Going Public with My Privates (part 2 of 3)

…on becoming post-(whatever I was).

Read more

Breakdown of JM Readers by Country

I’m not sure if anyone cares about these stats, but I find it interesting that only about 2/3 of our readers are from the US. It is also interesting that predominantly English-speaking nations rank 3rd (Canada), 4th (UK) and 8th (Australia). Interestingly, Brazilians make up a little over 5% of our reader base. Here’s the breakdown:

US 64%
Brazil 5.25%
Canada 4.3%
UK 2.8%
Japan 2.2%
Spain 1.4%
Mexico 1.4%
Australia 1.3%
Germany 1.15%
China 1.1%

Another World is Neccessary: Anarchism, Christianity and the Race from the White House

I’ll be presenting at the upcoming Jesus Radicals conference in Columbus, Ohio. My session (on the relationship between Church and State) will be on Friday afternoon. If you’re in the area, drop by. I’d love to meet some of the folks who frequent this site. Here’s the info:

August 15-16, 2008
St. John’s Episcopal
1003 W Town
Columbus, OH 43223
Contact: jesusradicals [at] jesusradicals.com

As election fever rises throughout the United States and the contest for the White House becomes more fierce, the masses will clamor for a new Commander in Chief to assume the seat of American power. This year, it seems as if the game has changed as a female candidate appears to fulfill feminist dreams and a viable Black candidate raises hopes for Black freedom and signals the weakening of racism. But is this really the case? For those who follow the One who confronted the powers and embrace the One who came as a Suffering Servant, these changes are not enough to leave this political system unchallenged. For those who envision an egalitarian world in which order and organization do not rely on the ever-present threat of state violence, bowing before the ballot box will not be an option.

Join us for this year’s Anarchism and Christianity conference as we explore alternatives to mainstream approaches to key issues raised in the current election, dream beyond the political options of our present system and imagine the other world we want to create. Get detailed session and housing info, and register to attend.

group of white men around the age of 30 challenge “everything”

(what follows is a work of satire…a work of satire that also works as a bit of self-deprecation)

A group of white men around the age of 30 launched a new network yesterday that sets out to challenge “everything.”

Jarrod Lewis, one of the coordinators for the network believes that people are looking for “something different.” Says Lewis: “A few years ago, I started looking around and noticed that there are a lot of Churches, but not a lot of people actually living in the way of Jesus…I mean REALLY living the stuff, you know?”

And so, Lewis began blogging on his site “Breaking Lewis” about the need for radical change. Armed with Apple laptop, he would go to his local Starbucks, order a machiato macchiato and proceed to challenge the status quo. Over coming months, his readership grew into the hundreds, and be began to connect with folks who shared his concerns–and hopes–for the church.

As the group began to conspire, they realized the need to have some face to face time if they were REALLY going to spark ecclesial revolution. Last month, in a secret meeting near Seattle, Lewis met with 20 other men near the age of 30. Sipping their expensive coffee, wearing their snappy hats, and sporting slightly unusual facial hair, they began to scheme a revolution.

The first thing they did was to name their new movement and come up with a cool website. The new movement, called “The Revelation 21 Cohort” (www.rev21cohort.com) will continue to mostly be an online network…though the idea of a conference is being kicked around.

These young men, though all around the age of 30 and white, are diverse in other ways. “We value diversity. In fact, we’re theologically diverse. We’re all from different denominational backgrounds within evangelicalism,” says Lewis, who is a pastor of “Aquatic Community” in San Francisco.

Aaron Johnston, pastor of the Journey Community in Ann Arbor, Michigan, believes that even greater diversity lays ahead: “We’ve made it a point to say that we’re open to women and people of color. In fact, there is a Latino guy who is interested in joining us, I think.”

Mark Van Steenwyk is the editor of JesusManifesto.com. He is a Mennonite pastor (Missio Dei in Minneapolis), writer, speaker, and grassroots educator. He lives in South Minneapolis with his wife (Amy), son (Jonas) and some of their friends.

Gandhi Was Wrong

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Israeli Settlers Attack Palestinian Children, Internationals on Way Home from Summer Camp

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Going Public with My Privates (part 1 of 3)

…on becoming post-(whatever I was).

