YouthFront July 30, 2008
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 1 commentAt that meeting over the weekend I met an amazing guy named Mike King. He hosted us at the campus of YouthFront, an organization he’s worked for and led for 33 years. I got some of Mike’s story in the car on the way and filled in some details reading his book later, Presence-centered Youth Ministry.
After driving through Missouri and Kansas fields and forest, when we finally arrived at YouthFront I immediately thought of that scene in the Matrix when Neo walks into the Oracle’s apartment for the first time. Remember the scene?: those kids, rebels in training, are sitting around silently meditating, levitating, bending spoons with their minds—sharpening their resistance to the Matrix. In her living room that Oracle character was building a revolutionary counter culture right in the belly of the beast.
So when we pulled up into the YouthFront compound, a couple hundred teenagers were scattered individually in silence around the grounds: they were sitting alone under trees and in doorways, in quiet meditation, writing in journals or studying the Bible. There was a magic energy. Like…you could just feel how much these kids were into what they were doing.
Earlier, the kids had been in a session with a “story teller” who (and I’m sorry if I’m getting it a little wrong here) tried to help them see the Bible as a story, and help them to see their own lives as stories inside of God’s story. I think an insufficient but helpful secular translation might be: they were finding significance for their own lives in the grand unfolding of history.
After the first part of our meeting, we joined the kids in the sanctuary where they were meditating, praying silently and out loud, reciting scripture and participating in liturgy. They were together accessing ancient Christian traditions of worship and prayer. (Again, my description will seem off to Christians because I still don’t understand the nuances of all these words.)
Mike King has been with YouthFront for 33 years. I think he started right out of high school. For most of that time he has been the leader of the organization. I also met the camp manger who has been there for more than 20 years, and he didn’t look more than 40. In other words, this place is being built by people who have dedicated their entire lives to it. That kind of dedication to and continuity in institutions is almost unheard of in the world I come from. Maybe it’s more common among Christians because the central model of leadership is of pastors and volunteers who often live out their adult lives—or their whole lives—serving in a single church.
And after all this time, YouthFront seems to be only just getting started. The same revolution/movement of the spirit that’s sweeping the church everywhere is at work out here in these Kansas woods, in this one-time outpost of extreme Fundamentalism. There is a feeling there of a whole new project, a whole new world unfolding. It made me think of the Highlander Folk School. Highlander had already been around for 25 years by the time it emerged as one of the incubating institutions of the Civil Rights Movement in the 50’s and 60’s. It was a place where young leaders of groups like the SCLC and their mentors gathered for practical training, study and spiritual retreat. I thought of the importance of the unconscious traditions that are embodied in these “long haul” leaders like Mike King: all of the knowledge and habits, all the little things, as well as the big ideas and inspiring words, that make a place work smoothly and make it a place where people can unfold and find themselves and others and, in this case, God.
A little more about Mike’s story: he grew up in a mainline church, was a bit of an “experimenter” in high school in the early 70’s, and then got sucked up into Christian fundamentalism through his participation in Youth for Christ (later renamed YouthFront). Youth for Christ started out in the 40’s as a relatively progressive (for it’s time anyways) church organization to serve the masses of adolescents left behind by World War II (by their fathers who were fighting and their mothers who were in the factories working overtime). Then in the 60’s and 70’s, the movement become consumed by the expansion of Fundamentalism (no rock and roll, no dancing, “literal” interpretation of the Bible, exclusive focus on salvation as getting to heaven when you die, etc…).
I’ve read that when the Christian Rock scene rose up, there were a whole lot of Christian fundamentalists taking issue with it. To a certain subculture, Rock was still the devil’s music. That’s still out there actually. I heard an anti-Rock tirade just last year on a rural Christian radio station. The speaker described a scientific study that played Rock music and Gospel music to plants. Yes, Rock music killed the plants! They thrived when exposed to Gospel music. Except… (yes, really) the Marijuana plant! It thrived with Rock and shriveled with Gospel.
Mike was one of those guys. But eventually one day (or one year) he woke up and said, “I’m a Pharisee.” The Pharisees were the religious sticklers in ancient Israel who Jesus was always challenging. They were concerned with following the rules of scripture to a T, but had lost sight of their overall message. Jesus’ engagement with the Pharisees is one of the key defining stories of this rising movement in the church.
So Mike was born again, again. Just as the whole church is being born again, again right now. You step anywhere near YouthFront’s beautiful 600 acres of sacred space and you can feel it happening right under your feet.
