Internet Monk October 27, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 6 comments
There are some great posts for outsiders to read right now over at Michael Spencer’s Internet Monk.
Reporting on an important mega church’s recent mea culpa, Michael gives voice to something I’ve observed on this blog before about evangelicals:
One of the things I like about being an evangelical is that we can just stop, no matter how big and successful we are, and say, “We’re wrong,” and it doesn’t threaten a thing in our faith.
On that same note, in a post a couple days earlier, he lists “Thirteen Critical Problems Facing Evangelical Christianity.” The post and the long comment thread are a really interesting read.
I really want to see the left get to a place of confidence where it can have that same discussion. Maybe I’ll start it with my own list of Thirteen Critical Problems Facing the Left…but not today.
Internet Monk also has a really interesting post about the changing styles of worship at church:
When I was a teenager, the Charismatic movement was just getting some traction. Raising hands, emotional expression in worship, Pentecostal expressions….these were all new in many churches that were used to nothing more than the “frozen chosen” type of rationalistic worship.
…
Fast forward thirty years.It’s a typical “praise and worship” service for high school and college kids. The band is on stage. Drums. Guitars. Keyboards. Vocalists. Projection. Lights. The whole event.
As the band warms up, a student puts his hands in the air and begins to sway. Before long, a group of students are all swaying their bodies and their hands. Later on, in the “Praise and Worship” service itself, many students are moving. Some are practically dancing. Others are bouncing up and down. The worship expressions are far more varied and free than the occasional Charismatic expression back in my high school days. There is lots of clapping, and some students are engaging in hand motions to the lyrics. Others are moving their heads and shoulders in a kind of “break dancing” motion.
If someone from the seventies were to drop in via time machine, I think they would be amazed at this scene, especially if they saw it in a church setting. Charismatic experience seems to have taken over.
Uhhhh…. just a moment. Not so fast.
Learn where he’s going with that here.
What Would Diggers Do? October 27, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri | write a comment
In Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change (see the last few posts), he builds a case that our current economic system is configured as a “suicide machine,” and lays out an “emerging view of Jesus” that he thinks can help us diffuse the ticking time bomb.
He presents Jesus as an alternate “framing story” to our current suicidal economic framing story. His main goal, I think, is to try to help us absorb and believe in the framing story that Jesus gave humanity—a story of love, selflessness, sacrifice and restoration of all creation.
However, he does spend a few pages suggesting some concrete actions and behavior changes that could flow from a belief in the Jesus story. First he goes through the personal and community changes that have become the standard new alter call in progressive evangelical churches. Downshift, recycle, serve your neighbors, serve your community. Think Heavenly, Act Locally.
And then he takes a step further:
In the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr., Desmond Tutu, and others, individuals and faith communities—whose normal work is done “in secret”—begin to go public, linking together in larger social movements, employing the full range of nonviolent methods of social change—from education to civil disobedience, from rallies and festivals to political organizing, from artistic expression of the new vision to coalition building and public demonstration.
Here’s a question. It’s not loaded! —just an honest question. In our modern society, what kind of civil disobedience, or other action that fits into McLaren’s categories above, can deliver the means of making a living into the hands of the two to five-and-a-half billion people (depending on how you count) who don’t have it?
As I was thinking about this tonight, I went and revisited The Diggers. They were a Christian movement in England in the 1600’s that practiced direct civil disobedience against big landowners. They believed it was God’s will that all people should have means of making a living. Back then, that meant land. Practically, land was the only means of making a living that didn’t involve domination over others. In the Diggers’ day, the big land owners were “enclosing” more and more land that common people had been living off of. (They enclosed the land using hedges — anyone see Over the Hedge?)
Back then, people who were born into families that had no means of making a living could look over the hedge and see some land (means of making a living) sitting unused with their names written all over it. The diggers crossed the hedges and planted. Ultimately they were defeated, but their pressure led to important national reforms and changed the power dynamics in their local communities.
So…what would a Digger do in the present day, when means of making a living doesn’t mean access to land, but rather access to capital?
When I read the Diggers’ manifestos, way back before I knew anything about Christianity or the Bible, they were just gibberish to me. Now that I understand most of the references, they make perfect sense. It was amazing tonight reading Gerrard Winstanley’s original “Standard” (selections below). Most of it maps perfectly onto stuff that Rob Bell has been preaching lately (if you translate the Diggers into modern language).
…Except for the part at the end where the co-signers close with, “And that’s why we’re coming to nationalize your oil company! Amen.” (If you translate the Diggers into modern language!)
