Why won’t McCain meet with evangelical leaders September 27, 2008
Posted by Zack in | 2 commentsThis is a really weird thing. I’ve heard this too on the grape vine that McCain won’t meet with *any* evangelical leaders. Back when he was really struggling, right after he won the primary, he wouldn’t even call back a group of evangelical conservatives who stuck their necks out a little bit to endorse him. Did the Hagee thing burn him so bad that he’s afraid to ever run into that again? Meanwhile, even many conservative evangelical leaders are getting chances to talk to Obama and have the campaign on speed dial in the spirit of “Advise everyone, endorse no one.”
I think that if the McCain campaign had been more open, then people like Richard Cizik would have restrained themselves more from criticizing McCain’s policies.
This from an interview on BeliefNet with Cizik:
The McCain campaign has beefed up its religious outreach efforts recently. How is their evangelical outreach going?
We put in a request with the McCain campaign and it was never responded to. Many figures in the Republican Party have reached out to the campaign stating their concern that the candidate has not reached out to evangelical leaders, but it went nowhere. And since we’re so deep into the campaign, we can only assume that we’re not going to get an answer. We had some people, including a governor and a major party official, who said to the campaign, “I think you should meet with some of these evangelicals.” I have subsequently interpreted that they didn’t think they needed to because they had an idea of their own and that maybe that was Sarah Palin.
Go to a Green for All event — and take a picture September 26, 2008
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This weekend, there’s a great way to save the environment & the economy at the same time: Go to Green for All’s site greenjobsnow.com, sign up for an event in your town this weekend, go to it, take a picture, and send it in so that you’re event is counted.
This is a great action that has been picked up by so many groups this week. I hope the Creation Care set represents!
Tags: climate change, creation care, green for allCome see The Ordinary Radicals Tuesday Night in Kansas City September 22, 2008
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 2 commentsThe Ordinary Radicals is a documentary made by one of the founders of the Simple Way community in Philadelphia, Jamie Moffett. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve heard great things. (And I’m in it!) As I understand, the movie has a ton of interviews with leaders of all sorts from among the “ordinary radicals” (Shane Claiborne’s term for the rising generation of socially aware Christians).
Jamie will be at the screening to speak — and I’ll be there too. Come on down. The showing is 8:00PM at Screenland Crossroads. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like they added this one-night only screening to their listings so you just have to have FAITH and show up. Please send some emails and bring some friends. This will be a very cool night.
Here’s the trailer:
Agent B leaves Son & Dad September 21, 2008
Posted by Zack in Texas | 1 commentMy favorite thing that the Internet has brought is the personal blogosphere. There are millions of blogs by people who are writing essentially for their friends or even just for themselves. They tend to link to a few friends who are doing the same thing. You can follow the links from blog to blog, traversing a nation of social networks for hours, usually never leaving the subculture that you started in.
In the Christian flavor of personal blogs, you can get a really deep look into the world view and daily practice of “followers of Jesus.” One of my favorite local Christian blogs has been The Agent B files. It’s just a guy in Alilene, Texas, writing about his life, relationships, work and God. He does a lot to help other people, which I bet is the main reason he keeps the blog totally anonymous (Matthew 6).
Some of the best stories on the blog are about Agent B’s job with a small landscaping outfit. There are amazing observations on the human spirit and the very nature of capitalism in there. But Agent B just announced that he quit the job! Congratulations on the change. Please keep the stories coming!
Tangent September 19, 2008
Posted by Zack in | 1 commentMy friend Marc Laitin just sent this:
Some of you will be too young to remember the Chrysler bailout.
Another friend of mine, who understands the economics of the bailouts happening now just said this about the ban on short selling:
“Everyone who was smart and was betting against financial companies just got punished; Everyone who was idiotic and was betting for them just made the most incredible amounts of money.”
So much for the free market.
Famous evangelicals stumping for Obama September 19, 2008
Posted by Zack in | 6 commentsSarah Pulliam at Christianity Today reported yesterday that the Obama campaign is launching a “Faith, Family and Values Tour” with evangelical stars, including Donald Miller:
Barack Obama’s campaign enlisted evangelical author Donald Miller on a tour through battleground states called “Barack Obama: Faith, Family and Values Tour,” a campaign official told Christianity Today.
