The recent Georgia-Russia mini-war in and around South Ossetia was definitely not a religious war, but it serves as a reminder that religious identity doesn't even come in third place when issues of national identity are at issue. While the battle raged, the majority of participants -- and casualties -- were Christians on both sides.

In both countries, the Orthodox Church -- in practice, though not officially -- functions as the national church. Russia has an icon of St. George at the center of its national coat of arms; the average Russian atheist regards himself as an Orthodox atheist. Georgia prides itself on having adopted Christianity in the 4th century, six centuries before the baptism of Russia.

No matter how borderless Christianity is in theory ("neither east nor west, neither Greek nor Jew"), in practice national borders are as substantial as cathedral walls.

The Orthodox churches in Russia and Georgia, led by Patriarch Alexei in Moscow and Patriarch Ilya in Tbilisi, are no exception. It's rare for either church to stand in opposition to its government. The Russian Orthodox Church has been especially notable for being quick to bless Russia's military -- and has been all but silent in voicing criticism about Russian actions, no matter how brutal. Patriarch Ilya also has been equally silent about post-Soviet Georgia's deepening association with the United States and the U.S.-sponsored military buildup that has resulted.

Thus it has been a surprise to note the efforts made by the leaders of both churches, first to prevent the recent war and then, their efforts having failed, to speed its end.

Ilya seems to have been the one who took the first step. In April he sent a letter to Alexei in which he noted the potential "role and authority of our churches to prevent the escalation of tensions and help restore good bilateral relations."

While Alexei's response has not been made public, it is likely that he intervened with Russia's president and prime minister (he is on close terms with both Medvedev and Putin) in hopes of encouraging renewed diplomatic efforts to prevent conflict.

But when Georgia's military bombarded Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, on the night of Aug. 8, hopes to prevent war were shattered. (What lay behind Georgia's action is baffling. It was something like Connecticut opening fire on New York. The Russians had already made clear what would happen in such a case. Georgia's small army hadn't a chance against Russian forces. Was President Saakashvili imagining that America, his military sponsor, would join the battle? Had he even been encouraged to open fire? I'd love to know.)

What is remarkable in the context of the days that followed was Patriarch Alexei making a public appeal to the Russian state to declare a cease fire.

"Today blood is being shed and people being killed in South Ossetia," he said, "and my heart deeply laments over it. Orthodox Christians are among those who have raised their hands against each other. Orthodox people, called by the Lord to live in fraternity and love, confront each other."

In a sermon given in Tbilisi two days later, Patriarch Ilya said that "one thing concerns us very deeply -- that Orthodox Russians are bombing Orthodox Georgians."

Note that when Alexei made his appeal, he was definitely not acting as the Russian government's amen chorus. At the time, Russia's leaders were strongly resisting international pressure for a cease fire. It seems likely that Russia was hoping, war having begun after years of tension, to seize the moment to bring South Ossetia, bitterly at odds with Georgia for many years, into actual rather than ex officio inclusion in Russia -- a goal Russia is still pursuing, but at present without warfare with Georgia.

Will the two churches make more vigorous efforts to prevent renewed conflict? And if so, how? How willing are the two churches to prevent the cross from being used as a flag pole?

Jim Forest is the international secretary of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship (www.incommunion.org), editor of its journal In Communion, and author of Praying With Icons and The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life.

I am going to preach this morning. Actually, in all probability I will be preaching by the time you read this. I will not be away from home in some alien pulpit, though, but at home in my own parish and among those whom I love. I won't preach, of course, because I can't. What I will do is just talk. And what I will talk about is where I was last week.

Last week, I was in Seattle at Fremont Abbey, which is the home structure or base for The Church of the Apostles, where an African-American female friend and colleague of mine, Karen Ward, is abbess and where a significant portion of the Fremont area of Seattle seems to gather to do its worship or to do its socializing or maybe just to lick its wounds, re-group, and go forth into the world renewed. None of those exercises is a bad thing for a church or parish to be engaged in, and most assuredly none is a bad thing for the folk who are the beating heart of Fremont Abbey.

Fremont Abbey is an Anglimergent church. That is to say that what you and I and all our kind are living through right now is referred to as The Great Emergence. Like The Great Reformation of the 16th century, The Great Schism of the 11th century, the time of Gregory the Great in the sixth century, or The Great Transformation that happened at the change of the eras, this one of ours also marks a seismic shift in human affairs, both religious and secular. When scholars call this one The Great Emergence, they do not exaggerate; for as was true with all its predecessors, out of it is coming a whole new definition of what it means to be human, of how society should be structured, of what constitutes the good life -- even of what human life itself is and how it may be defined.

In this "Great Emergence" there are churches, movements, and congregations that are frankly "emergent." That is, they are completely new conceptualizations of what "church" is to be. There are, in other words, many congregations and gatherings that frankly are emergent away from, or emerging up out of, the traditional flow of "church' as we normally think of it, and they are a legitimate new form of Christianity as surely as, 500 years ago, bodies protesting the dominance of Latin Catholicism were emerging and protesting and forming new bodies of the faithful and were legitimately Christian.

In all of this reshuffling and reconstituting, there are also other parishes, however, other churches and congregations that are moving to embrace emergent Christian thought while melding it with extant and/or historic expressions of the faith. They are known as the hyphenateds. They are the presbymergents and methomergents, the luthermergents, and the baptimergents, the submergents and the anglimergents, etc. They fascinate me more even than do completely emergent congregations, because they seem to me to be engaged in the more difficult task of bringing to the party the best of two worlds, the ancient and the future. They are hyphenated, in other words, because they seek to meld the DNA and passion and post-modern theology of a new form of Christianity with the extant body and operative history of an established tradition. Among them all, none is so absorbing or compelling to me as are the anglimergents, of whom there is no better example than the Church of the Apostles in Seattle.

Part of my joy in this and my sensitivity to it, undoubtedly, is that I am, for lo these many decades now, an Anglican through and through. Standing in the nave of the Church of the Apostles last Saturday night, I was reminded again of the richness and the glory of that singular and never-quite-domesticated or tamed position, especially as it is being translated into postmodern Christianity. I watched people of all classes and strata, abilities and dress styles, and all kinds of sexual or gender persuasions come together in a worship that used much of the order of service laid out in the Book of Common Prayer, but somehow remained innocent of preconceptions while revealing itself as long on mercy, compassion, and adamant belief. The worship at COTA was blatantly dedicated to the premise that the Bible is one narrative, not two narratives in one set of covers, and to the even more radical premise that Jesus, the Nazarene, actually meant what he said in everything that he said, including the fact that the promises of Holy Writ are fulfilled in him and had better be acted upon by us.

What will I preach this morning? I won't. I'll simply say to those of us gathered in our Tennessee nave that the time has come to take heart. Now, in this time of re-formation culturally and sociologically as well as religiously, our brothers and sisters in Christ all over this country and the globe are finding generous and merciful and grace-filled ways to exercise their faith and to include all peoples, and we can do no less. That is what I shall say, and I will begin the saying of it this morning by reading aloud a collection of words that I have heard many times before but never received until last week when I heard them proclaimed in the mixed beauty and aberrant, warm, but not quite familiar hospitality of anglimergence at its most powerful. The words are those of Isaiah, the prophet, who foretold Messiah's coming. They go like this:

Thus says the Lord, Keep right judgment and do justice; for my salvation is near and soon to come, and my righteousness to be revealed.

Blessed is the one who does this, and blessed is the one who lays hold of it, who observes the Sabbath and does not pollute it, and who keeps his or her hand from doing evil.

Neither let the son or daughter of a stranger who has joined himself to the Lord, speak, saying, "The Lord has utterly separated me from His people." Neither let the eunuch say, "Behold, I am a dry tree."

For thus says the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep My Sabbath and choose the things that please Me and take hold of My covenant;

Even unto them will I give in My house and within My walls a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.

