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Evangelizing the World: Reflections on Lausanne III Last October, over 4,000 evangelicals from almost every nation on earth met in Cape Town, South Africa, to pray and plan better ways to share the whole gospel with the whole world. (Both Al Tizon and I had the privilege of being participants.)

Thirty-six years earlier, Billy Graham had assembled the first Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland, to focus the energy and resources of the global church on evangelism. The primary mission of the church, Graham said, is saving souls. But ringing papers by younger Latin American evangelicals Samuel Escobar and René Padilla moved the congress to declare in its historic Lausanne Covenant that evangelism and social responsibility are both part of our Christian duty. Vigorous, intense debate followed, but the advocates of holistic mission prevailed (see Al Tizon’s excellent history in Transformation after Lausanne: Radical Evangelical Mission in Global-Local Perspective; Wipf & Stock, 2008).

At Lausanne III in Cape Town, the biblical obligation to combine evangelism and social action was assumed by almost everyone. A deep, powerful longing to share the gospel with everyone who is not a believer pervaded the congress.

But so did the call to seek justice for the poor, care for the environment, combat HIV/AIDS, and work for peace. A vast array of breakout sessions and dialogues addressed both the best strategies for

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effective evangelism and the urgency and practice of social engagement.

Lausanne III accurately reflected the huge change that has occurred among evangelicals all around the world. Holistic ministry–combining evangelism and social action–is now part of our spiritual DNA. And the official document from the congress, the Cape Town Commitment, provides a superb, biblical theological foundation for deepening our holistic engagement.

For the first time ever at a global evangelical congress, creation care received attention. In some workshops, and especially in the official statement from the congress, our responsibility as biblical Christians to care for the environment and combat the reality of climate change was clearly affirmed–and grounded in a solid theological framework: “Creation care is a gospel issue...

The gospel is God’s good news, through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, for individual persons, and for society, and for creation. All three are broken and suffering because of sin; all three are included in the redeeming love and mission of God; all three must be part of the comprehensive mission of God’s people” (Section 7).

Lausanne III was far less Western (and American) than previous congresses. Sixty percent of the participants were from the global South and East (Asia, Latin America, and Africa) where threequarters of all Christians now live. The program chair was Ramez Atallah from Egypt. Americans still had too much influence, but it was substantially less than at Lausanne I and II. I was surprised and delighted at the prominence of women at the conference: 27 percent of the participants were women (although the goal had been 35 percent). Women were prominent in the plenary sessions–Ruth Padilla DeBorst gave one of the morning plenary Bible

expositions. Brenda Salter-McNeil was co-chair of the morning plenaries. Grace Mathews played a prominent role presiding, along with Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda, in the final communion service. A young American couple gave a clear plenary call for mutual submission and full recognition of the equal roles of women and men in the church based on gifting. Privately, when I asked one US church leader what percent of the US delegation would have been opposed to this prominent role for women, he astonished me with his comment: only 5 percent! There is still a long way to go.

Women were not close to being half of all speakers or planning committee members. But Lausanne III did demonstrate substantial progress.

Many things, of course, could have been better. Repeated claims from the platform that Lausanne III represented the whole church were tragically false– virtually no Catholic and Orthodox Christians were present. American managerial missiology was alive and visible at Cape Town. But the positive features of Lausanne III far outweighed these and other weaknesses.

Again and again, personally, I was caught up in intense worship. I felt a deeper love for Christ our Lord and Savior.

Worshiping together–with the help of wonderful musicians and liturgical dancers–with Christians from almost every nation on earth was deeply moving.

Praise God for what, on balance, was an important global conference reflecting the growing maturity of global evangelicalism. And, far more importantly, thank God for a ringing call to get on with the task of sharing the whole gospel with the whole world.

Ron Sider is the founder and president of Evangelicals for Social Action, author of dozens of books, and professor of theology/holistic ministry/public policy at Palmer Seminary of Eastern University.

RON SIDER

The View from a Giant’s Shoulders

in retirement,Vernon Grounds modeled tireless service to the kingdom. For most of his 30-plus years of retirement, he continued to teach, counsel (in the Vernon Grounds Counseling Center at Denver Seminary), speak, and write.

His selection as master of ceremonies for the important evangelical conference on peacemaking that took place An evangelical giant has just left us to in Pasadena, Calif., in 1983 reflected be with the Lord. Dr.Vernon Grounds, both his prominence as an evangelical prominent evangelical leader for decades leader and his own vigorous commitand close friend of Evangelicals for Social ment to peace. But few things better Action, died on September 12 at the illustrate the degree to which Vernon Grounds was a pioneer well ahead of age of 96.

Vernon Grounds’ life and ministry his time than his 1967 lectures published significantly shaped modern evangelical as Evangelicalism and Social Responsibility.

Christianity. He began in the heart of This ringing call for evangelicals to comAmerican fundamentalism, taking his bine evangelism and social responsibility seminary degree at Faith Theological Seminary, which was founded by the prominent, reactionary fundamentalist, Carl McIntire. But by the time he moved to Denver in 1951 to join a new Baptist seminary as professor (eventually going on to become dean and then president), Vernon was becoming a prominent leader of a new kind of evangelicalism that embraced vigorous engagement with the modern world — via academic excellence, sociopolitical engagement, and loving In Loving Memory of Dr. Vernon Grounds respect for everyone.

J u ly 1 9 , 1 9 1 4 – S e p tem b er 1 2 , 2 0 1 0 In 1973 Grounds signed the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern, was delivered six years before the Chicago a document that launched Evangelicals Declaration of Evangelical Concern for Social Action. After retiring as presi- (1973), seven years before the Lausanne dent of Denver Seminary in 1979 after Covenant’s section 5 urging evangelical serving for two decades,Vernon agreed social responsibility. I was still in graduto help ESA, serving (without any salary!) ate school! That was back when Jerry as ESA’s president for several years. His Falwell was still condemning Martin reputation as a prominent evangelical Luther King, Jr.’s political engagement leader, plus the articles he wrote for ESA’s with the claim that Christ calls us to publications, was a great gift to our young preach the gospel, not to influence politics. That was back when many of movement.

The 19,000 books in Grounds’ per- evangelicalism’s most visible voices still sonal library reflect his love of learning. understood persons primarily as souls to The 75,000 miles he traveled to speak — be saved rather than body-soul beings just in 1962 — indicate his energy. The made for community and needing God’s 71-year-marriage he enjoyed with his total salvation.

Vernon Grounds also anticipated many wife demonstrates his dedication. Even PRISM 2 0 1 0

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of the momentous changes in evangelicalism over the last 40 years. With his vigorous claim that “personal evangelism and social concern are two sides of the same coin,” he was an early harbinger of what is now the evangelical consensus — that Christian mission must embrace both evangelism and social action. With his insistence that the human person “is not a disembodied spirit” but rather a “fleshand-blood being who needs bread as well as truth, shelter here as well as heaven hereafter, clothes for his body as well as the robe of righteousness for his soul,” he pointed the way toward a truly Hebraic understanding of persons and away from a one-sided, Platonic overemphasis on the soul. With his vigorous call for evangelical political action, he anticipated evangelicalism’s political re-engagement so often identified with the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition but did so with wisdom, caution, and qualifications that, if heeded, would have spared us the ghastly mistakes of the religious right.

Today it takes precious little daring to speak for holistic ministry combining evangelism and social action or to urge evangelical political engagement. But that was certainly not the case in 1967. Back then, whatVernon Grounds said in Evangelicalism and Social Responsibility was as controversial as it was insightful. For the president of a leading evangelical seminary to say these things took courage. It also involved the risk of loss of funds from influential donors and nasty attacks by fundamentalists. But Vernon Grounds was unconditionally committed to Jesus Christ and the Scriptures, not some short-term calculation of institutional self-interest or avoidance of controversy.

A wise person has said that if we see more clearly than our predecessors, it is because we stand on their shoulders. I am not certain that we see more clearly than Vernon Grounds, but we certainly stand on his shoulders. Thank God for this faithful servant, courageous pioneer, and successful leader. n

RON SIDER

Called to Love the Gay Community

stories. John, the former president of the student body at one of the most famous evangelical universities, told Marin how he had prayed every night for 15 years that God would change his gay orientation, but his feelings never changed.This experience is shared by many of the people Marin has met; they eventually reject a God who, they believe, ignores their This summer I read Andrew Marin’s pow- fervent, desperate prayers.

Evangelicals have gone to great lengths erful book, Love Is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation with the Gay Community to share the gospel with people of almost every culture. We study others’ beliefs, (InterVarsity Press, 2009).

Marin has an incredible story. After move into their neighborhoods, and open his first year at a prominent evangelical our hearts to them so we can share the university, three of his best (Christian) goodness of Christ. We have done this friends told him they were gay/lesbian. everywhere, contends Marin, except in In response, Marin, a straight, thoroughly the gay/lesbian community. evangelical Christian, felt called by God Evangelicals have gone to to immerse himself in the gay/lesbian community. He decided to spend almost great lengths to share the all his free time there, listening and gospel with people of almost learning. He now lives with his wife in Boystown, a GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexevery culture — everywhere, ual, and transgendered) neighborhood contends Marin, except in in Chicago. For most of the last decade, he has spent thousands of hours listenthe gay/lesbian community. ing to, weeping with, and befriending A pioneer, Marin listens rather than these folks, trying to see the world from judges. He quotes Billy Graham’s response their perspective.

As most of us know, a huge gulf sepa- to his critics for attending a meeting rates evangelical Christians and the gay/ with Bill Clinton after the president’s lesbian community. To a large extent sex scandal: “It is the Holy Spirit’s job because of our failures, they mistrust, to convict, God’s job to judge, and my despise, and are enormously hostile to job to love.” He avoids answering the evangelicals, viewing us as homophobic inevitable, closed-ended questions that come from both the GLBT folks (“Do bigots.

But Marin discovered deep spiritual you think homosexuality is a sin?”) and longing in this community. By patient, the evangelical folks (“Can gays and lespersistent listening — even when wounded bians change?”). Rather than taking on people vented their anger at him because these conversation-stopping questions, of painful past experiences with evan- Marin reframes the discussion with quesgelicals — Marin eventually won their tions about God’s love: “How do you respect and the opportunity to share the think your genetic makeup relates to love of God in Christ. Many found com- God’s desire to be called your Father?”

One weakness of the book is that fort in his friendship because, unlike both the GLBT ghetto and the Christian ghetto, Marin seems to lack an adequate underhe focused on their relationship with standing of the church and the communal responsibility of the Christian Christ rather than on their sexuality.

Marin’s book is full of wrenching community for moral discernment and PRISM 2010

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mutual accountability. Marin says that when a gay person tells a Christian that God has told him it is okay to be gay, it is wrong to “defend a traditional interpretation of God’s posture toward homosexuality”— that is to “step in between the other person and God.” Instead one should let God speak to that person, “personally and individually telling each of his beloved children what he feels is best for their life.”

That is simply too individualistic. On the other hand, Marin is surely right in stressing God’s timetable.We too often rush in to demand instant change rather than waiting for the Holy Spirit to move on the divine schedule.

Whether or not one agrees with every line in the book, it is clear that Marin is strongly evangelical. He is unconditionally committed to biblical authority, and he longs to remove the barriers that prevent large numbers of gays and lesbians from embracing the gospel. His excellent suggestions on how to build bridges to the GLBT community make this is an enormously important book for all Christians — especially evangelicals — to read.

Why? Because like the rest of us, gays and lesbians are made in the image of God and loved by the Father. Because the GLBT issue is one of the most controverted topics today. Because evangelicals are almost universally viewed as homophobic bigots. And because our lack of love, friendship, and understanding prevents us from sharing the gospel with this important community and also from making progress on other crucial agendas.

I pray that ESA and PRISM magazine become leaders in a new kind of sensitive, listening dialogue with gays and lesbians.

That doesn’t mean we’re changing our position on homosexual practice or gay marriage. Nor does it mean that we’re a neutral forum for dialogue. Instead, I want ESA to be a loving place where gays and lesbians can freely express their views even as ESA remains firmly committed to the biblical teaching that God’s will for sexual Continued on page 39.

RON SIDER

Helping NGOs Fight Poverty

religious bias, threatened to take over many of the traditional roles of the church in education and care for the poor.

In response, Dutch Calvinists led by Abraham Kuyper developed the theory of “sphere sovereignty”— i.e., God has established many societal institutions as With his endorsement of much of independent realms that rightly control President George W. Bush’s faith-based their own spheres. Instead of becoming initiative during his presidential cam- all-powerful and ever-present, governpaign and his subsequent actions as presi- ment should be limited and support these dent, Barack Obama has cemented this other institutions. But Kuyper also realconcept as a bipartisan consensus in ized that an unrestricted market econAmerican politics. But the liberal-con- omy was just as great a danger to family, servative battles over Bush’s initiative and church, and other community institutions the inherent weaknesses of his vision as was an all-powerful government.

The practical implication of this social produced a faith-based initiative which theory was the vision that government was fundamentally inadequate for overrightly both places limits on market coming American poverty. capitalism and funds universal educaA brilliant new book by Lew Daly, tion/economic programs to empower God’s Economy: Faith-Based Initiatives and the poor.

Furthermore, a great deal of the Caring State (University of Chicago the government funding for these proPress, 2009), places this whole debate grams should flow through a variety of over the initiative in a much broader NGOs. Churches and other religious context and shows us how its weakorganizations should be as free as other nesses could be corrected. groups to run schools and social service The core of Daly’s argument is that agencies, using government funds.

ProBush’s faith-based initiative transcended moted by Christian Democratic political earlier debates between liberals and conservatives about anti-poverty programs parties, these ideas profoundly shaped (conservatives wanted to end govern- policies in education and social welfare, ment responsibility by privatizing wel- especially in Holland and Germany. As fare programs, and liberals wanted to a result, these countries have substanexpand government-run programs). tially less poverty than the US. Daly shows how these ideas — mediBuilding on ideas that originated in ated especially by James Skillen and European Christian Democratic circles, Stanley Carlson-Thies of the Center Bush (unlike Reagan libertarians) retained for Public Justice — influenced George a major role for government in comW. Bush.

Bush argued that government bating poverty but greatly elevated the had an important role in overcoming role of faith-based organizations as the poverty.

But he insisted that the organidelivery systems. Unfortunately, Bush’s zations delivering social services using uncritical embrace of a largely unregovernment funds should be greatly strained market economy prevented him expanded.

He insisted on a “level playfrom understanding another key aspect ing field” that no longer discriminated of European Christian Democracy — i.e., not only an all-powerful state but against faith-based organizations in the also an unrestrained market can and does distribution of government funds. That, Daly argues, produced a major, positive destroy families and communities.

In the 19th century strong national shift in American anti-poverty programs.

Unfortunately, President Bush failed governments, often with a vigorous antiPRISM 2 0 1 0

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to grasp another crucial aspect of European Christian Democrats. Bush uncritically embraced the view that there should be very few restrictions on the market economy. The vast majority of his tax cuts went to the richest 25 percent instead of empowering the poorer segments of society, and he failed largely to expand effective programs to empower the poor. In spite of President Bush’s new, significant faith-based initiative, the number of Americans in poverty steadily increased during his presidency.

Understanding what Bush got right and wrong helps us see how to do it better. He was right in rejecting the dominant Reagan-Republican push to abandon governmental responsibility to alleviate poverty. He was also right to embrace a much wider role for NGOs in the delivery of government-funded antipoverty programs. Tragically, President Bush failed to provide enough funding to combat poverty and failed to see how an unrestrained market economy threatens families and communities just as much as an all-powerful government.

The way forward, therefore, is to strengthen, not weaken, the role of a wide variety of agencies in the delivery of government-funded anti-poverty programs. That includes adequately protecting the religious identity of faithbased organizations. But the state must act to place effective restraints on markets in order to reduce their negative impact on families and communities. It must also expand funding for effective programs that reduce poverty.The common good trumps unrestrained private economic self-interest. To embrace that whole agenda, both liberals and conservatives will have to abandon one-sided views and partisan bickering.

Hopefully large numbers of Christians and others of goodwill in both parties will insist that both Democrats and Republicans adopt this more holistic agenda for the common good. Q

RON SIDER

An Easter Meditation on the Carpenter

tury Jews knew such polytheistic notions were false—indeed blasphemous. “The Lord our God is One” was the central creed of first-century Jews.

For some reason, however, a large number of strictly monotheistic firstcentury Jews — including the highly trained orthodox rabbi Saul of Tarsus — began telling the world that a particAccording to the gospel account,Thomas ular carpenter from Nazareth was God flatly refused to believe the other disci- in the flesh. “For God was pleased to ples’ report that the crucified Jesus was have all his fullness dwell in him” (Col. alive. Unless he personally probed the 1:9). “The Son is the radiance of God’s wounds in Jesus’ hands and side, he glory and the exact representation of his insisted, he would not believe such fan- being” (Heb. 1:3). “In the beginning tasy. But when the risen Christ stepped was the Word, and the Word was with into the room, he could only utter in God, and the Word was God … [and] the amazed awe: “My Lord and my God” Word became flesh” (John 1:1, 14).

How can one explain such statements (John 20:28).

In Philippians 2 (written roughly 30 from the mouths of rigid monotheists? years after the crucifixion), Paul declares It was certainly not that they doubted that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus What the early disciples Christ is Lord (Phil. 2:10-11).Two things make this statement utterly astonishing. experienced forced them to First, Paul is quoting from Isaiah radically rethink their most 45:23 where Yahweh mocks the idols central theological belief. and declares in a thoroughly monotheistic vein that he alone is God:“Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue Jesus’ humanity. Some of them had spent will swear.” Paul takes these intensely three years eating, drinking, and walking monotheistic words from the mouth of the dusty roads of Palestine with this carthe one God and applies them to the penter-turned-preacher.

The only plausible explanation is that carpenter from Nazareth. Furthermore, he calls Jesus “Lord” (kurios) — the word astonishing things happened to these used in the Greek translation of the Old monotheistic Jews that compelled them Testament to translate the word Yahweh. to believe that the One God of the Paul is clearly asserting that Jesus the car- universe had somehow become flesh in the carpenter they knew so well. Even penter is not just Messiah but God. The second reason this statement by during his public ministry, to be sure, Jesus Paul (and similar ones by Thomas and had made claims that perplexed them. He other Christians) is so astounding is that not only said he was the long-expected Paul — and the others — were all devout Messiah, but he also claimed divine Jews. The most important, the most authority to forgive sins (Mark 2:10). distinctive characteristic of first-century He announced that he was Lord of the Jewish belief was its strict monotheism. Sabbath (Mark 2:28) and at his trial even Lots of people in the first century acknowledged that he was the Son of believed there were many gods and god- God (Mark 14:61-62).

All through the New Testament it is desses — and they sometimes ran around doing very strange things. But first-cen- clear that it was the disciples’ experience PRISM 2 0 1 0

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of the risen Jesus — in spite of important parts of their prior belief system — that convinced them that his claims were true. The resurrection compelled them to make seemingly blasphemous statements about the carpenter. In fact Saul, the highly educated rabbi, was so furious with this blasphemy that he worked fervently to execute Jesus’ early followers — until he, too, met the risen Jesus. What the early disciples experienced forced them to radically rethink their most central theological belief.

To be sure, it took several centuries for the church to think carefully through how God who is truly One exists as three persons. They also wrestled for centuries about how to understand that the carpenter from Nazareth is both true God and true man. But when we ponder the utterly stunning things that Christians for 20 centuries have said about Jesus, it is crucial to remember that the reason the earliest Christians began to say these things was that events happened among them that simply compelled them to such affirmation. When they reflected both on what Jesus said and did and also on the astonishing events of Easter, strict monotheistic Jews could only bow and exclaim: “My Lord and my God.” But these early Christians did not just make awesome claims about Jesus.They started to live what he taught.They never supposed that embracing proper theological doctrine was enough to make one a good Christian.They also knew that they must obey the One they worshipped. As they traveled everywhere inviting all who would listen to embrace the Good News about Jesus, they sought to care for the poor, love their enemies, and keep their marriage vows just as Jesus had taught them. Precisely because they knew he was God Incarnate, they knew they must, in the power of the risen Lord, also live like Jesus.

This Easter, let’s bow with Thomas and worship. But let’s also obey the One we adore. n

RON SIDER

Why Did I Sign?

In November I joined a number of prominent political conservatives to endorse and promote the Manhattan Declaration at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The focus of the declaration is on three issues: the sanctity of human life, marriage, and religious freedom. Many of the news stories have said this declaration represents the return of the “Religious Right” with its view that these three issues are the most important moral issues of our time.

So why did I speak at the press conference and urge people to sign the Manhattan Declaration? First, let me clear up some misunderstanding. The declaration does NOT say that the three issues it emphasizes are the three most important issues of our time. The declaration clearly affirms the way Christians over the centuries have worked for justice for the poor and oppressed and led the way in the battles against slavery and racism and in favor of the vote for women. It also insists that “ours is, and must be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances.” (That sounds to me like ESA’s “completely pro-life” agenda!)

The declaration does say that we are “especially troubled” that human life, marriage, and religious freedom are severely threatened today. While it calls all three of these “foundational principles of justice,” it does not say they are the only foundational principles of justice. If it had I could not have signed, because I think God’s special concern for the poor, the call to stewardship/care for creation, and the summons to peacemaking, for example, are also foundational principles of justice. Nothing in the declaration says otherwise. It is true, nonetheless, that I was the only spokesperson at the National Press Club who

has often been identified as a political “liberal” or “progressive.” I object to these labels, because I am clearly conservative on some political issues and clearly liberal on others.

So why was I there? First, because I believe what the declaration says on the three issues is right and important. Second, because I have always sought to build bridges. And third, because I think it helps us ESA folk win a hearing on issues like justice for the poor and creation care with political conservatives when we stand with them on issues like the sanctity of human life and marriage.

Likewise, it helps us gain credibility with liberals on abortion and marriage when we work with them on equality for women, economic justice, and climate change.

The Manhattan Declaration acknowledges that the sanctity of human life is under enormous threat by self-centered individualism. Too many women choose abortions because a baby is inconvenient.

Too many people are comfortable with sacrificing human embryos so that others may someday enjoy better health. And too many are ready to help the sick and the elderly end their lives because caring for them is expensive and difficult. I believe it is urgent that we say no to this culture of death. I also think it will be almost impossible to preserve a decent society unless we can restore the institution of marriage to much greater health.

Fifty years ago, less than five percent of our children were born out of wedlock.

Today it is more than 40 percent.

The declaration rightly confesses that Christians have contributed to the decline of marriage by easily embracing the culture of divorce and calls for repentance by Christians, and I agree that redefining marriage to include samesex unions will weaken, not strengthen, the institution of marriage.

I also signed the Manhattan Declaration because all my life I have sought to build bridges across what many thought PRISM 2010

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were unbridgeable chasms. I have tried to help Christians focused on evangelism see that other Christians emphasizing social action were partly right (and vice versa). I have tried to help white evangelicals understand African American Christians. I have tried to help Catholics, evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and Orthodox Christians understand each other—and have counted it a high privilege to play a leadership role in Christian Churches Together.

Within the last year, I worked with Jim Wallis, Michael Gerson, and others to bring together “liberal” and “conservative” Christians to find common ground on concrete programs to empower poor Americans (ThePovertyForum.org). I also recently joined in a Third Way project to bring evangelicals and secular progressives together to define some limited but substantial agreement on several issues, including abortion and homosexuality. (Click on “Come Let Us Reason Together” at ThirdWay.org.)

More evangelicals are in fact moving toward what ESA has long called a stance that is pro-life and pro-poor, pro-family and pro-peace, pro-sexual integrity and pro-creation care. That is especially clear in the National Association of Evangelicals’ consensus document, “For the Health of the Nation.”The Manhattan Declaration is more narrowly focused, but it repeatedly affirms the importance of other significant issues. Thus, in its own way, it too is a reflection of the growing number of Christians who affirm what I call a “biblically balanced agenda.”

The signers of the Manhattan Declaration represent a broad range of Christians. Prominent Catholics (two archbishops and the president of the major Orthodox seminary) joined evangelicals to speak at the press conference.

Within less than a week of its release, over 165,000 people had added their signature! I invite you to do the same (go to ESA-online.org to read the Manhattan Declaration). n

RON SIDER

Can We Recover the Three-Generation Family?

we moved 500 miles away from our Canadian farm community when we felt called to live and work in Philadelphia.

Arbutus and I went “home” to Ontario twice a year, so our children knew and loved their grandparents, but it was a vastly different, far less intimate and formative relationship than Arbutus and I enjoyed with ours.

Recently, while flying back to Philadelphia, I talked with a young father Three-generation families used to be the who had just moved his family back to the norm. Grandpa and Grandma lived close Philadelphia area. The reason? Because by and saw their grandchildren regularly, he and his wife wanted their children to provided free childcare to grateful par- live close to their grandparents. I didn’t ents, and helped in a thousand ways to ask him if his new job paid as well as the one he left, but whether it did or not, I shape the lives of their grandchildren.

