I’m speaking in NYC Monday February 28, 2008
Posted by Zack in New York | 3 commentsIf you live in NYC, come by Monday night. All I know is, it’s going to be very interesting. Fundamentalisms (that people didn’t even know they had) will clash, sparks will fly, Andrew Boyd will play some prank on us all, REALLY BIG WORDS will be used, and we’ll all say “mediated” a lot—it’ll be great fun.
Thanks to Beka Economopoulos and Not An Alternative for putting this on!
“I have seen the future of evangelical Christianity, and it is pierced.” February 27, 2008
Posted by Zack in Pennsylvania | 2 comments
Today Michael Gerson wrote in the Washington Post about the CCO conference that I was dying to attend (but I was out of the country). I wrote about CCO after interviewing one of its staffers in Columbus. Here’s Gerson’s reaction to what he saw at the CCO’s Pittsburgh youth conference:
I have seen the future of evangelical Christianity, and it is pierced. And sometimes tattooed. And often has one of those annoying, wispy chin beards.
Those who think of evangelical youths as the training cadre of the religious right would have been shocked at Jubilee 2008, a recent conference of 2,000 college students in Pittsburgh sponsored by the Coalition for Christian Outreach. I was struck by the students’ aggressive idealism — there were booths promoting causes from women’s rights to the fight against modern slavery to environmental protection. Judging from the questions I was pounded with, the students are generally pro-life — but also concerned about poverty and deeply opposed to capital punishment and torture. More than a few came up to me between sessions in anguished uncertainty, unable to consider themselves Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative — homeless in the stark partisanship of American politics.
Many observers have detected a shift — a broadening or maturation — of evangelical social concerns beyond the traditional agenda of the religious right. But does this have political implications?
Perhaps. Recent Zogby polls in Missouri and Tennessee found that about a third of white evangelicals who showed up on primary day voted Democratic. The sample sizes were small. Yet John Green, a senior fellow with the Pew Forum, finds the results interesting. “These results are higher than usual. Typically these numbers would be about a quarter.”
Kind of like the Jesuits, with goatees. February 26, 2008
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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.
“Zizek, Obama and the Emerging Church” February 24, 2008
Posted by Zack in Minnesota | 3 commentsYou know something interesting is going on when Mennonite pastors are writing posts with titles like “Zizek, Obama and the Emerging Church“.
Check out the post and discussion around it — it’s a good early example of the dilemma that Obama is presenting to the Revolutionary Christian community: Get involved and help a good man do good? Or be enticed by just one more worldly politician with a conversion story and compassionate rhetoric (just like George W Bush)?
In Heaven, there will be plenty of time to listen to the beautiful crazies February 22, 2008
Posted by Zack in | 1 commentFrom the ordinary radicals Christian blogosphere…one of my favorite bloggers “Agent B.” This is really what’s it’s all about, if you ask me:
The other day …I stumbled upon a brief moment involving my true calling. Yet the shackles of my momentary position in life kept me from following through.
My true calling: befriending, listening, and being real with the undesirables.
My current shackle: being an employee of Son & Dad Tree Service, Inc.
His story made me think of a sermon series I just finished listening to: Ozark Christian College’s Mark Moore on Revelations. He believes (like a lot of Revolutionaries) that Heaven is not a place that exists now, but a place that will happen on Earth after Jesus returns. In that world, believers will come back in immortal, souped-up bodies. One consequence: over eternity, you’d be able to spend as much time as you want to with every person in the world.
“Emerging evangelical center may decide 2008 election” February 22, 2008
Posted by Zack in | write a commentOpinion piece from the Associated Baptist Press: Emerging evangelical center may decide 2008 election, by David Gushee
The evangelical center, in turn, shares with the evangelical left a strong emphasis on the plight of the poor, attention to racism as a moral and policy issue, opposition to the routine resort to war by the United States, a high priority to creation care and acceptance of the seriousness of climate change, commitment to finding a humane solution to the immigration issue, and conviction that human-rights commitments require wholehearted opposition to torture in the U.S. war on terror. It tends to differ from the left in its more careful commitment to political independence, its stronger and more thorough attention to issues of abortion, family, and sexuality, and its willingness to support the moral legitimacy of some (though not all) U.S. military actions.
Faithful America starts petition to stop ridiculous exit poll practice February 20, 2008
Posted by Zack in DC | 7 comments
The newly relaunched group Faithful America has started a petition to stop exit polls that ask only Republicans about their religious affiliation and church attendance:
The presidential primary exit polls, sponsored by ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and the AP, must stop stereotyping people of faith. We call on the media pollsters to ask all voters — Republicans and Democrats — the same religion questions on the exit poll surveys.