Tags: Brian McLaren, Diggers, Gerrard Winstanley, Rob Bell
The True Levellers Standard Advanced:
or,
The State of Community opened, and Presented to the Sons of Men.
1649By William Everard, Iohn Palmer, Iohn South, Iohn Courton. William Taylor, Christopher Clifford, Iohn Barker. Ferrard Winstanley, Richard Goodgroome, Thomas Starre, William Hoggrill, Robert Sawyer, Thomas Eder, Henry Bickerstaffe, Iohn Taylor, &c.
Beginning to Plant and Manure the Waste land upon
George-Hill, in the Parish of Walton, in the
County of Surrey.…And so selfish imaginations taking possession of the Five Sences, and ruling as King in the room of Reason therein, and working with Covetousnesse, did set up one man to teach and rule over another; and thereby the Spirit was killed, and man was brought into bondage, and became a greater Slave to such of his own kind, then the Beasts of the field were to him.
And hereupon, The Earth (which was made to be a Common Treasury of relief for all, both Beasts and Men) was hedged in to In-closures by the teachers and rulers, and the others were made Servants and Slaves: And that Earth that is within this Creation made a Common Store-house for all, is bought and sold, and kept in the hands of a few, whereby the great Creator is mightily dishonored, as if he were a respector of persons, delighting in the comfortable Livelihood of some, and rejoycing in the miserable povertie and straits of others. From the beginning it was not so.
…
But for the present state of the old World that is running up like parchment in the fire, and wearing away, we see proud Imaginary flesh, which is the wise Serpent, rises up in flesh and gets dominion in some to rule over others, and so forces one part of the Creation man, to be a slave to another; and thereby the Spirit is killed in both. The one looks upon himself as a teacher and ruler, and so is lifted up in pride over his fellow Creature:The other looks upon himself as imperfect, and so is dejected in his Spirit, and looks upon his fellow Creature of his own Image, as a Lord above him.
And thus Esau, the man of flesh, which is Covetousness and Pride, hath killed Jacob, the Spirit of meeknesse, and righteous government in the light of Reason, and rules over him: And so the Earth that was made a common Treasury for all to live comfortably upon, is become through mans unrighteous actions one over another, to be a place, wherein one torments another.
Now the great Creator, who is the Spirit Reason, suffered himself thus to be rejected, and troden under foot by the covetous proud flesh, for a certain time limited; therefore saith he, The Seed out of whom the Creation did proceed, which is my Self, shall bruise this Serpents head, and restore my Creation again from this curse and bondage; and when I the King of Righteousnesse raigns in every man, I will be the blessing of the Earth, and the joy of all Nations.
And since the coming in of the stoppage, or the A-dam, the Earth hath been inclosed and given to the Elder brother Esau, or man of flesh, and hath been bought and sold from one to another; and Jacob, or the yonger brother, that is to succeed or come forth next, who is the universal spreading power of righteousnesse that gives liberty to the whole Creation, is made a servant.
And this Elder Son, or man of bondage, hath held the Earth in bondage to himself, not by a meek Law of Righteousnesse, But by subtle selfish Councels, and by open and violent force; for wherefore is it that there is such Wars and rumours of Wars in the Nations of the Earth? and wherefore are men so mad to destroy one another? But only to uphold Civil propriety of Honor, Dominion and Riches one over another, which is the curse the Creation groans under, waiting for deliverance.
…
O thou Powers of England, though thou hast promised to make this People a Free People, yet thou hast so handled the matter, through thy self-seeking humour, That thou hast wrapped us up more in bondage, and oppression lies heavier upon us; not only bringing thy fellow Creatures, the Commoners, to a morsel of Bread, but by confounding all sorts of people by thy Government, of doing and undoing.
First, Thou hast made the people to take a Covenant and Oaths to endeavour a Reformation, and to bring in Liberty every man in his place; and yet while a man is in pursuing of that Covenant, he is imprisoned and oppressed by thy Officers, Courts and Justices, so called.
Thou hast made Ordinances to cast down Oppressing, Popish, Episcopal, Self-willed and Prerogative Laws; yet we see, That Self- wil and Prerogative power, is the great standing Law, that rules all in action, and others in words.
Thou hast made many promises and protestations to make the Land a Free Nation: And yet at this very day, the same people, to whom thou hast made such Protestations of Liberty, are oppressed by the Courts, Sizes, Sessions, by thy Justices and Clarks of the Peace, so called, Bayliffs, Committees, are imprisoned, and forced to spend that bread, that should save their lives from Famine.
