Micro-powered revolution 11 December, 2007
Posted by Zack in Nevada.4 comments
You’ve probably heard that there’s a big Christian music scene out there. But you might not be aware of just how complete of an alternate reality it is.
Listen to RadioU online for an hour or so, and you’ll get a sampling of Christian indy rock, hard core, rap, reggae, reggaeton and more.
In almost every city, there’s at least one station that plays contemporary Christian rock. RadioU is on in Columbus, for example, and a few other cities. But “Positive & Encouraging K-LOVE” is more mainstream (no reggaeton or speed metal!) and it’s got stations in an unbelievable number of cities—including two in Vegas, where we are now.
And there’s even a version of Casey Kasem’s Top 40 countdown: “20 The Countdown Magazine,” with a guy who sound’s just like Kasem who tells little stories about the artists in between the songs. (Elizabeth informs me that she grew up listening to “20 The Countdown Magazine.” I grew up listening to Casey Kasem. Back then, Dr. Ruth came on right after Kasem. But Elizabeth also informs me that there was no equivalent to Dr. Ruth in the Christian world.)
One thing that’s fascinating is that most of these Christian musicians began their careers as worship leaders at churches (the people who lead the music before the sermon). What that means is that these artists are not just entertainers, they’re co-leaders of the movement alongside preachers and theologians.
For example, David Crowder, who has a song on the 20 right now, began his career in college with fellow student Chris Seay (who’s now a major leader who calls consumerism “the greatest problem facing the American church today”) when they started University Baptist Church together in Waco, Texas.
Here’s a Crowder song we’ve been hearing a lot on K-LOVE:
David Crowder :: Revolutionary Love Desperation leads us here Leads us here Illumination meets us here Meets us here Revelation brings us here Brings us here Restoration frees us here Frees us here And I don't want to leave I don't want to leave this place No, I don't want to leave I never want to leave this place CHORUS It's so amazing Your unchanging love Simply amazing Never changing love Love, love revolutionary love Reparation leads us here Leads us here Liberation meets us here Meets us here Jubilation brings us here Brings us here Higher elevation frees us here Frees us here Your revolutionary love Your revolutionary love, love, love You're a revolution I want to be Revolutionary You're a revolution I want to be Revolutionary You're a revolution I want to be Love, love, love Revolutionary love
Vegas Mega Church 10 December, 2007
Posted by Zack in Nevada.4 comments
I saw Jud Wilhite speak at the Catalyst conference in August, and today I got to see him preach at his Las Vegas mega-church. He’s the author of Stripped: Uncensored grace on the streets of Vegas.
Central Christian Church is huge and hosts five full services per weekend. It was diverse class-wise and ethnically. But it was also diverse in an unusual way that I couldn’t really put my finger on: there were all these people who were…just…so Vegas.
Before his sermon talked about the church’s effort to feed hundreds of homeless children in the Las Vegas Valley. The children have free meals at schools during the week, and CCCLV, along with other churches, provides free meals on weekends. It’s a new program, and the church had a lot of literature available about its plans to “eliminate hunger” in Vegas.
On the flight out here, I watched the new film about performance artist “Reverend Billy,” called What Would Jesus Buy. (I’ll write about that in a post soon—they sent me the DVD to review.) The movie is about a group of NY performers and culture jammers barging into Starbucks and Wal-marts preaching (or singing) at people to “stop shopping.” Billy wants them to spend more time living and loving than consuming. The film contrasted images of wild-eyed children tearing presents open with people communing around the Christmas table.
In Jud’s sermon this morning, called “An X-Mess Story,” he had a similar message—but he wasn’t shouting at strangers in a Big Box store. Instead he was delivering it to ten thousand people (or so, over the whole weekend) who were members of a community, all seeking something together.