It sounds like YouthFront has suffered a little bit of blowback for these changes. Some fundamentalist and conservative evangelical churches have stopped sending their kids. But “postliberal” and other evangelicals have taken their place. It sounds like a lot of mainline churches that had kind of lost their steam are getting it back partly with the help of evangelical and fundamentalist refugees. I have seen some examples of this, but for some reason I didn’t sense that it was a movement with any momentum. Now I have a word for it (”postliberal”) and I’ll look for more examples of evangelical workers injecting a little extra passion into mainline churches that might have gotten a little too low key for their own good.
Before we left YouthFront in the evening, the teenagers were finally acting like normal kids (what a relief!), chasing each other around, playing games, being incredibly excited about everything (remember that?). Thank you to Mike for hosting us and taking the time to talk to me about YouthFront when he had so many other things that day to do!
Tags: Mike King, youth workers, YouthFrontPut one back in the Mennonite column July 8, 2008
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 12 commentsWe went to a church house group Sunday night. A few people there said they read this blog! So they will laugh when they see see this story. Or maybe they were just humoring me and they don’t really read the blog. I will soon see…
So, here’s a typical and awesome story. I’ve met a whole bunch of people with a progression similar to this. There were at least a few other people with the same basic story there tonight; I also met a bunch of these guys on my visit to Ozark Christian College; and I’ve met scattered others.
“Ted” is about 23 (I think), really tall, blond, with a smile that never leaves his face. He grew up in a conservative evangelical family, going to a small country church in South Dakota.
His church had thread of historical connection to the Mennonites. He remembers in high school talking to a Mennonite pastor who served briefly at his church about pacifism. Ted couldn’t understand how the guy could oppose just wars of liberation or self-defense (like, I suppose, Iraq—this would have been the early days of the war). The pastor told him, “I used to feel the same way as you. Just read the Word of God and see what it has to say.”
Ted didn’t take him up on that challenge right away. After high school, he went to (very conservative) Calvary Bible College in Kansas City. After a couple years, he then transfered to another conservative Bible college. I can’t remember the exact name but it was: Midwest Bible…or Baptist…or Christian College — and yes, all three of those possible entities actually exist.
There he read Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, a best selling memoir of a young hipster/geek/intellectual Christian writer. One of the characters in the book was a pacifist. This got Ted thinking and he finally started to do a little Bible study on the topic, just like his pastor in high school had suggested. (And it’s funny, because the group had just been joking about how Donald Miller is the “gateway drug” to a radical Christianity. And, further, that Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis is when you start lacing the gateway drug with something a little more serious.)
A little later, in a Christian bookstore in South Dakota, Ted picked up a copy of Shane Claiborne’s Irresistible Revolution. It was right there on display, and he also had heard some other students talking about the book. Reading Irresistible Revolution sent him back to the Bible for more serious study. (Shane must be the Crack Cocaine of radical Christianity.)
Just like several other young, recently-right-wing Christians I’ve met, he wrote a list of passages in the New Testament that might justify violence in certain circumstances, and another list of passages that ruled out violence. The first list was very short, the second was very long. Moreover, just reading the words of the Bible through this new lens seemed to make the non-violent message of the Gospel stand out crystal clear and very loud. Ted became a pacifist—or “peacemaker,” as he prefers to say, because “it sounds more active.”
Ted graduated from college and went to work at an elementary school that mostly serves a refugee population in Kansas City. He believed in helping people in his community on a person-to-person basis, and he started living out that philosophy in his school.
I suppose he still had some partisan Republican instincts clanging around in his head and heart, and that’s why he threw himself into the Ron Paul campaign, with its mix of “conservative” social values (anti-abortion, etc…), libertarian economic policies and hardline, anti-imperial/anti-war stance. It was the perfect combo for Ted and he couldn’t resist. He dove in head first and spent a ton of time working in the Great Ron Paul Netroots Army.
Around the time that Ron Paul pulled out of the race, Ted read Shane Claiborne’s latest book, “Jesus for President.” Thanks to Shane, Ted realized that the government is not the solution to humanity’s problems. He decided to withdraw completely from politics. He plans not even to vote this year.
I asked him about Obama and McCain. Right off the bat he said that he doesn’t want McCain because he doesn’t want more war.
