Movement
Dear Zack,
First of all, let me say thanks. I'm so grateful for the honest questioning of a convert to Christianity who seems to intuit Jesus' radical politics. Your story is such [...]
Sojourners' June issue features Jim Wallis and the progressive shift within the evangelical community just got a little shout-out on a Daily Kos diary-which is great:
... this conservative Christian college is showing signs of a real shift in perspective. Being overtly Christian is no [...]
Over the last few years, I've gotten acquainted with a movement of Christians that is vibrant, enormous, and yet refuses to let itself be named or to take credit for any of its accomplishments. Some have named subsets or aspects of the movement -- for example, "The New Monastics," "The Emergent Church," "Ordinary Radicals," and even "Revolutionaries." But there are millions of people swept up into this movement who have never even heard those phrases. [...]
Zack Exley over at Revolution in Jesusland has been offering some careful thought and excellent questions about Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw's new book Jesus for President. His questions are well worth reading in depth, [...]
Christine Haider, 25, is preparing for her confirmation to the Roman Catholic Church. When asked about her confirmation name, she smiles broadly and says, "Dorothy." Seventy-five years since the founding of the Catholic Worker Movement, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin continue to call a new generation of the faithful to a radical gospel of nonviolent resistance to evil and hospitality to [...]
Last evening, I spoke at the Belmont Heights Baptist Church, just off the campus of Belmont University in Nashville. It was a good event, with the always-inspiring music of Ashley Cleveland, Kenny Greenberg, and Marcus Hammond. As is usually the case, there were [...]
In The Great Awakening, I wrote,
Imagine something called Justice Revivals, in the powerful tradition of revivals past but focusing on the great moral issues of our time.
Imagine linking the tradition of Billy Graham with the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr.
Imagine a new generation of young people catching fire and offering [...]
Several weeks ago, a pair of doves built a nest on a front windowsill at my house. My family watched as the mother bird laid two eggs, as they hatched, and as the young chicks feathered. We grew attached to the winged family who made their home with ours.
Two mornings ago, I was checking on the baby birds when a grackle (a large blackbird that a friend calls the "Darth Vader" of the bird world) swooped down and [...]
Jim Wallis, in his book The Great Awakening said,
Imagine something called Justice Revivals in the powerful tradition of revivals past, but focusing on the great moral issues of our time. Imagine linking the tradition of Billy Graham with the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. Imagine a new generation of young people catching fire and offering their gifts, talents, and lives in a new spiritual movement for social justice. Imagine such revivals taking place in [...]
I want to personally invite you to Washington, D.C., on June 13 through 16 to participate in Pentecost 2008: Training for Change. For more than a decade, we have held an annual mobilization around the time of Pentecost to lift up a vision of overcoming poverty to the nation. I believe that with your help we can make this a pivotal year of elevating poverty to the top of the national agenda, [...]
What about the mosaic revival is comforting? As a Latino evangelical leader, one of the things I am asking is moving beyond polarization. In this mosaic revival, we know that though politics is not the whole solution, it will be a vital part. We need the nexus of clergy, good government, activists, entrepreneurs, moms and dads, educators, etc. As a Christian who is part of the mosaic revival, I cling to one thing: my commitment is to Christ and the gospel first, not to any political [...]
Tuesday night, I spoke at the historic Park Street Church in Boston, where the second Great Awakening evangelist Charles Finney preached in 1831, calling people to faith in Jesus Christ and then to enlist in the anti-slavery campaign. William Lloyd Garrison delivered his first abolitionist speech here when he was only 23 years old. I was facing a packed church on a Tuesday night, full of 600 20-something evangelicals who want to be a generation of new abolitionists - focusing on the most [...]
The most considerable evidence that we're entering a "post-Religious Right America" is the shifting political agenda and theological emphasis of a new generation of 20-something evangelicals. I meet them all the time on the road; they are coming out of the woodwork for The Great Awakening book events in mass numbers.
I travel with one of these young evangelicals, a missionary kid who grew up in the former Soviet Union and who recently graduated from Bethel University in St. Paul, [...]
Sunday morning a week ago I preached at the beautiful Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, California. Their service blends the best of the Anglo/Catholic Episcopal tradition with the creative San Francisco one-this time beginning the recessional with dragons celebrating the Chinese New Year. Offering a sermon on hope with the light of a dozen stained glass windows dancing in the huge Gothic Cathedral [...]
Snapshots from the road: Portland, Oregon.
Last week we began the national 20-city book tour for The Great Awakening in Portland, Oregon, at a majestic old venue called the Bagdad theater. It's a renovated 1920's era cinema, one part Grand Old Opry and two parts Ali-baba
During the 2004 election cycle, I was bombarded repeatedly with messages about how young voters had failed to be involved in the electoral process. My generation-the Millennials-was failing to live up to its potential, it seemed. This time we're starting to shake things up-and people are taking note.
Motivated by growing economic inequalities, a declining environment, excessive war, [...]
This post is drawn from a message I sent to our staff at Sojourners, thanking them for their hard work and support as I begin the exhausting pace of The Great Awakening book tour. I'd like to share it with you as well. I really need your prayers, and wanted to share with you the prayer that I will be saying everyday-likely again and again! It is from Charles de Foucauld. He was a French aristocrat who joined the French army in Algeria, then left it, lived there identifying with the [...]
Discover what God is doing through a new generation of risk-takers, innovators, and prophets at The New Conspirators. We have asked these young conspirators, who comprise at least four new streams, to share their stories, dreams, and struggles on Feb. 28-March 1, 2008, in Seattle. These four streams include: the new monasticism, the mosaic [...]