I’m in Las Vegas to research how the new presidential Caucus is being organized here. I tried to ask around at church about opinions of the candidates, and whether anyone was going to participate. But people really get weirded out by questions about politics at church. Either I’m a bad a journalist, or there’s just some trick I haven’t figured out yet about political reporting in church! I emailed some of the church’s leaders to see if maybe I can visit some small groups during the week for discussions on this. We’ll see…
Jesus for President 8 December, 2007
Posted by Zack in 2008, Chris Haw, Jesus for President, Pennsylvania, Shane Claiborne.6 comments
Shane Claiborne, one of the most compelling voices of the Revolution sweeping “Jesusland,” is still taking applications for stops in his “Jesus for President” tour. He, Chris Haw and other friends will be visiting dozens of communities this Summer, at the height of the U.S. presidential campaign season, stirring up a different kind of politics. Just what kind of politics they’ll be advocating, I have no idea—except that it will be a challenge both to non-Christians and Christians alike.
This tour is an event to keep your eye on. Each of their stops (they’re criss crossing the nation in a veggie oil powered bus) will likely attract thousands of young (and old) Christian seekers. These will be people who have found Jesus, as the “God of the oppressed,” but are now seeking a way to live out a gospel that was forged in ancient Israel, at the periphery of a global empire, in today’s America, in the belly of a global empire. The subhead of the tour is: “Visiting cities across the empire. Summer 2008.”
You can still request a visit from the Jesus for President tour in your city at jesusforpresident.org. Check out the form below—it’s a really cool way to set up a tour.
Here’s their app for stops:
Young Evangelicals getting uncomfortable 7 December, 2007
Posted by Elizabeth in DC.3 comments
I recently got on a kick that involved buying a couple of Bible studies. One of the first ones I saw was titled: Get Uncomfortable: Serve the Poor. Stop Injustice. Change the World… In Jesus Name.
It took me a while, but I started reading it tonight. I can’t really comment on the content yet, though, because I couldn’t get past the first page: “Meet the Author: Todd Phillips.” As I read about him, I learned that he is the pastor of Frontline, a generational church within a mega-church (i.e., a huge gathering of about 3,000 young people every week that’s part of a larger mega-church).
This whole thing was so surprising to me because, when Zack and I lived in DC (before I met him), I heard about Frontline from someone I met randomly, and I attended it—once. I was disheartened—to say the least. Yes, there were tons of people there, and it seemed really fun. Yes, the music was great. Yes, the people were so nice. But I looked and looked for any sign of social justice work (which was always the way I chose a church community), and I didn’t find any. So I never went back. (Yes, maybe I should have given it another chance, but it has been my experience that if you can’t find a sign of social justice in a church within the first hour, then it’s probably not a big deal for them. So just know that my reading of the church at the time could have been all wrong…)
In the 4.5 years since I visited, though, it seems as though things have changed. In particular, Frontline hired a new pastor, Todd Phillips. Although Todd admits that he didn’t have a social justice focus for the first twelve years that he “followed Christ,” he says that he became convicted of the Biblical madates to help others by reading the Bible.
“My passion for this topic of poverty, injustice, suffering, and God’s heart for the poor came by reading Scripture. The Word of God transformed me as I read, reflected, memorized, and then acted upon God’s truth. I began to see people through God’s eyes as He revealed both His heart and the true condition of our world.”
And so now he’s authored a Bible study for teens/young adults on the topics of serving the poor and stopping injustice. He’s trying to ignite the same passion in his congregation, as well.
I don’t really know what to say about all of this, except that I am amazed. Even though I didn’t have anything bad to say about Frontline, when I visited it, it seemed as though — if there really was a Revolution in Jesusland — that this church might be a stronghold against the revolutionary powers. Not so.
Here are a couple of sentences from the first few pages of the book as he’s talking about the church’s history of not dealing with justice issues:
Many of us have turned the Bible into a self-help program rather than a life-long process of self-denial.
So what do we do? We can sit idly by and hurl accusations at the preachers of our churches. We can judge the country-club mentality of some of our congregations. We can even blame the publishing industry for leading us in the direction of self-indulgence. What will come of that criticsm? Nothing. The only option we have for profound change is to re-engage in the Word of God and then do what it says.