What’s also incredible, by the way, is that the same exit polls only ask Democrats about union membership.
Do TV ratings depend on telling a meta-story of an America divided into two completely separate cultures or something? Why do they run their polls this way?
Faithful America is a project of Faith in Public Life, the organization that commissioned its own exit polls that showed that religion and political parties do not match up. A whole lot of people have been complaining about this polling issue, and it’s great that Faith in Public Life and now Faithful America are standing up and doing something about it.
Tags: 2008, exit polling, Faith in Public Life, Faithful AmericaAmazon: Revolutionary Christianity #1 “radical political doctrine,” #2 “political philosphy” February 14, 2008
Posted by Zack in Pennsylvania | 4 commentsI just think this is kind of funny. These are Amazon best seller rankings for the three categories in which Shane Claiborne’s Irresistible Revolution is high up top:
Shane’s book came out two years ago. And yet it’s consistently in the top 1000 sellers on Amazon — which is pretty amazing in itself. But how funny is it that a born again Christian’s book is the #1 work of “radical political doctrine” and the #2 work of “political philosophy” among Amazon customers?
Maybe it’s a quirk of Amazon categories. Or maybe it says something about the left: that born again Christians are the only radicals anymore with a mass audience.
Tags: Amazon, politics, Shane ClaiborneAn Interview with George Barna February 13, 2008
Posted by Zack in California | 1 commentI’ve cited the work of the Barna Group here often — sometimes describing George Barna as “The Christians’ Stan Greenberg.” His company does high level research and polling for Christian organizations as well as corporations. George Barna himself has been swept up in the Revolution among Born Again Christians. His book “Revolution” is both an academic study of the revolution as well as an embrace of it. It’s brought him some criticism from the mainstream church, but has planted him firmly at the forefront of Christianity in America.
In your latest research project, you report that 2/5th of registered Democrats are Born Again Christians. I think this will surprise a lot of people. Before we get into that, can you explain how that category is defined? Who are born again Christians? And what’s the difference between Evangelical and Born Again Christians?
The Barna Group is the only survey research organization I know of that does not rely upon self-report to be classified as “born again” or “evangelical.” We classify people as “born again” based on their answers to two questions about what they believe, rather than the label they choose for themselves. The questions are whether they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today, and if so, we ask what they think will happen to them after they die. We offer seven possibilities to choose from, one of which is that they believe they will go to Heaven because they have confessed their sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as their savior.
We do not rely upon people calling themselves born again because we did some research on the people who choose such a label and found two interesting results. First, about one-third of those who call themselves born again also admit that they have no kind of relationship with Jesus Christ, which the Bible describes as being a central facet of becoming a person who is born anew – transformed by the grace of God into a new being. Second, we also learned that roughly one-quarter of the people who meet the two theological criteria we pose – regarding the personal commitment as well as the confession of sins and reliance upon Christ for forgiveness – appear to be born again but refuse to adopt that label for themselves. The major reason is that it carries such negative cultural connotations.
Evangelicals, in our way of measuring things, are a subset of born again Christians. The term “evangelical” is not in the Bible, so to figure out what this man-made category meant, we studied the belief statement of the National Association of Evangelicals and drew out seven particular elements that seemed most central to their perspective. Those include the accuracy and reliability of the Bible, the sinless life of Christ, the existence of Satan as an influential spiritual being, the importance of sharing one’s faith in Christ with others, that a person cannot earn their way into Heaven, religious faith is very important in the person’s life, and that God is the omnipotent and omniscient creator and ruler of the universe. The NAE has more components in their statement, but these seemed pivotal, and would give us a good grip on where a person was coming from, theologically.
So, using this approach, it is possible to be evangelical and born again, possible to be born again without being evangelical, but impossible to be evangelical without being born again. But I have to note that only God knows who is or is not truly born again. Surveys simply provide an estimate of what’s happening in people’s lives.
So - what percent of America is Born Again or Evangelical?
About 44% are born again, and about 7% are evangelical.
Has the number of Born Again + Evangelical Christians grown dramatically over recent decades or has it always been this way?
The proportion of evangelicals has remained constant for the past 20 years that we’ve been measuring it. The percentage of born again Christians has risen and fallen to some extent, but it generally hovers within a few percentage points of the 40% mark.
OK - so born again Christians believe that Jesus walked on water, healed the sick and rose from the dead; they mostly believe Adam, Eve, Noah and Satan are real. They believe prayer works. In the current DC conventional wisdom, those kinds of beliefs are associated with right wing stands on economics, law & order, foreign policy, social welfare and other policy areas. Is the DC conventional wisdom wrong?
