jump to navigation

YouthFront July 30, 2008

Posted by Zack in Missouri | 1 comment

At 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: , ,

A bunch of new stuff July 28, 2008

Posted by Zack in Missouri | 15 comments

I got to hang out with an amazing group of Christians for a few days this weekend. The small group included Christian rockers, publishers, preachers, youth workers, post-liberals (a new one for me!), post-evangelicals, recovering fundamentalists, recovering mainliners, reclaiming-it-mainliners, emergents, resurgent Catholics and all kinds of other chaos.

I am not going to tell you who all was there because, like I joked a couple posts ago, I am making people crazy jealous of all these famous Christians I’m getting to hang out with. It’s so unfair. They’re like, “You don’t even know who that is…I’ve dreamed about meeting him my whole life…” I feel so unworthy. So I’m going to keep a lid on it lest some jealous rank and file Emergent beat me up on the street one of these days.

Labels are a cruel thing when it comes to faith and spirituality. They’re necessary if we’re going to use language at all. But no label can do justice to even one person in this realm. Being around these folks was constantly unsettling because they kept blowing up all kinds of things I was hoping I understood.

And it was incredibly exciting. I feel like I just got to the top of another hill on this journey and can see miles of new territory to be explored:

Those were just of the few new spaces that opened up for me this weekend.

WWJD (with 3 trillion dollars?) July 22, 2008

Posted by Zack in Uncategorized | 7 comments

I’ve been mulling over an idea for a book that would be called, “What Would Jesus Do (with Democracy)?” It would deal with some of the questions that we’ve been discussing here lately. The main point would be: We do not live in ancient Rome; 2,000 years of redemptive history have changed the world; to act as though we are living under the same circumstances as Jesus’ first followers is to disregard what thousands of generations of martyrs lived and died for. Instead, we should be fully engaging — as Jesus did — with the world as we find it. In our case that means engaging our people through the democracies that our ancestors left us…. OK and more.

But maybe a more pithy title would be: What Would Jesus Do (with 3 trillion dollars)?

Three trillion is the amount of the annual federal budget. But it is also the amount the U.S. will ultimately spend on the Iraq War (according to some estimates).

Either way, the number brings up the very concrete idea that we live in a society where elected leaders (not Caesar) decide how our collective effort is channeled. Of course a lot of things are broken with our democracy. But what if the only reason is that we have variously been too intimidated, cynical or naive to really use the democracy that our ancestors left us (with their dying breath)? I just saw an ad from a Christian humanitarian org that said, “$1 will provide drinking water to an African for a year.” That ad probably brought in a few thousand dollars. Meanwhile, a dollar for 3 billion people with inadequate access to water is only 1/1000 of the money our government spends every year. One little tiny bill passed through congress could apportion that money with the stroke of a pen.

So…what would Jesus do with 3 trillion dollars? Send it back to Ceasar? But in the year 2008, in about half the world, WE are Caesar.

PS: Check out the Three Trillion Dollar Spending Spree — a great site set up by a coalition of orgs including unions and activist orgs.

McLaren’s M25 network email: Getting off the sidelines for Obama July 22, 2008

Posted by Zack in DC | 4 comments

This email just went out from the Matthew 25 Network from Brian McLaren:

Dear Friends,

There’s a little saying I’ve referred to often over the years: The proper response to misuse is not disuse, but wise and proper use. The saying helped me a lot in my twenty-four years as a pastor, and it still helps me in my current work as author, speaker, and activist.

It’s particularly appropriate in this election year. A lot of us feel that we’ve watched large sectors of our Christian community in the U.S. engage in several decades of divisive, ineffective, and downright counterproductive political engagement. At best, many attempts at engagement have been superficial, simplistic, and subject to binary thinking where one or two wedge issues easily distinguish the “good guys” from the bad. At worst, we’ve watched too many of our fellow Christians slip into a “culture war” mindset where neighbors became enemies to be defeated and silenced, not loved as we love ourselves. In addition, we’ve watched too many members of our faith communities be manipulated by cynical politicians who knew what tune to play to get people of faith marching obediently in their parade.

Many of us - sadly, I include myself here - stood on the sidelines and complained about the wrong being done by “the Religious Right.” In private, we might say that the major media figures didn’t speak for us, but we responded to faith-based misuse of the political process with faith-based disuse. We didn’t realize, as we now do, that disuse tends to favor those in power and support the status quo.