And all this, Because they stand to maintain an universal Liberty and Freedom, which not only is our Birthright, which our Maker gave us, but which thou hast promised to restore unto us, from under the former oppressing Powers that are gone before, and which likewise we have bought with our Money, in Taxes, Free- quarter, and Bloud-shed; all which Sums thou hast received at our hands, and yet thou hast not given us our bargain.
O thou A-dam, thou Esau, thou Cain, thou Hypocritical man of flesh, when wilt thou cease to kill thy yonger Brother? Surely thou must not do this great Work of advancing the Creation out of Bondage; for thou art lost extremely, and drowned in the Sea of Covetousnesse, Pride and hardness of heart. The blessing shall rise out of the dust which thou treadest under foot, Even the poor despised People, and they shall hold up Salvation to this Land, and to all Lands, and thou shalt be ashamed.
Our bodies as yet are in thy hand, our Spirit waits in quiet and peace, upon our Father for Deliverance; and if he give our Bloud into thy hand, for thee to spill, know this, That he is our Almighty Captain: And if some of you will not dare to shed your bloud, to maintain Tyranny and Oppression upon the Creation, know this, That our Bloud and Life shall not be unwilling to be delivered up in meekness to maintain universal Liberty, that so the Curse on our part may be taken off the Creation.
And we shall not do this through force of Arms, we abhorre it, For that is the work of the Midianites to kill one another; But by obeying the Lord of Hosts, who hath Revealed himself in us, and to us, by labouring the Earth in righteousness together, to eate our bread with the sweat of our brows, neither giving hire, nor taking hire, but working together, and eating together, as one man, or as one house of Israel restored from Bondage; and so by the power of Reason, the Law of righteousness in us, we endeavour to lift up the Creation from that bondage of Civil Propriety, which it groans under.
We are made to hold forth this Declaration to you that are the Great Councel, and to you the Great Army of the Land of England, that you may know what we would have, and what you are bound to give us by your Covenants and Promises; and that you may joyn with us in this Work, and so find Peace. Or else, if you do oppose us, we have peace in our Work, and in declaring this Report: And you shall be left without excuse.
The work we are going about is this, To dig up Georges Hill and the waste Ground thereabouts, and to Sow Corn, and to eat our bread together by the sweat of our brows. And the First Reason is this, That we may work in righteousness, and lay the Foundation of making the Earth a Common Treasury for All, both Rich and Poor, That every one that is born in the Land, may be fed by the Earth his Mother that brought him forth, according to the Reason that rules in the Creation. Not Inclosing any part into any particular hand, but all as one man, working together, and feeding together as Sons of one Father, members of one Family; not one Lording over another, but all looking upon each other, as equals in the Creation; so that our Maker may be glorified in the work of his own hands, and that every one may see, he is no respecter of Persons, but equally loves his whole Creation, and hates nothing but the Serpent, which is Covetousness, branching forth into selfish Imagination, Pride, Envie, Hypocrisie, Uncleanness; all seeking the ease and honor of flesh, and fighting against the Spirit Reason that made the Creation; for that is the Corruption, the Curse, the Devil, the Father of Lies; Death and Bondage that Serpent and Dragon that the Creation is to be delivered from.
…
For it is shewed us, That so long as we, or any other, doth own the Earth to be the peculiar Interest of Lords and Landlords, and not common to others as well as them, we own the Curse, and holds the Creation under bondage; and so long as we or any other doth own Landlords and Tennants, for one to call the Land his, or another to hire it of him, or for one to give hire, and for another to work for hire; this is to dishonour the work of Creation; as if the righteous Creator should have respect to persons, and therefore made the Earth for some, and not for all: And so long as we, or any other maintain this Civil Propriety, we consent still to hold the Creation down under that bondage it groans under, and so we should hinder the work of Restoration, and sin against Light, that is given into us, and so through the fear of the flesh man, lose our peace.
And that this Civil Propriety is the Curse, is manifest thus, Those that Buy and Sell Land, and are landlords, have got it either by Oppression, or Murther, or Theft; and all landlords lives in the breach of the Seventh and Eighth Commandments, Thou shalt not steal, or kill.
…
If you look through the Earth, you shall see, That the landlords, Teachers and Rulers, are Oppressors, Murtherers, and Theeves in this manner; But it was not thus from the Beginning. And this is one Reason of our digging and labouring the Earth one with another, That we might work in righteousness and lift up the Creation from bondage: For so long as we own Landlords in this Corrupt Settlement, we cannot work in righteousness; for we should still lift up the Curse, and tread down the Creation, dishonour the Spirit of universal Liberty, and hinder the work of Restauration.