Also the sons and daughters of the strangers that join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him and to love the name of the Lord and to be His servants, and everyone that keeps My Sabbath from polluting it, and takes hold of My covenant,

Even them will I bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer; their offerings and sacrifices shall be accepted on My altar, for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.

Isaiah 56:1-7

May it soon be so everywhere and in all places. Amen.

Phyllis Tickle (www.phyllistickle.com) is the founding editor of the religion department of Publishers Weekly and author of The Words of Jesus: A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord and the forthcoming fall release, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why.

[see all posts in this conversation on New Monastics and race.]

Jason and Vonetta Storbakken have extended a gracious and hopeful invitation to public dialogue about reconciliation's challenge for New Monasticism. I'd like to say in public what I've already said to them privately: Thank you. I'm grateful not only that they have named an issue that we need to continue to grapple with, but that they have modeled the power of God to move us beyond race to a new identity in Jesus Christ.

It is no secret that many New Monastics come from places of so-called privilege in the white churches that have dominated American Christianity. Disappointed by the ways our whiteness kept us from Jesus, we relocated ourselves to black and Latino neighborhoods to learn from people who knew the power of God at the margins of society. We came to learn community from our neighbors and to know Christ more fully across the dividing walls of hostility that Ephesians says God has already destroyed.

The good news is that we have not been disappointed. Eliacin Rosario-Cruz is exactly right: New Monasticism needs the life and spirit that minorities bring because it is a more complete expression of what the kingdom is. The testimony I have to share with other white Christians is that we can be set free from a history of colonial control and condescending service. We can find new life by submitting ourselves to the traditions and wisdom of minority churches. In my experience, this is possible only because of the radical love of God that is extended by people whom white Christianity has historically ignored and abused.

But this only makes the Storbakkens' central question all the more pressing: "What are the reasons for the membership [of New Monastic communities] to remain so homogenous?" That we come from segregated churches is not surprising. The problem is that these radical communities seem to remain so homogenous.

Where, then, is the church that God is gathering beyond the color line? The last thing a white guy like me needs to offer is an answer to a question like that. But for the sake of this conversation (which I hope others will join), let me offer a few observations:

1) Reconciliation is happening in minority churches. In the historically black neighborhood where I live, our communal houses were started by white folks and continue to be dominated by them. Our local church, however, was started by black folks and continues to invite all of us into a journey of liberation from the power of race and transformation into new life. Our community feels a greater need to be part of the community at our local church than to sell our neighbors on New Monasticism.

2) Listening to neighbors means changing our ideas about community. While we came to our neighborhood with the best of intentions, we've seen that we get things wrong. The Storbakkens are right: We must affirm affirmative action in New Monastic community, welcoming whoever might come. In our experience, though, we've also had to re-evaluate what were inviting people into. Are our meals the sort of meals that neighbors would want to eat with us? Is our Bible study a place where neighbors can share their spiritual gifts? We haven't figured all of these things out, but I know that we've made some changes for every authentic relationship we've built across dividing lines.

3) We are caught between two conversations. Ninety-nine percent of my neighbors and fellow church members have never heard the term New Monasticism. I doubt they need the term. Yet I've written a book about New Monasticism. I talk to churches and denominational leaders about it all the time because I believe that mainstream Christianity needs to imagine a different future.

Any dialogue about reconciliation and New Monasticism needs to take both of these conversations into consideration. One way New Monasticism has failed is that guys like me have tried to communicate the gospel that we've learned from our neighbors without asking for our neighbors' help. An African-American mentor pointed out to me how white people enjoy listening to me talk about the experience of black people, but they don't actually listen to black folks. Indeed, we do need to hand the mic over to indigenous community leaders.

But I also notice that when black friends speak with me or in my place, white audiences often assume my friends are speaking primarily for other black Christians, and not to the church as a whole. So-called black theology and black preaching can be affirmed as good for them without being taken seriously as true for all of us. So maybe it's not enough to just hand the mic over. Maybe we have to stand together, joining our voices in witness to the truth that we confess we can only know together.

Thats why I'm so grateful for the Storbakkens. Not only are they pursuing community across the dividing lines that this world writes on us. They're joining their voices to speak to the whole church about what it means to receive God's gift of reconciliation and become its ministers in the world. Yes, we need dialogue. More than that, though, we need a way of life that is good news for all people and a gospel that we can proclaim together. I hope all our conversation leads us toward that.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of Free to Be Bound: Church Beyond the Color Line.

[see all posts in this conversation on New Monastics and race.]

American churches are still segregated, and it is the way most of us—regardless of our race—would like to keep it.  At least, so suggests the recent online CNN article titled, “Why Americans Prefer Their Segregated Sundays." Curtiss DeYoung, professor of Reconciliation Studies at Bethel University, is quoted in this article as saying that only about 5 percent of American churches are racially integrated and half of those churches are moving in the direction of becoming all-black or all-white.

In his book United by Faith, DeYoung and his co-authors Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, and Karen Chai Kim, argue that when churches can be integrated they should.  The reality of residential racial segregation presents a real and sometimes insurmountable hurdle to church integration.  However, as inner-city gentrification becomes more of an established part of city life, there is a question about the church’s role in creating stable environments for integration, instead of merely transitional integrated bodies created by the market economy.

As Christians, we all agree that we should want racial integration in all facets of our lives, and, in particular, in our worshipping communities—right? Although the inexcusable sin of white racism still persists and is a major hindrance to church integration, John Blake insightfully reports what might be the most compelling example of why churches should remain segregated—the black church.  Established as the result of white racism, the black church formed out of necessity.  Historically referred to as the “Invisible Institution,” the black church flourished at the margins and gave its parishioners empowerment through leadership, dignity through shared cultural experiences, and hope through powerful and prophetic preaching.  As Blake mentions, the black church still gives its attendees a “break” or a place of retreat from the wear and tear of present-day racism.  Similar assets can be found in Asian, Latino, and Native American churches.

It is with this appreciation and recognition, however, that I reveal all of my biases.  As a white Christian I have been abundantly and exceedingly blessed to have worshipped in two racially integrated church bodies.  Words fail to express how these churches have shaped and transformed my understanding of God and my humble place in this world.  For the people of color who have worshipped with me I know that it has sometimes come at a significant cost to them and invaluable benefit to me. 

Ultimately, I agree with the authors of United by Faith because I believe that the biblical case for an integrated church is virtually airtight, and the witness it provides to a violent and bigoted world cannot be overstated.  Still, the formula for the success of such churches remains persistently and frustratingly elusive.

It does leave me with one final thought.  At the beginning of Blake’s article he recounts the fears expressed by black congregants whose church was experiencing an influx of white members.  Their fear was that these new white members would take over, rendering its current members disempowered.  I sympathize with this fear as it exposes what might be the greatest challenge to whites who want to lead on church integration – if you want to lead you are probably going to have to learn how to follow and serve.  We progressive types may even have to learn the radical implications of terms we do not often use, like “submission." Yet this is the way of Christ modeled through his earthly incarnation.

Sondra Shepley is the speaking events manager for Sojourners.

[... continued from part 1]

All I'm trying to say is that whether we wear the label of Christian conservative or Christian liberal, what matters most is that we are Christian. The Bible reminds us that there is no male or female, Jew or gentile, bond or free, but in Christ we are all the same, sinners saved by grace. 

What I've learned is that many of my liberal and conservative friends draw the line around issues of gay rights and abortion. But people in the church I attend disagree on these issues, and yet somehow are still able to worship God together on Sunday morning. To me that's evidence of the Holy Spirit -- that in spite of our disagreements, we all agree that God is worthy of our worship and deserving of our praise. Each of us is evidence that the gospel still works; if it didn't, we wouldn't gather together on Sunday mornings. 