So what about Obama? Ted says he is really moved and excited about Obama when he sees his speeches on YouTube. But then he goes to the Obama website and looks at his polices. There’s nothing there that excites him. “There’s no substance. Obama talks about Change, but what is he really going to change? How is he really going to change it? I think both the parties are just out for power,” he said. He remarked that when he went to Ron Paul’s site, there were convincing specifics about how he was going to really change America.
I bet there are at least a million Ted’s out there. They are a group to watch. They have insane leadership skills thanks to the well-organized training grounds of their churches, camps, schools, conferences, etc… They are personally and emotionally well adjusted. And they are willing to sacrifice their lives (either literally or just in hard endless work) to save the world.
Tags: mennonites, pacificsm, transformationDifferences between the First and Second Reformations July 5, 2008
Posted by Zack in | 5 comments
One of the books I’ve been nibbling at these days is: Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries. It paints a picture of a population of believers in the Netherlands in the 1500’s bailing out of the established (Catholic) church looking for a more authentic relationship to God. They were skipping established church services (the Latin Mass, which they couldn’t understand) to listen to lay preachers (and renegade Catholic priests) in fields on the outskirts of town and in secret basement meeting places.
Their desire for a different kind of relationship to God in worship was so strong that they risked arrest, torture and even death to attend those sermons. A lot of our knowledge of these believers comes from their heresy trials: They were mostly skilled and semi-skilled laborers. They were a mix of literate, barely literate and illiterate. Their beliefs were an eclectic and contradictory mix of the theologies of the pioneer Reformation leaders.
Above all, they cared about getting back to the Bible. For many it was the first time in their lives that they heard the actual Gospel read and interpreted in a language they could understand. Many printings of Dutch translations of the New Testament floated around, small enough to easily hide, long before a single unified Dutch translation of the Bible was made.
The established church and the secular government at the time responded to this bottom-up revolt of belief by restricting the teaching of the Bible. That only served to sap even more credibility from the established church.
The movement seems to have some strong similarities to what America has seen over the last couple decades in the abandonment of the mainline churches for non-denominational, more Bible-based evangelical churches.
The big difference that stands out to me: In the Reformation, everyone was yelling at each other. You couldn’t support the new way without condemning the old way. And you couldn’t support one particular new way without condemning all the other (competing) new ways. The Reformation leader theologians argued with each other bitterly. And the rank and file argued with each other bitterly too, even though they often had only a loose understandings of the views of the theologians who inspired them.
Contrast that to today: A thousand different popular books pointing toward a new kind of Christianity, and almost all of them take issue with each other only in the subtlest, most loving tone. As carefully as possible, they refuse to name the authors they might be (you can never be sure) writing in disagreement with. Meanwhile, Christians of different very different views happily mix at the same conferences, and even in the same churches. Tolerance abounds.
I know that’s not the case with *everyone*. It’s possible to find cranky, argumentative leaders in the church today, but not in the “Revolution,” which some have called a Second Reformation.
In the 1500’s (in the Netherlands anyways) many believers were willing to die rather than attend Mass because they saw it as a site of idol worship. Today, so many non-denominational Protestant “revolutionaries” are happy to attend Catholic Mass. They even get a certain nostalgic kick out of it. Could it be the that lack of persecution today is what takes that edge off?
Tags: history, reformationIf you want more… May 18, 2008
Posted by Zack in | 2 commentsI can’t believe I went 16 days without posting. Part of it was that Elizabeth & I went on vacation. It was the first real vacation we took since our honeymoon three years ago. We get so many opportunities to take little trips for work, conferences, etc… that we didn’t feel justified in taking a vacation. But we eventually realized that some true downtime was needed. (Pictures!)
And so there we were driving around the West, hiking every day, seeing so much amazing stuff, thinking up all kinds of schemes and ideas…I wanted to write about it…but it wasn’t related to the Revolution in Jesusland theme.
So I’m going to start posting on an additional blog. It will have all of the Revolution in Jesusland posts PLUS writing on all the non-Jesusland stuff going on in my little life. Most posts will be about technology, politics, culture, random observations, and so on. I’m not asking you to read it! But if you’re curious, go for it.
I’m calling it Fly Over THIS because about half the times I tell someone from one of my former haunts on the coasts that I live in Kansas City, they look at me with horror and say Kansas…or Missouri, or wherever I live…is supposed to be one of those “fly over” states that you don’t visit, let alone live in.