If not “secular,” then what? 5 December, 2007
Posted by Zack in Brian McLaren, matt stoller, Missouri, pastor dan, secular progressives, tmp cafe.31 comments
Ok. As I turn 38 (today!) one lesson I can say I have learned is: Don’t comment about a blog comment thread. Yesterday, I wrote about my disappointment with the tone and content of the responses to Brian McLaren’s posts at TPM Cafe. But, of course, a handful of commenters represent nothing, and it’s impossible to make an objective count of how many were negative, rude, etc.. and how many were not. Also, since I wrote, the level of the discussion over there has come way up.
What I saw in so many of those comments were the same stereotypes and misconceptions about Evangelical Christians that I hear coming from so many otherwise smart, open minded and well-intentioned activists on the left who are outside of the church. I hear it in meetings, at dinners, on conference calls, in one on one conversations. I hear it all the time.
At this point, I really can not say that I belong to one or the other culture. But for the purpose of this conversation, I’m putting on my “outside of the church” hat.
My point is NOT that we should change our views for Christians’ sake. Not at all. They don’t care what we think. My point is that they are something like half the country — and as long as we carry this false and negative understanding of their culture, then we are cutting ourselves off from having a productive social and political relationship with HALF THE COUNTRY. We may as well quit politics.
Please understand what I am NOT saying: I am not saying that we should try to find common ground with a group that stands against everything we believe in. I’m saying: “Surprise! This huge group stands for almost everything that we stand for—and they’re on the move, organizing tens of millions of Americans around our own very same values: people over profit, the environment over mindless growth, meaning over consumerism, means of making a living and health care for all, care for the needy, peace and more.” But we are divided from them by stereotypes and misconceptions.
Instead of pointing to some chaotic comment thread, I should just lay out these stereotypes and misconceptions that are in the way.
But wait — before I can get to that, there’s another problem. Last night I had Matt Stoller yelling at me on the phone (ok, I did some yelling too) about my very use of the categories of “secular progressive” and “progressive evangelical.” Others have criticized me for that too, including Pastor Dan at Street Prophets, several people on the TPM thread and friends in the thread to my last post here.
There has got to be some acceptable way for us to talk about these two different cultures. Yes, they overlap. (More and more, I’m an example of that myself.) I know lots of people who fall into the “progressive evangelical” category working on Democratic presidential campaigns, “secular” progressive orgs, and so on.
Nevertheless, there are two different cultures that we can talk about. And anyone with a foot in each one knows how different they are and how awkward it can be to straddle both.
So I’m asking Matt, Pastor Dan, Mave and others to please help me out here: How would you rather refer to “secular progressives”? First of all, “secular” does not mean atheist. Check out the substantial wikipedia article on Secularism. And here’s a dictionary definition:
Secular: (1) denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis : secular buildings | secular moral theory. Contrasted with sacred. (2) Christian Church (of clergy) not subject to or bound by religious rule; not belonging to or living in a monastic or other order.
As with any political label, to say, “Secular Progressive” bends the definition of “Secular” a little bit. But it works well in the sense that a secular progressive, like a “secular priest” is not acting in the world directly in the service of a religious community. In other words, all of us “secular progressives” can have a range of religious and atheist views.
By “Evangelical Christian Progressives,” on the other hand, I mean people who are tightly woven into an intimate Christian church community that pervades all aspects of their life and politics. Likewise, all aspects of their life and politics are guided by a very specific theological belief set — those beliefs vary somewhat from one community to the next, but all Evangelical Christians have a core theology in common.
Equally as important for this discussion, they mostly (but not all) have a lot of cultural practices in common that stand in stark contrast to most (but not all) “secular progressives.” They don’t approve of sex before marriage, think divorce is unacceptable, find common expressions that “take the lord’s name in vain”—and cussing in general—jarring and believe homosexuality displeases God.
Those cultural differences rule out simple social gathering, let alone intimate political collaboration, between “Secular Progressives” (soon to be renamed!) and “Evangelical Progressives.” It is those cultural and ideological/theological differences that need to be bridged—accepted where possible and negotiated where necessary.