…
It is shewed us, That all the Prophecies, Visions and Revelations of Scriptures, of Prophets, and Apostles, concerning the calling of the Jews, the Restauration of Israel and making of that People, the Inheritors of the whole Earth doth all seat themselves in this Work of making the Earth Common Treasury; as you may read Ezek.24.26,27& Jer.33.7. to 12. Esay. 49.17,18, &c. Zach. 8. from 9 to 12. Dan.2.44,45. Dan. 7.27. Hos.14.5,6,7. Joel 2.26,27. Amos 9. from 8 to the end, Obad.17.18.21. Mic.5. from 7 to the end, Hab. 2.6,7,8.13,14. Gen.18.18. Rom.11.15. Zeph. 3. & Zach.14.9.
And when the Son of man, was gone from the Apostles, his Spirit descended upon the Apostles and Brethren, as they were waiting at Ierusalem; and the Rich men sold their Possessions and gave part to the Poor; and no man said, That ought that he possessed was his own, for they had all things Common, Act. 4. 32. Now this Community was supprest by covetous proud flesh, which was the powers that ruled the world; and the righteous Father suffered himself thus to be suppressed for a time, times and dividing of time, or for 42 months, or for three dayes and half, which are all but one and the same term of time: And the world is now come to the half day; and the Spirit of Christ, which is the Spirit of universal Community and Freedom is risen, and is rising, and will rise higher and higher, till those pure waters of Shiloe, the Well Springs of Life and Liberty to the whole Creation, do over-run A-dam, and crown those banks of Bondage, Curse, and Slavery.
…
But I do not entreat thee, for thou art not to be intreated, but in the Name of the Lord, that hath drawn me forth to speak to thee; I, yea I say, I Command thee, To let Israel go Free, and quietly to gather together into the place where I shall appoint; and hold them no longer in bondage.
And thou A-dam that holds the Earth in slavery under the Curse: If thou wilt not let Israel go Free; for thou being the Antitype, will be more stout and lusty then the Egyptian Pharoah of old, who was thy Type; Then know, That whereas I brought Ten Plagues upon him, I will Multiply my Plagues upon thee, till I make thee weary, and miserably ashamed: And I will bring out my People with a strong hand, and stretched out arme.
Thus we have discharged our Souls in declaring the Cause of our Digging upon George-Hill in Surrey, that the Great Councel and Army of the Land may take notice of it, That there is no intent of Tumult or Fighting, but only to get Bread to eat, with the sweat of our brows; working together in righteousness, and eating the blessings of the Earth in peace.
And if any of you that are the great Ones of the Earth, that have been bred tenderly, and cannot work, do bring in your Stock into this Common Treasury, as an Offering to the work of Righteousness; we will work for you, and you shall receive as we receive. But if you will not, but Pharoah like, cry, Who is the Lord that we should obey him? and endeavour to Oppose, then know, That he that delivered Israel from Pharoah of old, is the same Power still, in whom we trust, and whom we serve; for this Conquest over thee shall be got, not by Sword or Weapon, but by my Spirit saith the Lord of Hosts.
Time for a Mennonite Update October 26, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri | write a commentI know you’ve been wondering how the Mennonites fit in to the Revolution in Jesusland.
Here’s a great glimpse into, as Tim Nafziger said in an email today, an “encounter between some of the progressive wing of the mega church movement and the Anabaptist tradition.” Check it out:
Greg Boyd, a famous and controversial mega church pastor, decides “I’m a Mennonite!”
One core aspect of their faith is the conviction that the Kingdom of God is radically different from all versions of the Kingdom of the World. The Kingdom of God is about sacrificially serving others while the Kingdom of the World is always about lording over others. They have held that citizens of the Kingdom of God must be wary of participating too much in, or trusting in, any government or nation. Traditionally Mennonites have refused to say the pledge of the allegiance, since their only allegiance is to Christ. Another core aspect of their faith has been the conviction that followers of Jesus are called to love, bless, pray for, and do good toward their enemies (Lk. 6:27-35). They have thus refused to fight in wars or kill for any reason.
Tim, a Mennonite himself and blogger at Young Anabaptist Radicals, responds with his thoughts here.
By the way: My Great Grandfather was a pastor in the Anabaptist Apostolic Christian Church.
A Revolution that needs a little more hope October 25, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 9 comments
Progressives (Christian and secular) have lost faith in humanity’s ability to intentionally manage our economies.