Miller, Pepperdine University professor Doug Kmiec, and former Indiana Congressman pro-life Democrat Tim Roemer will speak to groups in community centers and gyms before taking questions. They plan to talk about where Obama and his running mate Joe Biden stand on issues like poverty and abortion.
The tour will begin next week and will last for about a month in states like Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Florida, New Mexico, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
The Obama campaign has done several of these tours in the past, including a 10-day “40 Days of Faith and Family” in South Carolina and a 10-day faith tour in Iowa last fall. The campaign official said that previous tours were focused more on fact finding and this tour will focus more on why people of faith and values support Obama.
Oddly, today David Brody re-reported the news as “exclusive.” His take:
Tags: Donald Miller, Doug Kmiec, Tim RoemerLook, getting conservative Evangelicals was always a tough sell for the Obama campaign and it became much tougher after the Palin pick. But the Obama campaign understands that most people in this country consider their faith integral to their lives. The values and religion talk resonates not just with conservative Evangelicals but a whole range of people out there. It means different things to different people. Obama wants to tap into that and also stay true to the fact that his faith has been central to his life.
Jesus was an organizer; Pontius Pilate was a governor. September 18, 2008
Posted by Zack in | 20 commentsI’ve gotten this in my inbox several times now — but no one seems to know who made it first. Anyone know?
Two articles on evangelicals and Palin September 16, 2008
Posted by Zack in Uncategorized | 2 commentsFrom AP:
When Jessica Stollings learned on Facebook that John McCain had named Sarah Palin as his running mate, the 26-year-old from Bristol, Tenn., took the day off and picked up some campaign yard signs. Just like that, she went from “just a voter” to a McCain evangelist.
And then an interesting oped in USA Today by professor David Gushee of Mercer University:
Tag: Sarah PalinIt is an uncomfortable fact that many of the theologically conservative Christians who have endorsed Palin’s nomination would not be willing to endorse her or any other woman for service as pastor of their church. Women cannot serve as pastors in groups such as the Churches of Christ, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Presbyterian Church in America, most non-denominational Bible churches, and an influential advocacy group called the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW).
What’s up with the Chi-Rho tattoos? September 5, 2008
Posted by Zack in Uncategorized | 23 comments
The Christian pacifist & anarchist sets seem to like the Chi-Rho (☧) symbol a lot. But as far as I can tell, that symbol was created as a military standard by Constantine. In a few “I finally got my Chi-Rho tattoo!” blog posts, people reference this line: “Early Christians, through fear of persecution, devised the secret symbol as a means of recognition.”
That comes from the Chi-Rho wikipedia article. But it seems like someone just slipped it in there and there is no reference. I know that the Ichthys (”Jesus fish”) served that purpose. But everything I can find about Chi-Rho says it started with Constantine. Is it just that the minivan crowd co-opted the fish, making it unacceptable for anarchist forearms, and so another symbol had to be enlisted?
Hippster Christian set says Meh to both conventions September 5, 2008
Posted by Zack in Minnesota | 2 commentsHere’s a representative example from Josh Brown of the disengagement and skepticism that many young hippster Christians are feeling toward both parties’ conventions. Many were tempted to get caught up in Obama’s “hope,” but they largely stayed strong. Perhaps some have been tempted during the RNC by the symbols and rhetoric they were raised on. If so, they haven’t been admitting it.
For pure entertainment value I watched the DNC 2 weeks ago and was reminded of a Michael Jackson European tour in the late 80s with people crying and trampling each other to touch the cloak of his garment. It was sad and yet almost understandable to see people so desperate for change that they worked themselves up into an emotional frenzy over a person and a process that by himself can do more lasting change than the previous rich grey heads that have sat in the Oval Office.
For pure sleeping aid, I have watched the RNC the last 2 nights to lull myself to sleep with a bunch of the rich grey heads waking up from their sleep every 5 minutes when a speaker says the word terrorism. It has seriously lacked any energy or “heart” at all. That is until Rudy G - every conservatives whipping boy during the primary until he became a cult hero as the keynote - took the stage. All the rich white people who were driving their SUVs and flying their coach, first class, and chartered planes to the convention started chanting “DRILL BABY DRILL” for close to 5 minutes. It was the loudest they got in 2 days. I’m pretty sure I saw a few people salivate and/or piss their pants.
I’m not sure which convention was more full of fluff. The rock star status that Obama got at the DNC or the Cracker Barrell crowd that fell asleep out of sheer boredome at the RNC.
Oh Come and Rescue Us From This Madness.