And I don’t see how we can do that without at least having words to use for these two different, albeit overlapping and fuzzy, groups. Without words, we can’t talk. Without talking, we can’t work things out.
But, as Matt said last night, “secular” has become derogatory term used by the right wing against progressives. OK. Then what term can I use?
Brian McLaren attempts intelligent dialog with secular left; secular left responds with snarky insults 4 December, 2007
Posted by Zack in Brian McLaren, Missouri, Secular Left.13 comments
Please check out Brian McLaren’s post at TPM Cafe (an influential progressive politics blog) and the long, mostly hostile and insulting, comment thread that follows.
The comments are a particular rich and diverse example of anti-Christian feelings that are common on the secular left. I’ve been mulling over something like a “way to agree to disagree” that Christian, secular and other faiths’ contingents of the left could use as a basis for friendly and peaceful collaboration. This has spurred me on in that direction—I’ll see what I can come up with.
Sacrificial love & a double book review 27 November, 2007
Posted by Elizabeth in Missouri.5 comments
I just finished reading two books that Zack and I were asked to review: Acts 29: Fifty Days of Prayer to Invite the Holy Spirit by Dr. Terry Teykl (Prayer Point Press, 1999) and Justice in the Burbs: Being the hands of Jesus wherever you live by Will and Lisa Samson (Baker Books, 2007). I could say a lot about both of these books that echo many of the topics Zack’s talked about on this blog: the return to early Christianity, a focus on issues of social justice, the desire to live out a “covenantal” theology. But I’m going to limit my thoughts today to the concept of “sacrificial love” which is a central concept in both of these books—as it is for the revolutionary Christian movement as a whole.
The premise of Acts 29 is that Christians should focus on bringing about redemption (defined in the book as including “radical giving”, “healing”, “astounding community life” and “compassion” for those who are “hurting, confused and unloveable”) to a city. How can a single church implement such a radical agenda? Through sacrificial love. Christians can and should learn to lay “aside personal agendas” in order to “see how the Kingdom can be advanced.” More specifically, this book outlines a 50-day prayer cycle that calls on churches to bring together groups of people to pray for practically everything in the city: local parks, schools, government officials, church leaders, streets, industrial areas, etc. The idea is that Christians should learn from the first Christian communities (described in the Book of Acts), where the disciples prayed continually so that they could have the power to heal the sick and live in radical community where everyone shared all that they had.
The focus on prayer in Acts 29 is complemented by Justice in the Burbs’ focus on action—”being the hands of Jesus wherever you live,” as the subtitle says. This book, written by an award-winning Christian novelist and her husband, who’s working on his PhD in sociology, is half fiction and half non-fiction. The fictional part of the book describes a story of a husband and wife who live in the suburbs and start feeling the need to be more connected to issues of justice. The non-fictional part follows this story line with facts and examples as to how and why the Christian couple were Biblically sound in their endeavors—and how they (and others reading the book) could do more to promote justice where they live. Here again the focus is on sacrificial love: the non-fictional characters learn about the poverty around them and start to give up a lot of what they have and wanted in life in order to care for others.
Although neither of the books talks a lot about how the concept of sacrificial love is related to Jesus, the relationships are clear. His sacrifice (death on the cross) is the guiding light for those who choose to follow Him. Christians feel that we have a duty to recreate that type of love in our lives. And “revolutionary Christians” or “covenantal Christians,” as Zack has called them here, feel that call even more deeply—and are hearing it in the pulpits and are living it out in radical ways, as these books describe.
The idea of sacrificial love is one of the main things that drew me to this movement years ago. I went on a missions trip because the marketing materials said it would give me a “radical” commitment to God. I wanted that; I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself—something that, even though I don’t always understand it, has meaning and gives hope to our lives and our world, something that started 2000 years ago. I think it’s an innate desire in humans to want this. But whether or not you agree with me, I think that’s a lot of what this movement is about—knowing that if we can love the world enough, we can be a part of a long and beautiful history that has the ability to redeem the world.
