A tale of two movements September 17, 2007
Posted by Zack in Michigan , trackback
We’re in Grand Rapids, Michigan (driving to Iowa from a training in Toronto). On Saturday, we ran into an anti-war rally organized by local lefties. There were about 100 people, and it was a pretty awkward, low-energy and demoralizing event.
Then, on Sunday, along with about 10,000 other people, we attended the regular weekly services at a church, called Mars Hill, where they teach that Jesus calls Christians to be peacemakers—and that even 9-11 called for a non-violent response. You know: “Turn the other cheek,” “Love your enemies”—these folks don’t skim past those parts of the Bible.
The lefty rally could not have had less energy. At least while we were there, no one even tried to chant one of the ten tired, old anti-war chants.
At church, on the other hand, a chorus of thousands sang beautiful songs of peace, love, hope and lament—drawn from a vast, 5,000-year-old body of poetry. A loud, fun band (with an accordion and harp!) lead the singing.
At the lefty rally, many of the young people looked miserable and lost. Afterwards, they walked off just as isolated as they were before (I remember the feeling very well). The organizers made no attempt to connect people to each other or build any kind of community among the group that showed up.
At Church, the preacher and other leaders repeatedly called attendees to get involved with others, a call that took many different forms throughout the morning: requests for volunteers to help with service projects among the poor and oppressed of Grand Rapids, invitations to join small “fellowship” groups that meet in church members’ homes, and announcements of dozens of classes, workshops and retreats. The sermon itself culminated in a flat out raw call for anyone who needed help or who was hurting to come down and talk to one of dozens of trained staff and volunteers.
At the lefty rally, the main speaker talked about a campaign to get Pacifica radio picked up by a local station. On the ride home, we scanned the channels and found at least four Christian radio stations. On one, a Christian psychologist was teaching a lesson on “absolutely unconditional love” in child rearing, saying that parents should affirm children equally when they succeed or fail, behave well or sin. On another, this Christian pop song was playing:
It’s crowded in worship today
A traveler is far away from home
He sheds his coat and quietly sinks into the back row
The weight of their judgmental glances
Tells him that his chances are better out on the roadJesus paid much too high a price
For us to pick and choose who should come
And we are the body of ChristIf we are the body
Why aren’t His arms reaching?
Why aren’t His hands healing?
Why aren’t His words teaching?
And if we are the body
Why aren’t His feet going?
Why is His love not showing them there is a way?
There is a way.
And that song brings me to the last thing I’ll suggest the left could learn from this massive “progressive” Christian movement: it’s capacity for constructive self-criticism. No matter how big their churches, their conferences, or their book sales, no matter how radically they manage to undo the influence of the Christian right or rejuvenate their religion, they never seem to be satisfied. Many of them look at me like I’m crazy when I talk about how impressed I am with the scale and energy of their efforts.
Just the other day, a minister we were interviewing for HeartlandInnovators.org, speaking about a huge national, multi-city workshop he was involved in, told me, “This all seems so small to me, because I know there are so many people who need this who we’re still not reaching.”
On the left, that kind of self-critique is rare, and when it comes, it’s often met with anger and excuses.
Comments»
This description is so right on! I’ve seen this time and time again myself as a feminist activist. For awhile I pushed away from evangelicalism (pushing away from my southern roots) but recently I’ve been drawn back to it thinking “Maybe there is something as a progressive activist I can learn here.” I hear my liberal colleagues often say, “evangelicals have an easier time organizing people b/c they are so top down. people just follow blindly.” Sometimes I think that’s just our cop out for not having enough passion or enough will power to organize effectively. We’ve lost our compass some how. I wonder if by rejecting evangelicals and religion we’ve lost a chunk of the passion that once drove many progressive causes?
amen! This is why Friends of Justice organizes within a Christian framework. A lot of people ask why justice has to be a specifically Christian thing–I mean we do we need to be a faith-based civil rights organization? Can’t civil rights be secular? Of course, but I just haven’t seen civil rights organizing done in a secular way that seems to work. Until I do, I’ll do the things that work, and that’s organizing for justice as a Christian.
We don’t want to exclude anyone with religion, it’s just that we’ve learned that among our grassroots constituency, faith is a powerful source of collective identity, personal dignity, and affirmation of justice,
Revolution in Jesusland
…Zach recommends this post to get a sense of why he feels that secular progressives need to hear about this “revolution” within evangelical Christianity….
OK, is this Driscoll, the same Mars Hill pastor who thought wives may have something to be blamed for if their husbands cheat, and generally pooh-poohs the idea of gender equality in religious leadership terms?