My maternal grandparents lived on the think they made the right choice. Is a few other side of our farmhouse when I was thousand dollars’ income a year really more a young boy and later in the little town important for children than growing up two miles away. Regularly, my grandpa with loving grandparents? sat me on his lap and sang “Sweet Little Ronnie Boy.”When I grew a little older, A close relationship with he took me fishing and asked me to help one’s grandchildren is more him mow the grass at the small local high precious than the joys of school where he did maintenance. Often retiring in Florida or Arizona.

I listened to his unique testimony during “testimony time” at church. I never knew In my last column, “Weeping with Dad’s father, who was killed in a farm accident before I was born. But Grandpa (the) Trinity,” I told you about what a Cline lived a wonderful model. It was the special bond developed between Arbutus gentle, powerful way that he shaped my and me and our little granddaughter Trinity life and faith that now inspires my own while she and her parents lived with us during our daughter’s student teaching. efforts to be a good grandpa.

Today, unfortunately, very few chil- The wonderful sequel is that our daughter dren spend that kind of quality time with and son-in-law have just bought a house their grandparents. Often divorce divides across the street. So Arbutus and I enjoy families and complicates grandparenting. hours every week with our little darling.

Our other three grandchildren live in The mobility of our society separates grandparents and their grandchildren Pittsburgh. I wish they, too, were across because they live in different parts of the the street, but Arbutus and I drive 300 state, country, or world.We all understand miles to Pittsburgh at least every three the changes in contemporary society that months for a long weekend.At the end of have produced this result. Missionaries have a two-day weekend together at a state park, to live in other lands. Specialized educa- I told our oldest (6-year-old) grandtional and professional opportunities daughter, Ana, that I wished she lived in seldom pop up next door to our parents’ Philadelphia. Her prompt reply: “I wish you lived in Pittsburgh.” homes.

Good friends of ours in Philadelphia Our children did not come to know their grandparents the way we did, because have developed another approach. Most PRISM 2009

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of their grandchildren live near Boston.

Now retired, they have chosen to spend about three months of every summer living near their grandchildren in a little apartment attached to the house of one of their sons.

Finances often require a return to threegeneration family life. Many elderly folk cannot afford to live in a retirement home, or their health prevents them from staying in their own home. Depending on the personality and grace of all three generations, this arrangement can be challenging — or even terribly difficult. But it can also be a blessing and joy for everyone.

There is a lot to be said in favor of recovering the older model of threegeneration families.When grandparents live on the other side of the wall or across the street, they have a wonderful opportunity to support their children and bless their grandchildren. Actually, it is hard to know who is blessed more — grandchild or grandparent.That relationship is certainly more precious than the joys of retiring in Florida or Arizona.

Since children need their grandparents, we will all have to make important choices.

Some children will move their families back “home” to where grandparents live.

Some grandparents can move to where their children and grandchildren live.

Some can spend summers with grandchildren, and others can make frequent weekend trips.

I recently talked with Dr. William Shaw, past president of the National Baptist Convention, about our grandchildren.

He has been close to a granddaughter who is now in her later teens. A bit wistfully, I asked if it is possible for Grandpa to have good open conversation about important issues when a grandchild reaches that age.

I hope and pray that when my little granddaughters are in their later teens, I can answer as clearly as he did: “Oh, yes.”

It takes time, effort, and hard choices.

But three-generation families — or some reasonably similar arrangement — are well worth the effort. n

RON SIDER

Crying with (the) Trinity

of all of that. She has a wonderful mom and dad who love her, love each other, and love the Lord. Her grandparents adore her. She enjoys an abundance of good food, healthcare, clothes, toys, friends. Her bitter tears when Grandpa left her with the babysitter were shortThe other day, I dropped Trinity Sonita, lived and easily wiped away. my darling little granddaughter, off at a But I ache for the hundreds of milbabysitter. But she didn’t want Grandpa lions of tiny tots who have wrenching to leave her. She cried bitterly, clinging reasons to weep. to me as I finally tore myself away. As Approximately 30,000 children die soon as I got back in the car, my own every day of starvation, malnutrition, or tears turned quickly to sobs. All the diseases we know how to prevent. That way home, my tears were mixed with amounts to about 11 million a year. prayers.

Behind most such children is a heartTrinity, I knew, would be perfectly broken mother who must daily battle fine. Her babysitter was a good friend despair as she wonders how she will of our family and a fine woman. Even possibly feed her little ones. before I arrived home, she had called to Millions of young children have lost say Trinity was doing well. And I was both parents to AIDS. For some, a grandokay, too, especially since I would be parent or an orphanage provides a meaable to play with her again in just a few sure of protection, but many face a cruel hours. world all alone.

Two things explain my tears! The first, of course, was my love for my grandHe will defend the afflicted among daughter. Nineteen-month-old Trinity the people and save the children of the Sonita has thoroughly stolen her grandneedy; he will crush the oppressor. pa’s heart. For a year now, she and her Psalm 72:4 parents — our daughter Sonya and her husband, Benjamin — have lived with Desperately poor parents sell millions us as Sonya finishes her master’s in art of young girls into prostitution.Violent education and her teaching certification. armed bands like the vicious Lord’s Trinity frequently sits on my lap sharing Army in Northern Uganda terrorize and my breakfast — decisively replacing the rape tens of thousands of girls and boys.

New York Times as my breakfast com- All around the world evil men — fathers, panion. Giving her a ride on my shoul- uncles, trusted religious leaders — sexders, reading a book to her, and singing ually abuse children. Wars — especially her to sleep are a part of many evenings. civil wars in dozens of countries — I love this little brown-eyed beauty — snatch away the joy and innocence of and my three other marvelous grand- childhood from millions. daughters living in Pittsburgh — more For perhaps a billion of my grandthan I can say. daughters’ contemporaries, life means But my love for Trinity was only one hunger, abuse, pain, terror, and finally a of the explanations for my tears on the death that is too slow to come. I weep way home from the babysitter. As I drove, for them.

I began to think of all the children in the Weeping, of course, must lead to world who have big reasons for crying: action. We know what to do to dramatihunger, disease, neglect, abuse, war. cally reduce poverty in the world.We can My little Trinity is blissfully ignorant increase our giving to effective Christian PRISM 2009

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development agencies and lobby our government to increase foreign economic aid. We can insist that programs to combat the spread of AIDS and support those who have it are vastly expanded.We can work hard to reduce sexual trafficking and sexual abuse.

All this urgent, vigorous action is essential. But it does not change the fact that so very many of today’s and tomorrow’s children will experience terrible agony. That truth not only drives us to tears, but it also raises hard questions about God. Why does God allow such ghastly evil to continue?

Part of the answer, I believe, is that God wanted persons to be free so they could choose to embrace or reject God and his ways. Since God also made us communal beings, the evil choices of some inevitably produce suffering and agony for others. That is true, but I’m glad it is not the only thing a Christian can say.

Matthew 25 shows that somehow, mysteriously, behind every hungry, naked, imprisoned, abused person stands our Lord. The God of the universe — as Jürgen Moltmann rightly says in The Crucified God — experiences the pain of every hurting child. The God we know as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit agonizes more deeply over every suffering son or daughter than even human parents do.

The Trinity weeps because of the pain and suffering of every neglected, misused, starving child.

The Trinity’s tears, of course, are no substitute for action.The God who weeps is the God of justice who acts in history to correct oppression. Those who worship this amazing God need to do the same.

But the fact that we cannot instantly or even quickly end the agony of so many suffering children does cause us to weep as we work for justice. As we work and pray and weep, it helps to know that we are weeping right along with the Trinity. n

RON SIDER

Is Immigration Reform Just Another Way of Saying “Amnesty”?

True amnesty would grant them total, unconditional pardon without having to pay any price. It is perfectly clear that this is not what is being proposed. To charge that that is a “general pardon” (amnesty) is simply false. Lou Dobbs may feel comfortable telling lies on CNN, but Christians — whether they favor or oppose specific immigration reforms— should not. If Christians want to debate immigration reform honestly, then we dare not call President Obama’s (and George Bush’s and John McCain’s) proYes, say many opponents of the kind of posals amnesty.

Precisely to the extent that we want immigration bill supported by former President George W. Bush, Republican our Christian faith to shape our views on presidential candidate John McCain, and immigration, we will search the Scriptures for guidance on how to treat immigrants. current President Barack Obama.

The first thing we discover is that the Regularly on Lou Dobbs’ show on CNN, you hear the charge that immi- Bible talks a great deal about how we gration reform is amnesty.“Good evening, should treat foreigners. (The Hebrew everyone. Here we go again.The Obama word ger refers to persons who live in an administration [is] making amnesty for area but are not native to the local area and illegal aliens and open borders one of its therefore often have no family or land.) top priorities.” “The Obama administra- The biblical text regularly reminded the tion’s push for amnesty for illegal aliens couldn’t come at a worse time for many If we forced all illegal Americans who struggle to survive this immigrants to return home, recession.” we would break up millions What is President Obama proposing? of families.

And is it accurate (or honest) to call it amnesty?

President Obama has said that he people of Israel that they had been immiintends to protect the integrity of American grants in Egypt and then urged them to borders with more personnel, infrastruc- treat immigrants/aliens very generously. ture, and technology. Second, he wants Again and again, the Old Testament links to remove incentives to illegal immigra- aliens/immigrants with two other vulnertion by preventing employers from hiring able groups, widows and orphans, and undocumented workers. And third, he commands Israel to have a special conhopes to bring people out of the shad- cern for them all (Psalms 146:9; Ezekiel ows by allowing undocumented immi- 22:7; Zechariah 7:10; Deuteronomy grants in good standing (it does not apply 14:28-29, 24:19-21). As stated in to criminals) to pay a fine, learn English, Deuteronomy 10:18, God “defends the and go to the back of the line for the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien.” opportunity to become citizens.

Jesus taught that anyone in need is Is this amnesty? The legal definition of amnesty, according to Webster’s dic- our neighbor, and then he commanded tionary, is “a general pardon of offenses us to love our neighbors as ourselves. against a government.” Undocumented Surely that applies to immigrants.

Furthermore, millions of these illegal immigrants have clearly broken the law.

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immigrants are sisters and brothers in Christ. Our oneness in Christ surely is a stronger bond than any division grounded in differing national origins.

A concern to protect the integrity of the family also compels us to find a way to allow undocumented immigrants to stay. Recent estimates suggest that almost 5 million children in the United States have one or more undocumented parents.1 Two-thirds of these children are themselves US citizens. If we forced all these illegal immigrants to return home, we would break up millions of families.2 (Children who are US citizens could return home with a parent, but that would deprive them of educational and economic opportunity.) It is much more pro-family to find a way to allow illegal immigrants to work their way to legal status.

Does all this mean we ought to grant amnesty — a full unconditional pardon — to illegal immigrants? After all, God totally forgives sinners who repent, offering them unconditional pardon through the cross. But the church is not the state.

The state rightly requires that persons pay a penalty for breaking the law. Requiring payment of a substantial fine would show that breaking the law is wrong.

Amnesty is not the answer. Neither is trying to send all illegal immigrants back home. That is anti-family and counter to biblical teaching about how to treat aliens — not to mention impossible and unworkable.

Former President Bush, Senator John McCain, and President Obama all point us in the right direction. It is time for the Christian community to unite to promote wise, family-friendly, fair, caring immigration reform. n andy Capps et al, Paying the Price:The Impact of Immigration R Raids on America’s Children (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute for the National Council of La Raza, 2007).

1

J effrey S. Passel, The Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the U.S.: Estimates Based on the March 2005 Current Population Survey (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, 2006).

2

RON SIDER

Evaluating President Obama’s Budget

and families with three or more children receive a significantly larger tax credit.

(Since the EITC is refundable, people receive this money even if they owe no federal income taxes.) The budget also seeks to raise the minimum wage.

Improvement in the Child Tax Credit (CTC). Previously, this $1,000per-child tax credit was not refundable If a budget is a moral document, what for people earning less than $10,000 a year. should be said about the president’s pro- That meant the poorest workers got posed budget for 2010? I focus here on nothing. Now the CTC will be available what this budget proposal says about jus- to people earning as little as $3,000 (both tice for poorer Americans. this change and the increased EITC make A little history is essential. The US permanent what the stimulus bill had economy has grown enormously since done temporarily). the end of World War II. But there is a huge More assistance for college studifference in how that growing wealth dents from poorer families. This budget was distributed in the period from 1945- increases the dollar amount of annual 1980 and from 1981 to the present. In the Pell Grants (outright grants for lowfirst period, increasing wealth was widely income college students) and then indexshared and inequality dropped. In more es them to inflation for an extra $120 recent decades, the economy continued billion over 10 years. In addition, there is to grow but most of the benefits went to a new Access and Completion Incentive the richest 20 percent.

Fund ($2.5 billion over five years) to In 1980, the richest 1 percent of help low-income college students comAmericans received 10 percent of all plete their degrees. The budget also US income. By 2006, that percent had seeks to save $54 billion in the student jumped to 22.1 percent. loan program by removing banks as the What happened to the rest of us? middlemen.

From 1979-2005, the bottom 20 percent No farm subsidies for large farms, experienced a miniscule growth of pre- but more money for child nutrition. tax (inflation-adjusted) income of just 1 Large farms making more than $500,000 percent over all those 26 years. For the will no longer receive farm subsidies ($15 second-lowest 20 percent, income grew billion in savings). But there is an extra only 10 percent; for the middle 20 per- $10 billion for child nutrition.The highly cent, it grew only 15 percent. Even those successful nutrition program called in the next-to-the-top 20 percent only Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is received 23 percent more income after also slated for expanded funding. In addi26 years. But the top 20 percent saw their tion, there is an additional $1 billion a income jump 75 percent. And the rich- year for the upcoming Child Nutrition est 1 percent received a whopping 201 reauthorization. percent increase.

Pre-college education. The budget What President Obama’s new budget doubles the funding for charter schools seeks to do is to reverse this historic trend and creates an “innovation fund” to encourand provide more income and opportu- age better schools. There is also $4.2 nity for the people at the bottom. Here are billion in new spending for childcare, some key ways: Early Head Start, and Head Start.

Making work work. The Earned Expanded health coverage. The Income Tax Credit (EITC) is increased, budget sets aside $634 billion over 10 PRISM 2009

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years to help move us toward the goal of universal health coverage.

There are many other good things about this budget. It is far more transparent than President Bush’s budgets because it seeks to include all known costs (e.g., the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). And it calls for a major program to reduce carbon emissions and thus help decrease the impact of global warming.

Of course there are also things to question. Most of the increased taxes on those with incomes over $250,000 are quite justified, but reducing the tax deduction for charitable contributions is probably misguided. And the amount for economic foreign aid for poor nations should be higher. The size of the deficit is also of major concern. A large part of the present federal debt is because of President Bush’s invasion of Iraq and his tax cuts for the rich. But that does not mean we can continue indefinitely with high federal deficits.

Large deficits during a bad recession are wise. Ongoing deficits mean putting current purchases on our grandchildren’s credit cards.

The bottom line is that this budget represents a historic change. Jim Wallis told several of us in a recent call that he and others participated in a conference call with key government leaders around the time the new budget was released.

The Obama folks wanted to show how their new budget would benefit lowincome Americans. Jim said the call left him in tears as he realized, first, that he had never experienced this kind of concern from top government officials before and, second, that the budget contained things that “some of us have gotten arrested for.”

The battle, however, has just begun.

Many voices in Congress will seek to cut spending for the poor. We must let our representatives know that we strongly support effective measures to empower poor Americans. n

RON SIDER

Organizing the New Center

of Evangelicals’ historic declaration in 2004, “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility.” And in the last few years, prominent megachurch pastors—Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Joel Hunter, and Richard Nathan—have clearly and publicly proSomething astonishing has happened in moted this broader agenda.

A new, very important possibility the past few years in evangelical circles.An emerging evangelical center has replaced now presents itself. If it is possible to the religious right as the dominant group organize this new evangelical center, we in the evangelical world. A national poll could work with others who share a taken right after the election last November broad pro-life vision to profoundly change revealed an encouraging trend:A majority American public life.

Why do I say “if”? First, because I know (55 percent) of evangelicals want a political agenda that deals with both the more that there is no unified political vision in personal issues of abortion/family/marriage the evangelical world, even if the recent and the more corporate issues of economic poll is correct in identifying a widespread justice/creation care/peacemaking. (Of the embrace of a broadly “completely pro-life” remaining evangelicals polled, 21 percent agenda. And second, because the evanstill prefer a political agenda primarily gelical world is enormously decentralized concerned with abortion and family, and organizationally. It is composed of hun18 percent want to focus primarily on dreds of separate denominations, thousands of disconnected parachurch organizations, poverty, creation care, and peacemaking.)

That is a dramatic rejection of the reli- and a vast variety of disconnected, indegious right, which for more than two pendent leaders and groups.

We must somehow discover a process decades has promoted a much narrower that respects the un-hierarchical, decenagenda. What happened?

Many things. Ever since World Vision tralized reality of the evangelical world started about 50 years ago as a Korean while effectively nurturing widespread orphans’ choir raising funds for a few cooperation on our common agenda.

The starting point for wide-scale orphanages, evangelical relief and development agencies have been steadily grow- evangelical cooperation is almost always ing in numbers, scope, and skill. Over a biblically grounded declaration that several decades, evangelical leaders have large numbers of prominent evangelical turned away from their earlier view that gatekeepers endorse.The NAE’s widely Christians should be primarily focused on endorsed “For the Health of the Nation” evangelism and have come to embrace may serve this purpose.

Then several dozen of the evangelical holistic mission, understanding that both evangelism and social action are impor- world’s prominent leaders and their orgatant for biblical Christians. More slowly, nizations would need to form a new but then powerfully and visibly in the last network for the explicit purpose of coopfive years, many evangelicals have endorsed erating to shape public life on the basis of their common declaration.We do not creation care as a biblical mandate.

For decades, a few of us protested the want or need a new organization. Rather narrow political agenda of the religious we need a new network that enables right as unbiblical, not primarily in what large numbers of existing organizations it affirmed, but in what it ignored. Slowly to coordinate their efforts. A large counmomentum built for a broader agenda, cil of reference of distinguished evangelicrystallizing in the National Association cal leaders would be important. So would PRISM 2009

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regular meetings of the leaders of the major cooperating organizations and a small staff for the network.

It would be essential to organize in such a way that not all members of the network would need to affirm and work on every concrete initiative. Specific programs (whether on overcoming poverty, reducing abortion, or promoting marriage or creation care) could be done under the general umbrella of the whole network but in the name of the leaders and organizations that sign on to that specific program.

Exactly how to structure the network so that effective, sustained cooperation happens is only dimly clear. It will require wisdom, patience, and creative experimentation. But it must be done, because the potential results are far-reaching.

If white evangelicals truly embraced this broader agenda, several influential partners would be ready to work with us.

The Vatican and the US Catholic bishops already officially promote an agenda that is strikingly similar to the NAE’s “For the Health of the Nation.”The rapidly growing Latino evangelical world is conservative on abortion and family but wants strong action on economic justice and immigration reform. African American Christians do not use the word “evangelical” and have no interest in cooperation with white evangelicals unconcerned with racism and overcoming poverty. But African Americans also have conservative views on abortion and marriage and would gladly join a coalition with white evangelicals and Catholics that was seriously committed to racial and economic justice.

Obviously, what I propose is a 20-year project. To succeed we must think more deeply, cooperate more vigorously, and learn how to engage public life in a civil, sustained, sophisticated way.

We must also be clear that politics is not of ultimate importance and at best will produce limited, imperfect results.We must hold our political views lightly, always Continued on page 2.

Talk back LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Rusty Pritchard’s September/October 2008 A Different Shade of Green column was about the need for a middle ground in the global warming debate between “the environmentalists” and “those on the right” who claim that there is major controversy among climate scientists as to whether people are to blame for global warming. The environmentalists were characterized as having “a not-so-latent misanthropy for the world’s poor.” Wow. We would not characterize either side of the public debate in this way. However, those pushing for urgent action, such as Al Gore, seem far more concerned for the poor as they warn of the disastrous effects of inaction, which are expected to primarily hit the poor. In contrast, Exxon, the main funder of global warming naysayers, who bankrolled “research” to cast doubt on the human impact on global warming (as did the tobacco industry with the smoking impact on cancer), seems more concerned with profits than with the poor. Characterizing the public debate this way is misleading. Most people would think the author’s criticism of “environmentalists” applies to those like Al Gore, who is highly regarded as the authoritative voice on global warming and who received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.

Rather, Gore’s call to action mirrors those of the Evangelical Environmental Network,whose GlobalWarming Briefing for Evangelical Leaders states that the

possible consequences of global warming include the death of millions of people in this century. “Global warming is projected to hit the poor the hardest,” the briefing states, “and such impacts are already starting to occur.” They summarize why urgency is required: (1) it’s happening now; (2) the global warming pollution we create now will continue to harm our children and grandchildren throughout this century; and (3) we’re making long-term decisions now that will impact how much pollution we create for decades.

Seeking to move the debate to a “middle ground” closer to the naysayers is actually harmful to the poor, and we know this is not your intent. Therefore we were much encouraged by Pritchard’s January/February 2009 column, “The Danger of Derivatives,” where he points out that the accusations of legalism, judgmentalism, and hypocrisy that some Christians have leveled at environmentalists are the same that they themselves have been tarred with by detractors. He calls for Christian environmentalists to be a different shade of green: more humble, less judgmental of the shortcomings of others, more aware of our own shortcomings. And above all, a hue of environmentalism that follows the biblical call to love the poor and give voice to their needs.

The Francis-Lyon family Berkeley, Ca.

Ron Sider continued from page 40.

dramatically reduce poverty here and around the globe; renew vast numbers of two-parent families; avoid the worst dangers of global climate change and preserve God’s creation for our grandchildren; restore respect for the sanctity of human life; and nurture a more peaceful, just, democratic world.

That would still be a broken sinful world. But I would dearly love to pass on to my grandchildren a somewhat better world than the current disastrous mess. n

remembering that our common membership in the body of Christ is far more significant than even the deepest political disagreements.

But limited, imperfect results are still significant. If the new evangelical center could organize itself and cooperate with others of like mind, we could over the next 20 years accomplish the following: PRISM 2009

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RON SIDER

Open Letter to President Obama Congratulations. A brilliant campaign.

A mandate for change.

And, oh, yes: a nearly impossible cluster of horrendous problems.We don’t ask for miracles. And you have our prayers. But we do expect you to keep your promises.

Let’s start with poor Americans.About 36 million Americans already fall below the poverty line.The recession may push another 6 to 8 million Americans into poverty. During the campaign, you publicly embraced the goal of cutting domestic poverty in half in 10 years.

You know from your work in South Chicago that poverty devastates tens of millions of Americans. You know as a Christian that God measures societies by what they do to the people at the bottom. Measure proposals for economic recovery by what they do to the poorest.

Emphasize programs that empower the poorest 40 percent. And, early in the first year, spell out concretely how you plan to cut poverty in half in 10 years.

Morally, it is simply unacceptable for the richest nation in history to have 47 million uninsured people with no guarantee of adequate health care.We cannot wait another four years for dramatic changes. It would be immoral to solve Wall Street’s problems by postponing health care coverage for poor working families.

Within the first six months, unveil your proposals to get us to universal coverage.

Nor dare we delay the major changes needed to fundamentally reduce and change American energy consumption.

In international affairs, you have an historic opportunity, perhaps unparalleled since the end of World War II, to reshape international relations. All around the world, respect for and trust in the US is

at its lowest point in decades. An imperialistic, unilateral foreign policy simply will not work. Fortunately, your election has evoked almost everywhere astonishing levels of hope for change. Quickly strengthen that hope by moving immediately and unequivocally to end torture.

Other powerful interests will demand that you continue policies that protect and preserve America’s military dominance and economic self-interest. Many Christians, I believe, join me in urging you to embrace a genuinely multilateral foreign policy. Global economic structures must be redesigned both to incorporate the reality of growing economic powerhouses like China, India, and Brazil and also to give the poorest nations a larger voice.The patterns of international trade should be slanted, not to benefit the richest nations, but the poorest.

Please don’t wait until your last year in office to work seriously at resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Early in your first year, signal unequivocally that you intend to use the full weight of American influence to lean on both sides to negotiate a permanent two-state solution that provides peace, security, and justice for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Mr. President, seize this historic opportunity to lead the world in building a new global political/economic order that is more just, free, democratic, and cooperative.

Finally, the messy issues of abortion and faith-based organizations.You have a fundamental choice to make. There is a large, secular, radical segment of the Democratic Party that is demanding that you end the hiring rights of faith-based organizations when they receive government funds and sign a “Freedom of Choice Act” which would end the freedom of doctors and hospitals that oppose abortion to act according to their conscience.

You might even have enough votes in the House and Senate to pass such partisan measures.

But the result would be disastrous.

Large numbers of Catholics and evanPRISM 2009

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gelicals (many of whom voted for you) would feel betrayed. Millions of us would vigorously oppose such changes.You would undermine your declared hope to reach across partisan lines to build a strong center. And your hopes of building a bipartisan coalition that would enable you to make substantial, far-reaching changes in areas like healthcare and energy policy would be seriously undermined.

There is a better option. In your evaluation of the whole faith-based initiative, listen to the grassroots faith-based organizations working among the poor.They will tell you that policies preventing them from hiring on the basis of their religious beliefs would fundamentally undermine their successful programs to empower broken people.Then improve the program, correct mistakes of the previous administration, increase the funding, and make sure that you protect the identity of faith-based organizations that are often succeeding in difficult circumstances where almost nothing else works.