The bottom line is that as I travel the country visiting churches, talking about issues of justice, and organizing congregations, I don't hear these terms very often. I'm not sure where these labels come from or what relevance they have in advancing the work of the church. But I do know that most of the time I hear them being used, it's by the media, politicians, and religious organizations that seek to separate Christians into clearly defined groups to meet an institutional agenda around a given issue. Shouldn't we be seeking unity in the body of Christ, rather than entrenching ourselves in positions that distance us from each other? It's hard enough trying to do the work of ministry, so why should we expend so much energy defending ourselves against other Christians? 

The harsh reality is that there are people outside the church waiting on us to show up. And when we don't show, many of them are giving up. My prayer is that we would be like Paul and say, "I press toward the mark of the high calling for which God has called me Heavenward through Christ Jesus."

Rev. Romal Tune is the CEO of Clergy Strategic Alliances, a graduate of Howard University and Duke University School of Divinity, and a member of the Red Letter Christians.

Next Wednesday is the Feast of the Transfiguration. What that means is that next Wednesday is a major holy day for Christians like me who fall into what is commonly referred to as the "liturgical" category of the faith. That rather ponderous label is a sobriquet of sorts for those of us who are Anglicans or Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox and like to have history and the ancient traditions of the early church ever-present in, and informing of, our worship in the here and now.

By and large, our penchant for ceremony and antiquity makes for a more colorful form of Christian worship than is observed in non-liturgical services. It also makes for considerably more drama. It's the drama that makes my heart sing ... not only the drama of liturgical services, but also the fact that liturgical congregations are always inclined toward employing drama to enhance worship, deepen commitment, and increase their own experience and perception of the faith, as well as that of others.

For us, the Feast of the Transfiguration is one of the church's 12 Great Feast Days. That is, it's right on up there with the Nativity [Christmas] and the Feast of the Resurrection [Easter,] at least in religious terms, if not popular or cultural ones. It calls us to remember the apex or culminating event of Jesus' public life in which, on a mountaintop and in full view of Peter, James, and John, Jesus was transfigured into a radiance beyond their later description. Moses and Elijah were also present during the Transfiguration itself, one on either side of him; and even as the gathered apostles watched, a bright cloud overshadowed them and a voice, speaking from the cloud, said, "This is my son, the Beloved; and with him I am well pleased. Listen to him." From that moment on, the course of history was set and, in many ways, the church was born.

The Greek word used in the New Testament accounts of the events on the Mount of the Transfiguration is metamorphothe. While the ages have translated that word as transfigured, it actually comes closer to conveying something English can't quite convey. It wants to say something like "changed shape and beingness and allness into some other form thereof," or something equally awkward and wordy. What happened, in other words and in the fullest sense, was a "metamorphosis," which again is Greek and again has no really clear or felicitous analog in English.

That very impossibility of language, its very failure to convey some substances, its fractures and chips as a vessel for meaning have, over the years, come to be for me the central wonder of the Feast of the Transfiguration. Being convicted of something one can neither own nor ingest, articulate nor incarnate, is itself a glory beyond our grasping, whether we be ancient apostles or God's newest converts ... which says to me that the great truth of next Wednesday's Feast of the Transfiguration just may be that experiencing God always lies just beyond the reach of articulated theology, and never within it.

Phyllis Tickle (www.phyllistickle.com) is the founding editor of the religion department of Publishers Weekly and author of The Words of Jesus: A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord and the forthcoming fall release, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why.

It wasn't until I started working in the world of religion and politics with advocacy organizations on Capitol Hill that I ever heard anyone define Christians as liberal or conservative. These terms were not used in my church experience. But when I recall different experiences working in the church, I can see how some members of the churches where I worshiped then, where I worship now, and in congregations across the country, fit into these categories. I've found it difficult to determine which of these categories I fit into as a Christian. Am I liberal or am I conservative? More importantly, can the two co-exist in the church?

When I think about my passion for social justice, starting with the days when I, along with a group of church members, would go out every Wednesday night, feed the homeless, pass out the Daily Bread, talk with them, and invite them to worship, and how once a month we would conduct a worship service at the neighborhood homeless shelter and extend the invitation to accept Jesus and join the church, I'm not sure if these actions make me a liberal or a conservative.  But I also remember the day I realized that surely there must be more to it than this. I began to ask, why are we always feeding and providing clothes to the same people month after month, and in some instances, year after year? Isn't there more we can do to change their situations? In general, I had assumed that something beyond their own control was keeping them in poverty and perhaps there were systems of oppression working against many of the people we came in contact with on the streets. I began to realize that just generosity, though necessary, wasn't going to bring about justice. When I look at it this way, I can hear colleagues of mine in the religious advocacy world saying, yep, you're a liberal all right. 

But not so fast -- maybe I'm a conservative? Just last week, I was teaching Sunday school and the text was "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Surely this text did not suppose that every person who is poor shall inherit the kingdom. There are people who are not "saved" who are poor, and even some very bad people who are poor. 

As we discussed the possibility that Jesus meant something more spiritual than physical, that perhaps we are blessed and will inherit the kingdom when two things occur: First, we look at our spiritual condition without Christ and our inability to do anything to change it, and recognize our plight but realize that because of Christ's love for us, we are blessed because our sins will not be counted against us, and that's why we will inherit the kingdom of heaven.  Second, when we look at the condition of the world: communities overcome by crime, drugs, gun violence, and other social ills, we as Christians can recognize the sinful nature of people committing these acts, and through our spiritual lens understand that systemic change is not going to come at the hands of the government, police, or job opportunities alone. (All of these will help the social conditions, but do nothing to change the spiritual conditions.) Deep down, what people need most is a relationship with a God who looks beyond their faults and sees their deepest needs. True changes occur from the inside out. 

Maybe this perspective makes me a conservative. I'm not sure which label fits me best, but one thing I know beyond the shadow of a doubt: When we remove the layers of labels, like the grave clothes that confined Lazarus, we can look in the mirror and know in our hearts that we are Christians. 

[to be continued...]

Rev. Romal Tune is the CEO of Clergy Strategic Alliances, a graduate of Howard University and Duke University School of Divinity, and a member of the Red Letter Christians.

Tragically, the culture war crossed over fighting words to shooting bullets. Once again, a community of faith was caught in the crossfire. While 25 children sang songs from "Annie," a gunman fired three shotgun blasts inside the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. The seven people shot and two people murdered on Sunday morning are the latest victims of the culture war.  

Sadly, this wasn't the first shooting to occur at a house of worship in the U.S. and not likely to be the last. Do we remember the four teenagers and three adults who were murdered at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1999? Two more died at New Life Church in Colorado Springs last December. In each case, the shooter turned his frustration with particular religious expressions into an occasion to kill. (And as a nation we continue to support the right to shoot others over sane gun control policies -- but that deserves its own separate conversation).  

While many evangelicals celebrated Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott as martyrs who died for their Christian convictions at Columbine High School, I wonder if we will extend the same heroism to the victims in Tennessee? Evidently, usher Greg McKendry shielded the children performing selections from "Annie" and took the brunt of the shotgun blast. A retired schoolteacher, Linda Kraeger, also died from gunshot wounds. She was merely visiting the church. In both Columbine and Knoxville, the cowardly shooters took out their grudges upon innocent victims. Those with a conservative faith died at Columbine. Those with liberal beliefs perished in Tennessee. We mourn for them all.

The shooter in Tennessee, Jim Adkisson, has been identified as an unemployed divorcee. A four-page note found in his car described his contempt for liberals. When the system failed to work (evidently, his food stamps had just run out), Adkisson took up arms, aiming at those he had been trained to hate -- gays and liberals. 

Why did he single out Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalists? Evidently, the church recently posted a sign welcoming gays to their congregation. It set off a firestorm on conservative and Christian talk radio in East Tennessee. I found this online:

The specific chain of events that brought Jim Adkisson to the TVUC sanctuary was a recent decision to erect a sign specifically welcoming LGBT people into the congregation. That choice evidently set off a firestorm in the local right-wing community with the specific church and its location named repeatedly on right-wing and evangelical radio. The gunman, already looking for someone to take out his rage on, evidently took the path of local least resistance.  At any rate, while I'm not sure it's even worth assigning blame, it's not likely that Jim Adkisson would have driven the ten miles from his exurban hovel to my family's church if he hadn't learned what he needed about where to go on the radio.