Mega-Community 26 November, 2007
Posted by Zack in Charismatic Christianity, church, Evangelical Christianity, kingdom theology, mega church, Ohio, religion, Rich Nathan, Transformationalism.4 comments
Yesterday, we were in Columbus, Ohio, and went to one of American’s most dynamic and interesting mega-churches, Vineyard Columbus.
Vineyard Columbus is an example of the mega-church phenomenon at its best. Some say large churches allow people to avoid community because they are so easy to attend anonymously. You can go, and have a powerful experience of worship with the great musicians and preachers that large churches attract, and run home without getting wrapped up in anyone else’s life.
Vineyard Columbus, however, is a pressure cooker of community. As we walked into the sanctuary, where a band and choir were already booming, volunteers handed us a magazine called The Mix that lists literally hundreds of small groups, classes, service opportunities and social activities for adults and children. Before the sermon, two speakers urged people to get involved by tapping into a small group or other activity. All around the church, there were directories of small groups on dozens of topics—so that any individual can make direct contact with a group in their area. The pre-sermon speakers reminded small group members that there were cards in the pews for inviting anyone they met at church to their group. And new comers were asked to raise their hands to receive a special welcome packet that included more information on groups and activities, as well as information about the church and a CD of worship music produced by the church.
That may sound like a lot of hype and marketing, but it wasn’t. It was totally low key. The feeling we had was of a large church that was bursting at the seams with community, and that if we lived in Columbus it would be the easiest thing in the world to become an integral part of it.
(Vineyard Columbus has also become a major social service provider in Columbus. I met senior pastor Rich Nathan at Sojourners Call to Renewal earlier this year and heard about the various programs that the church is running. To do the church’s community work justice, I’d have interview church and city leaders, and unfortunately I’m not able to now.)
As you can see from the pictures, the church is enormous. We entered through the far entrance and walked through two different sections where younger and older children have their worship services. Each was packed. There were plenty of adults around, but kids seemed to be doing a lot of the work of greeting people, distributing info and getting ready for the services. It looked like a great place to be a kid. I wonder what the culture is like among kids at these big churches that are trying so hard to live as radical followers of Jesus. Do the kids still have cliques? Is there a popular group that ignores everyone else? Or do they actually live differently?
The sermon, by Steve Robbins, was exciting and fascinating. I think Vineyard is firmly in the “Kingdom Theology” camp—but I’m not sure if this is true for all Vineyard churches, or just the one’s I’ve visited or listened to online. Robbins’ sermon was all about building the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth now.
The Vineyard is not a denomination, but a family of more than 1,500 churches, that have come together or have been planted as part of the Vineyard movement with a shared culture and set of values. (Many outsiders consider them a denomination.)
Robbins’ sermon focused on the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. He said that every time someone is healed of addiction, every time that broken relationship is put back together, every time that love overcomes violence…that the Kingdom of Heaven comes closer.
And he added to that: “Every time a structural, political evil that oppresses” people is undone, the Kingdom of Heaven comes closer.
He talked about how he grew up in a “suburban, affluent, white…and racist” community, and that the first thing God called him to change when he became a Christian was his racism. The message he got from God was, (paraphrasing) “If you don’t start valuing people as I do…and stop looking down on people who look different from you…then you’re not going to be able to know me.” (When he says “God told me…” he didn’t mean that he heard a voice from God, but that he had a set of experiences, probably involving a lot of Bible study and worship, that led him to that conclusion.)
Going to church at Vineyard Columbus yesterday led me to more thinking and research on several topics: the growing influence of Charismatic Christianity on mainline and traditional Evangelical Christianity, the importance of the (hippy) Jesus Movement on the Evangelical explosion of the 80′s, 90′s and present day and “Transformationalism“. And Steve Robbin’s sermon brought up some really tough issues for me regarding international evangelism. I was on a roll here, about to pack all those topics into one post, but for your sake I’m stopping myself and will hopefully pick up those topics in posts through this week.
(Pict from Vineyard Columbus website)
In case you’ve missed it so far… 19 November, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri.5 comments
Some of my friends back in world of lefty politics are just realizing that I’m writing this blog and are asking, “What in the world are you doing?” So here’s a quick catch-up for those joining this blog already in progress.