Tag: Yet another blog?The Next Step for Christian Big Thinkers: Part 1 April 26, 2008
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 12 commentsAs an activist and organizer, I used to have a vision of my role in social change that kept me protected in a certain way from people and their problems. When I was a union organizer and community organizer, I spent countless hours at workers’ kitchen tables listening to their problems. Often they cried. I consoled. By a few months into a campaign, I knew enough about so many interconnected lives in a workplace or neighborhood for 100 John Sayles screenplays.
But my purpose wasn’t to help people, it was to “help them help themselves.” I wasn’t a social worker. In fact, as hard-nosed organizers, we were taught disdain for social workers who ministered directly to people’s short term needs. We were even advised by many of our mentors not to socialize with the people we were organizing, “because it could complicate things.”
When I met her, my wife Elizabeth became a new mentor to me. As a Christian who had always led a “missional” life, there had never been a time in her life when she wasn’t personally intertwined with a whole bunch of troubled lives. When we were first dating, she was visiting several times a week an old disabled man in one of the poorest sections of DC. Though he was confined to a wheelchair, he had no ramp to get in or out of his house. He was also half blind, and yet somehow was (barely) taking care of his two adult mentally retarded children. The man’s house was a disaster of filth and decay. Elizabeth was organizing a group of her coworkers to clean and fix it up. A few times she tried to get me to go visit with her. I resisted, saying things like, “I think we often just mess things up worse when we get involved in lives so different from our own,” and, “I choose to make a different kind of contribution.”
It’s a few years later now and, thanks to Elizabeth, I have finally gotten out side of my own “four walls” and into other people’s lives as a participant, not just an observer/organizer. It’s been a life-altering experience, even though I’ve only just dipped my toe in the water.
I remember, in college, during one building take-over protest (I can’t even remember what the cause was), when we angrily read/barked Franz Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth” (a great book) at passers by through a mega phone. The Christians I’ve been hanging out with lately, spend their lives trying to live with and directly aid the “wretched” of their neighborhoods and towns. So I’m incredibly grateful to Christians for what they’ve taught me over the last few years.
And now I want to give something back.
Too many Christians these days are rejecting the paradigm of “organizing” (intentional, structural social change) just as dogmatically as I used to reject “service” (individual, sacrificial social change).
These days, Christians are asking really enormous questions. They’re asking, “How can we eliminate poverty completely?” and “How can we stop harming the environment altogether.” What’s so great about them is that their faith in Christ leads them to believe that total redemption is possible. That is the miracle that makes their world irresistible to me.
But they’re attempting to answer these questions almost in complete ignorance of humanity’s long history of tackling problems of that scale and scope at the social level, at the level of whole societies. In other words, they’re approaching big social problems just as cluelessly as I have always approached “little” individual problems.
Today I attended Brian McLaren’s Deep Shift conference. One of the agendas of the conference was to get Christians engaged in social problems such as poverty. Both Brian and local pastor Tim Keel told some horrifying stories about what life was like in the slums of some African cities. And through Bible teaching, they left no doubt that Jesus called us to do something about it.
But when it came to, “HOW?” they could only offer the political economy of the personal: Be a good-hearted business person. And consume less.
Brian said something remarkable (if you’re able to place it in historical context): “Capitalism is our only option. So we have to figure out how to practice good capitalism instead of bad capitalism.”
Tim Keel said something equally remarkable (if you place it in the context of Brian’s statement, and have spent some time thinking through how capitalism actually works): “When we consume less here, we can build up prosperity and security over there.”
Those statements represent the two pillars of today’s pop economic thought. And all alone, they’re really harmful. They are the equivalent in political economy of Joel Osteen’s pop theology. “Think good thoughts, make good choices, and all will be well.”
[I should add here that Brian, Tim and so many other Christians are participating in and seeing with their own eyes a lot of *real* efforts where consuming less to give to development projects is working, and where practicing “socially responsible Capitalism” is working. My point isn’t that Christians should stop participating in those kinds of things, it’s that those kinds of personal efforts will unfortunately never be enough to even scratch the surface of world poverty. That kind of personal/relational work does form the foundation of any sincere big picture transformation…but only if we go beyond the personal to the (yes, I know, it’s horrible) political in a really big way.]
I’m not getting down on Brian, Tim or any other Christians—or, for that matter, non-religious lefties, who share the same economic thinking. In the present day, when it comes to economic thought, we’re all starting at zero. For a couple hundred years up to the early 20th century, there was a long tradition of deep, experiential and theoretical work done in economics by passionate people who had the exact same goals as today’s Christians who are saying, “Everything must change.”