While ultimate responsibility resides with the shooters, we can also connect these deaths to too much toxic talk radio. Both the left and the right play the blame-game all day long. On talk radio, my problems are always somebody else's fault.

This is the kind of tragedy that occurs when we adopt war rhetoric, turning our fellow Americans into enemies. Both sides have effectively demonized the opposition, laying blame for our problems at others' feet. Would it "kill" talk radio announcers to tone down their tenor for the sake of the common good? Could they sacrifice a few ratings points by refusing to serve the red meat their most radicalized listeners relish? Can we discipline ourselves to change the channel when the scapegoating begins?

I still recall my shock and horror when Paul Hill murdered Dr. John Britton in the name of "life." How could a graduate of Reformed Theological Seminary and an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church of America take up arms, killing in the name of God? I recently saw the chilling documentary Lake of Fire, which illustrates all the tragedies surrounding the fight over abortion. Director Tony Kaye captured early footage of Paul Hill, boldly proclaiming death sentences upon abortion providers. Lake of Fire also presents the horrors of an abortion procedure, including the emotional trauma that also follows. This even-handed movie leaves you with an enormous amount of sadness. There are no winners in Tony Kaye's bold documentary (or in our current culture war).

In response to all the overheated rhetoric, I created a documentary, Purple State of Mind, with my college roommate, John Marks. As I was entering the Christian faith 20 years ago, John was exiting. We revisited that crossing as an example of a constructive dialogue across the religious and political divide. Purple State of Mind is rooted in the profound hope that we can co-exist despite our differences. But plenty of patient listening must precede that fragile peace. We will not get there by burying our differences, but by bearing one another's burdens enroute.

I write this with a fair amount of trepidation. To promote peace to a war-mongering people can get you in trouble. I don't want to be placed on anybody's hit list. I do not want to put my children in the line of fire because I extend an olive branch toward atheists, homosexuals, or anyone else deemed "other" by the conservative Christian community. Churchgoers in Fort Worth, Texas, Colorado Springs, and Knoxville want to worship in freedom rather than fear. When something your pastor says or your congregation does can get you killed, we live in decidedly dangerous times. Heaven help us all to cease fire.

Craig Detweiler directs the Reel Spirituality Institute at Fuller Theological Seminary. He blogs at www.purplestateofmind.com. His new book, Into the Dark, searches for the sacred amidst the top-ranked films on the Internet Movie Database.  

Would any Mennonite church group ever invite a group of Muslims to use their meeting house on Fridays? I wondered this as I stood last month in the Kyk Ota Mosque in Serabulak, Uzbekistan, because it happened in reverse in 1881, when the imam offered refuge for nine months to a wandering and very needy bunch of Mennonites.

I was in Uzbekistan with 15 other Mennonites from the U.S. and Canada to visit scenes from an amazing 2,000-mile journey a group of German/Russian Mennonites took by horse and wagon in the late 1800s. After a punishing months-long trip from Ukraine through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, they had one nine-month stopover in Serabulak, Uzbekistan. There, the local imam gave them temporary shelter in the area around the mosque. They dealt with typhoid fever, their off-again, on-again hopes for settlement nearby, and the sad news of the deaths of two former advocates, General Kaufmann and Czar Alexander II. After leaving Serabulak and traveling for 40 more days, mostly through the desert, the surviving members finally established a colony near Khiva, which became their home for the next 50 years.

It is a tale of vision, of charismatic leadership gone astray, of courage, and of much suffering. We learned details from the diaries of leadership types -- all men; how I wished there were more remaining of the Mennonite Mama story!

Our trip followed that same Great Silk Road that had been traveled by this amazing bunch of pilgrims. We were welcomed at this mosque by local leaders who still have the local memory of the Mennonites' stay. Amazingly, the travelers at this location were even invited by the local imam to use the mosque for their worship services on Sundays -- in that same space used by Muslims on Friday! 

Standing together in this same mosque, we listened to three tour-group members read from diaries written by a grandfather and a great-grandfather, and a hymn from an account by Frank Bartsch -- all three had been part of the trek. After receiving permission from our hosts, we sang, "Come We That Love the Lord."  Tears surprised me as we sang, as those who "love the Lord" and as "children of the heavenly king." It was a holy moment shared with our new Muslim friends. The imam responded by thanking us for singing and added gracious words of peace and blessing for us and for the world. (This was interpreted for us by our expert and warm-hearted local Christian guide, Marina).

It was a time of discovery and pondering -- what made those Mennos behave as they did? Were they foolhardy? Courageous? Certainly interesting! What lessons should we take home?

But it is also a wondrous story of friendships between Christians and Muslims at that time -- with the Muslims offering hospitality and refuge. 

Helen Lapp lives in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, and is a retired administrator of the Mennonite Association of Retired Persons. Read about the end-times visions that fueled the 1880s trek, and the intercultural understanding that followed, in "Through the Desert Goes Our Journey," in the July issue of Sojourners.

It was almost 16 years ago that I sat in the debating chamber of Church House in Westminster and voted as a member of the House of Clergy to ordain women to the priesthood in the Church of England. At the time I was one of the youngest members of the House of Clergy, and I was in the first group of women ordained to the priesthood.

On Monday, July 7, the general synod meeting in York, England finished the job. At long last they have approved that women may also be consecrated as bishops--jettisoning the custom of a male-only episcopacy.

When women were first admitted to the priesthood in 1994, the synod passed various "safeguards" and "provisions" that included "flying [male] bishops" to serve those opposed to ordaining women. That year, I made an impassioned speech against those "provisions." This time, the women clergy made it clear to the House of Bishops that they wanted women to be bishops, but not at any cost. In a statement issued in May 2008, the women clergy said:

The price of legal "safeguards" for those opposed is simply too high, diminishing not just the women concerned, but the catholicity, integrity and mission of the episcopate and of the Church as a whole. We cannot countenance any proposal that would, once again, enshrine and formalize discrimination against women in legislation. With great regret, we would be prepared to wait longer, rather than see further damage done to the Church of England by passing discriminatory laws. ... If it is to be episcopacy for women qualified by legal arrangements to "protect" others from our oversight, then our answer, respectfully, is thank you, but no.

This incredible and historic decision that the synod has made is all the more wonderful to me because the legislation contains no "safeguards." It has simply a compassionate "code of practice" to be worked out over the next few years. No women will be consecrated as a bishop until the year 2014 and in the meantime, "arrangements" will be embodied in the code of practice for those who feel bereaved and betrayed by the raising of women to the episcopacy.

It is finally done! And this time I trust that the legislation will pass the test of theological integrity. I doubt that the fallout will be as bad as some have predicted. Many who threatened to leave the Church of England if this legislation passed have already decided to reconsider. Over the past 14 years of women in priesthood, many gracious and wise women priests have gained a lot of experience in building trusting relationships with those unable to accept their priestly ministry. I have no doubt that those eventually appointed will take this experience into the episcopate. They will do their jobs as shepherds, teachers, and unifiers with prayerful compassion and generosity.

On a more personal note: Whoo hoo!

Joy Carroll Wallis was among the first women to be ordained to the priesthood in England in 1994. She's the author of The Woman Behind the Collar: The Pioneering Journey of an Episcopal Priest. Carroll Wallis lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband (Sojourners editor-in-chief Jim Wallis) and their two sons, Luke and Jack.

July 4 weekend! Now this is a holiday! We won't have another one until Labor Day, but that doesn't even matter right now. What matters is that this is the last day of a glorious three days of blessed interruption. Thank goodness for all such favors.