I’m not talking about central planning, but I am talking about collectively guaranteeing that everyone in the world has access to means of making a good living that’s sustainable and doesn’t destroy the earth. That’s just not an acceptable goal anymore for respectable progressives.
We’re comfortable with the idea of society guaranteeing bare essentials like water access, education, healthcare and a few other baseline services. We’re comfortable with the idea of society creating incentives against socially or environmentally harmful economic activities and in favor of desirable activities. But when we think of society, say, providing the resources to completely overhaul a polluting industry and making it happen, we think of Stalin. Or at least we think that such an ambitious project would be doomed to fail spectacularly. Don’t we?
One hundred years ago, and for hundreds of years before that, progressives had complete faith that it was possible for humans to build and maintain a far, far better economy than we have today. They expected that, by the year 2007, there would be no poverty, no preventable illness, no illiteracy and no war. They were divided about how to get there—incrementalism, violent revolution, non-violent/democratic revolution, spontaneous/anarchist revolution, etc—but they all believed it was humanity’s job to make it happen.
Yesterday I got a remarkable reminder of that optimism while spending some time with Walter Rauschenbusch’s Christianity and the Social Crisis. It’s a 100 year old book from one of the leaders of the Social Gospel movement.
In some ways, it’s written with the same purpose as the other book I’ve been reading, Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change. But the difference in tone caused by the difference between the two worlds in which Rauschenbusch and McLaren worte could not be more stark.
Reading Rauschenbusch, you can feel how the whole world around him was on fire with change and hope. As bad as things were for the billion or so suffering poverty, a worldwide movement was in full swing to change everything. It was a real, practical movement with mass parties, some in power, and examples of societies all around the world leaping forward in development through various means—some lead by the movement, some desperately trying to stay ahead of it. Despite periodic setbacks, the direction was clear. And the endpoint was just as clear: no, not a Utopia, merely a world without poverty, unnecessary illness, illiteracy, etc…
Where Rauschenbusch wrote with the tone of being one voice in the cacophony of an already-500-year-old revolutionary movement, McLaren has to write—on his economic topic—with the tone of a lone voice in an almost silent wilderness.
Where you can feel Rauschenbusch’s confidence in humanity’s abilities to solve it’s economic problems bursting onto every page, McLaren can only offer beautiful but consciously irrational hope. He advocates resistance because it’s the just thing to do, but can promise nothing. At the start of a critical chapter named “A Revolution of Hope” he offers:
Can the suicide machine [of our economic system] really be stopped?…
The simple answer is that nobody knows. (p. 269)
There’s a new edition of Christianity and the Social Crisis out in print—peppered by (mostly condescending) essays from present-day thinkers. You can also download the full book for free thanks to Google books because it’s now in the public domain.
I clipped some interesting bits for you from Google books and put them here. Please take a look.
Tags: Brian McLaren, Christian Socialism, Everything Must Change, Walter RauschenbuschKingdom Economics October 24, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 26 commentsI’m reading Brian McLaren’s new book Everything Must Change—and oh it’s just so fascinating how history works.
- Christians invent socialism.
- Then socialists turn their backs on Christianity.
- Then the idea of socialism is thrown into the dust bin of history, and centuries-worth of socialist critical thinking about capitalism is lost.
- And now Christians are the first mainstream thinkers to begin a fundamental critique of capitalism again.
Christians like Brian McLaren, Shane Claiborne and so many others are questioning the legitimacy of economics run for the sake of profit rather than for people. They are in the mainstream of their culture, with best selling books and huge audiences at conferences and churches all over the world.
I can not think of any mainstream secular progressive who flat out questions the legitimacy of capitalism. Am I right about this? We have a lot of writers who call out the injustices of capitalism as it’s practiced today, but they don’t suggest that the system itself is evil and should be replaced by something else? Do they? Instead, they suggest that more education, better personal choices and some smart regulation is all that’s called for—all that’s possible anyways.
If I’m right about that (and I’m not sure that I am—please weigh in), then Christians are leading the way in reviving a fundamental critique of capitalism.
But they’re doing it with almost no connection to a centuries-old tradition of scholarly and practical thinking about capitalism—a tradition that they started. The first modern socialist/communists were Christians in England. The Early Church was communist. Through the 1700’s to the early 1900’s, the world and especially North America was dotted with Christian communist intentional communities. Even the Communist League, which commissioned Marx and Engels to write the Communist Manifesto, began as a Christian organization whose goal was: “the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth, based on the ideals of love of one’s neighbor, equality and justice.”