But twists and turns of history have hidden all that experience and knowledge from current generations. In some ways starting from zero is a good thing, because so much baggage had accumulated around those old traditions. But it’s wrong for us to simply repeat those two hundred years of trial and error, making every mistake they made, and ending up inevitably crushed by that same old debilitating baggage in the end.
OK…so in the next installment I’ll get into the economics itself. This post is way too long already!
Tags: Brian McLaren, capitalism, Consumerism, economics, Tim KeelJustice Revival! April 18, 2008
Posted by Zack in Ohio | 2 commentsWednesday night, I caught the first day of the Social Justice Revival at Vineyard Columbus, which continues through tonight. Here are some pictures:
Close to 100 churches participated, led jointly by Jim Wallis’ Sojourners and pastor Rich Nathan’s Columbus Vineyard church. Jim Wallis is an evangelical lefty progressive with a background in radical politics. Rich Nathan is an evangelical conservative who voted for Bush. The event is a tipping point in the decay of 20th century political categories.
As the church was filling up, a Vineyard church member sitting to my right told me: “They’ve been saying on the [Christian] radio that Jim Wallis is a communist.”
“What does that even mean?” I asked?
“I think…that he’s against…well…capitalism,” she said.
Then another Vineyard member sat down to my left. He’s away in grad school at a Christian university in Florida now.
“Why did you come all the way back for this?” I asked.
“The more I learn, the more I believe our economic system just isn’t sustainable,” he said, “I’ve really begun to question capitalism.”
He has been meeting with a group of other Christians to read about economics and environmentalism. They watch a lot of documentary films too—his favorite was The Corporation.
The vast majority of the audience attending this “Social Justice Revival” were conservative Republicans. Especially after the controversy raised in the local Christian media, people must have had some misgivings about participating. Nevertheless, the massive sanctuary was completely full, with the crowd pouring into two giant overflow spaces as well.
Asking these folks to listen to Jim Wallis with an open mind is a little bit like asking the lefty Take Back America conference to do the same for John Hagee.
But with a little help from Jesus, they did exactly that. Listen here how that works:
Rich Nathan would give Jesus all the credit, but he is doing something incredible with his church and this Justice Revival. He is saying (if I might translate): “Enough of these silly divisions. We stand for justice and there’s nothing wrong with that. Our faith calls us to act for justice in ways that we’re just not doing now. We’re doing a great job of helping people 1-on-1 in our city. Jesus calls us to do that, and it’s also what keeps us honest and in touch with reality. But we can only help so many people 1-on-1. Do we want to limit ourselves to be a little oasis in the desert for a few, or do we want to be leaders in our broader community who use our numbers and our love to change all of society?”
Over a year ago, the first time I talked to Jim Wallis, back when I was just starting to learn about all this stuff, he told me about Rich Nathan’s church. He said, “It’s absolutely incredible all the things they are doing for their community.”
And I asked, “But why won’t any of these amazing churches speak on policy when it comes to economic issues?”
He related the conversation he has about policy with many church leaders about that very question of whether the church is called to be an oasis, or force that salvages the whole desert. Apparently, some of those conversations are bearing fruit.
Here are four more short audio clips to give you a sense of the terms in which this is all unfolding:
- It’s not enough to be an oasis in a desert:
- We need to make three great commitments of Jesus:
- #1 Commit to Jesus:
- #2 Commit to each other
- #3 Commit to the cause of Christ…
I did an interview with one of the Vineyard pastors about the incredible service work they’re doing in Columbus. Hopefully I’ll have that edited down early next week for you to listen to.
Tags: Columbus Vineyard, Jim Wallis, Justice Revival, Rich NathanCheck out cool Christianity this summer April 16, 2008
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 1 commentThis summer will be filled with plenty of speaking tours, music festivals and conferences all over the country that will be open and friendly opportunities for those outside the church to observe the Revolution in Jesusland for themselves. Maybe I will try to get a wiki page up to list them.