I preach today -- four times, in fact -- at an Episcopal church in Ponte Vedra, Florida, where Sam and I are taking a few days of extended vacation. I use the word "preach" loosely, for I am not, and never shall be, a preacher. I'm a storyteller, which is a much humbler occupation ... not to mention a much more pleasant thing to be, but that's another issue entirely.

Storytellers like me, especially those in religion, often get asked to preach -- or "cover for us," as the wording usually goes -- during the summer months when clergy, for very legitimate reasons, want to get away and rest like the rest of us. So today, I am covering, and today I will tell some tales and spin some yarns, all of them true and all of them biblical, some of them shocking. The Bible, when we treat it as it is and not as what we wish it to be sanitized into, is full of shocking stories.

But there is one story I shan't tell today in the pulpit because I want to tell it here instead. Actually, it is not a story per se. The story part is simply to say that I, who loves poetry but cannot write it with any adequacy, love in particular the poetry of James Weldon Johnson. Poet beyond all telling, Johnson was by trade himself a preacher, and much of his poetry had Christian themes or sensibilities implicit in it. Yet like all good poetry, though it was written almost a century ago, it still sings in all our ears. One of Johnson's pieces, in particular, rings in my heart this July 4:

Listen, Lord - A Prayer

O Lord, we come this morning
Knee-bowed and body-bent
Before thy throne of grace.
O Lord -- this morning --
Bow our hearts beneath our knees,
And our knees in the lonesome valley.
We come this morning --
Like empty pitchers to a full fountain,
With no merits of our own.
O Lord -- open up a new window of heaven
And lean out far over the battlements of glory
And listen this morning.

You see, my heart is fingering Johnson's Prayer like a rosary this July 4 weekend because in this summer of 2008, in this country, within our part of God's world, you and I will further the process, almost to conclusion, of making some major decisions. It's a holiday today, and time to play. But tomorrow begins the long pull toward fall and elections.

Our knees are in the Lonesome Valley, Lord. Lean out over the battlements of glory and listen this morning as we pray.

Amen.

 

Phyllis Tickle (www.phyllistickle.com) is the founding editor of the religion department of Publishers Weekly and author of The Words of Jesus: A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord and the forthcoming fall release, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why. Listen, Lord - A Prayer is from God's Trombones, by James Weldon Johnson.

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.

The Christian Broadcasting Network talks to Jim Wallis in a recent segment on James Dobson's criticism of Barack Obama. Bishop Harry Jackson of the High Impact Leadership Coalition is also interviewed. Watch it.

CBN has also made extended audio content of their interview with Jim available.

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.

Marcia Ford is the author of We the Purple: Faith, Politics and the Independent Voter.

Following is an interview with Michael Christoffersen, director of Milosevic On Trial, a documentary I watched at the Tribeca Film Festival, which demonstrates the horrors that can happen when religion becomes intermingled with empire.

What attracted you to want to follow this entire trial?

By coincidence, I did the documentary Genocide: The Judgment (1999) for BBC and SVT about a trial at the Rwanda court. I made some friends there and found out that the trial of Slobodan Milosevic was going to happen. So, while some journalists came and went, I stayed around. Eventually, I got exclusive access to the tapes and was able to secure interviews with both Milosevic's defense lawyer and the prosecution team.

Explain how you got the trust of these players, so that they would open up and talk with you.

In the beginning, nobody wanted us there. We had to convince them that we were people to be trusted. That took a while, and it wasn't until much later that we were able to get some of the interviews. It takes a lot of stubbornness and you also have to be a little naïve to some extent. It also helped that we were just a small production company. In addition, we were not affiliated with a particular group, so we were able to be seen as not having an agenda.

How did you maintain your objectivity as a filmmaker given the brutality of these crimes?

I wanted to create a historic record that reflected to a certain extent what actually happened. At the same time, film is drama. It's not just dry historic records. So, it's not a totally neutral observation but my interpretations.

Of all the footage, what was most disturbing was the scene in which the Orthodox priest blesses the Scorpions. This is followed by a montage of the brutalities committed under this elite Serbian army.

It was very disturbing. It's a well-known fact that the Serb Orthodox Church was giving their blessing to the Serbians. This proved that it was not only an ethnic war but also a religious one as well. I'm not saying the Muslims have always been innocent victims. But in this instance, the church knew about the ethnic cleansing and was giving their approval. I've had some Serbs dispute the footage, claiming that the group this priest was blessing didn't perform the shootings that followed. But it's been investigated and the Scorpions that were blessed were the ones who did those acts.

How did you obtain footage like this?

We relied on material that was used during the trial as evidence. The only time we went outside was when we interviewed some of participants.

Why do you think there was so little coverage of the trial in the United States?

Except for some Balkan journalists and my documentary crew, I seldom saw any other media covering the trial.

How did you react to the sudden death of Milosevic during the trial?

At the time, it was terrible as there was no real closure. Looking back at it, the fact that there wasn't a judgment rendered gives an opening for people to talk about the issues raised at the trial.

What are the future plans for this film?

Milosevic on Trial will be seen at the Silverdocs: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival, held June 16-23, 2008, in Washington, D.C. Also, we only used about 1 percent of the material in the documentary. So we're in the process of making an archive where people can access all of the material. We might include information about Saddam on Trial, where I served as one of the producers. For more information, log on to our Web site (www.team-productions.com).

Becky Garrison was cited by Publishers Weekly as one of "four evangelicals with fresh views," alongside Jim Wallis, Shane Claiborne, and Ron Sider

[continued from part one]

What's at issue in the SBC, and in the larger evangelical community (and, we could add, in the mainline and Roman Catholic communities as well), isn't whether faith is political. Nobody (or almost nobody) is arguing for dropping the second half of the great commandment -- so that "loving God" is about faith and is central, but "loving neighbor" is about politics and is therefore marginal. Nobody is trying to divide the world into a spiritual realm that is personal and private and about faith, versus a secular realm that is social and public and about politics. Nobody is trying to say that faith has nothing to say about how people organize and govern themselves - how they seek justice, how they express kindness, how they walk humbly with God and in harmony with themselves, their neighbors, their enemies, and God's creation as a whole.

On both sides of these tensions -- this is worth emphasizing once more, to the point of redundancy -- we're agreed that faith relates to all of life, that faith is, as Jim Wallis wisely and repeatedly reminds us, both personal and social, both private and public. Nobody (or almost nobody) disagrees on this anymore -- thanks be to God.

The problem comes when "politics" comes to mean "dirty politics" or "partisan politics" or "narrow, wedge-issue, litmus-test, culture-wars politics." So when people suggest that caring for the environment is not a political issue, what they really mean (I think) is that it shouldn't be a partisan issue, a wedge issue, a left-right issue. Rather, they're saying that as followers of Christ, we shouldn't begin with the question, "What would Karl Rove (or James Carville) do?" We should ask the more obvious and Christian question. We should start with faith in our Creator and then move to politics in a spirit of justice, kindness, and humility -- not start with partisan politics and use faith to buttress it on the one hand, and not reduce faith to the private, personal realm so it has nothing to do with politics on the other.

So, perhaps when we read articles and hear discussions on faith and politics, we should develop the habit of raising this question, "Before we go any further, what do you mean by politics?"

Brian McLaren also blogs at brianmclaren.net and serves as board chair for Sojourners. He is an author and speaker (deepshift.org). His most recent books include Everything Must Change (2007) and Finding Our Way Again (2008).

A recent New York Times story, "Taking Their Faith, but Not Their Politics, to the People," highlights the challenge faced by followers of Christ who seek to integrate their faith with all aspects of life, including political life in a democracy. The article suggests to me a question that we should raise more frequently when people address "faith and politics," or "faith versus politics," namely: "What do you mean by politics?"

