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

Posted by Zack in DC | write a comment

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

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Obama-Dobson clash a fertile topic in Jesusland July 7, 2008

Posted by Zack in Uncategorized | write a comment

Obama’s willingness to engage the Christian Right directly in biblical terms has caused a lot of excitement among theologians and bloggers (and blogger-theologians). When the Democratic nominee can hold his own with James Dobson on the Bible, that’s a man-bites-dog story.

First, here’s a reminder of what Obama said recently in his engagement with Dobson. Then below, a post by popular born-again writer and theologian Scott McKnight. And this is a great example of the intellectualism of Jesusland. With these guys, a discussion of a CNN-style political dust up instantly takes us back to the Civil War and complex issues of race, class & theology.

Obama, as reported by the Washington Post:

“And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is okay and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount — a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our Bibles now. Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles.”

Here’s McKnight:

Some thought Barack Obama’s comment about which passages we should choose if our country was to follow the Bible was messing with the authority of Scripture. What wasn’t clear in the criticisms of Obama was this: it was when Obama mentioned Sharpton and Dobson as folks at the ends of the interpretive spectrum that perhaps the most significant issue came to light. In other words: OK, let’s follow the Bible, but whose interpretation will we follow? You might want to know that the dean of American evangelical church historians, Mark Noll (formerly a mainstay at Wheaton and now at Notre Dame), has weighed in on this with a brilliant book many should read; the book is a set of lectures.

It is called The Civil War as a Theological Crisis.

In essence, Noll argues that the Civil War precipitated a crisis, a major theological crisis. What the Civil War illuminated was that economics, race and slavery were so intertwined that discerning what was biblical and what was American and personal and denominational became confusing. When many thought they were fighting a slavery debate, they were so tied to their economic theories and blinded by their racism that they simply could not see their way to the Bible clearly.

Two options emerged from the Civil War: First, hand the business of theologians to the military generals and judge that the one who wins is also right theologically. Second, forget trying to base public policy on any one’s interpretation of Scripture. America, Noll argues, did the former during the Civil War and, ever since, has lived and dwelled in the second view.

…

Read whole McKnight post here.

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Obama’s message to (all?) Christians January 15, 2008

Posted by Zack in Uncategorized | write a comment

Hopefully, for Obama’s sake, his campaign won’t talk about his “call” only to black Christians, but white Christians also. Check out this Washington Post campaign diary:

GREENWOOD, S.C. — The brochure being handed out in South Carolina shows a picture of the candidate with his hands together and eyes closed. In large letters, it reads “ANSWERING THE CALL.”

Inside, voters learn of a candidate who was “CALLED TO CHRIST” and even larger letters is a “COMMITTED CHRISTIAN” and is quoted saying, “I believe in the power of prayer.”

Barack Obama’s campaign in South Carolina is targeting black voters, and one of the ways he’s doing it is appealing to a connection based on shared religious faith.

His campaign would benefit from telling his story of conversion and faith to predominantly white evangelical churches everywhere too. For such a strategy to be meaningful, though, the message can’t simply be “Obama is a Christian with the same faith story as you.” Rather, the message needs to include concrete examples of how being a follower of Jesus will lead him to be a better president.

Christians today are especially conscious that simply identifying as a Christian doesn’t mean too much. They want to see Christian leaders walking the walk. Huckabee connects his faith with compassionate (sounding) positions on immigration, education and other social issues. But I’ve been getting the feeling that Obama’s advisers aren’t making the connection.

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Infectious stupidity September 21, 2007

Posted by Zack in Iowa | 2 comments

Today I posted an article at The Huffington Post about an evangelical Christian Obama supporter we interviewed in South Carolina. I’ve written several articles about about Christian “revolutionaries” at HuffPo and other secular progressive spots. Usually, a heated discussion in the comments follows. Each time, it underscores why a blog like this is necessary.

For example:

Christians can have all the “revolutions” they want. Doesn’t change the fact that organized religion is a form of infectious stupidity that endangers us all.

I’m sorry - perhaps I missed something in the interpretations here, but how can an evangelical be “progressive”? An evangelical, by their own definition, believe in the absolute accuracy of the bible….An evangelical, by their own statements, say that the only way to salvation is through a man called Jesus Christ. That is Christian, not progressive. Now, can you please explain that oxymoron again of a “progressive evangelical”?

But so many believers speak up too, who are out there dying to get out from under the stereotypes:

Thank you. Of course, you’ve probably put the “Believers, go home” crowd in a state of shock. Not only do they insist on stereotyping evangelicals in the manner you describe, but they love to paint ALL believers as conservative and intolerant. Maybe the bigots will learn something from this. Or, more likely, not.

Yes! Hallelujah!! My point is that the religious left exists, we are just clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, visiting those in prison, welcoming the stranger; not talking non-stop about how great we are. In fact, I posit the religious left is way, way bigger than the religious right. We are quietly following our Lord and Master as he instructed us, while the modern day Pharisees are clamouring on the street corner… Same old, Same old.

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