On abortion, why not be genuinely pro-choice? That would mean retaining, not abandoning, policies that allow doctors and hospitals to follow their conscience and choose whether they want to perform abortions. It would mean not building compulsory payment for abortion into your healthcare policies. Instead of trying to force millions of Americans to violate their conscience with allegedly “pro-choice” policies that actually deny choice to tens of millions, form a strong center of people (both “pro-choice” and “pro-life” folk) who can agree on a number of concrete programs that will actually reduce the number of abortions.

Let’s work together to form a strong majority that figures out how to make abortion far less frequent.

That’s my advice, Mr. President. I know that giving advice is easy for me since I am sort of … well, a kind of “community organizer with no responsibilities.” But I do promise to pray for you regularly. n

RON SIDER

The Shack Needs N.T. Wright

Virtually every New Testament scholar today agrees that the gospel Jesus preached was the good news of the kingdom. And no one explains more clearly and powerfully what that means than N.T.Wright. Jesus claims to be the longexpected messiah ushering in the mesOnce I started reading William Paul sianic time when, as the prophets had Young’s remarkable book, The Shack predicted, God would not only forgive (Windblown Media, 2008), I could not our sins but also begin to transform the put it down. Fortunately I was on vaca- entire broken creation, restoring right tion in Maine, so everything else could relationships among God, our neighbors, wait until I made it to the last page. the earth, and ourselves.

In the common life of the early This book deserves its place at the top church, we can see how this new mesof the New York Times best-seller list.

The Shack offers a powerful portrayal sianic community reflected transformed of the Trinity, God’s astounding mercy economic, social, gender, and racial relaand forgiveness, and God’s persistent tionships. To be sure, sin was not fully wooing that respects human freedom. conquered even in the church. But the Again and again,Young gets important resurrection proved that the ultimate things right: God is profoundly personal transformation of all things had already but neither male nor female; God longs begun and would be completed when to heal our deepest hurts but does not Christ returned to finish his victory compel us to repent; at the center of over evil.

Christian faith is the astounding intimacy of a living personal relationship with the creator of the universe, who delights in our friendship far more than we can imagine.

I am sure that untold thousands of unbelievers will pick up this book with the humble title and be surprised to discover a wonderful portrait of an inviting, loving God. N.T.Wright’s recent Surprised by Hope But there is a problem. One would never guess from reading The Shack that (HarperOne, 2008), which I also read Jesus’ gospel was the good news of the on vacation, spells all this out in a fashkingdom of God.The picture of the gos- ion that is simply superb. He shows how pel and Christian faith that is presented our ultimate destiny is living in resurin The Shack is classic evangelical indi- rected bodies on a transformed earth (Rom. 8:19ff.) in the presence of the vidualism at its very best.

The gospel is forgiveness of sins, per- risen Lord. Even the groaning creation sonal healing, transformed personal will be restored to wholeness. Even the relationships, and an intimate personal glory of the nations, the best of human relationship with the creator of the gal- civilization, will be purged of its evil axies. All that, of course, is simply splen- and brought into the kingdom (Rev. did, and if that were the whole of the 21:24-22:2).

Wright helps us understand how gospel, I would be thrilled with God’s gift to us. But according to Jesus, the Plato and Western individualism have led us to reduce Jesus’ gospel to personal gospel is all that—and so much more.

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salvation for individual souls. Plato’s emphasis on the soul (we have a good soul trapped in an evil body) has led many Christians to focus almost exclusively on saving individual souls so they can go to heaven. If that is all Jesus’ gospel is concerned about, then caring for creation and working for justice now are wasted effort. But if Jesus’ gospel is the good news of the kingdom where everything, not just our souls, is being restored to wholeness, and if that kingdom has already begun and will be consummated when Christ returns to give us resurrected bodies dancing and reveling in a renewed good earth, then our work now for justice, peace, and a restored environment is part of God’s grand design.

I hope that the author of The Shack will read Wright’s Surprised by Hope. If he does, he will see that virtually all that he describes so vividly and wonderfully is true and good, but it just belongs in a larger frame. (To be sure, very occasionally, he will modify a few things, like his suggestion that God is only interested in relationships, not institutions. The personal God he depicts so beautifully is about the business of restoring not just personal relationships but also broken social structures and even the groaning creation).

Perhaps William Young understands this already. His vivid portrayal of the Trinity’s delight in the good earth certainly shows that he is not a Platonist.

But there is no hint in The Shack that the gospel affects social structures as well as personal relationships. I hope Young writes more novels—and that they reflect the fullness of the gospel.

If you have not yet read these two excellent books, buy them immediately.

But as you revel in Young’s gripping portrayal of how God delights in a personal relationship with you and me, remember that this glorious truth belongs within the larger picture of God’s agenda of making all things new. n

RON SIDER

McCain or Obama?

If Jesus is Lord and the Bible provides our normative framework, how should we vote on November 4?

Every four years, as I anguish over this question, I half wish God would send us an e-mail. But he never has. So we are left with the tough task of evaluating the candidates’ policy proposals and track records on the basis of what I often call a “biblically balanced agenda.”

If we ask what the Bible says God cares about, the implications for our political agenda become obvious: We must be pro-life and pro-poor, pro-family and pro-creation care, pro-racial justice and pro-peacemaking.This “completely prolife” agenda is now the official stance of both the Catholic bishops and the National Association of Evangelicals (see “For the Health of the Nation”).

So how do Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama fare if we evaluate them using that basic standard? Here, I will discuss (in alphabetical order) nine crucial areas: environment, family, healthcare, human rights, international affairs/peacemaking, poverty/economic justice, racial justice, religious freedom, and sanctity of human life. (Readers will need to follow the presidential debates carefully this fall to see where the two candidates expand, modify, or nuance their positions in ways that go beyond what is available as I write this column.)

On the environment, Obama and McCain have fairly similar positions.

Unlike President Bush for most of his two terms, both presidential candidates consider global warming a great threat that we must combat. Both favor market mechanisms (“cap and trade”) and higher fuel-efficiency standards to reduce the release of carbon dioxide. Obama

proposing spending $150 billion over 10 years to create a “green energy sector” in the US economy.

The issue of family has more than one aspect. One crucial area is economic. If parents cannot earn enough to escape poverty and provide healthcare for their children and themselves, they suffer enormous stress that undermines marriage and family life. Consequently the sections on healthcare and poverty/ economic justice (where I argue that Obama’s platform is better than McCain’s) are one important part of the family issue.

Another crucial set of components connected to the family relates to marriage, divorce, and sexual practice. The sociological studies clearly demonstrate that it is better for children to grow up with both biological parents, but neither candidate talks much about public policies that would discourage divorce. The example of their personal lives, of course, is different: Unlike Obama, McCain has divorced and remarried.

McCain’s position on homosexuality and gay marriage is closer to the historic Christian position than Obama’s.

Both personally believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and both oppose a federal marriage amendment that would embed this definition in the US Constitution. But McCain opposes a national marriage amendment because he thinks this issue belongs to the states, not the federal government. McCain, however, supported the federal “Defense of Marriage Act” (1996), which banned federal recognition of gay marriage.

Obama advocates the complete repeal of this act because “federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples.” If taken literally, that would mean that federal law should not in any way favor the historic understanding of marriage. I disagree.

Increasingly, Christians realize that the richest nation in history ought to guarantee quality healthcare to all its PRISM 2008

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citizens. McCain promises to do some things to move in this direction. He will offer tax credits so individuals are better able to afford health insurance. He wants to make cheaper imported drugs more available and place limits on medical malpractice damage awards to reduce medical costs. But McCain makes no promise to guarantee healthcare for everyone.

Obama believes that universal healthcare is a moral demand and promises to accomplish that by the end of his first term as president. He would not mandate that adults purchase health insurance, but he wants to make health insurance comparable to that enjoyed by federal employees affordable for everyone. He would fund the increased costs in part by letting some of President Bush’s tax cuts expire.

There is one important “detail” to watch in Obama’s promising healthcare proposals. Will he seek to have this federal health plan pay for abortions? He should not, although he seems to lean that way, arguing that poor women should be able to get an abortion even though they do not pay for it. Insisting on that would force Americans who oppose abortion to pay for it, which would be both morally wrong and politically explosive. One hopes he will accept the basic principle of the “Hyde Amendment,” which stipulates that the government does not pay for abortions.

Our fourth area, human rights, encompasses a wide range of issues. I focus on only three: the use of torture in “the war against terrorism,” capital punishment, and immigration. Both senators clearly condemn the way that the use of torture in interrogating suspected terrorists has become a part of US policy. Both would reverse this immoral policy.

Many Christians disagree with my view that respect for human rights means that we should not use capital punishment.That includes McCain and Obama.

Both favor retaining capital punishment in some situations.And both have worked to promote measures that would make it less likely that people are wrongly executed. But Obama emphasizes his belief that the death penalty “does little to deter crime” while McCain wants us to know that he would consider adding more crimes that carry the death penalty.

On immigration reform, McCain and Obama have rather similar positions.

Both advance proposals that combine border security and a legal path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

For years McCain has been a leader (and a minority in the Republican Party) in advocating a legal path to citizenship, although the political pressures of the primary season led him to say that border security must come before immigration reform. Obama has vowed not to support any bill that does not provide an earned path to citizenship for the undocumented.

In the area of international affairs (including Iraq), the two platforms are strikingly different.

McCain supported the invasion of Iraq as a just war, insists the US must continue the battle until we win (even if it takes many years), and supports the continued presence of American troops in Iraq after the war is over. Obama opposed the invasion of Iraq from the beginning, considers it a “dumb” and “rash” venture, and promises to have all US combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months.

More basically, Obama calls for a fundamental change in US foreign policy.

The unilateralist approach of President Bush (Iraq, global warming, the International Criminal Court, etc.) has precipitated a vast loss of respect for and trust in the US around the world. Obama wants to move to a much more multilateral, cooperative approach to global problems. He wants to emphasize diplomacy and is ready to meet with the heads of “enemy nations” like Iran, Syria,

and Cuba. McCain mocks Obama’s eagerness for diplomatic solutions.

I believe that fundamental values about respect for the freedom and independence of all people and nations as well as our long-term self-interest require a more multilateral, cooperative approach to international affairs. Not even the world’s sole superpower can unilaterally force its views on the rest of the world. Obama’s election would prompt the rest of the world to reassess its current low image of the United States.

Obama and McCain differ substantially on the question of poverty and economic justice.

Obama worked as a community organizer in low-income neighborhoods in Chicago for three years. He has pledged to seek to cut child poverty by 50 percent in 10 years. He regularly supports efforts to increase the minimum wage and expand the Earned Income Tax Credit.

McCain promises to make overcoming American poverty a priority, but it is not clear how he will accomplish this. He did vote to raise the federal minimum wage in 2007, but historically he has opposed such increases.

Tax policies, as I have argued in PRISM for years, are closely related to the issues of poverty/economic justice.

Over the last 30 years, the poorest 20 percent of Americans have lost ground in real dollars while the richest 20 percent have gained enormous wealth.

The gap between the richest 20 percent and poorest 20 percent has ballooned. President Bush’s tax cuts are one significant reason, because about 70 percent of the benefits went to the richest 20 percent.

McCain has pledged to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent—even though they have significantly increased inequality, expanded the federal deficit, and made it more difficult to fund effective antipoverty programs. He wants to cut the PRISM 2008

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federal corporate tax rate, thus further benefiting corporations and their shareholders. (On the other hand, McCain’s proposal to raise the personal exemption from $3,500 to $7,000 is a good profamily policy.)

Obama plans to abandon many of Bush’s tax cuts. He plans to keep the estate tax, raise the rate on capital gains taxes, and repeal the Bush tax cuts on those earning over $250,000 (this figure should be significantly lower!).

Obama also plans to cut taxes by $80 billion a year for lower-income workers, homeowners, and retirees (e.g., no income taxes for elderly workers earning less than $50,000). In my judgment, Obama’s tax policies are more likely to move us a little toward economic justice and poverty reduction.

On global poverty, Obama wants to double US foreign aid to $50 billion per year by 2012. McCain has not yet made any specific commitment.

The simple fact of a black person being elected president for the first time in our history would contribute enormously to racial reconciliation and justice. It would demonstrate to ourselves and the world that we have made (some) progress in overcoming our tragic, wrenching racist history. It would bring new pride and hope to African Americans. And it would strengthen Obama’s already powerful ability (as a son who grew up without his dad) to speak truthfully and courageously about single parenthood, family brokenness, and the importance of education.

Frequent speeches like his Father’s Day (2008) address in a black church given by our first black president would be powerful.

Whether McCain contributes to racial reconciliation will depend primarily on whether he will do all he can to rein in and silence the legions of political operators not directly connected to his campaign who will try to appeal to continuing white racism to defeat Obama.

If McCain does that, then (win or lose) he will make a great contribution to racial justice. If he does not (win or lose), he must bear substantial responsibility for our failure to take another major step forward as a nation.

On most aspects of religious freedom, Obama and McCain agree. One significant concern of American foreign policy should be to promote religious freedom around the world. At home, we must maintain the First Amendment’s prohibition against the government’s either establishing religion or hindering its free exercise. And that means, as both candidates also agree, that religious voices have every right to debate in the public square. They also both plan to continue government’s substantial partnership with faith-based organizations in solving our nation’s social problems.

There is, however, one significant area to watch. Thanks in part to four pieces of federal legislation signed by President Clinton and executive orders

by President Bush, present practice allows faith-based organizations that receive direct government grants to retain the right to hire staff who share their moral/religious beliefs. In spite of the fact that President Clinton signed four pieces of legislation with Charitable Choice provisions specifying this hiring right and in spite of Vice President Gore’s explicit embrace of Charitable Choice, most Democrats chose, after Bush became president, to denounce this right as “hiring discrimination.” McCain, however, clearly supports the right of faith-based organizations to hire on the basis of their religious beliefs.

Some stories have seemed to suggest that Obama wants to abandon the hiring right in Charitable Choice.

Fortunately, I have good reason to think that is not the case and that he would retain the key protections for religious organizations.

Something very important is at stake.

A rigid, sweeping application of the idea

that faith-based organizations that receive direct government grants cannot hire on the basis of religious beliefs would have two adverse effects: (1) It would go far beyond the actual practice of many decades; (2) It would mean that Christian colleges and Christian social service agencies would either experience enormous financial loss or accept widespread secularizing pressures as more and more staff no longer shared their original beliefs. There is good reason for Democrats to embrace ways for faith-based organizations to partner

If you agree that a “biblically balanced agenda” is important, then you will not allow one issue to trump all others. That is not to deny that in some years, certain issues are in play in ways that others are not. But it is surely good news that more and more evangelicals seek to let the full range of God’s concerns shape their politics. with government that respects the First Amendment, protects the religious freedom of clients, and does not force faith-based organizations to abandon precisely those religious beliefs that make them unique (and effective).

Finally, the sanctity of human life: ESA believes in a “completely pro-life” agenda—i.e., life does not begin at conception and end at birth. When millions die of starvation or diseases we know how to prevent, when millions die prematurely from smoking, when terPRISM 2008

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rorism and war destroy innocent persons, the sanctity of human life is violated.

But that broader “completely pro-life” agenda does not mean we forget about abortion.

On abortion, McCain and Obama have strikingly different positions.McCain wants to overturn Roe v. Wade and ban abortions except in the case of rape, incest, or a threat to the mother’s life.

His voting record is clearly anti-abortion: He supported the bill to prevent partial-birth abortions, and he has promised to appoint Supreme Court justices like Roberts and Alito named by President Bush.

Obama is strongly pro-choice. He acknowledges the moral dimensions of abortion and favors some policies that would reduce abortions, but he insists abortion must be legal. Obama’s appointments to the Supreme Court would obviously be pro-choice.

If the above analysis is roughly correct, then one thing is clear: On some issues, Sen. McCain is closer to what I consider a biblically shaped agenda; on others Sen. Obama is.

But the bottom line? On balance, overall, who is better? I’ll answer that question for myself in the privacy of the voting both on November 4. You must decide for yourself.

If you agree that a “biblically balanced agenda” is important, then you will not allow one issue to trump all others. That is not to deny that in some years, certain issues are in play in ways that others are not. But it is surely good news that more and more evangelicals seek to let the full range of God’s concerns shape their politics.

Study each candidate’s platform and character. Talk with friends. Form a bipartisan study group in your church to discuss both candidates. Pray fervently for divine wisdom. Then vote knowing that God calls us to act on our best insight even though our knowledge is always limited. n

RON SIDER

Wright, Obama, and the Future: We Must Choose

after King’s assassination. We lived in nearly all-black North Philadelphia for seven years. Since 1975, we have lived in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood, which is majority African American.

Our daughter is married to a wonderful black American. (Recently, while reading a newspaper story on racist behavior in suburban police departments, I suddenly The good news surrounding the sorry felt a wave of anxiety as I realized what episode of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s recent might happen to my son-in-law—or political explosion is that it presents all granddaughter—sometime.) These expeof us with a choice. White Americans riences have enabled Arbutus and me to can choose to seek a deeper understand- taste some of the pain, anguish, and—yes ing of black pain and anger, and all of —anger of African Americans. We canus can decide to rise to a new level of not fully feel what it means to be black racial reconciliation. Or we can ignore in this country, but we have learned the truth behind Wright’s exaggerated enough to understand why Wright’s fiery words and choose to use him as a tool —and often historically accurate—words for short-term political advantage, know- evoke a positive response from so many ing that this will block racial reconcili- African Americans.

Wright is right that white Americans ation and heighten division.

African Americans have good reason “took the country by terror” from Native to be angry. White Europeans captured Americans. He is right that our seizure millions, brutalized them on inhuman of Africans from their homeland was slave ships, then sold and bred them as terrorism.

That is not to justify everything animals for two centuries.After Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, white rac- Wright has said. Some of it is wrong and ism produced a century of racist laws in unacceptable. It is silly nonsense, for the South and slightly less explicit but example, to say that the US government widespread racist discrimination in invented AIDS to destroy the black community. Equally outrageous has been the North.

We have made substantial progress, Wright’s decision to go on national telethank God, since Martin Luther King vision and reignite and stoke the fires over Jr led the courageous, nonviolent civil his comments at the height of the rights movement. But we all know Democratic primaries. One would have more subtle racism still exists. Many thought that a concern for his most whites still move out of neighborhoods famous parishioner would have ledWright when African Americans move in. On to seal his lips at least until November!

Senator Obama’s whole life demonbalance, African Americans receive substantially inferior education to whites. strates that he totally rejects racism and Careful studies demonstrate that African believes passionately in the American Americans still experience discrimi- dream of racial reconciliation. At every nation in hiring. Some white police stage in his life—growing up with white officers continue to exhibit racist atti- grandparents, becoming the first African American editor of the Harvard Law tudes and actions.

I have had the privilege of living in Review, winning majority white states majority African American communities in elections—Obama has been a powersince 1966. Arbutus and I sat with our ful champion and compelling voice for African American landlords the night racial reconciliation.

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Senator Obama has rightly rejected Jeremiah Wright’s misguided statements.

Far more important, Senator Obama delivered one of the best speeches in decades on racism in America. He gently but clearly acknowledged and condemned the racism both of his white grandmother and Jeremiah Wright. He helped us understand the pain and anger of African Americans. But most importantly, he used the uproar to call all Americans to reach for a new plateau of greater racial justice and reconciliation.

That is a genuine possibility. We could decide as a nation to take another giant step along the road to racial wholeness.

Will that happen in the next few months? Not necessarily.

There is another real possibility.

Significant voices already make it clear that they intend to wring every ounce of political gain out of Wright’s foolish words. That will deepen racial division, strengthen white racism, and intensify black anger.That will torpedo any chance of seizing our present opportunity to reach another plateau of racial understanding. Senator McCain must lead the way—not just verbally, but by vigorously opposing all efforts to use the Wright episode for short-term political gain.

None of the above represents an endorsement of Senator Obama. I have not endorsed a presidential candidate for more than 35 years and will not this fall.

I recently wrote a piece strongly critical of Senator Obama’s position on abortion.

In my next column, I will discuss the different ways that McCain’s and Obama’s platforms do and do not fit with what I believe is a biblically balanced political agenda.

I do hope and pray, however, that all of us—starting with Senator McCain— will decide in the next few months to seize the present opportunity to move to a higher plateau of racial understanding and reconciliation.That choice would be a wonderful gift to all of us, starting with my little granddaughter. n

RON SIDER

Lots of Ways to Impact Politics

mons, Sunday school classes, and study groups, laying out the biblical foundations for economic and racial justice and teaching respect for the dignity and sanctity of human life—in short all the components of a biblically balanced agenda.

That does not mean that the pastor It is political season in America, and I hope or denominational leader should reguyou are involved. After all, one of the larly promote a specific political proposal ways we love our neighbor is to help or candidate for office. Instead church shape the political decisions that help or leaders should help their members develop a faithful approach to politics. They harm them.

But it is crucial that we understand should provide settings within the conthe many ways we shape politics beyond gregation where church members with voting for presidential candidates. Here diverse political views learn how to dialogue with civility, honesty, and humility. are nine ways: Just being the church. The first way They should encourage all their members Christians should influence politics is by to be active politically and nurture a few being a living model of Jesus’ dawning to devote themselves full time to politics.

Official church pronouncements. Church kingdom. Tom Skinner used to say that the church should be a little picture now leaders dare not make political pronounceof what heaven will be like. When the ments in the name of their church when church simply lives out a visible model of they speak only for themselves. But the transformed social, racial, and economic situation is quite different when the relations, it profoundly influences society. congregation or the denomination goes Prayer. Karl Barth once said that prayer through a careful process to develop an is the church’s most important contri- official congregational or denominational bution to political life. The Bible calls us position on a political issue.This should not be done hastily, nor should it be done to pray for our political leaders.

Shaping culture. To a great extent, broad constantly, but from time to time it is cultural assumptions determine what is important and right to do so. When that politically possible.Abraham Lincoln alleg- process produces a duly authorized stateedly told the clergy of his day that “the ment, then church leaders rightly speak church sets the boundaries within which to political leaders in the name of their politics has to function.” Christians help church. (As an example, the US Catholic shape the cultural norms in society first bishops did this effectively in the 1980s by their common life, then by their ideas, with their pastoral letters on peace and economic justice.) If done well, this kind writings, and artistic productions.

Educating church members to think bibli- of official church pronouncement can cally and wisely about politics. Unless church have a substantial political impact.

Educating the public on specific political leaders help their people develop a biblically informed way to think about issues. In political education, people seek political life, church members will sim- to inform a group of citizens (whether ply borrow their political values from church members or others) about parsecular sources. It is crucial that pastors ticular issues, the reasons for taking a and denominational leaders develop care- specific stand, the current state of the ful programs and excellent materials to political debate on the issues, and how help all their members embrace a faithful best to impact the outcome. Christians methodology for politics and a biblically may do this through denominational social balanced agenda. This would involve ser- action departments, parachurch organiPRISM 2008

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zations focused on political education, or secular public policy networks.

Lobbying elected officials. Here it is crucial that denominational social action agencies do this kind of work only when denominational structures have had a clear process and given concrete authorization for church agencies to speak in the name of the denomination. However, parachurch Christian organizations (and of course secular lobbying agencies) are better able to lobby politicians without politicizing the church.

Promoting the election of specific candidates.

In the United States, public law forbids congregations and other official church structures from endorsing specific political candidates. Normally church leaders should help educate their members on how to think and act publicly and then urge each individual member to prayerfully make his or her own decisions about specific candidates.

Running for political office. Congregations should encourage members with the interests and gifts to be candidates for political office. Caring church leaders and other members of the congregation should help Christian political candidates (and elected officials) to develop platforms that reflect a biblically balanced agenda, to think and speak honestly, and to retain integrity in public life.

We need far more effective structures for a loving, tough-minded process of both personal support and genuine accountability for Christians who embrace the difficult calling of public office.Without publicly endorsing a respected church member running for political office, a congregation can privately provide prayer, counsel, and a structure of accountability.

This election season, ask God in which of these ways he wants you to help shape politics. ■ (This column was adapted from Chapter 13 of The Scandal of Evangelical Politics, just out from Baker Books. Reproduced by permission.)

RON SIDER But if at that moment of death, it is true that Christ is risen—and that we, too, shall be raised from the dead to live forever in the presence of the Risen Lord—then again, nothing else matters.

Compared to life for all eternity with the Lord of the universe, even Dr. Pelikan’s The back page of the most recent news- astounding academic achievements as letter from the Yale Graduate School perhaps the most brilliant living scholar Department of History was devoted to of Christian history simply fade into the life of my doctoral advisor, Jaroslav insignificance.

Especially at Easter, Pelikan’s aphoPelikan (1923-2006). But, for me, it was not the long list of outstanding academic rism provides perspective and hope. He achievements that was most moving. certainly is not saying that life here on earth is unimportant. God created us as Rather it was his final aphorism.