It’s possible that folks like McLaren and Claiborne are writing with a lot more knowledge of those traditions than they’re letting on. Maybe they feel there needs to be a clean break from the socialist tradition—that they’ll have better luck rebuilding a new movement without any infection from the past. And I would agree with them.
But maybe it’s possible that the socialist tradition is just so dead—and died for all practical purposes so long ago—that they really have had next to no contact with it.
For example: McLaren arrives (through a friend) at his book’s central concept, that our global economic system is a “suicide machine.” He arrives at this concept as though it’s a totally new way of thinking about our economy. But for 500 years, Christians and the secular socialist movement they gave birth to developed an incredibly deep understanding of Capitalism as a suicidal system.
It may sound like I’m criticizing. But I’m really not. If he’s feigning ignorance of the socialist tradition for strategic reasons, more power to him. If he’s really that detached from it, then, like I said before, I just want to marvel at the beauty and mystery of history.
God’s “kingdom priorities” October 21, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 5 comments
This morning, I was flipping channels with one hand, and ironing my shirt for church with the other (when I don’t know how people will be dressed in a new church, I try to play it safe). I landed on a movie in which Nicholas Cage stumbles on to an island where the residents have created a fantastic alternate reality, and he struggles to understand it. When we got to St. Louis’ New City church, I felt a little bit like the same thing was happening to me.
About half the church was black and half was white. Folks were a range of conservative-looking (suits and all) to slightly off-beat. A lot of people were immigrants from Africa.
The music was already thumping as people were still arriving. It was awesome. It was not African-American gospel, African traditional, African pop, white “praise music,” modern Christian indy rock, R&B or punk—it was all of that together. No, they didn’t switch off from one style to the next, but seemed to mix it all up into their own style. I’m not an ethno-musicologist, but that’s what it sounded like to me anyways. The band looked like three white men and one Asian man. The singers were a couple of black men, a couple of black women and I think one white woman. Songs were in English, French and African languages I couldn’t identify.
There were about 600 or 700 people in the sanctuary, a converted school gym, with the basketball hoops still on the walls. The church complex is an old school building. Classrooms are now used for Sunday school, day care and other functions. There are dorms that house interns as well as families in transition.
Immediately, a lot of people were down in front dancing. And then they were dancing up and down and all around the isles. Also—they kept the kids in the sanctuary for this part of it. And there were just a zillion of them—all mind bogglingly cute, up on their chairs dancing. When the music stopped and they got into announcements, you could barely hear the speaker over the kids in the room as they wound down. It was great.
Martin Luther King Jr’s statement that the “most segregated hour in America is 11AM on Sunday” still holds a lot of truth. And while some predominantly white mega churches have surprised researchers with their “high” percentages of people of color (As “high” as 20%!), they are still predominantly white churches.
At New City, on the other hand, we really had the feeling that we were seeing cultures meeting each other on equal terms. I can’t say I’ve ever had that feeling anywhere before, except in a few local union chapters when I was working in the labor movement.
During the break between the music and the sermon, we asked the people around us what they were doing differently here. One thing they mentioned was a long series of “racial reconciliation” classes that church goers went through, especially during the early years. There’s got to be a whole lot more to the story than that, but it’d take a lot more than one visit to get a real grasp.
From their website:
New City Fellowship came into existence in July of 1992 after several years of prayer by a number of St. Louis Christians connected with the Presbyterian Church in America (P.C.A.). These believers were convinced there was a great need for their denomination to make an active commitment to reconciliation between the Anglo and African-American communities in St. Louis, as well as a basic God-given responsibility to care for the poor.
After a year of preparation and much prayer, Barry Henning, Associate Pastor at New City Fellowship in Chattanooga, Tennessee - a racially mixed congregation worship ministering to Chattanooga s inner city communities, was brought to St. Louis to begin the work of planting a P.C.A. church committed to exalting Jesus Christ and the power of the gospel to work toward racial reconciliation in the church and address the needs of the people of the city of St. Louis. New City’s need and commitment, since its beginning, have been to act as a catalyst for the larger body of Christ (first in the P.C.A. and then in the greater church at large) to fulfill this call through intentional, Spirit-led acts of justice, compassion and righteousness.
In other words, they went about this very deliberately, with the support of many local churches, and with some expertise from a senior pastor who had already figured some things out in another city. I want to write in the future about the role that prayer plays in these Christian communities when they approach big, difficult tasks. It’s really interesting, but I have to learn more first.
