Revolutionary roots
Mike Yaconelli, the founder of
Youth Specialties, spent 43 years of his life in ministry. Before he died on October 30, 2003, he said:
What is the deal with Christian colleges, anyway? Shouldn’t they be graduating students who are revolutionary, anti-institutional, anti-cultural extremists? Isn’t anyone else upset that most of our Christian colleges are graduating compliant, materialistic, irrelevant students who don’t have a radical bone in their bodies? Who will push the envelope in the generations to come?
I once did missions work where the brochure said the experience would develop a "radical commitment" to Christ. And it did. It was with
Adventures in Missions. I found the above quote on the blog of their founder,
Seth Barnes.
While I was out in the mission field, my husband was pursuing his "radical" roots by organizing unions. He and many others like him would love to be called "revolutionary, anti-institutional, anti-cultural extremists".
Why is it that these core values - wanting to make the world better and riding ourselves of the materialism so embedded in our culture - are not recognized by both sides as areas where we can (mostly) all agree?
Seasons of Life
Seasons of Life is a movement based around the former NFL star Joe Erhmann. After his football career, Erhmann, the author of
Seasons of Life: A Football Star, a Boy, a Journey to Manhood co-founded a Ronald McDonald House, became a minister and started coaching highschool football. This
ESPN story tells how Erhman runs the team. The rules: no trash talk, you have to care about the other members of your team, you need to act responsibly. He believes that a man has to have the capacity to love; and that individuals need to learn how to set aside their own goals for the greater good.
On his website, you can be forgiven for thinking you're reading postmodern feminism instead of Christian activism:
Critique the cultural ideology and social constructs that individually and systemically define masculinity and manhood.
Examine, exegete and expose the media, marketing, messages, and modeling of false masculinity in America....
Embrace the pain and problems of men and boys which result from our cultural paradigm of masculinity. Connect personal stories and problems with social, systemic, and cultural realities.
He's touring the country now, learn more
here.
Immigration
You've probably heard about the letter on immigration that over 50 evangelical leaders sent to Bush last week. The letter cited support for a bill which would allow citizenship for undocumented immigrants, according to
WashingtonPost.com. This issue is yet again dividing the evangelical church, as it is much of the rest of the country:
Among the signers was World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals. But the NAE itself did not sign the letter because its members are divided on how to deal with immigration, said the Rev. Richard Cizik, the NAE's vice president for governmental affairs.
Polls show that about two-thirds of white evangelicals consider new immigrants a burden on society, compared with about half of all Americans who hold that view. On the other hand, Cizik said, most evangelicals realize that Latino immigrants are the fastest-growing part of their church.
"Evangelicals are a lot more sensitive to the plight of immigrants than outside observers might think," he said. "When you put together the biblical mandate to care for the alien and the receptivity of the Latino community to the evangel, to the gospel, you have a sensitivity factor that almost outweighs the traditional evangelical concern for law and order."
Some predominantly white evangelical groups, such as the Christian Coalition and Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, have strongly opposed the Kennedy-McCain bill, labeling it an "amnesty" package. They support a House-passed measure that would concentrate on sealing U.S. borders and enforcing existing immigration laws.
A post on the
Think Christian blog shows some of the discussion going on around the issue:
As we read in the passage from Leviticus and in many other Biblical texts, God requires that immigrants be treated with love, justice, and equality. Yet the aliens in ancient Israel did not have to contend with the legality of border crossings or the bureaucratic complexities of green cards or visas that today’s migrants to the U.S. face. Immigration in a complicated issue: undocumented workers enter and reside in the U.S. illegally but the American economy is dependent on their cheap labor. How can Christians navigate these tricky waters that pit a Biblical duty to love against ethical qualms about a system where workers and employers defy the law?
Another blogger,
Jeff Doolittle, cites the same verse:
I’m intrigued at the thought of how American Christians might view the immigration debate if they took this command from God seriously:
“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”
Leviticus 19:33-34 (ESV)
It makes you think. Are we Americans first, or Followers of Christ first?
Emerging Church
Wikipedia defines the emerging church (aka the emergent church) as
a diverse movement within Protestant Christianity that arose in the late 20th century as a reaction to the influence of modernism in Western Christianity. The movement is usually called a "conversation" by its proponents to emphasize its diffuse nature with contributions from many people and no explicitly defined leadership or direction... Emerging Church groups are typically observed to emphasize the following elements:
1. Highly creative approaches to worship and spiritual reflection...
2. A minimalist and decentralized organizational structure.
3. A flexible approach to theology wherein individual differences in belief and morality are accepted within reason.
4. A holistic view of the role of the church in society. This can mean anything from greater emphasis on fellowship in the structure of the group to a higher degree of emphasis on social action, community building or Christian outreach.
5. A desire to reanalyze the Bible within varying contexts with the goal of revealing a multiplicity of valid perspectives rather than a single valid interpretation.
6. A continual re-examination of theology.
7. A high value placed on creating communities built out of the creativity of those who are a part of each local body.
8. A belief in the journey of faith, both as individual and community.
This movement, although speading quickly, isn't accepted by all Christians.
PBS did a story on the emerging church last year. Don Carson, from the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School believes that the movement could be a "threat to historic Christianity." But Brian McLaren, a Pastor at Cedar Ridge Community Church, disagrees.
McLaren insists a more open view enriches faith and better equips Christians for ministry. He's become a strong voice urging more attention to issues from poverty to the environment to social justice. He's been active in the effort to raise more attention to the atrocities in Sudan's Darfur province.
The following words from Pastor McLaren provide a summary of some of the key beliefs of the church:
The way we treat our neighbors; the way we treat people of other races, religions, social classes, educational backgrounds, political parties; the way we treat other people and interact with the environment, and all the rest is part of our spirituality.