Feeling rather left out, I began to worry. Perhaps I was still within my Evangelical cocoon. Or worse, maybe I was still crawling around on branches eating leaves. While my friends flew with new wings, was I still waiting to take off? Yet I felt as if I had emerged already, but by a different process; perhaps I had become a moth?

My question is, if I were to claim metamorphosis into a post/progressive-Evangelical/Conservative/Liberal existence, how did it come about?

Or, to change metaphors, most of my friends who claim a (re)birth trace their lineage through a secret promiscuity with Protestant Liberalism. But I was always much too self-righteous for that. So, is there another family line that can be traced beyond Evangelicalism not issuing from a liaison with Protestant Liberalism?

To make sense of this other possibility of a passage beyond, we have to look closely at the issue concerning how the Church publicly expresses its private beliefs; or, how we go “public with our privates.”

Going Public…

Now, the common complaint leveled against Evangelicalism is that it perpetuates a privatized faith without public effect. But of course this is not entirely true because the highest form of devotion for Evangelicals is to share their faith publicly at school, at work, in the heath club and every other arena of life. Discipleship is completed only when a believer confidently and regularly shares her faith in public. In a sense, Evangelicals are always willing to share their privates in public.

It could be argued that, in regard to matters of faith, Evangelicals are the true disciples of the sexual revolution. Thinking themselves much less repressed or socially inhibited, Evangelicals are willing to drop their religious pants at any time, while Protestant Liberals have much more modesty concerning their private beliefs. PLs are very reluctant to whip out their privates, but rather are reserved and careful, always referring to their beliefs in socially acceptable terms. Evangelicals, liberated from the embarrassment of their privates, are willing to freely expose themselves at any time: on the beach, at work or during dinner. It is the poor PLs who are repressed, denying the goodness of their private life, blushing whenever someone asks about the “hope they have within”.

Of course this evangelistic manner of “going public with the private” is not what critics of Evangelicalism are upset about. Rather they complain that Evangelicals all too typically fail to affirm the goodness of the world/society, and therefore fail to do any good in regards to economic, racial, gender, and environmental problems. Evangelicals go public with their privates on an individual to individual basis. But my maturing faith (fostered by reading OT prophets which are rarely, if ever, preached in Evangelical churches) left me disenchanted and demanding a social/communal aspect to Christian confession.

Coming Soon:
(part 2 of 3) Going Public with My Privates: Evangelical Liberalism/Fundamentalism
(part 3 of 3) Going Public with My Privates: Beyond the Private

Leaving the Faith Undefended

The recent debacle between PZ Myers and the Catholic League brings an interesting concept to the fore of social discussion; does one need to defend the faith? Read more

What’s Enemy-Love Got To Do With It?

My friend Rod recently said he’d enjoy having a few of us – his Mennonite friends – try to persuade him to pacifism. The other three of us there all looked at each other and grinned.

“Oh, this isn’t a one-day kind of decision, friend,” Rusty said to Rod with a laugh. We all nodded. Read more

Changing the wind?

Did you catch Al Jazeera’s special on U.S. politics and religion a few days ago?

Probably not. AJ generally isn’t included in most of our cable packages, and definitely doesn’t pass the bunny-ear test.

The videos of the special, titled “Inside USA: Christianity, Politics and Power,” are available in two parts on YouTube and certainly worth the 25 some-odd minutes it takes to view them.

I was struck at how different AJ’s questions were from U.S. news organizations. It seems as if the U.S. media can’t get beyond, “Yeah, but which candidate are you going to endorse?” (see Shane Claiborne’s Monday post on the God’s Politics blog). Al Jazeera, however, went a bit deeper in its questioning.

Right off the bat, while describing the rise and fall of the Moral Majority over the last 30 or so years, the story put front and center the glaring hypocrisy of Christian compliance and participation with a U.S. political system where money and lobbying rule the day. It is suggested that the church’s identity as following Jesus and politics’ propensity for greed and underhanded tactics are inherently incompatible. We’ve certainly seen that this is the case on the Christian Right over the last quarter-decade.

The thrust of the story, however, is what we’re all hearing quite a bit about in these days leading up to the November election: the changing political face of Evangelicalism. No longer are “Christian” and “Republican” synonymous, they say and write. Rising up is a movement of Christians asking different questions and seeking different politics to answer them.

But Al Jazeera’s report seems to cut through some of the apparent hypocrisy on the Evangelical Left as well, an insight rarely seen outside a few underground blogs, podcasts, and, of course, zines like Jesus Manifesto.