First, here are my favorite posts so far, if you want to dive right in:
- Almost Speechless (w/ Audio Clips from an amazing evangelical conference)
- An Air Force cadet whose Bible caused him to drop out
- Class war in the Bible?
- Chris Seay’s video
- A tale of two movements
Elizabeth and I have been traveling the country for the past few months working on a couple of different projects. Right away, we kept bumping into these amazing communities of “progressive evangelical” Christians—that is, people who hold a lot of progressive (even radical) political views, but who believe in an almost fundamentalist theology. It’s a huge movement—possibly of up to twenty million active participants. And so I decided to start this blog as way of explaining it to my secular progressive friends and colleagues back in DC.
I have been watching this “Revolutionary Christian” scene for a couple years already. Honestly, I thought I was exaggerating its size when I was trying to get my friends excited about it. But, as it turns out, it’s far bigger than I ever imagined.
When Elizabeth and I got married, I started going to church with her. We were in North Carolina then, and explored many different non-denominational and charismatic evangelical churches. I was shocked at how radical they were when it came to social-economic issues. They all seemed to be whipped up in the beginnings of some sort of conscious mass return to the spirit of Early Christianity—of leaving your wealth behind, not just helping the poor but joining the poor, adopting kids lost in the foster system and HIV+ babies, etc….
Only small handfuls of people in the congregations were actually doing those kinds of things, but they were being held up as the ideal, while the preachers relentlessly laid down the new/ancient theology of building “the Kingdom of Heaven” here on Earth, and of a Jesus who is “the God of the poor and oppressed.”
For me, surprise turned to feverish curiosity when a mostly upper-middle class/suburban/Republican mega-church had a sermon, based on the New Testament Epistle to the Colossians, that railed against the “Empire” of Pax Americana—the empire of “might makes right” and idolatrous consumerism.
Some googling turned up a whole web of explicit anti-Imperialist and even anti-Capitalist thinking at evangelical Churches all over the country. I wrote an article about some of the key players for In These Times magazine. But still, I admit that I thought the movement was limited to a handful of churches in college towns and a few Northern cities.
But then, a few months ago, when we hit the road, first in Georgia and South Carolina and then Iowa—we realized these people were everywhere, all around us. I mean literally: out here, I look around any coffee shop and half the time can find someone reading one of the books of this movement (usually with their Bible and highlighter handy) or holding a discussion or Bible study, punctuated at the start and end by hands joined and heads bowed in prayer. They are sitting next to us on planes. They are taking over in half of the little, Bible-banging churches we wander into on Sundays wherever we are.
Therefore, this blog. Last month we went to a few big Christian conferences that totally blew me away. Check out the posts from the Catalyst conference—especially this one.
So—now you’re all caught up. I’ll keep reporting here from around the country as we go.
If you have suggestions for any particular churches or communities to write about, please email us at info@revolutioninjesusland.com.
“Covenantal Christians” 18 November, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri.11 comments
I know this sounds bad, but yesterday I listened in on the whole beginning of a first date between two young Christians. I was sitting in a coffee shop, staring at my laptop, hoping for inspiration for a blog post, and then the post sat right down at the table next to me.
Their conversation answered a question I’ve been walking around with for a long time: What is the essential difference between these progressive “evangelicals” (who are new to me and who I’ve been writing about on this blog) and liberal Christians (who I’ve known all my life)?
One would think the difference is theological—e.g. Bible as inerrant/inspired Word of God vs. Bible as literature to be taken with a grain of salt.
But that can’t be the essential difference because so many of the people we meet in churches differ in their personal beliefs from the official line of their church. So, what is attracting so many theological liberals, who believe the Bible is just some darn good literature, to churches that believe Jesus is coming back on a cloud with a sword coming out of him mouth?