As I’ve watched with sadness what has happened in recent years, I’ve promised myself again and again that I wouldn’t just stand on the sidelines complaining this election season. That’s why I’m so thrilled about positive, constructive initiatives like the Matthew 25 Network. Drawing from Jesus’ powerful parable about his solidarity with “the least of these,” this network invites us as people of faith to step beyond individual self-interest, and even beyond the interest-group politics of “what’s best for us” - whether “us” is our denomination, religion, party, or nation. It invites us to consider how to use our vote on behalf of the neediest, the most vulnerable and poverty-stricken … so that their concerns are our own when we vote. For us, this is inherent in what it means to be followers of Jesus.

Based on these values, the Matthew 25 Network has chosen to support Barack Obama. Does that mean that every one of us is in full agreement with every detail of Senator Obama’s campaign? Of course not: we’re electing a president, not a Messiah! Blind, uncritical support is part of the misuse that we’re trying to move beyond.

But it does mean that a wide array of committed Christians - Catholic, Evangelical, Charismatic, and Protestant - are mobilizing pastors, seminarians and theologians, women religious, Sunday school teachers, religious educators, and faithful church-goers to seek to model wise and proper use of the political process this year in hopes that Senator Obama will be our next president.

Learning from past mistakes, we realize it’s not just who we support that matters - it’s how we show that support. So the Matthew 25 Network will be creating honest and positive messages for broadcast on Christian radio, and for publication in Catholic, Evangelical, and other periodicals. We’ll have a vigorous online presence, and we will organize voices on the ground to speak out in appropriate ways and venues. In everything we do, we will seek to model wise and proper engagement in the political process for people who are deeply rooted in Christian faith.

Here are three ways you can help:

1. Go to Matthew25.org right now and SIGN-UP.
2. Please make a DONATION. This is a brand new effort and we can’t do it without support from people like you.
3. TELL your friends about Matthew25.org.

For nearly 2000 years, followers of Christ have sought to live out their faith in the real world - under a variety of political systems: empires, feudal systems, tribal systems, monarchies, totalitarian regimes, anarchy, and democracy. In our American democracy, we have struggled, stumbled, fallen, and gotten up again, and again, learning each time as we moved forward. We have grappled with how our faith related to declaring independence, opposing slavery, confronting child labor and economic depression, embracing the dream of overcoming racism, and so much more.

Now we face unprecedented global crises: caring for our fragile and wounded planet, building a just peace in situations of conflict and fear, and eliminating extreme poverty. Electing the wrong president will set us back even further in these crises - something we cannot afford to do. Electing the better president will not solve everything; it will only be a first step in the next chapter of our history, but it is an important step.

We invite you to step off the sidelines as an observer or critic. We hope you’ll join us … praying for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven and seeking to be humble makers of peace, joyful workers for the common good, and dedicated servants of “the least of these.”

Yours,

Brian McLaren
Author and Pastor

PS. Learn more at www.matthew25.org

Tags: , ,

An old new picture of Heaven July 21, 2008

Posted by Zack in Uncategorized | 23 comments

Popular theologian Scott McKnight has been writing a long series on what the Bible says about Heaven. Today he’s up to Part 12. McKnight says:

We are looking into such issues as whether or not “heaven” is the eternal home, or whether it is better to speak of “new heavens and new earth” as the eternal place, and then we are looking into whether heaven/new heavens is “up there” or the earth itself under new conditions as it is recreated. (From part 5.)

This changing picture of Heaven is the furnace that fuels the Revolution in Jesusland. (I guess that’s a weird metaphor.) As far as I can tell, the tension between the “up there” and “down here” versions of Heaven have been part of the church almost since the beginning. For much of the 20th century, it felt like the “up there” version had almost won the day forever. The drive of the born-again/evangelical church became to save as many souls as possible (i.e. get people to say they accept Jesus) to fill up Heaven. If it’s all about going to Heaven, then conditions on earth don’t matter much.

But then, in the 70’s, some theologians got an undertow going that eventually starting pulling seminarians and others back to the “down here” version. Those obscure theologians gave rise to best-selling popularizers, young mega-church pastors and thousands of young church planters who are sowing this new/very old version of the Gospel. That early undertow has progressed into a full tidal shift that’s pulling everyone over. In some churches this has led to controversy. But — and this is just anecdotal — I think that in most evangelical churches they are simply mixing up the two versions and the people in the pews don’t even notice that anything’s happening as their church moves along the continuum.