In this case, it is wrong. There is a wide spectrum of beliefs within the born again constituency. There are segments on both sides of the arguments related to immigration reform, responses to poverty, the Iraq war, and so forth. Much of this relates to the worldview of factions within the born again community. Some, especially younger born agains, tend to have a postmodern view of the world, which leads them to conclude that there are no absolute moral truths, that relationships and dialogue are of the ultimate importance, and that tolerance of diverse opinions and lifestyles is appropriate.
As you alluded to earlier, our research shows that a plurality of born again adults who are registered to vote are Democrats. Among the born agains, more than four out of 10 are registered Democrats, three out of ten are registered Republicans, and the remaining two out of 10 are independent. Things look very different among the evangelicals, though, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats almost three-to-one. Maybe the insight to draw from all of this is that the mainstream media constantly try to simplify complex realities so that people can quickly understand the world. The problem is that some things get oversimplified, and understanding the faith community is one of those dimensions that gets misunderstood.
Given the drum beat by so many high profile Christian leaders around anti-gay marriage and anti-abortion campaigns, what does it say that those issues are so far down the list for most born again Christians? Aren’t they listening to their leaders? Or is it that those people we see on TV are not actually regarded as leaders by most born agains?
There are several dimensions to consider in this. First, there is an important distinction to be made between someone being a leader and a teacher. Some of the people who have the media platforms have their greatest influence as teachers of biblical principles rather than as sociopolitical leaders. Second, every issue I have ever studied – and I’ve been involved in political research for more than 30 years – suffers from constituency burnout at some point. Remember, Americans live in a fast-paced, immediate gratification culture, anchored by the postmodern view that moral values are situational rather absolute. Consequently, while many born again Christians are personally pro-life, they have lost some of the energy to fight that battle, and now say they are personally pro-life but are more galvanized by other issues and concerns. Third, the fact that many born again voters rank abortion and gay rights lower on their agenda does not so much indicate that those issues are unimportant to them as it reflects the increasing sophistication of many born again voters. They have morphed from single-issue voters to being more educated about a wider variety of national and global concerns. In that context, they may see other matters as possessing more immediate significance for our nation. Finally, realize that the younger generation of born again Christians tends to be less drawn to the “culture wars” and more drawn toward conversation and reconciliation. For better or worse, many of them express an interest in influencing the culture through their relationships and lifestyle choices rather than through political engagement.
Perhaps that biggest, last point of division between born again progressives and…er…born once progressives is homosexuality. I have met a number of born again Christians who believe in “gay rights” — i.e. that gays should have the same rights as everyone else — even while they believe that homosexuality is un-biblical and a sin. To most people reading this, that will seem a huge contradiction — can you shed any light on what Christians like that are thinking.
This is a great example of the “new” thinking that is gaining ground among Christians. While it is true that you can legislate morality – after all, what laws do is define what is right and wrong, which is the essence of morality – a growing number of born again people are not staking their entire realm of influence on the legal and political systems. Instead, they desire to offer a theologically honest but emotionally compassionate reaction to proponents of homosexuality. In other words, they cannot ignore the fact that homosexuality is a sin from a biblical perspective, but also realize that Jesus’ primary exhortation was to love other people into a different way of understanding and living their lives. So, on the one hand, you’ll find some born again adults who strongly reject homosexuality as a valid lifestyle, who at the same time have a number of homosexual friends and are comfortable discussing that lifestyle with those friends in a non-hysterical, non-hostile manner. Their view is that God, alone, is called to judge people. We’re simply called to love them.
Tags: Democrats, George Barna, homosexuality, RepublicansFour more “turning point” articles February 13, 2008
Posted by Zack in Uncategorized | 2 commentsEvery week several “turning point” articles pop up — articles, book reviews, op-eds that are helping to incorporate an awareness of the Big Shift among born again Christians into the conventional wisdom of the day. The Faith in Public Life daily news digest is hands down the best way to keep up with these. Here are four from the last few days.
Jim Wallis: The Great Awakening on the Right and Left
E.J. Dionne: Souled Out: Why The Era of the Religious Right is Over
Reuters: Polls show some U.S. evangelicals vote Democrat
ABC News: Are Young Evangelicals Skewing More Liberal?
Sign up for the Faith in Public Life updates here. (And BTW, they were behind the exit polls story — they finally took matters into their own hands and commissioned their own polls. Hooray for FIPL!)