The article begins and ends by recounting a mini-culture war going on in Missouri. It may be no surprise that the conflict involves Southern Baptists, who are known for their willingness to plunge headlong into battle for what they believe is right (in both senses of the word). What's surprising, though, is that the battle isn't between Baptists and secular-humanist-postmodernist-liberal-heathens outside, but rather with fellow Baptists.

It turns out that some members of a SBC-affiliated new congregation called the Journey gather on occasion to discuss theology and life with their unchurched friends in (gasp) a pub. Some fellow Baptists see this as the first step on a slippery slope that may lead to alcoholism, drug addiction, fornication, and (I'm partially joking here) maybe even Democratic and Obama-voting tendencies, so they have agreed not to fund new churches like the Journey in the future.

The article mentions another fissure in the SBC structure. This one pits a 25-year-old graduate of Liberty University - and son of a former SBC president - against Richard Land, SBC giant in public affairs. This David-Goliath conflict concerns not beer but the environment, and whether Southern Baptists have been too timid in addressing environmental issues. Jonathan Merritt, starring as David, took a stand on behalf of the planet and has drawn about 250 others (and counting) to stand with him. Land, seemingly convinced that environmental regulations are presently a greater threat to humanity than environmental degradation, has criticized Merritt and friends, and has in fact persuaded some of the original signors to un-sign.

Dean Inserra, 27-year-old pastor of the Well in Tallahassee, Florida - another SBC church more in the tradition of David than Goliath - offers his assessment of the tension: "There is so much resistance to the environmental initiative because it is a threat to the right-wing agenda that has crept into the Southern Baptist Convention." Then he raises this question: "How is taking care of God's creation a political issue? Since I am pro-life, I am pro-environment."

Inserra's comment, along with others in the Times article, shows how the word "political" is used in different ways. The article's description of "a new generation that refuses to put politics at the center of its faith and rejects identification with the religious right" similarly shows the ambiguity of the word "politics." Consider the previous statement in light of what follows:

They say they are tired of the culture wars. They say they do not want the test of their faith to be the fight against gay rights. They say they want to broaden the traditional evangelical anti-abortion agenda to include care for the poor, the environment, immigrants and people with H.I.V., according to experts on younger evangelicals and the young people themselves.

In this light, "politics" means culture wars, litmus tests, anti-gay rights, narrow agendas. Is that a good definition? If we define politics more intentionally - as how groups of people organize and govern themselves - then the NYT article is mistitled and its repeated pitting of faith versus politics obscures the issue.

[continue to part 2]

Brian McLaren also blogs at brianmclaren.net and serves as board chair for Sojourners. He is an author and speaker (deepshift.org). His most recent books include Everything Must Change (2007) and Finding Our Way Again (2008).

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).

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams took up a similar theme in an April lecture titled The Spiritual and the Religious: Is the Territory Changing?

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.

Jim Wallis, in his book The Great Awakening said,

Imagine something called Justice Revivals in the powerful tradition of revivals past, but focusing on the great moral issues of our time. Imagine linking the tradition of Billy Graham with the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. Imagine a new generation of young people catching fire and offering their gifts, talents, and lives in a new spiritual movement for social justice. Imagine such revivals taking place in cities’ great convention centers, but resulting in thousands of small groups for ongoing discipleship, training, and action in every neighborhood of those cities. Imagine disillusioned believers coming back to faith after many years of alienation, while other seekers discover the power of faith for the first time. Imagine social movements rising out of spiritual revival and actually changing the wind of both our culture and our politics. Imagine a fulfillment in our time of the words of the prophet Amos: ‘Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.’ Just imagine.

We plan on three nights of preaching and worship. Tonight, Wednesday, April 16, we will call people to make a commitment to Christ. Matt Redman, the writer of many of our worship songs, and his band will join us for worship. On Thursday night, we will call people to work for justice in the Central Ohio community and we will host the Raymond Wise Gospel Choir as our worship leaders. And on Friday night, we will focus on issues of global justice. Worship we will be led by Vineyard Columbus’ new worship pastor, Clarence Church, together with some worship leaders from other churches in Central Ohio.

Then on Saturday, thousands of members of Central Ohio churches will fan out into our community and to dozens of servant evangelism projects such as fixing up local schools, visiting nursing homes, and working on homes for Habitat for Humanity.

We have several goals that we hope to accomplish through the Justice Revival. First of all, we want to transform the public face of Christianity here in Central Ohio. I want our city to know that we followers of Jesus are not at war with our city. I want Christians to be Jeremiah 29:7 people, who “seek the peace and prosperity of the city [where we live] and pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, [we] too will prosper.”

I want hundreds of people to be saved through this Justice Revival and to come into fellowship with local churches throughout our community. I want to see churches across Central Ohio united in the practical service of our city and in reaching our city for Christ. Many of Columbus’ largest churches are already involved in helping to host this Justice Revival including First Church of God, Grove City Nazarene, Faith Ministries, Reynoldsburg United Methodist Church, First Community Church, Rhema Christian Center, and New Salem Baptist. We also have several other Vineyards involved.

We particularly want to call attention to the condition of children in our city by having local churches adopt local public schools for the purpose of mentoring kids. And we want to call attention to global issues of justice especially the Darfur, the tragedy of global sex trafficking, the 30,000 children a day who die of malnutrition and preventable diseases, and the billion people on our planet who live on less than $1 a day.

Through the Justice Revival we want to help redefine what it means to be a Christian disciple so that thousands of Christians will understand that they can’t be good followers of Jesus without also committing to Jesus’ agenda, which includes feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, giving care to the sick, and visiting the prisoner (Matthew 25:35-36).

Rich Nathan is the pastor of the Vineyard Church in Columbus, Ohio, which is the co-sponsor with Sojourners of next week's Justice Revival. Click here for more details.

My dear friend, Ken Wilson, who pastors the Ann Arbor Vineyard, showed me a chart that I found very helpful:

Evangelical	Charismatic
Social Justice	Liturgical

What has happened in the last generation is that there has been border-blending among the four great movements in the church. So we find many evangelicals who feel very comfortable praying for the sick and casting out demons; and there are many evangelicals who engage in liturgical practices such as using the Anglican Book of Common Prayer in their devotional lives, etc.

But while there has been a huge move of border-blending, there are still many corner-dwellers, people who believe that it is entirely wrong for someone in their camp to engage in practices associated with one of the other three camps. Corner-dwellers get really mean and mad when we step out of our traditional boxes.

So, for example, some conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists get mean and mad when we claim to be evangelical, but we engage in border-blending with one of the other wings of the church. Like the Pharisees of Jesus'’ day, some angry corner-dwellers may set themselves up as the judge of what is biblical - like the Pharisees, they get really mad when we associate with “the wrong sort of people,” and, like the Pharisees, they are constantly looking for reasons to accuse border-blenders for our supposed theological errors.

I look forward to a day when an evangelical church that does a Justice Revival not only doesn’t create any controversy, but hardly raises an eyebrow. I look forward to a day when Christians who hear about a Justice Revival say: “So, what else is new? Of course, evangelical churches are involved in social justice. That is what Christian churches are supposed to do. We are supposed to follow Jesus, who is both the God of justification and the God of justice!”

Rich Nathan is the pastor of the Vineyard Church in Columbus, Ohio, which is the co-sponsor with Sojourners of next week's Justice Revival. Click here for more details.

During the closing days of January, more than 15,000 Baptists from 30 different Baptist denominations gathered together at the Convention Center in Atlanta. Although all Baptist groups were invited to join in what was called The New Baptist Covenant, official representatives from the largest Baptist group in the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention, were conspicuously absent. Although they were invited, the SBC officials chose not to attend. There were good reasons for that.

First, the plenary speakers at this gathering were not speakers who would have been welcomed at the annual meetings of the SBC. They included Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and John Grisham - all of whom would likely be treated as persona non grata by Southern Baptist leaders.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the unspoken agenda of the New Baptist Covenant was to provide a Baptist alternative to the politics and practices of the Southern Baptist Convention. Those Baptists who did attend, representing denominations with a combined membership of more than 20 million other Baptists, were viewed by the leaders of the SBC as a kind of "in your face" demonstration that they were tired of being painted by the general public with the same broad brush that has wrongly allied them with many positions taken by the SBC.