Here’s one example of a tour that would be great for anyone to check out—and they’re going through a ton of cities and towns:
From their site:
Tags: Church Basement Roadshow, Doug Paggit, Mark Scandrette, Tony JonesThe Concept
Three authors/friends/public speakers hit the road for a summer, barnstorming churches around the country in a cross between an old time tent revival and the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. Speaking at churches large and small, Tony, Doug, and Mark will present a 90-minute show (including a 20-minute intermission) that will combine humor and passion, speaking and video, preaching and dialogue. Audiences will be entertained, to be sure, but, more importantly, they will be given a vision of an alternative Christianity, one that it woefully lacking in today’s world—this alternative is a Christianity of adventurous theology, passionate faithfulness, postmodern wit, and unrelenting concern for the justice and peace that God offers.
Jesus for President, a book review for atheists; Part 1, What is Shane Claiborne? March 24, 2008
Posted by Zack in Pennsylvania | 6 commentsShane Claiborne has an exciting new book out called Jesus for President, this one co-authored with co-conspirator Chris Haw. It’s a beautifully designed, reframing of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation—sort of an activist introduction to a thing called Narrative Theology, which is all the rage among Christian Revolutionaries.
Last year, Shane gave me my single best piece evidence for convincing skeptics that something absolutely incredible is going on inside the church. First, I show them this picture (Shane, the speaker, is one of those specs down on stage). Some kind of right-wing Christian rally, right? It’s looks like they’re all on their feet reading something together off those screens. How fascist.
Then I play the audio. All those people—mostly white, Republican, Southern, born-again Christians—were on their feet reciting a “Litany of Resistance“. It was the end of a long sermon/lecture by Shane at at the Catalyst Conference in Georgia last year. The litany lasted about ten minutes (you can watch the whole thing here). Here’s one very short clip from it:
With governments that kill…
…we will not comply.
With the theology of empire…
…we will not comply.
With the business of militarism…
…we will not comply.
With the hoarding of riches
…we will not comply.
With the dissemination of fear
…we will not comply.
But today we pledge our allegiance to the kingdom of God…
…we pledge allegiance.
To the peace that is not like Rome’s…
…we pledge allegiance.
To the Gospel of enemy love
…we pledge allegiance.
To the poor and the broken…
…we pledge allegiance….
Usually the reaction I get is something like: “Huh… [long pause] How did that happen?”
In this case, it happened because Shane has been fearlessly, creatively and lovingly preaching that gospel of resistance from inside of mainstream Christianity. He doesn’t stand on the outside criticizing and condemning. As a result, people listen. Almost all the speakers at that three-day conference preached on social justice issues, but usually they remained just inside of the audience’s comfort zone. Shane crossed that line and kept on going, and going, and going. But he has a magical ability to keep people with him as he goes. After his talk, I heard kids clustered in the hallways grappling together with all the ideas he had introduced. It was an incredible thing.
But the truth is that same thing is happening all the time, all over the country, every day — at big Christian conferences, in living room Bible studies, in Bible college classrooms, in little churches and in mega churches. Shane has become one of the most famous and effective voices in this continuation and transformation of the church. But this was all happening long before Shane uneasily consented to glamour shots at Christian mega-publisher Zondervan.
Claiborne’s first and best-selling book, Irresistible Revolution, tells the story of his own journey from church youth group jock to radical follower of “the God of the oppressed.” It begins with trembling first outings to the midnight streets of Philadelphia with his Bible college buddies. (They asked “What Would Jesus Do?” and, after studying the Bible, concluded: Hang out with homeless people, drug addicts and prostitutes.) He takes detours to work with Mother Teresa and intern at a “seeker sensitive” mega church in Chicago. Eventually, he returns to Philadelphia to co-found a Christian commune that humbly attempts to live in solidarity with and support of the poor and oppressed of a broken neighborhood.
Shane’s story comes out of an organic and spontaneous movement. When I was telling activist theologian Brian Walsh about all the different places I was seeing this movement sprout up, he said, “So it’s a movement of the spirit.” That means something that God is making happen all over the place at the same time—and that sure is what it feels like.
Irresistible Revolution is still making its way deeper and deeper into the heart of mainstream Christianity. I have seen it discussed in several Bible study groups and Sunday school classes—even in conservative and rural churches. Some say it changed the course of their life. Others say it “challenged” them to think differently about God. Reading the book communally has spurred some churches to reach “outside of the four walls” to get involved more deeply in their community.