To be sure, Pelikan’s academic suc- body/soul unities designed to revel in the cess was stunning. He could read by age goodness of creation. Christian scholar2 and earned both an MDiv and a PhD ship is significant and worthy of our best by age 22. He published almost 40 books efforts. But Pelikan reminds us that all and was awarded 42 honorary degrees. of that goodness and success pales in He was named the Jefferson Lecturer in comparison with eternal life. It is betHumanities (the highest honor the fed- ter, Jesus said, to lose the whole world eral government confers for distinguished than to lose our relationship with the intellectual achievement). He was pres- living God. Perhaps one sees that most clearly ident of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, chair of the board of the when facing death. But it is true for all American Academy of Political and of us, whether we have a month or five Social Sciences, and founding chair of the more decades to live. If Christ is risen, Council of Scholars at the Library of Congress. The list goes on and on. But that is not what amazed me.

The Yale History Department (both when I was there in the ’60s and now) is a very secular place. But in their tribute to this distinguished Sterling Professor Emeritus of History, they noted that toward the end of his long battle with cancer Pelikan provided the last of his many striking aphorims: “If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.”

Dying from cancer, Pelikan knew that if death ends human existence—if, as Bertrand Russell said, we die, rot, and disappear forever—then nothing else matters. No matter what fame we have achieved, all is finished. No amount of joy, success, honor for a few short decades matters much anymore. It is over and we disappear into nothingness.

if the truth about reality is that we can accept Christ’s offer to live with him forever, then nothing else matters as much as gladly accepting that invitation.

No matter what our age, we should rejoice in and live out that truth. We rightly work hard; shape scholarship, culture, and society to the best of our ability; and delight in the goodness of this material world for whatever years the Creator gives us. But we know that our short sojourn here is not all-important. It is just the beginning of life eternal.

As a result, neither success nor failure is all-important.We can let go of frantic grasping for success.We can accept temporary failure or even premature death.

Because Christ is risen indeed.

When I read this astounding witness to the center of Christian faith in my Yale Graduate School newsletter, I felt like weeping for joy. Even in the most secular sectors of contemporary life, there is still a powerful witness to the truth of Easter.

Christ is risen. And nothing else matters as much as this glorious gospel truth. ■

“...nothing else matters.”

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Angilla S, Shutterstock

“If Christ Is Risen…”

RON SIDER

Needed: A Few More Scholars/ Popularizers/ Activists Church and society are often misled by people offering simplistic, one-sided answers to the big issues of their time.

They pretend to know what they are talking about, even though they lack the necessary expertise. Evangelicalism, especially, with its strong anti-intellectual strain, has often—whether one thinks of eschatology, science, family life, or politics—been badly served by popularizers and activists with simplistic ideas and superficial solutions. Nor will that change unless more people with good scholarly training become effective popularizers and successful activists.

I did not consciously set out to combine scholarship, popularizing, and activism, but that’s where my journey has led.

I spent several years of my life in intense academic study preparing to be a Renaissance/ Reformation historian and then taught only one course in that area in my entire life. When people come up and thank me for “my book,” I assume they mean the nontechnical, easy-to-read Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, not my scholarly dissertation on a 16th-century theologian.

A few years ago I wrote an article for Christian Scholar’s Review reflecting on my personal journey trying to be a scholar, popularizer, and activist. In it I said that such a road is not for everyone.

While there are a few exceptions, like Martin Marty, most people cannot attempt the level of popularizing and activism I have sought and also become a widely recognized scholar. Both church and society need more people who can success-

fully combine all three activities.

Good popularizing requires special skills: an ability to develop a broad synoptic vision; an instinct for quickly discerning the most crucial issues; a personality and mind that enjoy moving quickly from one issue to another; and the ability to write clearly and powerfully. Plato said that if the wise disdain the task of politics, then they must suffer being governed by fools. Somebody will write popularizing books. If those with scholarly training will not do it, they should not complain when those with little expertise do it badly, embarrass the church, and mislead laypeople with one-sided, simplistic nonsense.

(That is not to say that scholarly training guarantees wisdom or that lack of scholarly training entails lack of wisdom.)

I hope and pray that at least a handful in the next generation of Christian scholars will prayerfully recognize in themselves the gifts, develop the skills, and pay the price of becoming far better popularizers and more effective activists than I have managed to be.

I’m excited that Palmer Seminary at Eastern University (where I teach) and the Sider Center on Ministry and Public Policy/Evangelicals for Social Action (which I direct) are partnering to offer two new programs designed to nurture precisely such a generation of scholars/ popularizers/activists.

A new joint appointment (see the ad on page 3), to begin in the fall of 2008, is now being announced: a tenuretrack appointment for a professor of public policy and Christian ethics at Palmer Seminary and coordinator of public policy programs for ESA.This person will teach three or four courses a year at the seminary and coordinate ESA’s numerous activities in public policy. This person will be encouraged to combine good teaching and scholarship with popular writing and organizing Christians to shape public life.

We already have one such joint

appointment (Al Tizon, who is assistant professor of evangelism and holistic ministry at Palmer and also director of ESA’s Word & Deed Network), and now we will have a second.

If interested in applying for this position, write to me (rsider@eastern.edu) or Palmer’s academic dean, Dr. Elouise Renich Fraser (efraser@eastern.edu).

The second new program involves an exciting new scholarship program at Palmer Seminary (see the ad on the back cover). Palmer is offering 10 Sider Scholarships and 10 Wallis (as in Jim Wallis) Scholarships for 20082009. Each scholarship (for full-time students) covers half of tuition and is worth over $6,000 per year. Each scholar will work 10 hours a week (September through May) in a variety of ESA-related programs in public policy, holistic ministry, and popular writing (working on PRISM and the ePistle). Four of these scholars are also eligible for an Ayres or Wilberforce Scholarship worth an additional $4,000 a year (these scholars work 15 hours a week). These scholarships are renewable for two to three years. Many of these students, I hope, will go on to do doctoral studies in ethics, politics, economics, sociology, theology, etc., and then become leaders in church and society as scholars/popularizers/activists.

These scholars can enroll in the MDiv or MTS program at Palmer. The MTS program includes a concentration in Christian faith and public policy.

(Interested persons can contact Dr. Steve Hutchison, director of admissions at semadmis@eastern.edu.)

I am excited about both of these programs and intend to be an active mentor for the Sider and Wallis Scholars, and I look forward to encouraging and nurturing the new joint appointment in public policy. In both cases, I pray, God will be at work raising up younger scholars/activists/popularizers who will faithfully lead the church in the coming decades. ■

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RON SIDER

Christmas, Christendom, and Discipleship

that Christendom—which is foundational to Niebuhr’s work—involved setting aside Jesus’ radical teaching for the sake of political power. (By “Christendom” Carter means the notion that Western culture has a religious arm [the church] and a secular arm [the state] and both are Christian. Either legally or practically, church and state are united.)

“But the gospel of Jesus Christ is not At the center of Christmas stands a stunning claim. The eternal, all-powerful Christendom Christianity,” writes Carter. creator became flesh in the womb of a “...The gospel is countercultural, nonyoung Jewish maiden. The early church violent, and subversive of empire...The confessed that her son—the carpenter gospel is of no use to most political rulfrom Nazareth, the champion of the ers because it outlaws violence and poor and neglected, the daring peace- renounces greed.”

When Emperor Constantine early in maker—was more than a great prophet.

He is God become flesh to whom every the 4th century “embraced” Christianity, knee shall eventually bow and acknowl- Carter argues, Christians should have edge as Lord. That, Christians through insisted on remaining faithful to Jesus’ the ages have confessed, is the meaning full gospel when they accepted this end to imperial persecution. “When the of Christmas.

Tragically, however, Christians have Roman emperors offered the church the often affirmed this truth without living job of being the religion of the empire,” its implications for discipleship. The fact he writes, “the bishops of the church that Jesus is both true God and true man should have done what Jesus did in the is not just an abstract theological state- wilderness when the devil made the ment. It also means that those who same offer.The Crusader, the Inquisitor, the judicial murder of heretics, the blessbelieve it must live what Jesus taught.

If Jesus were just a great man, we ing of wars of conquest in the Americas, could pick and choose what we want the justification of slavery,anti-Semitism... to accept from his challenging life and and the use of atomic weapons as tools teaching. If Christ were only God and of terror against civilians—all this hisnot truly human, his life on earth would tory should never have been part of not be relevant for what is possible and church history.”

But this history did become part of right for human behavior. But if Jesus is both God and man, it is ultimately blas- the church, Carter argues, because phemous to say that Jesus’ teaching is too Christians decided they needed to abanhard, too impractical, or irrelevant for don Jesus’ nonviolence and engage in killing to influence culture and exercise how Christians should live now.

But that is exactly what Christendom political power. Niebuhr argued that the has done, as Craig A. Carter explains in New Testament Christ is so radical that a brilliant, recent book called Rethinking his teaching cannot be lived in this world Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom and therefore we must abandon Jesus’ Perspective (Brazos). Carter’s book vigor- teaching for the sake of cultural influence.

In his book Niebuhr outlined five ously critiques H. Richard Niebuhr’s famous book, Christ and Culture, which models of how Christians have related has exercised enormous influence since Christ and culture. He labeled those who believed they should follow Jesus’ its publication in 1951.

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against Culture” model, which he judged to be fundamentally mistaken, and called them irrelevant for trying to make culture conform to Christ. Carter, on the other hand, argues that it is precisely those Christians who have remained faithful to Jesus’ example and teaching and refused to conform to sinful culture who have most profoundly influenced culture. If one simply conforms to fallen culture for the sake of political influence, he contends, one abandons the possibility of radically changing it.

Carter points out that Niebuhr did not really believe that the specific man from Nazareth was true God, and his Christology is essentially that of theological liberalism. And whenever Christians choose to set aside Jesus’ explicit example and teaching for the sake of cultural influence and political power, Carter claims, they implicitly deny Jesus’ deity. If the one who told us to love our enemies is the creator of the galaxies, then we cannot say he was mistaken. If we refuse to obey him, we implicitly— no matter how orthodox our words— deny that the man Jesus was true God. The only way to avoid Carter’s conclusion would be to argue that Jesus did not really live and teach the radical things Carter says he did. I think, however, that we all know that again and again Christians have watered down Jesus’ radical ethical demands about money, marriage, and loving our enemies.

Carter has written an enormously important book that is significant for all Christians, both pacifist and non-pacifist.

(In fact, Carter has very sympathetic things to say about just war Christians who truly apply the just war criteria rather than simply let politicians decide which wars are just.)

What is essential for all Christians is to embrace the full meaning of Christmas.

If the babe in the manger is God become flesh, then faithful Christian discipleship means that we must live what he taught, not just affirm who he is. ■

RON SIDER

Should We Stop Using the “E” Word?

orthodoxy.There are people around who call themselves Christians who do not believe in the deity of Christ, his atoning death, and his bodily resurrection.

Large numbers of people in “mainline” Protestant congregations believe Jesus is only one of many paths to salvation.

We need some label to distinguish theologically orthodox Christians from A few months ago I took a call from theologically liberal Christians.

Third, ESA has always sought to USA Today. The reporter wanted to know if I still used the word “evangeli- ground all our work in the Bible. We seek a biblical balance of evangelism and cal” to describe myself.

Certainly there are problems. Sex social action and a biblically balanced scandals involving prominent evangeli- political agenda. Along the way, people cal leaders have besmirched the name. have attacked us from both left and right.

Prominent right-wing evangelical polit- When I tried to follow what I believed ical voices (often strident) have cham- the Bible said about God’s special conpioned narrow, one-sided agendas. The cern for the poor, some called me a secular media and our secular neigh- Marxist. When I tried to follow what I bors too often assume that most or all believed the Bible said about sexuality evangelicals are like Pat Robertson and and marriage, some called me a narrowthe late Jerry Falwell. Both here and minded conservative. Biblical revelation abroad, many assume that President Bush has been the final authority for what ESA is “the evangelical president” and that —and all evangelicals—think and do.

Fourth, historically, it has been the his policies are what evangelicals want. evangelical world that has offered some Should we just drop the label?

I say no.The USA Today story quotes of the best holistic models that ESA has me as insisting that the label is a good tried to follow. John Wesley, the great one and that we should continue to use evangelist and leader of the evangelical revival in the 18th century, condemned it. Why? First, “evangelical” is a good biblical social evils, including slavery, and called word, from the Greek word for “gospel.” for social holiness. It was the Wesleyan Evangelicals are people committed to movement that led to the conversion of Jesus’ gospel and passionately eager to William Wilberforce, the great British share it with all who have never heard. parliamentary leader who succeeded in Decades ago, when I first sensed God’s abolishing the slave trade and then call to try to help the evangelical world slavery throughout the British Empire. become more socially engaged, I deter- Wilberforce was also deeply involved in mined that I would do my best not to evangelism both in England and abroad.

In the United States, Charles Finney, repeat the social gospel’s history with its loss of evangelism. ESA has kept the the Billy Graham of the middle of the balance with Network 9:35, helping 19th century, was one of the leading local congregations combine evange- crusaders against slavery. Oberlin College lism and social action. Using the word —where Finney taught—was a leader “evangelical” emphasizes this commit- in combating slavery and promoting evangelical feminism. ment to evangelism.

Using the word “evangelical” idenSecond, ESA has always sought to ground all it does in historic Christian tifies us with and anchors us in this long

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heritage of faithful engagement in both evangelism and social transformation.

Fifth, I refuse to give up a very good word to people like Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell.

Finally, now is no time to abandon the label, because we are actually winning the debate! Virtually all evangelical leaders today agree with what ESA has championed for decades—namely, that a biblical understanding of mission must include both evangelism and social action.

Thirty-five years ago, when ESA was getting started, most evangelical leaders believed that “saving souls” was our primary mission. Today almost all agree that faithful mission must also include social ministry. More and more prominent evangelical voices—think of Rick Warren!—now embrace ESA’s longstanding call to empower the poor.

And even the National Association of Evangelicals’ official public policy framework embraces what ESA has long promoted—namely, a pro-poor and prolife, pro-peace and pro-family, pro-creation care and pro-marriage agenda.

Today, the evangelical center clearly rejects the evangelical right’s attempt to focus evangelical political engagement almost exclusively on the narrow agenda of the sanctity of human life, marriage, and sexuality. The NAE’s official statement explicitly declares that faithful evangelical civic engagement must have a biblically balanced agenda. And when James Dobson and others tried in March of this year to persuade them to return to the narrower agenda, the NAE leadership very publicly refused.

People with an ESA vision should use it gladly, even as we insist it does not mean the narrow, nasty, unfaithful things that some people think it means. By even more vigorously promoting a biblically grounded, holistic vision, we will help both Christians and secular people understand that “evangelical” is a very good word with which to identify. ■

RON SIDER

The Religious Right Has Lost the Evangelical Center

Call to Civic Responsibility” as the official framework for all their political work.

“The Bible makes it clear that God cares a great deal about the well-being of marriage, the family, the sanctity of human life, justice for the poor, care for creation, peace, freedom, and racial justice,” this document explicitly states. And it goes on to conclude that “faithful evangelical civic engagement must champion a biblically balanced agenda.” This is an A recent, very public clash reveals the explicit rejection of the notion that the greatly diminished clout of the religious only “moral issues” evangelicals care right. In a March 1 letter, James Dobson about are abortion and marriage. And (for some time probably the evangelical the second part of the NAE document religious right’s most influential voice) devotes major sections not just to the called on the National Association of sanctity of human life and marriage but Evangelicals to discipline or fire Richard also to economic justice, peacekeeping, Cizik, its vice president for public pol- religious freedom, human rights, and icy, for championing vigorous action to creation care.

Dramatic events in the evangelical combat global warming. Cizik’s efforts, he wrote, were shifting the emphasis of world in the last two years underline evangelical political engagement “away changes that have been developing for from the great moral issues of our time, many years. Over several decades dozens notably the sanctity of human life, the of evangelical relief and development integrity of marriage, and the teaching agencies have grown into large, multiof sexual abstinence.” Dobson’s open letter to the NAE produced major stories in national newspapers and a New York Times editorial about the dramatic public conflict.

But in spite of Dobson’s obvious clout, the NAE executive board solidly supported Cizik. Why is this important?

Because evangelicals constitute at least a quarter of all American voters; because the million-dollar, global organizations.

NAE is the largest evangelical network World Vision alone is a $1.7 billion a year (approximately 30 million members) in operation. In the last 10 years, evangelithe U.S.; because evangelicals have voted cals have worked so effectively on many overwhelmingly for Republicans in recent issues of global human rights (religious elections; and because the widespread freedom, sexual trafficking, Sudan) that perception has been that evangelicals a New York Times columnist has spoken cared only about this important but nar- of a new “evangelical internationalism.”

Rick Warren (author of The Purpose row range of issues.

What Dobson fails to understand is Driven Life, the most widely read nonthat the center of the evangelical world fiction book in American history) is the has changed dramatically. In a historic most influential American evangelical action in October 2004, the NAE’s board voice today, and Warren is passionately of directors unanimously approved “For and very publicly committed to comthe Health of the Nation:An Evangelical bating poverty and HIV/AIDS, espe-

Voices like James Dobson simply do not represent the center of the evangelical world today.

cially in Africa.

In March 2006 over 80 prominent centrist evangelical leaders launched the Evangelical Climate Initiative.They insisted that science clearly shows that humaninduced global warming is happening.

And they called the federal government to enact national legislation to combat it.

The result, according to many observers, is a substantially increased possibility that Congress will soon pass significant legislation on global warming.

Meeting on March 8-9, soon after they received the Dobson letter, the president and board of the NAE strongly supported Richard Cizik and pointedly and unanimously reaffirmed their commitment to the broader pro-life, and pro-poor, pro-family and pro-creation care agenda developed in their historic declaration,“For the Health of the Nation.”

(They also endorsed a major new evangelical document expressly rejecting all use of torture by U.S. forces and agencies in the struggle against terrorism.)

Religious right voices like James Dobson simply do not represent the center of the evangelical world today.

Mainstream evangelicalism—precisely because it seeks biblical balance—understands that “moral issues” include not just the sanctity of human life and marriage, but also justice for the poor, human rights, freedom, peacemaking, and care for creation. That, of course, is what Evangelicals for Social Action has been saying for decades.

This position is very similar to the official Catholic framework for political engagement. Together the evangelical and Catholic communities represent one half of all American voters. That represents both opportunity and difficulty for both Republicans and Democrats.

Whichever party manages to develop a platform that reflects this full range of issues will discover great interest among large numbers of Catholics and evangelicals who embrace this “biblically balanced” agenda. ■

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RON SIDER

Justice for All This past February, I had the privilege of attending the fourth U.S.-Islamic World Forum in the Persian Gulf.

Sponsored by the Brookings Institution (perhaps the most influentialWashington think tank) and the State of Qatar (a small Arab state south of Kuwait), the conference brought together leaders from the United States and from across the Muslim world. Participants included former prime ministers, foreign ministers, top diplomats, key business leaders, and religious leaders.

The discussion was direct and honest. It is painfully clear that the U.S. is highly unpopular throughout the Muslim world. Even in the historically proAmerican nations of Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, only 12 percent of the people expressed favorable attitudes toward the U.S. in a recent poll.

The evening session devoted to IsraelPalestine was especially vigorous. It is patently clear that the U.S. must do more to promote a fair settlement of this terrible conflict if it wants to improve its standing in the Muslim world.Virtually all Muslims consider U.S. policy onesidedly pro-Israel.

During the plenary discussion, after input by a top-level panel, I asked the first question. Identifying myself as an American evangelical who wanted the U.S. to support the security of the state of Israel, I said I also wanted justice for the Palestinians and supported a twostate solution (which President Bush has endorsed but done little to promote). I added that I thought U.S. policy has been very one-sidedly pro-Israel. I ended with this question: Why, both in the interest of justice for all and long-term U.S. geopolitical self-interest, does the U.S. not press Israel more vigorously to

embrace a fair two-state solution? The hall fell silent, and the two top-level Americans on the panel looked at each other, each hoping the other would respond.

Finally, Ambassador Martin Indyk (former ambassador to Israel under both President Clinton and President Bush) offered a short—only modestly helpful —response. After the session ended, I went up to talk to him. His first comment was, “I thought all you American evangelicals had a homogeneous, proIsraeli position.” I assured him that was not true, indicating that large numbers of evangelicals want just, secure states for both Israelis and Palestinians. Indyk also indicated that he thought it would be very important right now for evangelicals with such views to make them clear to President Bush. In fact, he believes that one reason for President Bush’s failure to vigorously urge Israel to negotiate a fair two-state solution is that he fears an attack from evangelical voters.

A number of recent polls demonstrate that a majority of the evangelical world is indeed one-sidedly pro-Israel, a position that is closely related to evangelicals’ views about the relationship between Israel and Christ’s return.

Interestingly, the 2006 poll found that only 48 percent of white evangelicals consider themselves premillennialist and 40 percent say it is impossible to know what will happen before Christ’s return.

Also interesting is the difference among traditionalist (48 percent of all evangelicals), centrist (41 percent of total), and modernist evangelicals (11 percent).

While 64 percent of traditionalists support Israel over Palestine, this position is taken by only 45 percent of centrists and 28 percent of modernists.

Is there a biblical basis for supporting Israelis more than the Palestinians?

Some point to God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3: “I will bless those who bless you.” Does that text mean that we ought to uncritically support the modPRISM 2007

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ern state of Israel? Hardly. The biblical prophets repeatedly taught that God demands justice of all people, starting with his chosen people.When the Israelis acted unjustly, God punished them. The best way Christians today can bless the descendants of the ancient Israelites is to urge them to practice the universal justice that their prophets proclaimed to the world. Today that means a fair, twostate solution.

Others will argue from a dispensationalist, premillennialist theology that God has established the modern state of Israel as a necessary part of the end-time scenario, preparing for Christ’s second coming in the very near future (see Hal Lindsay’s Late Great Planet Earth and the LaHaye/Jenkins’ Left Behind novels).

But this idea poses huge problems.

For one thing, Christians for centuries have been pressing the imagery of Daniel and Revelation to find detailed predictions about the end of the world—all of which have proved foolish and wrong!

To suggest that we know that Christ will return in the next few decades is flatly unbiblical. Jesus said even he did not know the time of his second coming (Matt. 24:36)—beware of people who claim to know more than Jesus!

The evangelical participants in the February conference returned to the U.S. determined to act vigorously to inform President Bush, Secretary of State Rice, the American people, and indeed the Muslim world that many American evangelicals long and pray for a just twostate solution. Hopefully, by the time you read this column, you will have seen the fruits of those efforts in ESA’s ePistle and the wider news media.

Meanwhile, pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Pray for peace and justice for all people in Israel/Palestine. And pray that American politicians exercise vigorous leadership to urge all parties concerned to make the necessary compromises to bring about a just, two-state solution. ■

RON SIDER

Is Jesus All You Need?

One of the great popular Christian songs I love to sing says: Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in his wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of his glory and grace.

Even more moving to me is: As the deer panteth for the waters, So my soul longeth after Thee.

You alone are my heart’s desire, And I long to worship Thee.

We know what they mean. Nothing matters as much as Jesus. We must willingly abandon anything and everything that prevents us from following Christ our Lord. As Jesus himself taught us, it is better to lose the whole world than to lose one’s right relationship with the Living God (Matt. 16:24-26).

But is Jesus really all genuine Christians need? If our hearts are truly attuned to the will of God, do good Christians desire only Christ? Do all the things of this material world grow increasingly dim to us as we become more and more like Christ?

No, absolutely NO! To say that is to embrace a dreadfully inadequate, fundamentally unbiblical understanding of creation and eschatology. Indeed it is to forget the core of Easter.

Any Christian need honestly reflect only a second or two to realize that she in fact desires other things: adequate food, physical health, good friendship, a loving spouse. Is that wrong, as some of our wonderful gospel songs might seem to suggest?

Not at all. Christ is the Creator through whom all things have been

made. The Creator designed human beings as body-soul unities who need and take delight in material things in order to be precisely the finite, material beings God intended us to be. God also designed us as communal beings who reach fulfillment only as we rightly relate not only to God but also to other human beings. By all means, the relationship to God is most important. We must be ready to abandon any or all other things and relationships if necessary. Indeed, we do just that at death. The only thing that remains to us at death is our relationship with Christ. And that is enough.

When circumstances remove everything else, Jesus alone is enough.

But that is clearly not the way the Creator intends for us to live. (Remember that death with all its agony and loneliness is the result of sin.) God wants us to take great delight in this material world.

We should enjoy it, desire it, rejoice in it—always, of course, remembering that God, the source of all this material splendor, wants us to love him even more than his created gifts.

But God is not displeased when I take great delight in my wife, Arbutus.

He is not offended when I long for her presence and desire to hold her in my arms. That is exactly what the Creator intends. God experiences great joy when you and I delight in his material gifts.

I have rewritten one line in the song: “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will glow pure and bright, in the light of his glory and grace.” Another song I love gets it right: “Jesus, you’re the center of my joy.” Jesus is not the only source of my joy, but he is the center of it, illuminating and giving beauty and meaning to all my other joys.

Our eschatology also contradicts the notion that Jesus is all we need. The Bible does not say that at Christ’s return we fly away to some invisible, immaterial heaven where all we have is Jesus.

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Coming, Christ gives us resurrected bodies. The earth itself is freed from bondage (Rom. 8:21). God himself comes to live with us. The honor of the nations is brought into the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21, 22). We sit down to enjoy the marriage supper of the Lamb, feasting on the material delights of a transformed creation.