Most of those in this New Baptist Covenant, unlike their SBC brothers and sisters, have no problem with women in the pastoral ministry, and are not necessarily fans of the Bush administration. Strong anti-war sentiment was easily discernable among those in attendance. Representing what they considered a moderate stance on such issues - in contrast with the overtly Religious Right commitment of the SBC - they went on to reaffirm historic Baptist principles. These included a belief that the local church should decide on what should be its practices (in contrast to the SBC practice that Baptist state conventions can lay down beliefs and practices that determine whether or not a given church is acceptable for membership in their respective fellowships); and the principle of "sole conscience," which abhors doctrinal conformity (in contrast to the SBC requiring the signing on to creedal statements by any who would be its missionaries or serve in its denominational seminaries or offices).

In seeking unity among the many Baptist participants, those who planned this get-together selected Concern for the Poor as their theme for the conference. Recognizing that there are more than 2000 verses in Scripture that call upon the people of God to care for the poor, the organizers of the New Baptist Covenant decided that there would be no argument among those attending this gathering, given this focus of attention.

It seemed to work! There was a sense of joyful oneness pervading each and every session. In this respect, the New Baptist Covenant was in harmony with the defining mission of Sojourners. This movement lent support to the work of Jim Wallis, who has zeroed in on eliminating poverty as the primary concern of Sojourners.

The negatives of this meeting of Baptists included the absence of significant representatives from African-American denominations, even though the gathering was planned to follow the meetings of two of America's largest African-American denominations, and was held in the very same convention hall. It was reported that many of the members of these two large groups of Baptists were unable to finance staying in Atlanta for an extra three days, which attending the meeting of the New Baptist Covenant required.

Another shortcoming of this gathering was that there was no clear-cut vision of what the next steps should be. There were important questions that were not answered. Is the New Baptist Covenant supposed to function as some kind of new informally-organized denomination? Is the call to care for the poor, so eloquently prescribed in the speeches, going to be translated into some specific programs? Will there be a team of leaders to give direction and some kind of organization to this New Baptist Covenant? It should be noted that the executives of the represented Baptist groups have an upcoming meeting planned, at which time these and other questions probably will be answered.

Whatever might have been the shortcomings and critiques of what transpired in Atlanta, however, there emerged clear evidence that this New Baptist Covenant could be the beginning of something very significant for Baptists. It could represent a movement that could transcend the partisan politics, too often evident among Southern Baptists, and could be a major step in moving Baptists into being a visible and viable partner with other mainstream denominations.

Tony Campolo is founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education (EAPE) and professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University.

On Easter Sunday sermons about new life and transformation, resurrection and redemption abound. At our church we celebrated the baptism of a young man living in a half way house and doing work-release in our community. The genuine hugs and welcome from the mostly black congregation for this young white man were warm and genuine. One church member sponsors work release, another church member picks up the four to five who come for events and church, and this young man felt touched by God in the welcoming community. He stood holding the baptismal candle and asked God and us for help for the journey of restoration ahead.

Three to four thousand people are released each year into our low income, African American, two square mile community. National statistics show a 67% recidivism rate, with costly results in human lives and our national pocketbooks. Congressman Danny Davis has been pushing and cajoling Congress for six years to pass the Second Chance Act, helping former inmates reenter our communities with funding for job training, substance abuse treatments, housing, tutoring, etc. The bill finally passed the House and Senate.

In his summation, Congressman Davis noted that major religions speak about resurrection and redemption, and that is how lawmakers should view helping ex-offenders reenter society and rebuild lives. He went on to say, "We are a country that preaches redemption in our churches, synagogues, and mosques. That we can practice what we have preached is what we want to show with this measure."

It will take God's touch in peoples lives, people willing to reach out and help, along with government's assistance to really reclaim the many lives from incarceration and recidivism. This is but a small, hopeful start to new life.

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.

The media frenzy over the remarks of Barack Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, raise critical challenge to the prophetic role and voice of the black church. These "incendiary" remarks have set off a firestorm in the media, exposing the deep divide that exists on Sundays - America's most segregated hour of the week. This controversy serves as a stark reminder that the problem of the color line that still divides the U.S. and its churches. This often misguided debate obscures the rich and necessary prophetic role of the black church. Most coverage fails to capture the competing narratives and self-definitions of the U.S. that coexist depending on one's race and social location. While I'm uncomfortable with some of Dr. Wright's overly provocative rhetoric, and disagree with some of his claims (like his suggestion that AIDS was a creation of the U.S. government), I still vehemently defend the prophetic tradition that Rev. Wright has advanced over the course of 36 years of ministry. I agree with the Rev. Otis Moss III, the new Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, that we do a grave disservice by boiling down over 207,000 minutes of Dr. Wright's preaching into a handful of 30-second sound bites, most taken out of context.

Many may be wondering what I mean by prophetic voice and asking why it is so critical for the full vocation of the church and the health of our democracy. Prophets foretell the future in the name of God, speaking truth to power against injustice while calling us back to God's word and kingdom. According to Obery Hendricks, "prophetic speech is characterized by an overwhelming sense of an encounter with God and a message of moral and political judgment that a prophet feels divinely compelled to proclaim … to change social orders that have stratified inequities of power and privilege and wealth so all can have access to the fullest fruits of life". Amos, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and so many other biblical prophets did not mince words or shy away from controversy. Like these prophets, prophetic preachers are often misunderstood, persecuted, and sometimes even killed for their words. Jesus continues this long and rich tradition when he says in Matthew 23:3, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith." This is also exemplified in the gospel of Luke when he overturns the tables of the money changers in the temple just after riding a donkey into Jerusalem on the Palm Sunday that the church just commemorated.

Arguably, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. embodied the best of the black prophetic tradition as one who courageously pronounced judgment against America for the sin of racism and the cancer of Jim Crow segregation. But King also called on America become the beloved community, ensuring that God's demands for dignity and justice and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution were afforded to all Americans. King's life was cut tragically short exactly 40 years ago in April because of his prophetic witness - describing the war in Vietnam as a "demonic suction tube," calling the U.S. "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, and forewarning to striking sanitation workers in Memphis that like Dives in the parable of Lazarus, "America is going to hell if we don't use her vast resources to end poverty and make it possible for all of God's children have the basic necessities of life." Our nation is quick to romanticize the Dr. King of Montgomery and Selma, but often ignores the King of Memphis that demanded a living wage, or the King of Riverside Church who declared silence around the Vietnam War as betrayal.

A preacher's job sometimes requires prodding and provoking a congregation, shining a light on some of our most uncomfortable realities and hard-to-accept truths. I find it hard to believe that anyone could attend a church for years and never take issue with at least some of the things that were said by even the most respected and beloved pastor. Black prophetic preaching often criticizes America for its transgressions, contradictions, and hypocrisy, but at its best does this out of a deep and abiding belief in God's justice and love for what America could become if it lived out the full promise of her ideals. When the prophetic tradition holds up a mirror to our nation's misdeeds and imperfections, it stands tall with the biblical prophets of old. This is good company to keep indeed.

Adam Taylor is director of campaigns and organizing for Sojourners.

They came to the Georgia World Congress Center by the thousands. They represented thirty different Baptist groups from across the nation, along with an array of representatives from Baptist groups from abroad. This gathering, held January 30 to February 1, 2008, marked the historic beginning of what is being called The New Baptist Covenant. This is not a new "super" denomination, but rather, is an association of separate Baptist denominations that are committing to work together to further ministries that will serve Christ and His Kingdom.