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/294572_marshill04.html
Because that makes him a complete tool, in my book. I know, I konw–he apologized. But the damage had been done. And the fact that he ever thought it was ok to say in the first place does not inspire confidence.
And I will see your dispirited peace rally and raise you several Sundays in church in which no spirit whatsoever was in evidence. But then, I have also walked down Fifth Avenue in NY and down the streets of DC as part of war-protesting crowds so huge that there was not time for all of us to walk the whole parade route before the cops had to open the streets back up. Is We Shall Overcome really a tired old song–what about Amazing Grace, then? I mean, it’s over 100 years old and has been covered by everyone on Earth. Time to retire it, too?
I get what you’re trying to do, but if you believe in gender equality as you imply in your About page, you’re going to have to face the deep-seated misogyny of people like Driscoll at Mars Hill and many many others in evangelical religion. That is a much bigger obstacle than any sniffiness by liberals. The whole submission doctrine is just morally untenable to any woman with an ounce of self-respect, but it’s a huge part of evangelical teachings. That’s not a gap, that’s the Grand freakin’ Canyon.
emjaybee: First of all, you’ve got the wrong Mars Hill Church. I was talking about the one in Michigan. You found the one in Seattle. No relation.
Second, I’ve walked in those giant peace marches too. And look, I’m not trying to be negative about the left. But the left should be doing what these “revolutionary” Christians are doing. No matter how much they achieve, they come together and say, “This isn’t big enough to change the whole world at it’s very core, how do we do better? How do we bring more people in? How do we change ourselves to better live out the Word?”
We’ve got big peace rallies, but that’s kind of all we’ve got. Actually, thanks for groups like MoveOn, we’ve now got a whole lot of little peace rallies as well. But then people go home.
My point is that we’ve got something to learn from these folks. At this conference I just attended (see the more recent blog entries) 11,000 leaders came together for 2 days of celebration, study but most of all *re-evaluation* of how they’re leading their home church.
No, they don’t march in the streets. But does that actually accomplish anything? I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it — it’s fun, after all. Marching is fine. But we need to back it up with real, massive, movement-building organizing. I want to see the left organizing scores of massive leadership-development events every year like these folks are…and gathering in their communities every week for celebration and rolling up their sleeves figuring out how to serve and change their communities, the way these folks do.
Regarding “We Shall Overcome” — is it our ONLY song available for celebration? Well, guess what, it’s a gospel song. And so, of course, is Amazing Grace.
They sang Amazing Grace at this giant evangelical conference I’m at yesterday. They sang it loud and bold, in a way I’ve never heard a group of people sing. And what’s interesting is that basically all of the other (scores) of songs they sang over these three days were variations on “We Shall Overcome.” I mean, that was the essence of the lyrics of most of the songs: We’re called to do something big; It’s going to be really hard; We’re feeling oppressed by all the hate and chaos of the world; But with God’s help we’re going to overcome.
Ha, I had no idea there were two Mars Hills. Good to know. Glad yours was the other one!
Sorry if I came on combatively; but I have had many experiences of meeting with “liberal” evangelicals who turned out to be liberal until it came time to deal with women. It’s an old wound, and one the church in general is going to have to do lots of work to heal (starting with ordinations, but that’s a different discussion).
Have you read Anne Lamott? She is an old hippie liberal type but also very committed to justice, and works very hard with her writings and within her church to bring that about. She still occasionally marches, too.
I guess, as per this post, that maybe what I objected to was setting “liberal protesters” against “Christian do-gooders.” There is, and should be, a tremendous amount of overlap between the two! If what you are trying to say is that “marching is not as useful as doing X, Y, Z.” then that’s merely a matter of technique, and not about ideology.
If you don’t already, I would highly recommend reading Slacktivist
http://slacktivist.typepad.com/
Fred there has done lots of work similar to what you are doing, and has a lot of wisdom to share.
And just so you know, I’m not hostile to what you are doing. I am an atheist/agnostic/believer depending on what day of the week you ask me, but I was raised in the church and know what it means to really believe and to be committed. I have grieved that so many good people have been taught so much hatred by misguided leaders, and if you and your group do something to change that, you have my wholehearted support.
To Jennifer Butler above - Zack, you probably get email addresses with comments so you would be able to forward information to her, there are some egalitarian evangelical organizations dedicated to equality between the sexes. The one I’m most familiar with is a group called Christians for Biblical Equality.
Just got pointed to your blog, very interesting. I too am a lefty-pacifist and Christian who wonders why there’s such a disconnect between the old style peaceniks and the new breed of evangelical Christians. Here’s one example of a post where I talk about this. Neat blog, I’ll subscribe right away.