Easter itself should have protected us from the heretical notion that Jesus is all we need to be what God intends us to be.

At the Incarnation, God became flesh, and on Easter morning, the crucified carpenter who is the only Son of God rose bodily from the dead.That is how good the material world is.To suppose that God does not want us to appropriately desire this material world is to misunderstand Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection.

This Easter, as we worship the Risen Lord, let us remember that his victory over death means that we await a time when we can, in our resurrected bodies, delight in the Creator’s material world with the full joy and ecstasy that the Creator intends. And that means that even now we should take great delight in the splendor of the material world, treasuring it, as St. Augustine said, as a ring from our beloved. Please God, keep us from becoming so focused on the ring that we forget you, the giver. But help us never to insult you by belittling the goodness of your ring.

Jesus, be the center of our delight in your astounding world of wonderful food, artistic beauty, human friendship, and familial love. ■

RON SIDER

Injustice Against Women An estimate from the United Nations in 1980 stated, “Women work two-thirds of the world’s working hours, produce half of the world’s food, and yet earn only 10 percent of the world’s income and own less than 1 percent of the world’s property.” Unfortunately, we do not have nearly enough hard data to describe with precision exactly where and how much injustice against women exists today, but we do have enough information to know that blatant injustice against women is widespread.

Missing women. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has estimated that approximately 100 million women are missing.

The reason? A cultural preference for boys that leads to neglect of female babies and abortion of female fetuses. All things being equal, the normal gender ratio is about 105 females to every 100 males. However, after ultrasound devices to determine the sex of the fetus became available in the 1970s, the percentage of baby boys at birth jumped dramatically in countries such as China, India, and South Korea. In 1997 in China, for example, 117 male births were recorded for every 100 female births.

Unequal education. In most of the developing world, women have less access to education and are more likely to be illiterate than men. In low-income countries in 2001, 46 percent of women could not read, compared to 28 percent of men.

The youth illiteracy rates (ages 15-24) provide another measure. For low-income countries in 2001, 31 percent of female youth were illiterate, compared to 19 percent of male youth. In our global information society, where education and knowledge equal power and wealth, inequality in education means injustice.

Uequal health. Michael Todaro,

author of one of the most influential texts on economic development, says that women and children are more likely to be malnourished than men. In Latin America, 31 percent of girls are underweight while only 17 percent of boys are. In India, he notes, girls are four times as likely to suffer acute malnutrition as boys; boys are 40 times more likely than girls to be taken to the hospital when ill.

Unequal property ownership/ work. The data is far from complete, but women clearly have legal title to vastly less property than do men. In Brazil in 2000, women owned 11 percent of the land, and men owned 89 percent. In Mexico in 2003, women owned 22 percent and men 78 percent.And it is generally thought that land ownership is more equal in Latin America than in other developing areas!

The United Nations’ Human Development Report for 2005 reported that in a large majority of cases, women work more than men. On average, in urban areas, women worked 481 minutes a day and men only 453 in 2005. In rural areas, women worked 617 minutes to men’s 515.

The vast majority of developed countries reported the same pattern: 423 minutes for women and 403 for men.

Violence against women. On October 7, 2006, the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, published the results of a massive World Health Organization study of physical and sexual abuse of women by intimate partners.

Interviewing 24,097 women in 11 countries, they found that huge numbers of women in most countries reported experiencing physical violence at least once in their life. The following statistics are representative: 40 percent in Bangladesh; 30 percent in Brazil; 49 percent in Ethiopia; 49 percent in Peru’s cities and 61 percent in its rural areas. Astonishing numbers reported physical abuse in just the last 12 months.

Sexual trafficking/prostitution.

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(June 5, 2006) that of the 600,000 to 800,000 people trafficked across international borders every year, 80 percent are women and girls. Most of them end up in prostitution. These figures do not include the millions of girls and women that the State Department believes are trafficked within their own national borders every year.

We know enough to know that all around the world today, men inflict widespread injustice and violence on women.

This behavior stands in blatant defiance of the biblical teaching that every person, both male and female, is made in the very image of God and therefore is inestimably precious in the eyes of God. How can we men continue to violate the dignity and equality of women when we remember that our Lord and Savior died for these very women and invites each of them to accept his love and live eternally with him?

In spite of frequent, indeed widespread, failure, Christian faith over the centuries has been a powerful force creating dignity and justice for women. But the task is far from finished. It is time for Christian men around the world to say “Enough injustice and violence against our sisters!”

One man who is making a difference is Gary Haugen of the International Justice Mission (ijm.org), who works courageously to free enslaved women.And Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine and author of 10 Lies the Church Tells Women, focuses much of his work on empowering women in ministry (themordecaiproject.com). I pray that more Christian men will open their hearts to their sisters’ suffering and create a contemporary tidal wave that washes away all injustice against women. ■ (This is a summary of a paper Ron Sider presented on November 15, 2006, at the annual meeting of the EvangelicalTheological Society.)

RON SIDER

The Awesome Goodness of Human Love: A Meditation at Christmas

course, we still sometimes disagree, quarrel, and hurt each other. But mostly we feel incredibly blessed with a quiet, pervasive happiness.

Our experience is just one tiny personal example of the wondrous gift of human love that flourishes all over the planet. Watching our son and daughterin-law lovingly care for and delight in our two granddaughters reminds us of the hundreds of millions of parents who sacrifice for their children and discover great joy in them. Hundreds of millions Arbutus and I experienced several won- of adult children care, even at great inconderful weeks together again this summer venience, for elderly parents. Millions of at our little spot along Nicatous Lake in neighbors share generously with those northern Maine. Reflecting now on that in need.

Of course, there is another side. time of happiness and mutual delight in each other moves me to reflect on the Hundreds of millions of families experience pain and anguish—from illness, awesome goodness of human love.

In response to a question about how famine, war, and the selfish choices of I am doing, I often say: “Well, I’m 67, I spouses, parents, neighbors.

Recently a good friend in our small love the Lord, and I am in love with my wife of 45 years, I greatly enjoy my work, group expressed her deep anger at God and, as far as I know, I am in good health. for allowing all the evil in the world. To It doesn’t get much better than that, her, at least at the moment, the glass is more than half empty. So much—in the does it?”

Arbutus and I simply love being world, the U.S., our broken city neightogether. That’s true all—well, almost all borhoods, our families—is misguided, —the time. And especially at our cabin wrong, painful, vicious. She is partly right. on Nicatous Lake. I suppose it is especially easy to be romantic lovers at that gorgeous spot. There is no need for TV, restaurants, or expensive things.The simple things of life are more than enough.

For several weeks, we sleep as long as we want; we make meals together; I fish every day; we read as much or as little and whatever we want; and we pick wild raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries (gallons of them this year). It’s great when friends drop by for a visit, but we enjoy just being together so much that even if nobody comes, the two of us have a wonderful time together. I am simply amazed at how much joy a couple our age married for 45 years can experience together.

I don’t mean to overstate things. Of

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There is enormous evil around.

Frankly, I do not know what the balance is. More evil than good? More love than hate? I am inclined to embrace the positive conclusion.

Whatever the balance, there is a vast amount of human love in the world— hundreds of millions of parents truly delighting in their children; hundreds of millions of husbands and wives genuinely caring for each other. Even in the midst of great evil and enormous hardship, billions of people every day find delight in the goodness of human love. And, less often, but still in large numbers, there are married couples that have truly sought to live according to the Creator’s commands and have discovered as a result deep abiding mutual love that is truly astonishing in its beauty and goodness.

I am sure the Creator of the galaxies, who chose to become a baby at Christmas so long ago, is pleased. His birth brought great joy to his mother and her husband.

He grew up surrounded by the love of caring parents, adding to their joy by his obedience. As an adult he developed deep friendships with men and women.

On the cross, when evil did its worst, he lovingly asked John to take care of his mother. Nothing reveals how much God delights in the awesome goodness of human love so clearly as the Incarnation.

The Creator of the universe personally experienced in our very flesh and blood not only the worst of human hate, but also the best of human love.

This Christmas, God willing, as Arbutus and I celebrate Christ’s coming in Pittsburgh, surrounded by our children and grandchildren, we will give thanks that God has given us the awesome gift of human love—for each other, our children, their children, and many dear friends. And we will pray for the grace and strength to continue working to correct injustice and restore the broken so that many more of God’s children can enjoy the goodness of human love. ■

RON SIDER

War & Peace: It’s Time to Live What We Preach Millions of people now know a little about Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) —thanks to the kidnapping of four team members in Iraq in late 2005. In early 2006—when one member was killed and three suddenly freed—newspapers around the world ran stories about these strange peace activists trying to work nonviolently in Iraq. In fact, many commentators were critical.

But CPT’s work in Iraq is not the best illustration of its vision. Far better is their work in Hebron in the West Bank, where about 500 Jewish settlers live amidst 120,000 Sunni Muslim Arabs.

CPTers have been a presence there for 10 years, seeking nonviolently to befriend both sides, reduce violence, and promote understanding and peace. They accompany children threatened by vigilantes, seek to prevent the illegal demolition of Palestinian houses, and befriend young people and frightened Israeli soldiers.

(See Art Gish’s Hebron Journal [2001] and Tricia Gates Brown’s Getting in the Way [2005], both from Herald Press.)

Many people concerned with war and peace overlook an astonishing fact: The 20th century, the most violent in human history, also witnessed numerous nonviolent victories over injustice and oppression, including the nonviolent overthrow of many vicious dictators.

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s nonviolent marchers changed American history.

Gandhi’s nonviolent campaign defeated the British Empire and won India’s independence; while the British did kill some nonviolent campaigners, only one in 400,000 Indians died. Contrast that with the Algerians’ violent campaign for

independence from the French in which one in 10 Algerians died.

One of the most amazing components of Gandhi’s campaign was a huge nonviolent “army” (over 50,000 eventually) of Muslim Pathans in the Northwest.

These are the same people we now know as the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan!

Even when the British humiliated them and slaughtered hundreds of them, they remained faithful to Gandhi’s nonviolent vision.

In Poland, Solidarity’s nonviolent campaign successfully defied and helped defeat the Soviet empire.In the Philippines, a million peaceful demonstrators overthrew the brutal dictatorship of President Marcos. The list of stunningly successful 20th-century nonviolent campaigns for peace and justice goes on and on.

And they succeeded with very little preparation. (For more examples, see my little book Nonviolence:The Invincible Weapon?

[1989, W Publishing].)

One wonders what might happen if the Christian world got serious about exploring the full possibilities of applying nonviolent methods of overcoming injustice and seeking peace in unjust, violent situations around the world. In fact, the theological and ethical teaching of all Christians demands that we do just that. All Christians claim to believe what the Bible says, and this includes Jesus’ statement, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Pacifists have long claimed they have an alternative to war. But that claim remains empty unless they are willing to risk death, as soldiers do, by intervening to stop injustice and bring peace.

Just war Christians (the vast majority of all Christians since the 4th century) have always claimed that war must be a last resort. Before it is just to go to war, we must have tried all reasonable nonviolent alternatives. But contemporary just war Christians cannot claim they have tried all reasonable nonviolent alternatives in the face of three hard facts: 1) PRISM 2006

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Even without much preparation, nonviolent approaches have worked again and again in the 20th century; 2) Investing a few tens of millions of dollars in training would enable us to develop thousands of CPT-like teams that could intervene nonviolently and explore the possibilities of nonviolence; 3) The Christian church has never done this.

It is time to do it! Think of what might have happened before Bosnia or Kosovo exploded into carnage if the Archbishop of Canterbury, top Catholic cardinals (or even the pope), and leading Orthodox leaders had invited Muslim leaders to join them in leading a few thousand praying, peaceful Christian and Muslim followers into those dangerous places. The message would have been simple: “We come in the name of the God of peace. Kill us if you like, but we will stand beside the people you are threatening.”

A prominent Palestinian Christian has said there ought to be a thousand CPT teams spread all over the West Bank.

Imagine what might happen if Archbishop Desmond Tutu, joined by Catholic cardinals and other key leaders, led a few thousand praying Christians from all around the world into Zimbabwe, calling on the government to end its undemocratic action and violent practices. One can imagine parallel nonviolent campaigns occurring in dozens of dangerous, unjust, violent situations around the world.

Just war Christians do not have to believe that nonviolence will always prevent war in order to engage in a serious, large-scale test of nonviolence. All they must do is be honest with their own rule that war must be a last resort.

Christian leaders (both just war and pacifist) from all traditions should together issue a call for something that has never happened yet in our history: the training and deployment of 10,000 to 25,000 CPT-type peacemakers who Continued on page 39.

ing those members and giving them a sense of belonging.

We also found that emphasizing the theological grounds for embracing cultural difference was important. When issues of culture and ethnicity were not addressed from the pulpit, there was a tendency for the majority group to squelch dialog over difficult issues, calling them “divisive” or “distractions.”

to come to terms with the fact that not only are a multiethnic congregation and doing social justice tools for drawing people to Christ, but also when the church neglects justice as a Christian virtue it is turning people away from Christ.

Fong: Those of you who have never experienced a diverse church or fellowship don’t know how much you are missing.

As uncomfortable as it will make anyone to become more diverse, especially if you are in the majority, down the road God is going to give us an experience that outweighs anything we are uncomfortable with. God is building a house for himself where he is comfortable. We have a tendency to think this is our house and it should make us comfortable. Think about it: Where you or I am 100 percent comfortable, God is not comfortable.The first question is,“Whose house is this?”

It is not ours, but God’s. Second,“Who is building this house?”

It is not us, but God. A lot of the arguments that we have over what makes us uncomfortable, such as the worship or the leadership style, are irrelevant when we put things in the right perspective. Christ has broken down the walls that divided us, and just as God is on the throne in heaven now with a diverse multitude, he is creating some of heaven here on earth now. Let’s be a part of letting God build his house.

Christerson: My advice would be to commit to either a diverse congregation or one where your ethnic group is in the minority for at least a year. You can’t really understand the richness of other cultures and their unique understandings of God in a short-term experience. Most people who do this are incredibly blessed by the experience and decide they don’t want to go back to an ethnically homogeneous worship environment. ■

PRISM: What would you say to those who have never considered the importance of an ethnically and culturally diverse church experience?

Edgerly: There’s a lot of talk about the biblical mandate to value diversity but there is an evangelistic aspect to this as well. We live in a world that is divided, and wars often result from ethnic differences. If the church brings people of diverse backgrounds together and lives purposefully, especially if it addresses the issues of racial injustice, the world will look at that and say, “That is righteous.” When Jesus said to “let your light shine before men,” he was talking about acts of justice that the world recognizes as righteous. It will draw them to Jesus. Many people come to our church simply because we are multicultural, even though they don’t know Christ. A Muslim came into our midst to ask if he could help pass out flyers inviting people to the church because he saw the diversity and thought it was beautiful. Churches need to consider the evangelistic aspect of being a diverse church. I have met so many people that have been turned off to the gospel due to racism and segregation in the Christian church. Many of these folks have turned to groups like the Nation of Islam as a reaction to racial injustice in the church. Much of the movement toward Islam within the African American community has its roots in a lack of sensitivity toward justice and righteousness in the church today. Racial justice in the midst of an ethnically diverse church can attract people to the gospel. It’s evangelistic.

On the flip side, neglecting diversity and justice turns people off to the gospel. For those of us who value evangelism we need

Ron Sider continued from page 40. are committed to using the nonviolent teachings of Gandhi and King in unjust violent settings around the world. It would only take a few tens of millions of dollars. (Annual income of Christians is over 15 trillion dollars, so money is not the problem!)

If top global Christian leaders (hopefully joined by Muslims) led a thousand

Glen Kinoshita currently serves as director of multiethnic programs at Biola University. He has been engaged in the process of racial reconciliation ministries and diversity training to both Christian and nonChristian organizations for the past 14 years.

trained, praying, nonviolent peacemakers into the West Bank, the eyes of the world would be on them. Hundreds of millions of Christians would be praying for peace and justice for both Israelis and Palestinians. Media coverage would be phenomenal.Their very presence throughout the West Bank would discourage violence. Both sides would feel pressure to negotiate.Who knows what the Prince of Peace, who is also King of kings, might do in the hearts of hardened politicians?

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If Christians mean what they have been saying for centuries about war and peace, then they have no choice.Without much planning and training, nonviolence has worked. It’s time to invest $50 million in serious training and deployment. We cannot know ahead of time what will happen. But we already know that unless we do this, our rhetoric about just wars and pacifism has been hypocritical and dishonest.

It’s time to live what we preach. ■

RON SIDER

Never Before in American History

versation and cooperation. It was not clear at the beginning whether a critical mass of evangelical and Pentecostal denominations would join, but several of us evangelical and Pentecostal participants worked vigorously to encourage our family’s participation. The result is that eight of the founding denominations of CCT come from the evangelical/ Something historic happened March Pentecostal family: Christian Reformed, 28-31 in Atlanta. For the first time ever Church of God (Cleveland), Open Bible in American history, official representa- Churches, International Pentecostal tives of major denominations from all Holiness Church, Salvation Army, Free five family traditions agreed formally to Methodist Church, Evangelical Covenant launch a new ecumenical organization Church, and Church of God of Prophecy.

According to CCT bylaws, 80 percalled Christian Churches Together in cent of the participants/members must the U.S.A. What is so new and important is be national denominations; no more than that the Roman Catholic Church and 20 percent may be national Christian evangelical/Pentecostal denominations organizations. Evangelicals for Social are fully engaged.These two families had Action is privileged to be a founding not joined earlier ecumenical efforts that member in this latter category, as is included mainline Protestants and the World Vision.

One significant early decision that Orthodox and African-American denominations. Now all five families have made it easier for evangelicals/Pentecostals decided to work together in Christian to join was the choice to require that all decision-making in CCT be by conChurches Together (CCT).

CCT’s purpose is to help the vari- sensus. That prevents a bare majority ous Christian theological traditions from ignoring the views of the minority.

CCT would have been ready to launch understand each other better through common prayer and honest dialogue at the June 2005 meeting except for and then to witness together to society the fact that we did not yet have any through faithful evangelism and the African-American denominations on shaping of public life. An annual three- board. Given the tragic history of slavday meeting of leaders of denominations ery and racism in this nation, we felt we and national Christian organizations will must wait until African-American denombe the primary initial vehicle for dialogue inations had joined. Fortunately, two black national Baptist conventions and decision-making.

CCT has a solidly orthodox Christ- (including the largest, led by Dr.William ological and trinitarian theological Shaw) have now become founding foundation. Our common confession is members. AMEN, the largest evangelithat Jesus Christ is God and Savior in cal Latino organization in the States, is accordance with the Scriptures and that also a founding member.

The press release of the Atlanta we worship one God—Father, Son, meeting quoted a lament about the and Holy Spirit.

I have had the privilege of being at brokenness of the body of Christ from all preparatory meetings, starting in 2001. the first meeting in 2001. It conveys From the first meeting there was con- powerfully the impetus for CCT: We lament that we are divided and sensus that it was time to establish a new, that our divisions too often result in much broader table of ecumenical conPRISM 2006

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distrust, misunderstandings, fear, and even hostility among us. We long for the broken body of Christ to be made whole, where unity can be celebrated in the midst of our diversity. We long for more common witness, vision, and mission.

From the beginning, we were clear in CCT that our first tasks were to pray, worship, and dialogue together in order to better understand each other. But we also looked forward to the time when we could witness together.

Each year for several annual meetings, we have spent time on three things: worship and fellowship; business; and discussion of a major theme. In Atlanta, the major issue was overcoming domestic poverty. CCT is clear that (a) this is just one of many issues we will discuss; and (b) that CCT will not become an anti-poverty organization.

However, we did find strong consensus in Atlanta that “a commitment to overcome poverty is central to the mission of the church and essential to our unity in Christ.”Therefore we agreed that CCT would develop a strategy to use the unique gifts and influence of the key church leaders in CCT to summon both our churches and the nation to confront the reality of widespread poverty in the richest nation in history.

CCT’s new steering committee named a task force (which I chair) to bring concrete recommendations to the 2007 annual meeting.

I think CCT represents a truly historic development in American church history. Already the 34 denominations and national Christian organizations that have joined represent over 100 million American Christians. CCT is the broadest, and largest, fellowship of Christian denominations and traditions in the U.S.A. And additional denominations, representing millions of additional members, are already in serious conversation about joining.

Continued on page 39.

as a way for Christians to enter science Watermarks continued from page 21. and help people in a very tangible way.

“I am terribly biased on this issue,” Greenberg says. “But if young Christian are we to do with that fragile beauty rebuilt and reestablished—and that has adults want to do something to help the surrounded by the chaotic, fetid ruins?

My hope for New Orleaneans is that, everything to do with people as well.” world and they want to show the love Greenberg has tackled his fresh calling of Christ at the same time, science and amidst the foul water of natural disasters with a two-pronged approach, seeding the geology in particular are areas with tre- and human failure, they can taste the fine value of environmental stewardship in both mendous needs all over the planet—and wine of a God who is at once good and also a terrible and beautiful mystery. traditional classroom settings as well as in tremendous opportunities.

New Orleans left a watermark on me. non-traditional arenas. For the past few “Clean water and water supply is the years, Greenberg has taught at University number one health problem in the world I am grateful to those who entrusted me of the Nations sites for Youth With a today. And that’s the realm of geology. with the stories of their loss. In the photo Mission (YWAM) in Hawaii and South We want people who are looking for album of my memory are pictures of a Africa.Through these classes, Greenberg something to do who love to help people broken table set with red plates, a mattress equips missionaries with the tools they and share the love of Christ in a very hanging on a telephone pole, and two need to handle certain environmental practical way. Today, the biggest topics unscathed wine glasses. ■ concerns in developing nations. discussed in the news are energy resourc“At these schools, the idea is to help es, tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes. You can see more photographs from Chris present a worldview and a new perspec- All of these are geological problems and Jordan’s new book/exhibition, In Katrina’s tive on many different issues,” Greenberg all of them have opportunities for people Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural says. “Specifically, I want to teach them to get into these fields and share the gos- Disaster, at chrisjordan.com. enough about the earth so they under- pel through working with people.” stand how it works in order to take care Greenberg has seen the level of envi- Lisa K. Fann is a writer, editor, and counselor of it properly. If they don’t understand the ronmental consciousness rise among based in Seattle,Wash. As an instructor for world in which these people live, they will Christians in recent years, but he sees Mars Hill Graduate School’s StoryWorkshops, miss an important life connection.” room for more progress to be made— she works with people to explore their stories At Wheaton, Greenberg has also over- even if it means making some waves. through counseling and writing. seen some of his students’ environmental “We’re so afraid of rocking the boat, This article was adapted from an essay originally published in projects to clean up areas of South African but maybe we need to rock the boat,” “Views from the Edge” on the Mars Hill Graduate School webcoastal cities. “What these students were Greenberg says. “There are so many peo- site (mhgs.edu). Reprinted by permission. able to do was to clean up these town- ple on the fringe of Christianity, but are ships in a profound way,” Greenberg says. so afraid of the Gospel because of the Ron Sider “It helped bring back some pride to strong conservatism that’s grounded more continued from page 40. one area that is one of the best surfing politically than biblically. By embracing I believe CCT can slowly help us beaches in the world.” environmental stewardship, we have an While they were beautifying the land, opportunity to reach people in a way the make progress toward better understanding, common witness, and—please they also helped show the people how church hasn’t seen in a long time.” ■ God—greater unity. I hope that CCT they could maintain the area in a way that would be healthy as well.When the world Learn more about Greenberg’s program at can become an instrument for answering our Lord’s prayer that the loving gets sick, people get sick. I want to get wheaton.edu. unity of his followers would be so them more balanced in their approach to helping people that recognizes both Jason Chatraw co-authored Saving God’s strong and visible that the world would Green Earth and is a freelance writer living believe: “I in them and you in me—so physical and spiritual needs.”

In challenging other believers on in Atlanta, Ga. He is a regular contributor to that they may be brought to complete the topic of environmental stewardship, magazines such as Stand Firm and Christian unity. Then the world will know that Greenberg has found that it is an environ- Single and has most recently served on staff you sent me” (John 17:21-23). We dare mental issue that remains the most toxic at the Atlanta Vineyard Church as small not rest content until our life together as Christians represents the fulfillment enemy to public health in the world: water groups pastor. of our Lord’s prayer for his church. ■ supply. However, he sees these challenges

Christian Environmental Leaders for the 21st Century: Jeffrey Greenberg continued from page 15.

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RON SIDER

Naturalism vs. Theism: An Honest Search for Truth I frequently ponder the stunning complexity of the world through two totally different lenses.

Sometimes, I view the world through the naturalistic eyes of a good friend and brilliant philosopher who sincerely believes science urges us to conclude that nothing exists except a blind, materialistic, evolutionary process “governed” by random mutations. Sometimes, far more often, I view the world through my theistic eyes, which discern a gloriously intricate, purposely designed world created by a loving God. Those two fundamentally contradictory views stand side by side in today’s world. The first dominates our great universities, although substantial minorities of today’s best philosophers, physicists, and other scholars embrace the second. The second has been the view of both Christian laity and generations of brilliant Christian scholars for two millennia.