At the table next to me in the coffee shop, a long round of small talk got me up to speed on where the two young Christians stood theologically and political. The man is a pastor (maybe a youth pastor) at a liberal mainline church. The woman attends a “theologically conservative” Emergent church. But actually, the woman was even more liberal theologically than the liberal pastor: for example, believes that everyone around the world is worshiping the same God in their own way. Mark Driscoll would have blown a gasket!
The liberal mainline pastor said he had visited her church once and was turned off a little by the preacher’s informal outfit of jeans and sandals over socks. But, worse, he was frustrated that the preacher delivered a sermon about marriage without giving a position on gay marriage. The man was pro-gay rights, and thought the preacher should have either come out for or against considering all the controversy. The woman, who I think said she also supported gay rights, seemed not to agree, perhaps thinking that church unity is more important.
The woman said she supports Hillary for president, saying, “I know it’s awful, but I support her because she’s a woman.” The guy was still weighing the candidates and it sounded like Obama had a good chance with him.
The woman talked about her sister, who is moving to what sounded like a Christian intentional community in a poor area of Kansas City (the kind I’ve been writing about recently).
OK. And then the big difference emerged. They started talking about a movie they both saw recently called Once. I’ve seen the movie—it’s awesome. It’s a tale of two people who fall in love, but don’t do anything about it because one of them is married (unhappily).
The first thing the woman said about the movie was, “I loved that they didn’t get together in the end.”
“Really?” the man said incredulously, “That’s so interesting that you feel that way…they were in love, and she was unhappy in her marriage!”
Now, this woman seemed really nice, and I shook my head with pity for this poor guy as he ploughed ahead, ruining any chance he had with her. But at least he was being honest.
“She was married!” said the woman.
“But she was in love with the other guy,” the man said, “Her heart was with him… Would you want to be married with someone who’s heart was with someone else?”
The last scene in that beautiful movie is the woman looking out her window, longingly, thinking of the life she could have had with the other guy (playing a piano the guy had given her). But there was more to it: her husband, apparently a bit reformed, was inside playing with their kid. She wasn’t exactly remorseful, she was going to make the best of her situation.
The woman said, “She didn’t leave her husband because she had made a commitment.”
“But she wasn’t happy,” said the guy.
The woman answered, “When you’re dating, and you’re not happy, then you just move on. But marriage is when you make a decision to be with someone no matter what. You make it work. You don’t change you mind on that kind of commitment.”
At that point, I almost stood up and shouted, “Eureka!” On display within this doomed first date was the essential difference between liberals and…this other kind of Christian: The difference is in the attitude toward selfless commitment to principals and traditions that could be considered by some to be arbitrary (and principals and traditions which happen to be spelled out in the Bible).
As I thought about it, I realized that every sermon I’ve ever heard at one of these Bible-based churches were about a sacrifice that you have to make for God. They’re about sacrificing for your kids, your spouse, your community, the poor…and to God. All those various sacrifices are all sacrifices you’re making to God, because, for example, by sacrificing for the poor, you’re obeying God’s commands.
It is that sacrificial attitude that unites all the Christians who might fall under these various overlapping labels: Emergent, Red-Letter, Evangelical, Born Again and even maybe Fundamentalist.
If you add up all those groups, they are massively diverse in their theological and political belief systems, but they pretty much all have one thing in common: they believe that a God who is actively engaged in humanity is inviting us into a new covenant with him—one aiming at peace and justice—and they are desperately trying to live up to this new covenant.
So from now on, I’m going to call these Christians “Covenantal Christians.” It’s a big relief to finally have a term that might describe everyone I’m writing about on this blog from extremely progressive Emergent or Red Letter Christians to very conservative Evangelical, Born Again or Fundamentalist Christians.
So…”Covenantal Christians.” Any reactions? I realize that a lot of the liberal churches that I’m leaving out of this label officially subscribe to “Covenantal Theology.” But I’m using this term to describe not official written-down doctrine of a church, but rather the stance in which people are striving to live today, in their own lives towards other people and towards God.
____
PS: If this blog post somehow makes it to one of those people I overheard…I’m sorry! But at least I’m not doing anything that hasn’t also happened to me…