Host Avi Lewis interviews Tony Campolo in the second part of the piece. Strolling through the green lawns of Campolo’s Eastern University in Philly, Lewis almost immediately addresses the conflict of interest in Campolo’s political action and endorsement.

Lewis: You’ve written strongly about ending partisan politics in the church, calling on church leaders to end partisan affiliations. But then you endorsed Hillary Clinton before she dropped out.

Campolo: Yeah, and I think that as individuals, outside of the church, we’re able to do that. There’s a big difference as an individual speaking as a representative of a religious body, and calling upon the members of that body to support a particular candidate or party. And an individual standing up and saying, “This is who I am—“

Lewis: But you’re a leader. You have followers, you—

Campolo: I realize that that has implications —

Lewis: And you’re clearly a Democrat.

Campolo: Obviously. Everybody knows that.

Lewis: And you’re hoping that more Evangelicals will vote Democrat this time.

Campolo: I certainly do.

And with that, the damage is done. Viewers are seeing what Lewis and Al Jazeera had already recognized: That much of the “Religious Left,” of which Campolo, sojourners founder Jim Wallis, and author Brian McLaren are the elder statesmen, is succumbing to the very same pitfalls and trappings as the Religious Right. Campolo dichotomizes the “individual Christian” from the “public Christian,” suggesting that if he simply states that he’s endorsing a candidate as an “individual outside the church” and not as a respected leader, ordinary followers will be able to tell the difference.

Indeed, the public face of our faith is the only witness we have to a broken world crying out for release from its dead-end power plays. Campolo does nobody any good by playing by the same old dead-end rules. Lewis calls him on this a few minutes later in the interview:

Lewis: I’m just having trouble understanding how Evangelical moves in the political arena, which you strongly support and hope go in a slightly different way politically than they have, are different from having Christian values turned into government policy, which is an exclusive version of religion in public life — not a catholic one with a small “c.”

Campolo: Let me say this: There is a lot of common ground. Whether you’re Jewish, whether you’re Muslim, whether you’re Christian, you would agree on this: That helping the poor is a divine order. That we are compelled by Scripture, whether you are going to the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Bible, or the Koran, you’re compelled to respond to the needs of the poor. Let’s start there. And furthermore, when I deal with my agnostic friends, even my atheistic friends, they say caring for the poor is essential. Fine, can we start there? Can we start with caring for the environment, which all religious traditions ask us to do? Are there a number of things we can hold in common? …Sometimes, I think it’s about time Christians start getting back to what the Bible says instead of listening to the pulpit. And that’s why certain Evangelicals like myself and Jim Wallis say, “Let’s go to the Bible.” So in short, we sound like Billy Graham, saying, “It’s about time we look at what the Scripture says instead of what the spokesperson for the Religious Right are telling us.”

Right before this portion of the interview, Campolo had referenced Jim Wallis’ oft-quoted metaphor about how politicians change their views based on the direction of the wind, but the mandate for politically active Christians is to change the wind.

Do Campolo’s words sound like a wind change?

No, his words – along with much of the conversation surrounding progressive Christianity – reflect slightly different wind direction (as the interviewer points out), but the same wind nevertheless. Like Lewis, I too had a hard time understanding how what Campolo is advocating is any different than the strategies of the Religious Right: Seeking to build up a movement to bring about godly principles through legislative means. What Campolo also fails to recognize here is that the Religious Right uses Scripture every bit as much as progressive Christians to justify its political action.

What is needed, and what a few crazies on the margins are calling for, is a “third way” – a solution to our global crises and biblical mandate that subverts rather than joins the “powers and principalities of this dark world.” What is needed is a “back to the Bible” campaign showing that Jesus’ movement of love spread not through political coercion or leveraging power, but by sacrifice, martyrdom, and simple acts of charity.

I wish Shane and Psalters were given a little more face time in the Al Jazeera report, because they are leading this campaign. But alas, I suppose most viewers really only want to hear about who’s endorsing who in “politics as usual.”

I guess this love movement is going to have to stay underground for a bit longer.

Author Bio:: Steve Holt is a disciple, writer, husband, and proud father to an apricot mini poodle, and he lives and conspires in East Boston, MA. You can find his musings about faith, culture, and mission at harvestboston.wordpress.com.

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