It is widely recognized that these two contradictory visions lead to momentous, contradictory views about persons and society. Christian theists claim that persons are made in the image of a loving, personal God who created them with genuine freedom to embrace or reject the universal moral order embedded in the universe, indeed even the freedom to say yes or no to the Creator’s invitation to life eternal in the presence of the Living God. If the naturalistic philosophy is right, then persons are just complex machines that accidentally evolved. Many naturalists still somehow think persons have

a special dignity and worth (we certainly are a lot more complex and intelligent) and argue for human freedom. But I do not think that persons, if made by a blind, materialistic process, possess the same worth and dignity they do if they are created in the very image of God. I also find it hard to see how human beings have any freedom in a world whose every part is determined by prior, exclusively materialistic causes and random mutation. At death, as Bertrand Russell dared to say bluntly, we die, rot, and disappear forever. Whatever worth persons may have, it lasts only for a fleeting moment and then is gone.

How is it that honest, intelligent people today genuinely searching for truth come to such radically different conclusions?

Christians should not quickly dismiss the secular view. We need to face the considerable evidence that people like Carl Sagan marshal (see his DemonHaunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark [Ballantine, 1997]).

A millennium ago, almost everyone saw a world full of miracle. Comets and plagues were miraculous signs from God. The sun, planets, and stars revolved around the earth, the center of the universe, where human beings existed as the center and height of God’s creation.

Then careful (usually devoutly Christian) scientists set to work looking for natural material causes. They discovered that the earth was a tiny speck revolving around a small sun in a small galaxy in a universe with billions of stars in every one of more than 100 billion galaxies.

Scientists discovered natural, non-miraculous explanations for comets, plagues, and all kinds of other things formerly explained by miracle.Then Darwin caught a glimpse of how species evolve through chance mutation and survival of the fittest. An ever-growing body of fossil finds, DNA evidence, and scientific data about our 10-plus-billion-year-old universe confirm Darwin’s basic thesis. Of course, PRISM 2006

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there are still substantial gaps, lots of things that contemporary scientists cannot yet explain, but is not the only “responsible,” “rational,” “scientific” conclusion that the scientific method will be able to explain everything and that nothing exists except this evolving materialistic world? Such a conclusion may– indeed does–force upon us a painful, radical rejection of the traditional view of persons made in the divine image and called to life eternal in the presence of the loving Creator of the universe.

The truth may be tough. But honest people will embrace it, no matter how wrenching its implications.

But difficult questions press in.

First of all, is there not a huge philosophical (ultimately religious) leap in the so-called “scientific” case for naturalism? All science does is show us with ever greater (breathtaking) precision how the natural, material world regularly works. No amount of scientific data could ever in principle tell us whether there is something more than the material world. More and more knowledge about how the material world regularly works tells us absolutely nothing about whether God exists. If God exists outside of the material world as its Creator, God can perform miracles anytime he chooses. An intelligent Mind could have chosen to use the long evolutionary process to which Darwin pointed to bring the detailed world we know into existence. It requires a leap of faith to bridge the gap between the scientific fact that a vast amount of what we regularly experience in the material world has natural, material causes and the atheist’s claim that only the natural world exists. The latter statement flows not from science but from atheistic religious belief.

Atheists disagree on how compelling the connection is between the vast amount of scientific data on natural, materialistic causes and the conclusion that God does not exist. Some think that con-

RON SIDER

tinuing to believe in God is extremely irrational; others consider the question of God’s existence much more open. It would certainly be bad philosophy to argue that contemporary science demands a naturalistic worldview.

Second, and quite apart from current discussion of “intelligent design,” many of our best minds have thought the amazing complexity and order of the world around us points to some intelligent cause. Even the great skeptic, David Hume, wrote that “a purpose, an intention, or design strikes everywhere the most careless, the most stupid thinker; and no man can be so hardened in absurd systems, as at all times to reject it” (quoted in C. Stephen Evans, Why Believe?: Reason and Mystery as Pointers to God [Eerdmans, 1996] p. 35).

Third, in a random, materialistic world, it is hard to understand ethics as anything more than arbitrary and subjective. As the atheist Jean Paul Sartre said, “Everything is permissible if God does not exist.” So why not rape, rob, or kill your neighbors if you are stronger and can get away with it? As Russell said, those who have the best poison gas will determine the “ethics” of the future.

In practice, to be sure, many ethicists do develop ethical systems and argue that right and wrong are more than subjective feelings. But it is hard to see how a solid foundation for a universal ethic can be derived from a blind

materialistic process. On the other hand, it is easy to see how a loving personal Creator could make a world with universal moral norms and create human beings with some innate sense of that moral order.

Fourth, there is the problem of freedom. If everything is determined by prior materialistic causes, how do we explain the inner experience of freedom that we all experience? Surely, materialistic determinists have to conclude that freedom is just an illusion, because it would seem impossible for genuine freedom to evolve from a materialistic process. And yet the materialists often acknowledge that moral responsibility makes no sense at all without freedom.

Finally, there is the historical evidence. Virtually all serious historians today agree that Jesus was an historical person who was kind and loving but also made some pretty outrageous claims.

There is even pretty strong historical evidence that the crucified Jesus was alive again on the third day.

How clear is that evidence? The person willing to look honestly at the historical evidence with an open mind finds it surprisingly strong. But it is not a mathematical proof. The preponderance of data points toward a real historical resurrection, but the evidence is not so strong that it totally overwhelms the rational mind.

There is a certain parallel to the other

things we have noted. Design in nature, the sense of right and wrong, human freedom, all seem to find a better foundation in a theistic rather than a naturalistic view of the world. But none of the arguments—one by one or together —represent a totally airtight case. They leave room for human choice.

Why? Biblical revelation says the Creator shaped persons as free beings because he wanted us to love and obey him in freedom, not compulsion. If God had made the evidence for his existence so total, so clear, so omnipresent that every rational mind felt compelled to accept it in the same way we feel compelled to accept mathematical formulae, we would not be free in our relationship to God. It looks as if the Creator left pretty clear calling cards scattered in nature, persons, and human history. But God chose not to make their message so abundantly clear that they would wipe out human freedom.

We are left with two radically contradictory views of the world. The theistic view, I think, makes better sense of all we know than the naturalistic view.

But, finite beings that we are, we must all, on both sides of this divide, keep looking honestly at all the solid data that human experience (science, history, selfreflection) provide. Unless we do that, we fall into dogmatism, rather than continue an honest search for truth. ■

MusicNotes continued from page 38.

strength as a songwriter: His open, honest lamentation pulls no punches yet is never self-indulgent. It humbly acknowledges the overwhelming need for the redemptive work of Jesus. In this respect, Bazan can be listened to as a contemporary psalmist, reflecting the sometimes harsh honesty of King David before God. These songs are worth our time and

thought, because here is displayed for us a microcosm of the Real Story—God’s work of grace in transforming people who are helplessly broken.

enough, as long as they are not forced to confront the ugly reality of sin. You certainly don’t hear anything about falling from grace on Patti’s comeback album.

This is how David Bazan makes us uncomfortable, but it is also his greatest

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Matt Weed is a visual arts major at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he also runs a small recording studio with people from his band, Rosetta.

RON SIDER

Holy Week, American Poverty, and Faithful Discipleship Two things prompt me to think about domestic poverty right now. The first is that my publisher has encouraged me to do a second edition of Just Generosity: A New Vision for Overcoming Poverty in America, which came out in 1999, and I am in the final stages of the update.

The second is that Christian Churches Together (CCT) has decided to make domestic poverty the issue for discussion and reflection at its annual gathering this year. When officially launched this year, CCT will be the first ever truly ecumenical group in this country because denominations from all the major church families have decided to join.

I have been privileged to serve on the steering committee from the beginning.

From March 28-31 CCT will hold its annual meeting in Atlanta, and domestic poverty will be discussed at six different times in the program. As chair of the committee preparing the materials and agenda for these sessions, I need your prayers.

As we think toward Holy Week, it is highly appropriate that we ponder poverty in light of Good Friday and Easter.

Jesus was crucified—in part—for his radical words and actions about poverty, wealth, and oppression. Yes, he went to the Cross as the atonement for our sins and because he angered the religious leaders with his claim to be the Son of God. But he also upset the establishment by driving the money changers out of the temple for turning the place of prayer into a den of thieves. Early on in his ministry Jesus said he had come to heal

the sick and preach the gospel to the poor.

Later he told the rich young man to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor. He said it was almost impossible for rich people to enter the kingdom, and he commanded people to make loans to the poor even if they had no hope of being repaid. All that would have been quite enough to make the rich establishment want to be rid of him. So that is part of why Good Friday came to be.

But it is only Good Friday because Easter followed on the third day. The Resurrection demonstrated that Jesus was right about the arrival of the Messianic kingdom, a reality God had promised would correct injustice and empower the poor as they joined the dawning kingdom.

Among many other things, Easter means good news for the oppressed. Since the Resurrection, a new kingdom, a dramatically new community of Jesus’ disciples, has been emerging where the poor can experience love and justice.

So Holy Week is the perfect time to talk about the facts of domestic poverty.

What are the facts?

In the last four years, as the U.S. economy has recovered, more and more people—about 1 million more per year!

—have fallen into poverty. In this richest nation in human history, 37 million Americans are poor. That means their income is so low that a family of four does not reach the poverty cap of $19,157.

Less than half the poor are black and Latino, but the poverty rates for minorities are double those for whites.

One reason for this rise in poverty is that the wages for men without a college degree have fallen dramatically in the past 30 years—even when they work full-time. From 1979-2003, male highschool dropouts saw average hourly wages decline 20 percent in real dollars.

Part of the problem is the absurdly low minimum wage—just $5.15 per hour.

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earned a salary equal to the poverty level for a family of three. In 2004 that same full-time worker’s wages were just 68 percent of the poverty level.

At the same time that the poor—even full-time working poor—are losing ground, the rich are getting much richer.

In 1974 the richest fifth enjoyed seven times as much income as the poorest fifth.

By 2003, the richest fifth had an annual income 12 times that of the poorest fifth.

The richest 1 percent of Americans has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent!

CEO salaries illustrate the outrage.

In 1960 CEOs made approximately 41 times the salary of the average factory worker. In 2004 it was 431 times as much.

If the minimum wage had risen at the same rate as CEO pay since 1990, the minimum hourly wage today would be $20.03 not $5.15!

In spite of all that, Republicans in Congress have been working to cut the budget deficit (caused substantially by tax cuts for the rich and the war in Iraq) by cutting programs for the poor.

What’s wrong with this picture? It flatly contradicts the biblical call to seek justice for the poor. God measures societies by what they do to (or for) the people at the bottom.

Easter, however, is no time for despair.

Easter means that the Messianic kingdom is breaking powerfully into history. And that means, in part, that Jesus’ new community of disciples is empowered to be a robust voice for the poor. Fortunately, a movement is growing all across the American church to demand that this nation change its priorities and make overcoming poverty an urgent agenda.

Please pray that the Holy Spirit will move the hearts and minds of the dozens of top U.S. denominational leaders meeting in Atlanta. Pray that they catch God’s vision of justice for poor Americans.

Then, this Easter, rejoice in the fantastic news that the Messianic kingdom is breaking into history—and live in a way that demonstrates you truly believe it. ■

RON SIDER

One Person Can Change a Denomination Last summer my wife and I hosted a very special visitor, Rev. Philip Owasi from western Kenya. Owasi was in Philadelphia to attend the annual conference of Christians for Biblical Equality. They had given him a scholarship because his master’s thesis had persuaded his 2-million-member denomination, the Kenya Pentecostal Assemblies of God, to ordain women for the first time in its history.

After accepting Christ in 1972, Owasi became an active youth leader in his church. But his desire to go into ministry angered his father, who considered pastoring the humblest of jobs for an educated person and refused to give his son a single shilling for his theological studies.

Fortunately, Owasi was accepted at the Pentecostal Bible College in Nyong’ori, Kenya, where he graduated in 1983 with a diploma in Bible and theology.

Over the next 20 years, Owasi pastored several congregations.

From 1996-1997, Owasi studied at the Allahabad Bible Seminary in India and received a bachelor’s in theology.

His passion for education led him to apply to Wheaton College, but he lacked the funds to come to the United States.

Then, unexpectedly, in September 2000, Owasi received a scholarship to do an M.A. in theological studies in South Korea.

When Rev. Owasi traveled to South Korea, he left behind a thriving congregation of about 300 members. Earlier in his ministry, he had not understood the connection between evangelism and social ministry, but slowly he learned how to combine them. The Child

Development Center his church implemented in cooperation with Compassion International today ministers to over 250 needy children from poor families.

An amazing thing happened during his studies in South Korea. Puzzling over what topic to choose for his master’s thesis, Owasi felt drawn to the topic of women’s ordination. A Canadian professor suggested that he contact Christians for Biblical Equality in Minneapolis, and they sent him a number of good scholarly books on the topic. Initially, he confesses, “I was just like any other man in Africa who believed in patriarchal leadership in every place.” But his views began to change as he studied the Scriptures, and he grew increasingly uneasy with the fact that his own denomination trained women theologically but then refused to ordain them. Eventually, both his Scripture-searching and his soulsearching resulted in a thesis entitled “Women’s Ordination: With Special Reference to Pentecostal Assemblies of God in Kenya.”

Upon his return to Kenya in late 2002, Owasi went to his denominational headquarters, showed them his new degree, and gave the top leaders a copy of his thesis. Shocked at the title, they wanted to know why on earth he had written on this topic, since never in its history had the denomination ordained women. Owasi simply asked them to read the thesis.

The leaders studied it for two years and, miraculously, the general superintendent moved from a traditional to an egalitarian stance on gender issues. Many continued to oppose the ordination of women when the general superintendent put the issue up for discussion with the top church council. But the leader persisted and, in April 2005, for the first time in its history, the Pentecostal Assemblies of God in Kenya ordained 20 women!

In December 2004, Rev. Owasi started a new church plant with 12 people.

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In less than a year the church has grown to about 100 members. Two former Muslims have come to Christ. The congregation has an active youth department training young people to do evangelism.

The women’s department helps women serve the Lord, care for their households, and start small businesses. The church managed to raise enough money to buy two tailoring machines, with which they expect to begin making dresses and producing school uniforms for local schools. Owasi and his congregation dream of many projects in evangelism, health care, community development, and education.

But Owasi’s church has a special need that I want to share. No Pentecostal Assemblies of God church in his town has a church building anywhere large enough for their district conferences.

Owasi’s church is growing fast, and he dreams of building a church building that can seat up to 700 people. Given the rapid growth of his congregation, they will soon need a space of that size.

But Owasi’s members are not wealthy and don’t have the $85,000 needed for the building. (In fact, $46,000 would pay for the first phase of the building.)

As I listened to Owasi, I told him that I believed there were some American congregations in the ESA network who might be delighted to partner with his congregation in his building project as well as other areas of holistic ministry.

So I invite you to think and pray about the possibility that God wants your congregation to partner with this faithful, hardworking pastor (he has even found time to complete all the course work for his Ph.D.) and his congregation in Kenya.

If you are interested, write to me at ESA, 6 E. Lancaster Avenue,Wynnewood, PA 19096; rsider@eastern.edu. I will be glad to put you in direct contact with Owasi. It would be so easy for a few U.S. congregations to help that congregation realize its dreams. ■

RON SIDER

Moving Toward a Biblical Balance?

The new National Association of Evangelicals public policy framework, “For the Health of the Nation,” insists boldly that “faithful evangelical civic engagement must champion a biblically balanced agenda.” Why? Because “the Bible makes it clear that God cares a great deal about the well-being of marriage, the family, the sanctity of human life, justice for the poor, care for creation, peace, freedom, and racial justice.”

That is now the unanimously adopted, official position of the NAE, which represents approximately 25 million American evangelicals. (Interestingly, that agenda is very similar to the one advocated by the Catholic bishops.) But how many of those 25 million evangelicals agree with this principle? And will it become the operational norm and practical guide for large numbers of evangelicals?

The public image has been that evangelicals are preoccupied with two issues: abortion and family/marriage (especially gay marriage). That stereotype is only partly right. Evangelicals have played a key role in the last decade in a number of important political debates and in successful legislation promoting human rights and religious freedom and countering sexual trafficking of women and children.

On the other hand, some of the largest, most visible conservative evangelical political organizations clearly have focused on this narrow agenda. And many want things to stay that way.

At the March 2005 release of the

new NAE document in Washington, D.C., Tom Minnery, vice president of public policy for James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, publicly urged the NAE not to get involved in the issue of global warming.

(Creation care is one of the seven major areas that the NAE declaration calls evangelicals to address.) Privately, key leaders of the Religious Right have urged the NAE to remain focused on abortion and family issues.

Jim Wallis tells the story of a public presentation by a prominent Republican conservative at the Kennedy School of Government. Basically this person argued that the Republicans win elections by appealing to evangelicals and other religious people with a lot of talk about life and family issues and then govern in the interests of the rich. (Note President Bush’s huge tax cuts for the wealthiest 20 percent.)

Then Jim Wallis asked the speaker a question:“What would you do if the Democrats ran a candidate who was solidly pro-life and pro-family and also favored Democratic policies on economic justice, racial issues, and the environment?” The answer: “We would panic!”

A version of this scenario will be offered in the 2006 Senate race in Pennsylvania. In a real-life, high-stakes political battle, incumbent Rick Santorum (No. 3 Republican in the Senate) is being challenged by Bob Casey, Jr., son of the late former governor of Pennsylvania.

Like his father, whose pro-life stance is said to have barred him from speaking at the 1992 Democratic convention, Casey, Jr., is a pro-life, pro-family Catholic. But he embraces typical Democratic positions on the economy, race, and the environment.

Choosing how to vote in this race will not be easy for people with a biblically balanced agenda, since Santorum also has a genuine concern for the poor and has pushed some significant proposals like adding real dollars for Bush’s Faith-

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Based Initiative and instituting Kids’ Accounts that would provide substantial government grants to children born into poor families.

This race will be one of the most highly watched in 2006. If Democrat Casey were to defeat Republican Santorum on a pro-life, pro-family, pro-poor, proracial justice, pro-creation care platform, it would probably significantly affect the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries and perhaps the November election as well.

Specific races, of course, are always muddy and complex, and I am certainly not endorsing either candidate. What is important is to watch two key developments in the next decade. First, will large numbers of evangelicals truly embrace the “pro-life, pro-poor, etc.” position which is now the official approach of the National Association of Evangelicals? And what impact will that have on both the Democratic and Republican parties?

As I read the situation, Republicans are usually better on family and sanctity of life issues, and Democrats are usually better on economic justice, racial justice, and creation care. That could change.

The Democrats could become more prolife and pro-family.The Republicans could become more pro-poor, pro-racial justice, and pro-creation care.

Since evangelicals represent one-quarter of all American voters, evangelicals have the power to force such a change.

If even one-half of the evangelical voters began to demand public policies and political platforms that represented a biblically balanced agenda, at least one of the parties (and maybe both) would move in that direction.

I won’t hold my breath until that happens or bet my retirement funds that I will see it in the next decade. But it could happen. Indeed it will if enough evangelicals (and Catholics) insist on it with their votes. ■

RON SIDER

A Growing Movement to Overcome Global Poverty On June 28, I gathered in Britain with about 40 other American and British church leaders at Lambeth Palace for the London Forum to call on the leaders of the G8 to expand our nations’ commitment to overcoming global poverty, especially in Africa. Chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the London Forum called on the G8 leaders meeting in early July in Scotland to increase aid, cancel more debt, and improve the opportunities for fair trade so that the poorest nations can make more rapid progress in overcoming poverty.

Every three seconds, a child in the developing world dies of poverty or diseases we know how to prevent.

American, European, and Japanese trade barriers, especially agricultural subsidies to wealthy farmers, lower the global prices of key African products and thus make it difficult for poor African countries to earn their way out of poverty.

(For example, European farm subsidies produce a situation where every European cow receives a subsidy worth more than the annual income of each African worker!) “This means,” we concluded in our Church Leaders’ Statement at the London Forum, that “all of us in the prosperous world—governments, churches, the media, and populations—stand under judgment.We believe God judges nations by what they do to the poorest.”

Before the meeting at Lambeth Palace, the American delegation met with Chancellor Gordon Brown for an hour (the number-two person in British

politics, who will almost certainly become prime minister sometime in the next year or two). Both Brown and Pr ime Minister Tony Blair have been vigorous leaders in urging the rich nations to do more to overcome poverty in Africa.

Brown was especially interested in what Richard Cizik (the NAE’s public policy person in Washington) and I said about the expanding commitment of American evangelicals to overcome poverty and spent a couple minutes talking to the two of us after the meeting ended.

Everyone recognizes that this key component of President Bush’s political base could have enormous influence in the task of urging President Bush to do more.

On the day before we traveled to London, the U.S. delegation met in the White House with key policy people preparing for the G8 summit. In that meeting we expressed our appreciation of the fact that President Bush has already done a lot to expand U.S. government foreign economic aid. He has tripled assistance to Africa and doubled overall U.S. foreign humanitarian aid since he became president.That is more than any president has done in decades. But we urged him to do more so that his record is not just good, but great.

Just before that meeting, I met in the White House with Tim Goeglein (the president’s liaison to the religious community) and urged the White House to dialogue more with a wider range of evangelicals, especially centrist and progressive evangelicals who largely agree with the president on life and family issues but want greater attention and resources focused on overcoming poverty and caring for creation.

At the London Forum, we sensed a kairos moment—a special historical time when God is moving in unusual ways to move our world toward greater justice.

In spite of ongoing theological and other disagreements among Christians,the entire Christian community is uniting in an unprecedented way around overcoming PRISM 2005

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global poverty, especially in Africa. Evangelicals and Pentecostals around the world are joining with Catholics and mainline Protestants to advocate for debt cancellation, increased aid, and fair trade.

One of the striking new developments is the Micah Challenge.The Micah Challenge is organized by the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) to support and promote the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals to reduce global poverty by 50 percent by 2015.

(The WEA is a network of 123 national evangelical church alliances in 123 countries, representing about 3 million local churches and 385 million Christians.)

More and more national Micah Challenge organizations are springing up around the world to work on this grand project for the next 10 years.

ESA is already at the center of this swelling tide of evangelical engagement on overcoming global poverty. And we can do more. Every ESA member could do the following: • Go to the Micah Challenge website (www.micahchallenge.org) and sign up to join the campaign and get the regular updates. (I am on the steering committee for the Micah Challenge USA.) • Consider coming to New York this September for a day or two to join Micah Challenge leaders and a vast range of others from around the world who will meet near the United Nations as scores of heads of state gather to evaluate the progress being made to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

(More information is on the ESA website.)

• Join the One Campaign (recently endorsed by Rick Warren)–a very broad movement of religious and secular organizations (Bono is a key mover) to urge the U.S. government to increase economic foreign aid by 1 percent (c. $25 billion) of the federal budget (www.one.org).

• Write your senators and members of the House, urging them to restore (in Continued on page 39.

intro, but “Firefly” is a wonderful exception, the highlight of the album.The song starts with Berquist playing straight piano chords and repeating the signature line from the chorus,“My memory will not fail me now.” She arpeggiates the chords on the verses, low to high, but when the chorus returns, it’s with distorted electric guitar, bean-shaker percussion, bass tremors, and Berquist’s voice at its sensual, soulful best. This is the sort of intensity more frequent on albums past, especially Eve and Films for Radio.

Drunkard’s Prayer ends with a cover of the classic jazz ballad, “My Funny Valentine.” It’s romance without sentimentality, best shared with the woman I love. But I am driving away. I listen to the CD twice more before I get to work.

Around 11 p.m, I’m ready to sleep on my hosts’ couch. I have some work planned for tomorrow, but it could wait a few weeks. My wife calls to say our 9month-old daughter won’t go to sleep unless I’m there to rub her back. I know what I have to do.Yeah, it’s a long trip. But Over the Rhine will take me home.

J. James DeConto surprised his then-fiancée by flying from New Hampshire to Ohio to take her to an Over the Rhine concert in the fall of 1999.They sat close to the stage, from where Berquist and Detweiler laughed at their, uh, public displays of affection

Washington Watch continued from page 32.

In Like Manner…the Women continued from page 7.

resort to low-income housing in the first place?What are the long-term consequences of gentrification and urban renewal?

Tomorrow I am attending a lecture by a well-known financial analyst, and I plan to ask him some really tough questions about the role of the government in economic reform.After that, I plan to come back to the office and talk to my coworkers about what we can do, in the long run, to change the systems of injustice in this country.

And perhaps, on my way home afterwards, I’ll go against all the advice I’ve received and try simply looking each man in the eye, greeting him with the respect due any neighbor, so he sees that I recognize his God-given human dignity.

That just might be the most charitable—and just—act of all. ★

hosted by Dr. Suzan Johnson Cooke ( w w w. w i m i n c o n f e r e n c e . c o m ) , October 9-11 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Trust me, you’ll be encouraged and blessed to go forward in the work God has for you.