And then there are the young Christians who were already living out stories very similar to Shane’s. They’re usually thrilled to realize that they are in fact part of a large movement. But they’re also made uneasy by the possibility that their own radical choices are just part of a passing fad to be commoditized by the very “Christian Industrial Complex” that Shane rants against the first chapter of the book. In Irresistible Revolution, Shane gives voice to a generation of young Christians who aspire to live wildly and dangerously selfless lives. But one of the ethics of that life is that you don’t go seeking credit. Shane himself wrestles with the contradiction in an author’s note at the beginning of the book. Sensing he is about to become one, he argues the last thing the world needs is another Christian subculture superstar.
In that respect, Jesus for President is the perfect companion to Irresistible Revolution. Having unexpectedly captured the attention of mainstream Christianity, Shane and Chris don’t water down their politics or theology one bit. Instead, they deepen and broaden their radicalism. In Irresistible Revolution, it still sounded romantic when Shane said, “Jesus didn’t fix my life, he wrecked it.” It seems to be possible for some to read that book and conclude the Gospel is just about helping others. In Jesus for President, Shane and Chris unambiguously take aim at capitalism and empire; and they are much more explicit that Jesus calls upon his followers to actively resist systems and structures of oppression in ways that will ultimately put you in danger.
Since Irresistible Revolution, Shane has been speaking at tons of Christian conferences and mega churches. The more sharply he delivers his message, the more invitations he seems to get. I imagine he probably gets scolded by his hosts from time to time, but there are many in the audience electrified by what they hear. Christians recognize him as a prophet. And even the crankiest of conservative preachers knows that a prophet’s job is to say things people don’t want to hear. In that way, a certain kind of radicalism is built into Christianity. And Shane is taking it about as far as it goes.
OK, so that’s an introduction to the Shane Claiborne phenomenon. In part two of this review I’ll focus on Jesus for President itself.
Tags: Chris Haw, irresistible revolution, Jesus for President, Shane ClaiborneThe New Conspirators March 20, 2008
Posted by Zack in Washington | write a commentI really didn’t want to miss the New Conspirators Conference this weekend. But I did.
Though the magic of the Intarweb, however, we can all follow along as though we were there right now!
Kind of like the Jesuits, with goatees. February 26, 2008
Posted by Zack in | 7 comments
During the Reformation, the newly-formed Jesuits took on a special role inside the Counter Reformation of understanding and validating many Protestant grievances and theological arguments—with the goal of bringing people back into the fold of the Roman Catholic Church. They successfully stopped the spread of Protestantism in large chunks of Europe. Their success came from their ability to connect with and affirm disgruntled Catholics while rekindling hope of reforming the church from within. This role, and their success, made Jesuits extremely valuable to the Catholic church—and extremely dangerous.
With the rise of the Revolutionaries—including, but not limited to the Emergent movement—the cry “Heresy!” has rung at churches, conferences and across the Internet. Some critics have been acting on a purely knee jerk fashion—often not even taking the time to understand what the real views of their targets are. Other critics are making principled theological arguments in good faith.
Mainly, though, the new counter reformation has been falling on deaf ears thanks to a usually bitter and angry approach. For example, efforts such as Apprising Ministries are stuck preaching to their own choir. Here are some of their recent articles (all-caps theirs, not mine):
EMERGENT CHURCH: FEEDING YOU THEOLOGICAL POISON
GREG BOYD: HERETIC
BRIAN MCLAREN: SPREADING A GENEROUS HERESY IN THE EMERGING CHURCH
ROB BELL IS NOT A CHRISTIAN
Enter a couple of young hipsters (to be fair, only one seems to have a goatee) who are capable of sympathizing with the Emergent Church’s passions and grievances, while making reasoned arguments why true Christians must sick with an orthodox theology and (modern) church traditions:
Tags: appraising ministries, emergent church, why were not emergent“You can be young, passionate about Jesus Christ, surrounded by diversity, engaged in a postmodern world, reared in evangelicalism and not be an emergent Christian. In fact, I want to argue that it would be better if you weren’t.”
The Emergent Church is a strong voice in today’s Christian community. And they’re talking about good things: caring for the poor, peace for all men, loving Jesus. They’re doing church a new way, not content to fit the mold. Again, all good. But there’s more to the movement than that. Much more.
Kevin and Ted are two guys who, demographically, should be all over this movement. But they’re not. And Why We’re Not Emergent gives you the solid reasons why. From both a theological and an on-the-street perspective, Kevin and Ted diagnose the emerging church. They pull apart interviews, articles, books, and blogs, helping you see for yourself what it’s all about.