Note also that these are not the liberal mainline Presbyterians that the secular left knows and loves. PCA is a split-off group of mostly Deep South congregations that walked out of the larger Presbyterian body when it made a left turn in the early 1970’s. Some say they left partly because of the denomination’s support for the Civil Rights Movement. But now here they are!
The senior pastor is traveling, and so the sermon was delivered by a visiting pastor from Togo. He preached on a part of Acts of the Apostles that documents a situation in which one ethnicity inside the Early Church was being neglected, and how a solution was arrived at by the community. He was hitting on some deep theological questions—and I just don’t understand enough about the Bible yet to know if I understood his main points correctly.
The sermon was delivered in both English and French—apparently they do it that way every week.
Like Nicholas Cage in the movie this morning, there was a lot that didn’t make sense to me about the scene at church. I was mainly curious about “my people,” the suburban white folks there. Why were they willing to sit through a sermon made twice as long by its delivery in two languages? When people started dancing in the isles around them, why didn’t they get that awkward “what am I doing here!” look and, instead, joined in? Why didn’t it feel either like a “white church” or a “black church?” Why didn’t people clump up with others of their ethnicity like in almost every other mixed setting?
I saw a documentary last week about Little Rock’s Central High School, the first public school to be desegregated. In the present day, classes there still have an invisible line down the middle that divides the “black” from the “white” side of rooms—40 years after desegregation.
No question: racial reconciliation is about the most difficult kind of social change to make in America. I’ll offer a theory about one thing these church folks might have in their favor as they attempt it: They’re not doing it for each other’s sake, but for the sake of their God.
When I was in college, there was a big political movement almost every year among the students: resistance to tuition hikes, the Gulf War, protests against harassment of students of color by campus police, etc…. Every year, like clock work, each movement exploded into a giant race conflict among the student activists—despite a ton of effort put into deliberate racial reconciliation (workshops, classes, etc…).
Sometimes it felt as though the harder everyone tried, the worse the outcome was. At the time, I concluded that the process was doomed from the beginning by the idea that reconciliation was something that white people should do out of the goodness of their hearts for the victims of their own racism. There seemed to be no way to shake the paternalism out of that equation. The whites couldn’t shake the feeling that they were doing something they didn’t have to do—i.e. we were doing others a favor.
These white Christians, on the other hand, are approaching the problem with a whole different attitude. They’re doing it for God. And so the two groups may have an easier time coming together as true equals—with no one doing anyone else a favor—as children of the same God making the world right because its what he wants.
Just a theory.
PS: A really interesting read is NewCity.org’s Core Values section. The church takes these ideas very seriously—there’s an eight week class on them just to become a member of the church.
Some selections:
When Jesus Christ came to earth he announced the good news (Gospel) of the kingdom (Matthew 4:23). He came as the King of kings and the Ruler of the Universe to save a people for himself, through his own sacrifice, and restore us under his loving rule and reign as a people who would live lives defined by godly justice, mercy and humility (Micah 6:8). The focus of Christ's ministry in this world is described in Isaiah 42:1-4"Here is my Servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out , or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his law the islands will put their hope."
As his people, we are freed from a lifestyle of self-focused sin and freed to "seek first his kingdom" (Matthew 6:33). Like Jesus, we are anointed by the Spirit (Matthew 3:11), gifted to make his love known (Ephesians 4:7-13), and will be led by the Spirit to sovereignly appointed opportunities for good works (Eph 2:10).
God's kingdom priorities are not hidden to us, nor are they ours to define. God has spoken in his Word and declared to us what he wants our service to look like: "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter - when you see the naked to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? The your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I." Isaiah 58:6-9
Genesis 9 and a new camera October 18, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 1 commentAfter posting all those blurry and dim photos from Catalyst we finally sprung for a new camera. It came today and we wandered around the endless strip mall cluster of Festus, Missouri, where we’re staying, snapping pictures of the incredible clouds.
The rainbow reminded me of listening to Tri Robinson at Catalyst talk about the biblical basis for environmentalism. He explained that in Genesis 9, where God lays out the Noahic Covenant, God repeats over and over that his covenant is with humanity and ALL of the animals, EVERYTHING living and the WHOLE Earth.
I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. …This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.
(Genesis 9)
Elizabeth took all these photos of beautiful Festus, Missouri—except the shot of White Castle! Click on the images to see the full version, or here to see the full set.
(Click here to see the full set.)
Small world…or big movement October 17, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 2 comments
Like 100,000 other people around the world, I listen to all of Rob Bell’s Mars Hill sermons via iTunes on my iPod. Sometimes I get a a little behind, so I just heard this story from a couple weeks ago today.
