Patheos
Patheos Press Items
12/20/2011
I’ve noticed a movement afoot among Christians to take back Christmas. No, I’m not talking about the perennial braying over secular America’s “war on Christmas” from those offended by “holiday” trees. (If you want to know what I think about that war on Christmas, read Sojourners’ Jim Wallis’s take on it. That pretty much sums it up for me.)
12/19/2011
From SoJo, and I agree with Jim Wallis that Fox News’ “defense” of Christmas goes not much deeper than the protection of businesses to use traditional Christian Christmas greetings. Christmas celebrates the humiliation of God in becoming one of us, “who became poor for us so that we might become rich in him,” and our entrance into that gospeling act of Jesus for us.
12/15/2011
It is true of course that the Christian gospel has inherently social implications, and that in some cases direct political action and social activism are entailed, at least for individual Christians working out of their own convictions, if not always for the institutional church itself. It makes sense, then, that the consciences of some Christians are deeply pricked by the message emanating from the Occupy movement and have wholeheartedly thrown their lot in with the cause of the so-called "99 percent." This is in part why religious activists like Jim Wallis and Shane Claiborne have positively engaged the Occupy movement.
12/07/2011
Is free enterprise moral? This question was debated by Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, and Jim Wallis, president and CEO of Sojourners on November 30th at my alma mater, Gordon College.
12/01/2011
I remember the first night I sat down to begin writing Left, Right and Christ. I stared at the blank page and thought, “What did I get myself into?!” There was a real moment when I didn’t know if I was in over my head. I prayed up a storm and heard God say, “Don’t worry. Just write.” As I gave myself to the writing process I experienced what writers call small miracles. With each new chapter the process of writing (and researching) offered opportunities to learn and grow in understanding.
11/23/2011
What does it mean to have the "mind of Christ" and to live out the Gospel in the real world? What is the will of God on economics, abortion, immigration, health care, homosexuality, and war? And why is it that Christians so often disagree starkly on these issues?
Left, Right and Christ spotlights those differences, as two thinkers (Lisa Sharon Harper of Sojourners and D.C. Innes of World Magazine) from very different ends of the political spectrum argue, respectfully and impressively, that their positions reflect "the mind of Christ," or—less boldly, perhaps—the most faithful and efficient way to promote the flourishing of the image of God in human communities.
11/23/2011
I recently read a book that I highly recommend to any Christian interested in American politics and faith. If you read my articles on a regular basis, you know that this is a subject that comes up from time to time. I am not a republican or a democrat – my voter registration states “independent.” This is because my allegiance is to King Jesus and no platform fully fits his kingdom agenda. In this way, I consider myself a “purple” Christian – because my views, with God’s grace, are informed by how I understand the agenda of king Jesus.
Yet, I would be lying if I didn’t put my cards on the table: my politics tend to lean to the left (with some important exceptions). So, naturally, my resonances lie with Lisa Sharon Harper (“democrat”) rather than D.C. Innes (republican) in their book Left, Right, and Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics. With that admitted, Innes clearly loves Jesus and articulates his convictions well.
11/22/2011
The memory of all that came back to me this week while reading Left, Right & Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics by Lisa Sharon Harper & D.C. Innes. In the book, which was sent to me, Harper recounts her story of faith & politics: “I was a happy Democrat until I became a born-again Christian seven years later in August 1983, at a Sunday evening camp church meeting in Cape May, New Jersey. It was the start of Ronald Reagan’s run for his second term in office when a devout friend in my youth group told me very soon after I prayed the prayer of my salvation that I would need to be born again …again (so to speak). Though I wasn’t of voting age, I would have to become a Republican if I was going to call myself a Christian.”
11/20/2011
Jim Wallis wrote that your budget is the most indicative moral document in your world; how you arrange your expenditures is the litmus test of virtue and vice. That’s strong… but he raises an important question.
11/03/2011
The Atlantic’s Molly Ball reports, “Religious Right Still Lacking a Champion in 2012 Field.”
Ball attended a public discussion between Sojourners’ Jim Wallis, a standard-bearer for progressive evangelicals, and Richard Land, the conservative head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