The one single cause around which all of these Baptist groups could rally without debate was the call of Christ to address the needs of the poor. There was recognition of the fact that there were differences among those who were signing on to this New Baptist Covenant, but the participants all recognized a basic principle of the Baptist tradition, which is the autonomy of the local church. True Baptists, from the time of Roger Williams, the initiator of the Baptist movement here in America, down to the present, have always held that local congregations should develop their own rules and regulations for faith and practice. Following that lead meant that there were some Baptists present, for instance, who did not support the ordination of women to the preaching ministry, even though most of those who were present were champions of the claim that women should have the right to hold any and every role in church leadership. There were those present who affirmed gay marriage, while most of the others were opposed to it. Some held pro-war positions, but there were many who were pacifists. Nevertheless, all who were in attendance were united in affirming the call to address the needs of the poor.

If ever Jim Wallis and the Call to Renewal Movement, which he was instrumental in starting, needed assurances that what they were doing was producing results, the New Baptist Covenant provided it. This new association, representing more than 20 million Baptists, made addressing the problems of poverty their basic cause, and this is the kind of thing that the Call to Renewal people have hoped would happen to church groups everywhere. The politics of the Call to Renewal have been the politics of poverty, and it obviously was the politics of the New Baptist Covenant.

The gathering had a list of star-studded platform speakers that included former Vice President Al Gore, John Grisham, the best selling author, former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense League. There also were seminars that included some of the premier prophetic voices of our day. For example, James Forbes and Wil Campbell taught eager listeners what they had learned about preaching sermons with a prophetic edge. But in the midst of all the sermons and seminars promoting social justice for the poor, those in the New Baptist Covenant never lost sight of the need to win the lost to the salvation of the cross.

The Southern Baptist Convention was not represented at this gathering by their own choice. They were invited, but several of their leaders took exception to the speakers who were listed on the program for the Atlanta meeting. Several of the SBC's most prominent spokesmen condemned the meetings for what they perceived to their liberal tendencies. The net result is that the New Baptist Covenant may end up being a counter-Baptist group to the theological fundamentalism of the Southern Baptist Convention and its espousal of Religious Right politics. This, in the long run, may prove advantageous to the other Baptist groups in the New Baptist Covenant, whose members are often upset when they are lumped together with Southern Baptists, and have to put up with being labeled with that convention's overt support of the war in Iraq and President Bush's policies.

Already, the leadership of the New Baptist Covenant is planning the next steps that must be taken if this new "association" is to be more than just a one-time gathering with some inspiring talk. Many are waiting to see if "the talk" is translated into action and concrete efforts to end poverty, both in America and in the Third World. Given who the leaders are, I believe it would be surprising if the hopes generated at the Atlanta gathering were not actualized.

Tony Campolo is founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education (EAPE) and professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University.

The Global Christian Forum is a new phenomenon bringing together Christian churches from throughout the globe and the different parts of the Christian community - from Pentecostal to Catholic, historic Protestant to Orthodox. In the March issue of Sojourners, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson describes the Forum's historic gathering last November of 245 Christian leaders in Limuru, Kenya, "where God's Spirit began erasing the excuses that have kept Christians judging one another and apart from one another." Below, he gives an update.

Last week about 18 of us from throughout the world, representing the full spectrum of the Christian community, were in Geneva to help figure out what happens next with the Global Christian Forum. The committee, which has guided the GCF process, gathered at a small hotel and, for the first morning, simply shared our impressions and experiences since the Limuru meeting.

Rev. Nicta Lubaale, general secretary of the Organization of African Instituted Churches, spoke of how there was not a bureaucracy filled with "power games," but a genuine place of fresh fellowship that must continue. Prince Guneratnum, who is pastor of a 5,000 member Pentecostal congregation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, reflected on what a blessing this was to the churches. Several of us kept pointing to how we were not centered around structures, or arguments around particular doctrines, but had put our focus on getting to know one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, and that this is the model that the wider church needs.

We agreed that the Limuru gathering, as the culminating meeting of a nearly 10-year process of exploration and preparation, had found a "spiritual entry point," and something new had emerged. Our Vatican representative said that this has become a place where we can tap into God's energies and become a source of light. And Metropolitan Mar Gregorios from Syria said that for the 21^st Century, we need something new like this. Those like him who have been in WCC circles said that its approach, emphasizing the search for theological common ground in groups like Faith and Order, had its place and role. But the Global Christian Forum had discovered a different starting point—what one Lutheran member called a "lived ecclesiology"—and we must keep our focus here.

All this underscored our pattern of beginning with the sharing of our spiritual journeys. This testimonial approach, across such vast differences of theology, culture, geography, and tradition, was the unique gift that made so much else possible. Nicta put it this way: The Global Christian Forum gave us a picture of "the imagined church."

So what now?

We came up with clear ideas and commitments. First, communicating the vision and experience of the GCF will be a priority. We've got about 1,500 people on an e-mail list who have had some contact with the Forum over the past decade, and about 245 who were at Limuru last November. They have to be the ones to carry this vision, so we'll focus our communication with them.

A couple of independent groups will also do a thorough evaluation done of the whole process since 1998. Those results will be brought to a gathering of about 30 to 40 people in November, meeting in New Delhi, to plan for the next three to five years. Also, since we haven't had a regional meeting in the Middle East (prior to Limuru we held regional meetings in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe), we scheduled this, to be hosted at the end of September by the Syrian Orthodox Church.

Our vision is expansive. The response is so affirming. Our infrastructure and budget are minimal. It's a new paradigm, and we're convinced that God's Spirit is creating a new thing. Huge questions remain ahead, but the journey is as exciting as any ecumenical experience I've ever known.

Wesley Granberg-Michaelsonis general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, a member of the steering committee of the Global Christian Forum (www.globalchristianforum.org), and vice-chair of Sojourners' board of directors.

This is an important year for studies on religious life in the U.S. From Kinnaman and Lyon's UnChristian, to David T. Olson's The American Church in Crisis, data is accumulating that business/ministry as usual is not a great strategy for most U.S. denominations and nondenominations.

The new Pew study highlights the fluidity of commitment among the American people of faith, and it raises important questions for church leaders in at least three areas.

1. If congregations and denominations are not connecting with people's questions, needs, and desires - people are moving on. Old-fashioned denominational loyalty is gone. Church leaders can complain about it, but they'd also better acknowledge it. Now this fact could be used to advocate increased religious pandering ... a "give 'em what they want" approach that turns church leaders into "purveyors of religious goods and services" (a damning turn of phrase from the missional church folk) who are competing for share of the religious market.

But it could also have a much more positive effect: by convincing church leaders that blindly maintaining the status quo is a losing strategy, the data can liberate them to ask deeper questions like ... Why are churches here? What is our mission? What is our core message? Does Christ's church have a mission, or does Christ's mission have a church? How much can, and should, change in our churches? What shifts in church history can guide us as we face this sea-change in our religious environment? In other words, the new data could challenge leaders to ask, not simply, "What do the customers want?" but, "What does God want?" ... and not just "What do members need from their church?" but "What does the world need our churches to become, be, and do so that God's will can be done on earth as it is in heaven?"

2. People are dropping out of church altogether. The fastest-growing religious segment - especially among the young - continues to be the unaffiliated. If the "church growth" question of the 90's was, "How are we going to attract baby boomers to come back to church services on Sunday?" the "church mission" question in coming years might be, "How can our churches inspire younger generations to live a new way of life as disciples each day of the week?"

3. Old categories are blurring and old identities are diversifying and fragmenting. The study highlights the simultaneous growth and diversification of the old evangelical base, for example. As older generations pass from the scene and the alliances they created lose strength, who will help catalyze new movements and alliances? What will their priorities and ethos be?

In light of the accumulating data, it's become increasingly clear: we don't just need new answers to old questions, but we need new questions as well.

Brian McLaren (brianmclaren.net) is board chair for Sojourners. He is in the middle of an eleven-city speaking tour you can learn about at deepshift.org.