Listen to it, it’s just a couple minutes:
I heard that interview with the teacher in January. It made me want to go work in a broken school myself.
But doesn’t Rob’s story give you the image of an army of unlikely people heading off to the most hard-up corners of the empire to serve?
Is it really a movement? October 17, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri | write a comment
This is really interesting. Check out this post by Mark Dixon, an on-fire-for-Jesus radical Christian in California, who is reading my blog and is having trouble believing that the movement I’ve been talking up can be as big and energetic as I’ve been describing:
Such a sudden about-face among any significant number of evangelicals seems unlikely to me. Also, I am cynical and wary of another trick by the Christian Right to placate us into letting our guard down. But what if it’s true? If you have personal knowledge that such a movement is in fact taking place, write me at buzzbin [at] unworthymagazine [dot] org with the details.
…I try to picture the Republican-voting, SUV-driving soccer moms and NASCAR dads of California’s suburban megachurches making such a massive reversal in their belief system, and I simply can’t. But what if that’s just my own prejudice talking? What if it is true? I wonder…
And this isn’t the first time I’ve spread the news to an incredulous progressive Christian about their own movement. It happened just the other night when we were staying with the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Southern Missouri. They have been resisting the empire their whole lives. It was like I was delivering news of a miraculous reversal at the front as I told them about Shane Claiborn’s litany against the empire at Catalyst. Sister Cynthia said, “You’re giving me goose bumps.”
It reminds me of when I was studying in China, a very long time ago, and found my self occasionally translating between Hong Kong people who couldn’t speak Mandarin and mainland Chinese people who couldn’t speak English. They were so close to each other but, very randomly, an outsider was needed to make the connection.
Tag: Mark DixonReading Everything Must Change October 16, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 4 comments
I’m going to start digging into Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope. He’s known as a “progressive Evangelical”—and there are even websites set up by fundamentalists calling him the son of Satan. But he’s been a huge influence to the broad evangelical movement. Young people especially have named his books as inspirations in all of the evangelical settings we’ve explored over the past couple of months.
One thing I’m hoping to get from this book is a better grip on the subtle (looking in from the outside anyways) theological shift beneath the surface of the revolution in evangelical Christianity.
It’s especially hard for me to grasp this moving target because I never knew the previous theology that they’re now shifting away from. So, what’s new? What’s the difference? What are the difficult parts for people to accept? What is scary about this?
All I can tell so far is that the shift is BIG. It seems to be shaking the very foundation of the faith. You can hear it in the tone of voice of preachers as they cross the line in a sermon…as they drop the bomb that questions people’s deepest assumptions. At Catalyst, you could hear it in the subdued Amens and muffled applause, when the speakers crossed these lines, as the crowd really had to think.
Here’s one way that Brian explains it in Everything Must Change:
As a follower of God in the way of Jesus, I’ve been involved in a profoundly interesting and enjoyable conversation for the last ten years or so. It’s a conversation about what it means to be a “new kind of Christian”—not an angry and reactionary fundamentalist, not a stuffy traditionalist, not a blasé nominalist, not a wishy-washy liberal, not a New Agey religions hipster, not a crusading religions imperialist, and not an overly enthused Bible-waving fanatic—but something fresh and authentic and challenging and adventurous. Around the world, millions of people have gotten involved in this conversation, and more and more are getting involved each day. (One reason we keep calling it a conversation is that we can’t find a short way of describing it yet.)
…the versions of Christianity we inherited are largely flattened, watered down, tamed—offering us a ticket to heaven after death, but not challenging us to address the issues that threaten life on earth. Together we’ve begun to seek a fresh understanding of what Christianity is for, what a church can be and do, and most exciting, we’re finding out that a lot of what we need most is already hidden in a trunk in our attic. Which is good news. (P. 2-3)
The most exciting and uplifting thing about this is the part about people being challenged instead of comforted by this new understanding of Jesus. If you’re looking to replenish your faith in humanity, especially the American people, then this is the jackpot: As these revolutionary Evangelical preachers make their messages and churches more and more challenging, more and more people show up.
Millions of kids are flocking to Christian conferences, music festivals and just plain church not to get their “ticket to Heaven” or learn how to hate gays, but to join an international movement of people ready to give their lives in order to redeem the world—both individual broken lives as well as whole broken social and economic systems.
So I’ll keep working on this book. On days when I don’t have any in-person encounters to report on, I’ll try to report on my progress through the book.
Tags: Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change