Although it may hurt to lack the blessing of man, we must desire so much more the blessing of God. God’s blessing comes through our obedience to what God has called us to do, and sometimes fulfilling that call comes without the blessing of those from whom we desire it. Nevertheless, step out into your calling, searching first God’s blessing, and looking forward to the fulfillment you’ll receive by ministering to those whom God shall have you bless. ■

Rebecca Yael Miller is on staff at the New Atlantic Initiative of the American Enterprise Institute (www.aei.org/nai), an international nonpartisan network of think tanks, business leaders, journalists, and prominent political and cultural figures dedicated to revitalizing and expanding the Atlantic community of democracies and to combating the dangerous drift and self-absorption that infect American and European politics.

Elizabeth D. Rios is co-pastor of Wounded Healer Fellowship in Pembroke Pines, Fla., academic advisor and adjunct professor at Trinity International University, founder of the Center for Emerging Female Leadership (www.cefl.org), and a doctoral student in organizational leadership. Visit her weblog at http://latinaliz.typepad.com

W

Ron Sider, continued from page 40. the budget they will approve in early fall) the full request by President Bush for foreign economic aid. (The House cut the president’s request by a couple billion dollars!). In fact, tell them that the evangelical community wants Congress to authorize even more than the president requested.

• If you don’t get ESA’s weekly ePistle,

sign up now (send an email to e-pistle @esa-online.org) so you can receive regular updates on this expanding campaign.

We stand at a historic moment of unusual opportunity to dramatically reduce global poverty. Evangelicals are strategically placed to play an especially

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crucial role.As I look back on the almost 30 years since I first wrote Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, I am amazed at what God has already done—and very excited about what God wants to do through us in the next decade. Let’s seize this opportunity! ■

RON SIDER

Evaluating President Bush’s 2006 Budget “When the king is concerned with justice, the nation will be strong, but when he is only concerned with money, he will ruin his country.”

Proverbs 29:4 Every budget is a moral document.Your family budget reflects what you value.

President Bush’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2006 tells us what he values.As the House and Senate reshape the president’s proposed budget, they are telling us what they value.

Christians must start with a set of biblically grounded moral norms in evaluating this budget. Hundreds of biblical texts tell us that God has a special concern for the poor and demands that rulers seek justice for the poor.The new official public policy document of the National Association of Evangelicals declares that “God measures societies by how they treat the people at the bottom” and says the Bible calls us to “work toward equality of opportunity.” It urges Christians to “work in the political realm to shape wise laws that…protect those trapped in poverty and empower the poor to improve their circumstances.”

Thinking in a Christian way about political proposals like the 2006 budget requires more than biblical norms. We need to understand the context. Several things are especially important: 1) Recent budget deficits (first because of the 2001 recession and then because of huge tax cuts) have become so large that many economists worry they may severely damage future economic well-being; 2) military expenditures have greatly increased in the last few years;3) American

society has become increasingly unequal in the last several decades; and 4) the number of people in poverty and without health insurance has increased in each of the last three years.

From 1977 to 1994, the poorest 60 percent of all Americans actually lost in terms of after-tax income while the richest 1 percent gained 72 percent. The poorest 20 percent benefited a little from the economic growth of the later 1990s, but the richest 20 percent got most of the benefits. From 1979 to 2001, the average annual after-tax income of the richest 1 percent grew by 139 percent (from $294,300 to $703,100) while the bottom 20 percent saw a small gain of 8.5 percent (from $13,000 to $14,000).

By 2000, the U.S. had become the most unequal society of all industrialized nations. In fact, the richest 1 percent had more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.

The Bush tax cuts made things even more unequal. Just 5 percent of the huge tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 went to the bottom 20 percent (an average of $27 per person), while 70 percent of all the tax benefits went to the richest 20 percent —and 26 percent went to the top 1 percent (an average of $34,992 per person!).

The number of people in poverty has grown by more than 1 million each year for the last three years: 17.6 percent of America’s children are in poverty; 45 million Americans lack health insurance.

So what does the president’s budget do? It provides for more tax cuts for the rich, expands the military budget, and cuts dozens of programs that help poorer Americans. Does God really want poor Americans to bear the burden of paying for the war in Iraq and balancing the federal budget?

E ve n t h o u g h t h e n u m b e r o f Americans lacking health insurance stands at the highest point ever, the president proposes cutting Medicaid (health insurance for the poor) by $45 billion over the next 10 years.

Even though the president has made PRISM 2005

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education a priority and increased federal funding for education in his first four years, he now proposes cutting the education budget by $20.5 billion over five years. (Two bright spots: He does propose substantially increasing funding for Pell grants to help poor kids afford college and adds a new $500-million program to encourage teachers to work in low-income schools.)

Even though the WIC program (a nutritional program for pregnant and nursing mothers and their young children) has proven to save money in the long run, the president proposes cutting the program by $658 million over the next five years: 670,000 fewer individuals would be helped in 2010 than in 2005.

Even though low-income Americans find it increasingly difficult to afford housing, the president does not even propose enough funds to continue to serve the people who today receive Section 8 housing vouchers (which help low-income people pay their rent): 370,000 fewer households would receive rental assistance in 2010.

Even though childcare costs for the working poor continue to rise, the president freezes childcare funding for the next five years: 300,000 fewer children will receive childcare assistance in 2010.

Even though the number in poverty keeps rising, the president proposes $600 million in cuts in food stamps over five years: 300,000 people would lose food stamps.

At the same time, the military gets more money and the rich get more tax cuts.The military budget is now about 15 percent higher than it was on average during the Cold War. Anybody who thinks it needs to be that high should insist that richer Americans, not the poor, should pay for it.

In spite of the huge budget deficit, the president’s proposed budget includes tax cuts that will cost $1.4 trillion over 10 years.

Continued on page 39.

as if he does just that. I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

All in all, The College Dropout is the work of an admitted sinner touched by the grace to speak truth, summed up in a line from “Jesus Walks”: God show me the way because the devil’s trying to break me down.

Guest columnist Jesse James DeConto listens to Kanye West in his car or on headphones, out of the range of little ears. His 4-year-old daughter prefers “girl” singers.

Prophet Unaware

BY BOB HEPBURN

One of the weirder sidebars to Kanye West’s Grammy quest was the unrelated Stellar Award nomination of The College Dropout for “Christian Hip Hop Album of the Year”—a bid that was retracted a few weeks later after howls of protest swamped Stellar Awards’ headquarters.

As embarrassing as this misstep was, it speaks volumes about how the church is faring in the contest for the hearts and

minds of those outside its walls.

Mad props* to Kanye West for understanding the times and knowing what the church should do. He taps into the Jesus Zeitgeist with “Jesus Walks,” deploying street-sharp, church-referenced lyrics crafted for him largely by Che Smith (aka Indianapolis rapper Rhymefest), voicing them over an infectious, militant, and danceable track (co-written by hip-hop violinist Miri Ben-Ari), and then directing it at the street—a context already searchin’ “hard” (in a heartbreakin’ way) for a Christ that’s f ’real.

West lobs a “Go ye” grenade into the Church: Follow your Lord, come out of the sanctuary, and engage this hurting world you’re busy waiting on Jesus to escape from.

Sad drops** for the church for not understanding the times and not knowing what it should be doing.Trading our prophetic voice for the “profitic,” we’ve succumbed to the idolatries of Christian prosperity and celebrity. The adversary’s saw? “Nothing succeeds like success.”

Indeed.

As a secular hip-hop prophet,West’s “ministry”to the church is strange indeed.

Beyond wittily tackling the idiosyn-

crasies of a socio-cultural context, his challenge of status quo Christianity in “Jesus Walks”is a call for a radical return to an “axe is already at the roots” spiritual authenticity. Like the secular poets and prophets who posthumously provided resonant grist for Paul’s Areopagitic flow, so does West (among others)—for those in the Philippians 3:10 loop. Both street and church contexts eagerly await a reso/ revo-lution and everyone will be shocked and awed at how God works it out. In the meantime, God is able to use even someone who says he believes in himself to remind and rebuke God’s own children to get with God and get at what God’s after:“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

Guest columnist Bob Hepburn is director of YUBM (Young Urban Black Male) Ministries.

Check them out at www.yubm.org. *many thanks to **shame on (Brush up on your street slang at www.urbandictionary.com)

Ron Sider, continued from page 40.

Especially striking are two tax cuts that would get phased in from 2006 to 2010: Once fully in force, the 10-year (2010-2019) cost of these two tax cuts is $146 billion. And 97 percent of all the benefits from these cuts go to the richest 4 percent of households with incomes over $200,000 a year; 54 percent go to households with annual incomes of more than $1 million.

Do evangelical Christians really want to support tax cuts for millionaires paid

for by cuts in food stamps, healthcare, housing vouchers, and nutritional programs for poor Americans? Is that the meaning of compassionate conservatism?

If evangelicals want to implement the new NAE declaration’s call to empower the poor to improve their circumstances, they will have to demand that the president and Congress reprioritize the 2006 budget. Eliminating proposed tax cuts for the richest 5 percent of Americans would make available tens of billions of

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dollars to empower the poor.

How can that happen? Actual adoption of the 2006 budget is a lengthy process that will not be complete until October of this year. If enough of us write letters to the president, our senators, and our representatives in the House, they will change the proposed budget. ■ “Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

Psalms 82:4

RON SIDER

Looking Back, Looking Ahead: An Exciting Future for ESA I turned 65 this past year. Inevitably, registering for one’s monthly Social Security check focuses the mind and prompts reflection on the past—and the future.

My more than 30 years of involvement with Evangelicals for Social Action have provided some of the highest privileges of my life. I still remember organizing the first meeting in Chicago, over Thanksgiving, 1973, where about 40 older and younger evangelicals drew up a little manifesto, The Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern, which instantly attracted a lot of media attention. In fact, the Chicago Sun Times commented that perhaps the Thanksgiving workshop was the most important church-related event of 1973. Among many other things, it led in 1978 to the launch of ESA as a national membership organization.

Some of you have been friends and partners in ESA from the beginning.

Others joined later, albeit years ago.

Still others have only recently discovered ESA.Walking and working together, we have been able to accomplish a lot over ESA’s 32 years. Glancing back, I mention a few of the highlights.

In the earlier years, as ESA worked to recover a more balanced embrace of evangelism and social ministry, the primary need was for increased evangelical engagement on social issues. ESA promoted that through a variety of conferences and publications–including my books, such as Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger and Good News, Good Works.

Over more than two decades, ESA

has taken the lead in a number of efforts to strengthen evangelical engagement on international issues of global awareness and social justice. ESA was a leader in the call for economic sanctions against South Africa’s apartheid regime. In the early ’80s, ESA endorsed the call for a bilateral,verifiable nuclear freeze.Through much of the ’80s, ESA worked extensively in support of peace, freedom, and justice in Central America, opposing both the States’ funding of the contras and the Sandinistas’ oppression. For a number of years, ESA provided the U.S. base for INFEMIT (The International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians, the most influential global network of progressive evangelicals) and INFEMIT’s ethics journal Transformation, which is the only international evangelical journal on social ethics. ESA also provided a base from which I served as the general secretary of a major eightyear global process called the Oxford Conference on Christian Faith and Economics, which in 1990 produced the influential Oxford Declaration on Christian Faith and Economics.

ESA took the lead in establishing (and providing the home for) the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), the evangelical partner of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE).The other partners were the National Council of Churches, the United States Catholic Conference, and a Jewish coalition.At a time when there was very little evangelical activity on environmental issues, ESA leaders developed vision for EEN and took the lead in its development. In January 1996, ESA and EEN together conducted a highly successful press conference and campaign to defend the Endangered Species Act. (Mainstream environmental activists have credited ESA/EEN with a major role in this successful defense of the Endangered Species Act.) In 2002-2003, EEN conducted its phenomenally successful “What Would Jesus Drive?”

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campaign. Today, 19 major evangelical organizations are members of EEN’s Program Council, and environmental concern is slowly becoming more mainstream in evangelical thinking.

Starting in the early 1990s (with funding from the Pew and Luce Foundations), ESA held a series of conferences, mentored several dozen doctoral scholars doing PhDs in public policy at America’s most prestigious universities, and produced over two dozen monographs on specific public policy issues.

Eventually, an approach to Christian thinking about public policy emerged (thanks in part to a three-year process funded by the Bauman Foundation) which produced two major volumes, one of which won book awards both from Christianity Today and the American Library Association’s Booklist Top Ten. Partly because of this, the National Association of Evangelicals named me to co-chair a major process to develop a new political philosophy to guide the political engagement of the NAE. ESA played a crucial role in making this process happen. In October 2004, the resulting document,“For the Health of the Nation:An Evangelical Call to Civic Engagement,” became the official framework for the political work of NAE, the official voice of 30 million evangelicals.

By the early ’90s, as evangelicals became more engaged on social issues, ESA began to sense a growing need to place greater emphasis on evangelism.

The result was the ESA-led Network 9:35, a network of national organizations, institutions, and local congregations focused on helping local churches strengthen their holistic ministry.

Network 9:35 has a website, videos, starter kits and second-level kits, books, and a range of other tools on holistic ministry. Both mainline and evangelical congregations contact Network 9:35 for help with developing or strengthening their holistic ministry. Network 9:35’s

focus on nurturing more effective holistic congregations has emerged as one of ESA’s central programs.

In 1993, at Chicago II (the 20th anniversary of The Chicago Declaration on Evangelical Social Concern), ESA launched PRISM magazine. It has grown to be recognized as an important voice of progressive evangelicals. And every week, ESA’s ePistle alerts a growing network to news, ideas, and important articles on public policy, holistic ministry, creation care, and Christianity and culture.

ESA does not pretend that we singlehandedly reshaped the evangelical world.

But it is certainly true that 30 or 40 years ago many (probably most) evangelical leaders thought that evangelism was their primary responsibility. Today, on the other hand, almost all evangelical leaders agree that both evangelism and social responsibility are central to faithful, biblical Christianity. ESA has been a persistent, vigorous voice promoting that change for 30 years. For whatever success ESA has had we truly thank God. For several years now, as ESA’s board reflected back on this history, we began to ask a key question about the future.

Since I was approaching age 65, we asked what the future would look like.

The board prayed and talked about how to strengthen and find a strong, permanent institutional home for ESA’s ongoing ministry.

Slowly, a vision emerged.We realized that although great progress had been made in helping evangelical leaders embrace holistic ministry, there was still a great deal to do in helping local congregations fully grasp and thoroughly integrate God’s concern for the poor, holistic ministry, and biblically balanced political engagement into their ongoing church life.The board felt that this task could best be carried on in conjunction with an evangelical theological school.

ESA had a long association with Eastern Seminary in Philadelphia, where

I had been a faculty member since 1978 and where ESA’s offices had been located since 1990. Throughout its entire history, Eastern had been committed to holistic ministry. Its motto was “The Whole Gospel for the Whole World through Whole Persons.” Eastern’s open evangelical stance and holistic vision fit very well with ESA’s evangelical commitment and ecumenical engagement.

And the seminary was a part of Eastern University,whose vision was to be the leading progressive evangelical university on the East Coast.

A conversation began–and led eventually to Eastern Seminary deciding to establish a center called the Sider Center on Ministry and Public Policy and inviting ESA to associate with the new center. A lot of study and prayer led to the ESA board’s decision to accept this offer.

Both institutions had the same evangelical, holistic vision. Eastern Seminary, as the theological school of Eastern University, offered a large institutional home that would provide a strong base for ESA’s ongoing work long after I retired (relax–or spit tacks–I do not intend to do that for a number of years!).

ESA will continue as a membership organization. ESA will continue to educate the church, promote holistic ministry in local churches and articulate a biblically balanced agenda for public policy. ESA’s educational communication activities will continue. In fact, we have already greatly strengthened the ePistle’s electronic communication. Network 9:35 will continue.

ESA’s public policy work will continue.

Just as in the past, annual memberships and the gifts of smaller and larger donors will make it possible for ESA to continue its work.

The location of ESA as part of the Sider Center, firmly established in a significant evangelical theological school and university, means not only that ESA has a strong, permanent home but also that it can both benefit from and conPRISM 2005

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tribute to the ongoing academic work of training future leaders and advancing understanding through research and writing.The practical, activist things that ESA learns through concrete work with local congregations and politics can feed back into the academic training of future leaders, and the cutting-edge knowledge of the university can inform ESA’s concrete, practical efforts to promote just, fair politics and holistic congregations.

I have a dream for ESA and the Sider Center–20 years from now when I am fully retired, observing and encouraging from my rocker.

I dream of ESA’s Network 9:35 enjoying an expanded set of tools and activities so it can work with hundreds of local congregations, helping them lead thousands of people to personal faith in Christ and transform their communities. I dream of ESA nurturing a large network of Christians committed to shape American politics so it is truly pro-poor and pro-family, pro-peace, procreation care and pro-life. I dream of effective popular communication tools and networks of scholar/activists visibly affecting what happens in national, state, and local politics. I dream of ESA having vastly more effective tools of communication to share this biblical message with an ever growing circle of committed Christian disciples/activists.

I dream of all of this seamlessly interconnected with the academic ministry of the seminary and university. I dream of graduate students in Christian Faith and Politics taking courses, earning degrees, and interning in ESA’s political work to gain practical experience.I dream of ESA’s Network 9:35 profoundly influencing seminary training so that a vast stream of seminary graduates pour into our congregations with a passion for and an understanding of how to build holistic congregations combining evangelism and social action. I dream of pastors taking sabbaticals at the Sider Center, refreshing their vision for holistic min-

istry, pondering more deeply about how to lead their congregations in faithful political engagement, and discovering how the concrete tools and activities of ESA can strengthen their pastoral work.

I dream of several joint appointments at the seminary and the university where persons teach half-time and work halftime in ESA’s programs on public policy and holistic ministry. In my life I have tried to combine the roles of scholar, activist, and popularizer. Not content just to teach and do research, I sought to write popular articles and books for a larger lay audience and organize movements to change church and society.

Most scholars should not do that. But some—more!—persons are needed who combine all three roles of scholar, activist, and popularizer. If scholars don’t write the popular books, others will do it— badly!—and mislead the church. (One need think only of Late Great Planet Earth or the Left Behind series.) So I dream of several joint appointments at the center, freeing up brilliant young evangelical scholars to spend half their time working in ESA programs, dreaming up new, brilliant tools, programs, and movements to more effectively change church and society. And yes, from my rocker, I

would like to go on encouraging and mentoring them!

The Sider Center at the seminary and university provides an excellent setting for realizing these dreams.A growing endowment fund can help bring these dreams to fruition.We already have raised over $1.3 million as a beginning.

A $1 million gift has established a Chair in Theology, Holistic Ministry, and Public Policy that enables me to teach half-time and serve as director of the Sider Center and president of ESA for the other half. (You can see why I would not want to retire for a while!) We already have two endowed graduate fellowships in holistic ministry and public policy that enable us to attract outstanding students who study here, work with ESA, help with research, catch ESA’s holistic vision, and prepare for doctoral studies and activist careers in church and society.

I dream of God sending the endowment funds for half a dozen more graduate students, for two or three joint faculty appointments for scholar/activist/ popularizers, for half a dozen sabbatical scholarships for pastors, for annual conferences on holistic ministry and biblical political engagement, for pastor/schol-

Faith, Reason & Justice, continued from page 28.

ars who lead highly successful holistic congregations and help teach and mentor future pastors, and for an annual young evangelical writer scholarship to nurture a new generation of evangelical writers committed to ESA’s biblical vision.

The financial base for ESA and the Sider Center will always be twofold: ongoing annual membership fees, sales, and donations on the one hand; and endowment funds on the other. The second will never replace the first. ESA members’ annual contributions will always be essential. But a sizeable endowment could supplement and strengthen our work.

That’s what I see as I look into the future and dream. I pray that God will give me the health and strength, as director of the center and president of ESA, to lead in this vision for a cluster of years.That includes substantially expanding the endowment. Then, from the rocker, I hope to mentor and encourage a younger generation of brilliant evangelical leaders, passionately committed to Christ and biblical truth and therefore dedicated to nurtur ing even more churches that love the whole person the way Jesus did and shaping society in a way that honors Christ our Lord. ■

throughout the United States. For them, the Sider Center is part of the solution to changing this trend, and both are proud and excited that their schools are a part of this latest addition to the progressive evangelical movement.

“My dream,” concludes Smith,“is that—arm in arm with the Sider Center—Eastern University and Eastern Baptist Seminary will be the recognized location for students from all over the world to study these principles and put them into practice, and that our motto—‘The Whole Gospel for the Whole World through Whole Persons’—will be maximized in our course offerings, our social activism, our influence on public policy, and our passion for justice.” ■

is whole, seven grace gifts are present. Someone sees what others don’t yet see and proclaims the gospel, someone manages the systems and infrastructure, someone teaches, someone provides support and social service, someone is skilled in making and giving away money, someone leads, and someone shows mercy.The curricula of the university and seminary could actually be placed into those seven categories. The Sider Center is a place where these seven are woven together holistically.These are what make the church effective.”

It is this holistic vision of the gospel—one that proclaims both the holiness and justice of God to both individuals and communities—that Smith and Black feel is missing in many academic institutions, churches, and theological discussions

A full-time Master of Divinity student at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Keith Wilburn also serves as an associate pastor at Circle of Hope N.W. in the Germantown section of Philadelphia.

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RON SIDER

A Tsunami Every Week News about the ghastly devastation caused by the Asian tsunami rolled in day after day as I was finishing the revisions for the fifth edition of my Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger—20,000 dead…then 50,000,100,000,175,000. The final count could easily reach 200,000 lives suddenly snuffed out by the raging ocean.

People of the world rightly recoiled in horror and then swiftly launched a massive global effort to save those the sea had spared.

Such an enormous death toll is truly awful. But far more than that number of people die unnecessarily every week— this week, next week, and every week— because of poverty the rich world chooses largely to ignore. Every day 30,000 children die of starvation and diseases we know how to prevent—210,000 dead (counting only the children) every week.

That means that more than 52 times as many children die unnecessarily from poverty every year as those who perished in the year-end tsunami.

According to the World Bank, 1.2 billion people struggle to survive on just one dollar a day.Another 1.6 billion live on less than two dollars a day.That kind of poverty means inadequate food, lack of clean water and sanitation, inadequate or no medical care, and therefore unnecessary disease, brain damage, and illiteracy.

In 2004 the World Bank reported that 1 billion people lack access to safe water and 2.5 billion have no access to improved sanitation, and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 6,000 children die every day from these two causes alone. The WHO reports that 13 million people die each year from diseases like diarrhea, malaria, and tuberculosis that we know how to

prevent or cure.

According to the WHO, it would only take about $3 billion more invested each year in preventive care in poorer nations to save 5 million people. Can Americans, who spend $30-$50 billion each year on weight-loss diets, not give one-tenth of that to save 5 million people a year?

AIDS is one of the most deadly killers of the poor. In rich nations, most people with AIDS receive expensive drugs that can enable them to live largely normal lives. But in Africa, where half of the world’s 48 million AIDS victims live, only three to four percent of those who need these life-saving drugs receive them.Why? Because even though the price of these drugs in Africa has dropped enormously in the last two to three years, most people still cannot afford them. A careful study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimated that just $27 billion (far less than the rich world spends on golf each year) spent over eight years would prevent 30 million poor people from getting infected with HIV/AIDS. According to the United Nations, 20 percent of those living in the richest nations are at least 74 times as rich as 20 percent of those living in the poorest nations. In fact, the richest 25 million Americans enjoy as much income as the poorest 2 billion people in the world.

Part of the tragedy is that American citizens think we are far more generous than we are.A 2001 poll by the University of Maryland discovered that most Americans believe that the United States spends 24 percent of the annual federal budget on foreign aid! In reality, it is only a tiny fraction of that. In fact, as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, we are dead last (0.14 percent) among all industrialized nations in official development assistance. (Thankfully, the large amount of American private relief and development funds improves that figure a little, but only a little.)

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What can be done? We can make changes in our personal lifestyles, our churches, and our public policy. Each of us can, in the words of a Catholic saint, “begin to live more simply so that others may simply live.” Less money spent on new clothes, new cars, large houses, and expensive vacations can mean life rather than death if we share those resources through effective Christian development organizations. If we used just 1 percent of global Christian income for microloans, we could raise the income of the poorest 1 billion people in the world by 50 percent—within one year!

Our churches need to preach on more texts like Proverbs 19:17—“He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord”— and then reallocate church budgets so they are consistent with the hundreds of biblical texts that talk about God’s concern for the poor.

Finally, we need to change public policy: forgiving much more of the debt of the most heavily indebted countries; increasing economic foreign aid to combat poverty,AIDS, and other preventable diseases; and making international trade more fair.

The huge amount of farm subsidies in rich nations is another thing that must change. Just one example: Farmers in Africa can produce cotton for about onethird the cost of producing cotton in the United States. But in a recent year, the U.S. government gave out $3.9 billion in subsidies to 25,000 American cotton farmers—more than the entire GDP for the African country of Burkina Faso, where more than 2 million people depend on cotton for their livelihood It would take only a small percent of our incredible wealth to dramatically reduce poverty in our world. As you (rightly) support the victims of the Asian tsunami, remember that a quiet, largely hidden tsunami kills well over 200,000 people every week. And that will continue year after year after year unless you and I decide to change it. ■

RON

A New Evangelical Consensus on Politics?

I’m truly excited and grateful to God for what might just be a historic document that significantly shapes evangelical political engagement in the next decade.

