has a master plan to expand across the land of the Nassars and their neighbors.
Parallel to the legal battles, the Nassars have done everything to prevent the
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Mary Nelson is president emeritus of 
Phyllis Tickle (
Brian McLaren is an author and speaker and serves as Sojourners' board chair. You can learn about his books, music, and other resources at 
Comedian 
Allison Johnson is the policy and organizing assistant for Sojourners.
Marcia Ford is the author of 
I arrived in the West Bank the afternoon of Saturday, June 7, and hit the ground running. The next morning we starting filming for