However, that may be my outsider’s bias speaking. There might be controversy everywhere that I’m just not seeing. For example, there was a church I attended in North Carolina. I was amazed at how radical the sermons were for being a middle class, white, Southern evangelical church. But the other day I heard the story of an Emergent pastor who kind of got pushed out for pushing things too far.

This Heaven question: this is what the Revolution in Jesusland is really all about. The revolutionaries believe in in a real Heaven. Most seem to believe in a future change that will be just as dramatic as Tim Lahay’s apocalypse as portrayed in his Left Behind series. But the Revolutionaries believe it will be peaceful. They believe the whole human race will be physically resurrected into amazing super bodies that never get sick and can probably fly. An actual New Jerusalem will descend from the sky — a giant urban cube (thus the wings!) about as big as Rhode Island. We’ll have the time to talk to everyone and do everything we’ve ever dreamed of, and to do it all twice. Every addict, every mentally ill person, every leader, every housewife, every nation and ethnicity from every era will all have the time to process all the crazy stuff we did here on old Earth, and then who knows what we’ll do after that. What a great vision though. But we’re building it. We have to build it. That’s what’s so cool about this vision of Revolution that American Christianity is taking on.

Anyways, check out Scott McKnight’s series on Heaven. And don’t forget to stop back and check the comments here where knowledgeable Christians will rightly take me to task for all the over simplifications in this post.

Tags: ,

Matthew 25, a P.A.C. July 19, 2008

Posted by Zack in DC | 18 comments

Matthew 25 is an organization started by some evangelical Christians that endorse Barack Obama. It is a political action committee that is raising money for ads on Christian radio, among other things. But the story is more interesting than that. Brian McLaren’s endorsement of Obama, at a Matthew 25 event last week, is a major step for this whole community. Some other Christians (who are in some ways more radical politically than McLaren) are gently or indirectly opposing making any endorsements. Check out this satire by Mark Van Steenwyk at Jesus Manifesto. (And check out the debate with Thom Stark in the comments on that post.) Then check out Shane’s post on God’s Politics: “Advise Everyone Endorse No One.”

It’s going to be very interesting to watch evangelicals attempting to resist and sometimes succumbing to the allure of Barack Obama over the next few months. May I suggest a third way between a sign-your-life-away endorsement (which by the way Brian McLaren is not giving) and disengagement:

Why not state the obvious: a vote for Barack Obama is an intervention that can reasonably be expected to lead to less war, more health, better education, more reconciliation and more compassion. “Ah, compassion!” you say, “That’s what we voted for in 2000 and 2004 with Bush! We’ll never be burned like that again!” But think about that: Bush said compassion, but he talked about cutting services, trying teenagers as adults, ignoring the environment, etc… The difference between McCain and Obama isn’t the difference between Satan and Jesus, but it is the difference between millions of people being able to go to the doctor and not being able to, the difference between hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (and Iranians?!) dying. And so on… Is it possible that Obama could do the opposite of what he is promising? Sure. But is it possible that the homeless people your home group is working with will fall off the wagon? Sure. These are the risks we take as humans in a broken world. There’s no way to get away from those risks.

Tags: ,

“The Emergent Church” July 19, 2008

Posted by Zack in Missouri | 4 comments

Imo’s PizzaOver the last week, I have been living the dream of every rank and file Emergent Christian.

First, I got to hang out with the guys from the Church Basement Road show: Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt and Mark Scandrette — and Emergent leader Tim Keel, who’s church, Jacob’s Well, was hosting the show. They were doing their performance/book tour at Jacob’s Well in Kansas City. Like a groupie, I finagled my way into their RV and wound up going on a pre-show walk with Tony Jones. He told me the insider’s history of the Emergent Church — and I felt so privileged. I didn’t realize at the time that it was the second chapter of his book! — but I still feel privileged.

After the show, Elizabeth and I bribed our way into their lawn chair hangout session outside their RV with two large Imo’s pizza. Again, what a privilege to talk to so many of the early leaders of the Emergent movement at length!

Often, people have commented on this blog, “You’re writing about the Emergent Church, why do you keep saying the movement doesn’t have a name?” But the Emergent movement is a sub-movement within a much larger phenomenon. These guys are the ones who were willing to be overt and explicit about the full implications of the wider movement. A consequence of that was accepting a name, and therefore becoming an easy target for fierce criticism from conservatives. It also means that pastors and leaders who’ve been ostracized, demoted or chronically ignored in the struggle to change their churches find their way to Emergent mailing lists and websites. These Emergent leaders carry weight on their shoulders: they see the consequences of working toward a new future for the church. From my perspective as newcomer and outsider, it all looks good. I can easily see the change the change that’s happening in the church, but it’s not easy for me to see the pain and turmoil that abundant just under the surface. These guys are seeing the friction and tension and hurt that are an inevitable by-product of any sea change in a tight-knit culture.

I have to admit, I still don’t really understand what Emergent is all about. I feel like I should understand it, because I’ve studied all the postmodern philosophers who these guys like. They seem to share many of my positions social issues. And their style of “doing church” appeals to me more than any other. So if there are any Christians I should understand, it’s these guys. But the more questions I asked them, the more of a mystery they became. So, I’m diving into some more of their books. Right now I’m reading Tony Jones’ The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier. It is an incredible overview of this chunk of the Revolution in Jesusland, covering all aspects of the Emergent church from its history to theology to church methods. And it’s a great read.

And then, to make Emergent visitors to this site even more jealous, I got to visit with Brian McLaren before the Matthew 25 Network event in DC the night before last. What a great guy! Since he stepped down from being a pastor in 2006, he’s been to some crazy number of countries learning about the global church (and a lot of other things). A lot of good is clearly coming from his travels.

Tags: , , , ,

Changing tone at Cornerstone? July 14, 2008

Posted by Zack in Illinois | 4 comments

Cornerstone Music Festival is a giant Woodstock-like Christian music festival. It takes place every year and is attended by 10,000 or more people.

I first learned about the festival in Lauren Sandler’s book Righteous. Characterizing it as a giant festival of “right-wing organizing,” she followed a group of very angry anti-abortion activists into their demon-filled world.

Here’s a different kind of glimpse into this year’s Cornerstone, which just wrapped up last week, by Tim Nafziger writing at Young Anabaptist Radicals.

I’m trying to think of an analogy for the left that might work here. Maybe MoveOn.org recruiting for the last five years at…(trying to think of a very large, wild, a-political secular regular gathering)…Sturgis motorcycle rally!

After you read Tim’s post about the changing atmosphere at Cornerstone, then check out the seminars that took place at the festival this year. If you’re still expecting “right wing organizing,” you’ll be surprised by what you find.

Last week Charletta and I spent 5 days at the Cornerstone Music Festival promoting Christian Peacemaker Teams. For me, it was an inspiring awakening to the "Revolution in Jesusland" as Zack Exley calls it. That is, the increasing openness of young American Evangelicals to God’s vision for shalom. It’s an awareness that Jesus’ redemption is not just an individual soul thing, but an invitation to transformation of relationships, communities and creation as a whole.

Cornerstone Fairway at night

Charletta and I joined Jim Fitz at a booth that he has been staffing for the past 5 years. When Jim first started out, no one at Cornerstone had ever heard of CPT. Furthermore people were openly hostile. "Are you really Christian?" was the frequent challenge. Over the years, responses have begun to change. Even the one person who sat down and argued for half an hour about the efficacy of nonviolence told us he gets our newsletter. Part of the reason for this is Jim’s persistant witness. Many people come by with a familiar greeting for Jim. His beard and his hat are well known. But Jim’s perseverence is not the only influence on changing attitudes.

Here is a write-up by Shane about his stop at Cornerstone too.

Put one back in the Mennonite column July 8, 2008

Posted by Zack in Missouri | 12 comments

We 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: , ,

Atheists who believe in God July 7, 2008

Posted by Zack in Uncategorized | write a comment

Even though this Pew Forum report was a big story last week, I missed this one interesting nugget:

Another finding almost defies explanation: 21 percent of self-identified atheists said they believe in God or a universal spirit, with 8 percent “absolutely certain” of it.

Jeff Archer, president of the Atheist Coalition of San Diego, was at a loss to explain how one in five atheists said they believed in God.

“I find it quite preposterous that an atheist believes in God,” Archer said. “The only qualification to be an atheist is a nonbelief in God. When you take that away, then they’re not an atheist.”

Actually, I think I can explain that!

(HT: Drew Goodmanson)