On October 7, 2004, the Board of Directors of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) unanimously adopted “For the Health of the Nations: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility” as its official policy statement for its work on public policy. I’m hardly a neutral observer (since I co-chaired the process that produced the declaration), but I think the document is strong, biblically balanced, and potentially very significant.

The NAE is the largest association of American evangelicals. It has 30 million members in over 50 denominations in 45,000 congregations. If even a large minority of those people started lobbying and voting on the basis of this document, American politics would change.

For many years, I have been critical of a great deal of evangelical political activity. Lacking a biblical balance of concern for all that the Bible says God cares about, it has often been narrowly focused on just a couple of issues, such as abortion and family. It has largely lacked any deep conceptual foundations in a carefully constructed political philosophy like that developed for Catholics in a century of papal encyclicals.As Ed Dobson (for years Jerry Falwell’s vice president at Moral Majority) later said:The approach was “ready, fire, aim.”

I used to dream about the unlikely possibility that a group of evangelical leaders, representing everyone from Jim

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Wallis to James Dobson, would engage in a process to develop a common set of principles for political engagement—in short, the beginnings of an evangelical political philosophy. I even proposed the idea in a few speeches and a chapter in a book. But the whole idea seemed highly unlikely.

Well, it has happened!

For the last two years, Diane Knippers (president of the conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy) and I have co-chaired a process authorized by the NAE to develop just that kind of consensus document for evangelicals. Over 15 scholars wrote preparatory papers on key issues, and these will appear in March in a book edited by Knippers and myself called Toward an Evangelical Public Policy: Political Strategies for the Health of the Nation.

A drafting committee, led by David Neff (editor of Christianity Today), produced an initial draft from these papers and then revised the document many times in response to suggestions from numerous people. Now a wide range of evangelical leaders are being invited to add their signatures to the final draft approved by the NAE. A series of meetings in Washington in March, 2005, will formally launch the document and the book.

Why is “For the Health of the Nation” so potentially important? Primarily because what it says is now the official platform of 30 million evangelicals, and it says several important things that many evangelicals have not said or practiced.

I underline four here.

First, the declaration clearly—and repeatedly!—adopts what ESA folk often summarize as a “pro-poor and pro-life, pro-racial justice and pro-family” approach:“The Bible makes it clear that God cares a great deal about the wellbeing of marriage, the family, the sanctity of human life, justice for the poor, care for creation, peace, freedom, and racial justice.While individual persons and organizations are at times called by God to concentrate on one or two issues, PRISM 2005

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faithful evangelical civic engagement must champion a biblically balanced agenda.”

Second, the declaration clearly affirms the importance of transforming both individuals and institutions. Even as evangelicals became much more politically engaged in the last two decades, researchers (e.g., Chris Smith) discovered that evangelicals still continued to think that the primary way to change society was “one person at a time” through personal conversion.This declaration reaffirms the importance of personal conversion in producing social change. But it lays equal emphasis on structural change:“Christian civic engagement must seek to transform both individuals and institutions …Lasting social change requires both personal conversion and institutional renewal and reform.”

Third, the declaration clearly calls for humility and civility in our political activity and insists that our commitment to other brothers and sisters in the one body of Christ far transcends any ongoing political disagreements: “We must be clear that biblical faith is vastly larger and richer than every limited, inevitably imperfect political agenda, and that commitment to the Lordship of Christ and his one body far transcends all political commitments.”

Fourth, the declaration clearly rejects excessive nationalism: “We confess that our primary allegiance is to Christ, his kingdom, and Christ’s worldwide body of believers, not to any nation…As Christian citizens of the U.S., we must keep our eyes open to the potentially selfdestructive tendencies of our society and our government. We must also balance our natural affection for our country with a love for people of all nations.”

I could go on. But read it for yourself on the ESA (www.esa-online.org) or NAE (www.nae.org) websites.

Consider studying it in a Sunday school class or small group (Christianity Today is producing a study guide).

Continued on page 37.

WASHINGTON

WATCH

ner of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.After weeks of controversy, much of it taking place behind the scenes, Mayor Koldenhoven vetoed the city council’s decision to purchase the church.The council could not muster a large enough counter-vote to override the veto, so the mayor’s decision stood.

The controversy was never really about the town’s need for a recreation center, but about fear of Arab Muslims by a large number of town residents.

Mayor Koldenhoven said he made his decision because of his commitment to protect the Constitution’s First Amendment and because Jesus said to love your neighbor. Among the mayor’s supporters was Michael VanderWeele, professor at Trinity Christian College, who could not fathom how town residents—many of them members of the town’s more than 21 churches—could condone racism or religious discrimination.

This story of fear and courage, of hatred and love, in Palos Heights in 2000 is just one of many stories about Middle America—the American homeland— told in Homeland (Seven Stories Press, 2004), by journalist Dale Maharidge with photographs by Michael Williamson. It is a book well worth reading.

The stories the book tells illuminate American life today, divided as it is along several fault lines. Maharidge traveled the

country, stopping in small towns and rural areas off the beaten path, inquiring into remarkable incidents and the heartdeep concerns of different kinds of Americans. What he found was two distinct Americas, one in places like Silicon Valley and Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the other in small, often poor, hard-up towns.

In the story about Muslims seeking entrance to Palos Heights he concluded that the tension was not so much racial as it was religious, with roots going back as far as the medieval Christian crusades.

For many Americans, the United States is a Christian country, and the entrance of too many Muslims would mean its demise. Regardless of what President Bush or any other president does to build a Homeland Security department, many Americans in heartland and elsewhere will feel “homeland insecurity” as long as the Muslim population is growing.

But is America the kind of country that should privilege Christians and secularists over Muslims? Or should we try to build an open society that rejects religious discrimination? Koldenhoven and VanderWeele believe that Christians are called to do the latter, but it takes work and listening to one another.And that is difficult to do in times of deep need when people are losing jobs and feeling abandoned.

One of Williamson’s photos shows the abandoned Homestead steel works in Rankin, Penn.Tough, hardworking men who once made steel there helped build America and also helped to defend it by working overtime during World War II.Today other countries produce steel at lower cost; jobs have moved elsewhere; and whole towns have lost their vitality.The old spirit of the steel works survives, however, in those who produced the bumper sticker that Williamson photographed on a truck in Phoenix, Ariz. It said,“God, Guns, and Guts Made America: Let’s Keep All Three.”

Is there another way to think about God and America’s future than in terms of guns and guts? Or perhaps we should ask, is there a better way to think about protecting the freedom of citizens who have the courage (guts) to honor God and to serve their civic neighbors today?

Koldenhoven showed guts in the decision he made.Where will we take our stand in the months and years ahead on the issues that now divide America? ★

Postcards From the Road continued from page 26.

Art & Soul continued from page 28.

Ron Sider continued from page 40.

by Micah, finds its counterpart in Jesus’ Big Three (again in the form of a prosecutor’s accusation, in Matthew 23:23): “You have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness.”

May we not be found negligent, but “let justice roll down” in all of life: my life, your life, the life of the church, and in our world. ■

that feed our souls and keep us moving.

Considering the darkness our cities continue to endure, I can’t help but long for more artists like Mako, for more beauty that points us upward, and for more encounters with I AM. ■

Dr. James Skillen is president of the Center for Public Justice (www.cpjustice.org). In addition to editing the Center’s quarterly Public Justice Report (from which this column was adapted), he is the author of In Pursuit of Justice: Christian-Democratic Explorations (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).

Most important, pray that the evangelical world will not only endorse but actually implement this declaration.

One-quarter of all U.S. voters are evangelicals. Think of the impact if half of them started lobbying and voting on the basis of this “biblically balanced agenda.”

Just a dream? Some dreams come Jo Kadlecek writes frequently on urban life and the arts. Her first novel, The Sound of true. Join me in praying that this hope My Voice, will be published this spring by becomes reality. ■ WaterBrook/Randomhouse.

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RON

Politics and Christmas Christmas radically qualifies the importance of politics.

If your candidate lost on November 2, don’t feel too bad, because the result is not that important. If your candidate won, don’t celebrate too much, because he will accomplish far less than he promised.

Please don’t misunderstand. I am not saying that politics—or the 2004 presidential election—is irrelevant. Elections are important. Their outcomes shape decisions that help or harm millions of people.

But God was aware of that when he chose to send the Savior of the world to a lowly carpenter’s home in an unimportant colony rather than to the emperor’s family at the center of global power.

Furious debates about momentous political decisions were taking place in Rome when the Eternal Word became a baby in Bethlehem in 4 B.C.Those political debates mattered. If faithful followers of Yahweh could have bent them toward greater peace and justice,they should have.

But something vastly more important was happening in Bethlehem.

For centuries a tiny people group called Jews were scattered across the successive Babylonian, Persian, then GrecoRoman empires that dominated a huge part of the world.This minority believed that their god was the only God, the Creator and Ruler of heaven and earth.

They believed that someday God’s Messiah would appear—to overcome evil and injustice, bring peace and goodness for all, forgive sins, transform sinners, and usher in a new time of Messianic shalom where all nations would worship the One God and enjoy his wholeness.

That’s also what Jesus believed as he started his public ministry.

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With this difference: Jesus believed he was God’s Messiah sent to begin this marvelous new day.And he rejected violence as the way to inaugurate God’s new kingdom. Instead, he said the wonderful, long-expected kingdom of goodness and peace would grow slowly like a mustard seed as more and more people believed in him, decided to follow him, and began to live what he taught.

Was Jesus’ message political? No— and yes. Jesus was not arguing about the current policy questions being debated in Rome. He rejected the notion that military force could bring in the new age of shalom. He did not try to become the next Caesar.

But Jesus’ message and claims were deeply political.At the very center of the Jewish hope which Jesus embraced was the expectation that the Messiah would come to conquer evil and bring peace and justice not just for the tiny Jewish community, but for the whole world.

That’s who Jesus said he was. And he said his death and resurrection would be central to the arrival of this new period of history.

As the early Christians reflected back upon the astounding events of Jesus’ three short years of public ministry, they confessed that Jesus had been right.The new time of peace and justice had begun.

Jesus was—at that moment—King of kings and Lord of lords.All authority on heaven and on earth had already been delivered to him.

The big difference from earlier Jewish expectation, of course, was that the old age with its injustice still remained alive and powerful.The new kingdom was arriving slowly as more and more people embraced Jesus’ vision and way.

And this way was political, even though it was not political in quite the way Rome was political. Even though Caesar claimed to be “Lord” and “Son of God,” it was really Jesus to whom those titles belonged. Whenever Caesar demanded things that contradicted Jesus’ PRISM 2004

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way, the early Christians followed Jesus, not Caesar.They believed that Jesus’ new kingdom, not Caesar’s policy decisions, would be the most important factor in transforming the world into what the Creator intended.

Does that make Caesar’s—and the U.S. president’s—policy decisions irrelevant? Not at all.These decisions greatly affect people’s lives, so whenever we can nudge them toward greater wholeness we should. Although, according to Colossians 2:15, Jesus Christ in some important sense actually broke the power of the evil political powers at the cross and took them captive to himself, we need only take a quick look around us to see that this process is still very incomplete. Only at Christ’s return will all evil disappear.

Until then you and I must live out the Christian confession that Jesus alone is Lord.That means he is not just Lord of our personal political decisions but in some basic sense he is already Lord of presidents and prime ministers, parliaments and congresses. But he has chosen the church as the place where his reign is to become most visible and powerful.

And that means that no matter who wins elections or what politicians do, God’s reign continues to take shape on this earth.

When politicians are at their worst, defying Christ and seeking to destroy his church, Christ’s kingdom still advances.

And when politicians are most sympathetic to gospel values, they are still a mixed bag of good and evil and everything they do is less important than proclaiming the gospel and living as Jesus’ new redeemed body of believers.

In 2005, ESA will keep urging you to push for wise political decisions. But never forget that politics is not nearly as important as living as Jesus’ new community and inviting others to embrace his wonderful gospel. Bethlehem, not Rome (or Washington), is the center of the universe. ■

RON

Bush vs. Kerry: Does God Have a Preference?

The answer is yes, but God has not told anybody. Pat Robertson occasionally claims a direct line to God’s thinking on presidential elections, but I am skeptical.

God provided a normative framework through biblical revelation and expects us to use our rational minds to ponder wisely over every political decision.

In my last column, I argued that God is pro-life and pro-poor, pro-family and pro-racial justice and pro-creation care.

So how do Bush and Kerry stack up?

Bush is much better on the sanctity of human life, family issues, and the faithbased initiative. Here’s a run-down: Human life—Whereas Kerry is prochoice on abortion, Bush promoted and signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Act, the first major legislative restriction on abortion in many years. Whether the issue is abortion, euthanasia, or stem-cell research, the Bush administration seeks to respect the sanctity of human life. (Capital punishment is a tragic exception.)

Family issues—Bush has eliminated the marriage penalty in most tax codes, earmarked TANF funds to strengthen wholesome families among poor folk, earmarked the use of federal funds to promote abstinence programs here and abroad, supported the historic understanding of marriage, and endorsed a constitutional amendment specifying that marriage be defined as between a man and a woman.

Faith-based initiatives—Bush’s vigorous use of executive orders has prompted a significant, perhaps historic, change in the way government relates

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to faith-based agencies. An earlier bias has been replaced by a wide variety of initiatives affecting billions of dollars in federal funds. Now, when government uses nongovernmental agencies to deliver social services (and it does that in a vast variety of instances) there is a level playing field that enables faith-based organizations to compete fairly.

Closely related to all the above is the fact that the next president will probably nominate one, two, or possibly more new justices for a Supreme Court which is presently sharply divided and often decides key issues with a 5-4 majority.

The nominees of the next president may very well decide whether some restrictions on abortion-on-demand become law, whether gay marriage becomes the norm in this country, and whether the First Amendment means a radical wall of separation between religion and public life or equal treatment for all religious viewpoints with no bias toward secularism. It is certainly plausible to argue that the next president will have an unusual opportunity to shape the Supreme Court and thus the nation for the next generation. On issues of life, family, and the First Amendment, I believe Bush’s nominees would be preferable to Kerry’s.

On the other hand, Kerry is better on economic and racial justice, the environment,and America’s international role.

Economic justice—Bush’s policies have been sharply slanted toward the rich.

His tax cuts have overwhelmingly benefited the richest 10 percent. He has cut a variety of programs that benefit poorer Americans, most recently slashing the number of Section-8 housing vouchers that partially subsidize lowincome housing at a time when more and more poor working families cannot afford housing. His tax cuts have helped create a huge federal deficit that our grandchildren will have to repay. Kerry promises to reverse some of the most unfair tax cuts, increase effective programs to empower poor Americans, and lower PRISM 2004

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the budget deficit faster than Bush.

Racial justice—The situation is less clear-cut here. Bush has made highlevel, very visible minority appointments.

He has also dared to talk publicly about our nation’s ghastly failure to provide quality education to African-American and Latino children and has insisted on regular testing so that we know clearly which (often inner-city) schools are failing. He also substantially increased federal funding for education, by about 35 percent, although his “No Child Left Behind” package is not fully funded and Kerry promises to change that.

On balance, however, for several decades, the Democratic Party has been more open to and supportive of African-Americans and Latinos than have the Republicans.

Environmental issues—Bush’s stance on the environment has been appalling. In spite of clear scientific evidence of global warming, he rejected the global agreement worked out at Kyoto to reduce fossil-fuel emissions.

Domestically, he has largely ignored conservation, and refused to raise substantially the CAFE standards that could easily force car manufacturers to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles. (Regrettably, Kerry has proposed using our reserve of petroleum to lower rising gasoline prices, when in fact they should go still higher to discourage the use of fossil fuels.)

Foreign policy—Bush’s unilateralist policies have resulted in a dramatic loss of respect for America all around the world. On the environment, the World Court, and, of course, Iraq, he has chosen to defy world opinion and act in a unilateralist manner that is widely perceived as arrogant. Many of the reasons Bush gave for invading Iraq have proven —at best!—to have been based on faulty judgments. After the fall of Iraq, when a multilateral approach might have avoided the ferocious opposition of so many Iraqis, he refused to welcome a significant role for the United Nations.

Continued on page 33.

A Conscience Decision continued from page 11. a long time, but I support the administration’s view that terrorism is the symptom, while the challenge of modernity is the problem. Given our wealth and superpower status, it seems fitting that the United States lead the rest of the world in dealing with the question of modernity in a shrinking global village where there’s fierce competition for resources.

How has President Bush done this?—by focusing on HIV/ AIDS funding and research for South African nations and by forcing the question of democratization for unstable countries in the Middle East. True, one can’t force democracy, but I don’t think a “leave and let alone” policy will work globally long-term either.

Third, fiscal policy. This is where I have the biggest problem with Bush.

But fiscal policies are only proposed or vetoed by the president; they are passed

Ron Sider continued from page 36.

High-level decisions about the application of the Geneva Conventions to pr isoner s of war in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, and then Iraq contributed to the terrible abuses at Abu Ghraib that will continue to undermine American credibility for years to come.

Bush has a great catch phrase—“Freedom is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity”—but his actions have tragically weakened America’s ability to play its historic role of nurturing freedom for everyone around the globe.

Kerry’s promise to do better is credible.

In some areas, it is a toss-up. Bush has pledged to increase economic foreign aid for poor nations far more dramatically than any president in years. His

by Congress. So I’m voting for Bush and voting out those Democrats and Republicans who spend as if there’s no tomorrow.

Our system of checks and balances only works if they check and balance the system itself; the system doesn’t exist to cut personal deals of self-interest.

Evangelicals talk a good game about “servant leaders,” but all politicians consider themselves servants of the people —that’s why they are called public servants.The question then becomes:What people are they serving? As an AfricanAmerican city-dweller, I have yet to see the Democrats do anything meaningful for me. Consequently, I’m concentrating on the criteria of morality,leadership,and sound fiscal policy to shape my opinion for this election.That’s why I’m voting to reelect President Bush. ■ Kim James is president of a nonprofit organization that provides educational services to disadvantaged people in Philadelphia. $15-billion commitment to Africa to combat AIDS is also commendable.

Kerry, of course, would probably implement both commitments. On international trade, Ker ry has sometimes sounded like a protectionist who ignores the fact that when Western jobs move to poorer nations and thus enable poor people to find new and better paying jobs, poor nations benefit—and so do consumers who pay less for the things they buy. On the other hand, Kerry is right that international trade agreements pay far too little attention to concerns for the environment and the rights of labor, and he promises to correct that.

I have two final comments. First, it is obviously presumptuous to make such sweeping, summary judgments about enormously complex topics, but I believe that a much more extensive analysis of

both biblical norms and the facts of our world would back up what I have said.

(And in other places—e.g., Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger; Just Generosity: A New Vision for Overcoming Poverty in America; Completely Pro-Life; and many past columns in PRISM—I have spelled out those arguments in a lot more detail than I can here.)

Finally, I cannot tell you how to vote.

Personally, I find this year’s decision especially wrenching. Evaluate both candidates on the basis of what you consider to be a biblically grounded, factually informed approach to politics.Pray.Discuss the issues with others. Then vote your conscience, knowing that God promises to accomplish his will through our weak, finite, often perplexed efforts. May God use your vote on November 2 to bless this nation and the world. ■

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RON

Needed for This Fall: An Evangelical Political Philosophy Just because you are a Christian does not mean you get your politics right. That’s true for all of us, not just George W. Bush and John Kerry.

Republican Senator Jesse Helms, for example, was for many years one of the most prominent pro-life leaders in Washington. But Helms represented North Carolina, the number-one tobacco-growing state, and as such regularly defended tobacco subsidies and the use of tax dollars to ship tobacco to poor nations under our Food for Peace program—not exactly a pro-life position.

Miguel d’Escoto was a Catholic priest who became foreign minister of Nicaragua under the rule of the semiMarxist Sandinistas in the 1980s.

Around 1987, D’Escoto travelled to Moscow to accept the Lenin Peace Prize, where he called the Soviet Union the great hope for the future of humanity —again, hardly perceptive, especially in the late-’80s.

Examples of Christian folly in the political realm abound. In the last couple of decades, evangelicals around the world have flooded into politics.There have been evangelical presidents in Africa and Latin America and scores of newly elected evangelical officials the world over.

Again and again, like many evangelical political voices here, they have been foolish or corrupt or incompetent.

But how does one think properly about politics? How does one move from a strong biblical faith to concrete pub-

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lic-policy conclusions—or the selection of a president on November 2?

That’s a question I am wrestling with r ight now, not only because I must decide for whom to vote this fall, but also because I am currently writing a book on precisely that topic. I will give you a very short summary of my answer in the hope that it will help as you decide how to vote on November 2.

Every political decision requires four different components: a normative vision; careful socio-economic, historical analysis of society; a political philosophy; and then some more detailed analysis.

Almost every political decision is grounded in some set of values: about the nature of persons, right and wrong, etc.

If you think persons are just complex material machines that will rot and disappear at death, you treat them differently than if you think they are created in the image of God and invited to obey and live with the Creator for all eternity.

Legislators who believe law is grounded in a universal moral order embedded by the Creator will craft legislation differently than those who believe law is merely a set of arbitrary societal rules created by self-interested power blocs.

While a normative vision or biblical worldview is the essential starting point, it is not enough.The Bible says nothing about the graduated income tax, global warming, or democratic capitalism. We need to engage in a careful, sophisticated study of history to see what works and what does not in real societies.

But a biblical worldview and careful social analysis are still not enough.You do not have the time between now and November 2 to spend months developing a biblical normative vision and restudying history.You need a road map —a handy guide that boils down the essence of what flows from integrating a normative biblical vision with extended, careful social analysis. That’s what one calls a political ideology.

My political philosophy (which I will PRISM 2004

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gladly change if you can show me that it does not flow logically from a biblical worldview and accurate social/ historical analysis) includes things like the following: • Society is much larger than the State; therefore a good government does not try to dominate or replace all the other important institutions in society like the family, media, business, churches, and faith-based social agencies.

• Since centralized power in a fallen world is always dangerous, we must guard against allowing small groups of people (whether a communist party or a small circle of very wealthy business leaders) to gain vast, unchecked power.

• Since God has a special concern for the poor and summons rulers to bring justice to the needy, both nongovernmental institutions and the State ought to adopt policies that enable the poor to become self-sufficient and enjoy quality healthcare.

• Tax policies ought to promote economic well-being, encourage marriage, and benefit the working poor.

• A biblically balanced platform would be pro-life, pro-poor, pro-family, proracial justice, pro-peace, and pro-creation care since God cares about all those things.

Lastly, even after developing a working political philosophy, a specific social analysis is needed. Both Bush and Kerry say that their political philosophy calls for public law that allows only a man and a woman to obtain a marriage license.

But is Kerry right to leave that decision to the state legislatures (and courts), or is Bush right to call for a constitutional amendment to prevent activist judges from demanding the acceptance of gay marriage? Answering that question requires careful analysis of many things, including recent court decisions and changing public opinion. (My analysis leads me to agree with Bush on this one.)

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less wasn’t reserved for those times when there was a little something left over: It was a portion required by God from each person’s livelihood. In return God promised to bless those who cared for the fatherless—and to curse those who did not.

Moreover, as evidenced in the story of Ruth, care of the fatherless went beyond the provision of material goods.

It called for an involvement in the lives of the fatherless and their inclusion as members of one’s own family.

In his exposition of New Testament Scriptures, Davis shows that God requires no less from us today.“If we are to please Him,” he writes,“we must recover what

has become a lost cause—the fatherless. … It doesn’t mean you have to become a missionary or take a vow of poverty!

In some very practical ways, you can participate in the lives of those God is so passionate about and make differences that will last an eternity.”

Sponsoring an orphan abroad; inviting and keeping in touch with foreign students at your local university; babysitting or sharing groceries with a single mother on your street; mowing the lawn or running errands for a neighborhood widow, or just inviting her over for a cup of tea: these are the ways we can make a powerful difference in the life of the fatherless.

“Your creative energy could be the very thing that helps him or her keep going and even experience God’s love for the first time,” writes Davis. “Will you plant a seed of hope in lives that have been stripped bare by the misery of this world?”

This book brings power and urgency to the saying, “To the world, you may be just one person. But to one person, you might just be the world.”To mean that much to someone is itself blessing enough. ■

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Art & Soul continued from page 27.

Ron Sider continued from page 36.

internships, and/or witness weekends (see Network 9:35’s free resource, Congregation2Congregation, at www.net work935.org).

And the final component? Keep praying. Prayer needs to be more than an occasional activity in worship or meetings. “Pray without ceasing” for future leaders. Last year, while serving a congregation whose pastor was on sabbatical, I helped their staff and leadership brainstorm about potential leaders, developed a prayer list of those names, and encouraged current leaders to look for ways to mentor future leaders in a prayerful way.

If your congregation wants to “hit the road,” they must create an efficient leadership-development plan for effective outreach. Let me know how I can be of help as you undertake this exciting process. ■

You get the idea. Not only does each artistic act bring a touch of beauty to an increasingly hard world, but by engaging with those creative folks in their artistic venues, we create new opportunities for friendship and truth.

Because whatever we think of the film, it wasn’t that long ago when “The Passion of the Christ” was merely an idea for a movie that required a whole lot of creative planning and financial backing before it could ever be made.

And since so many Christians paid to see it, couldn’t we be equally passionate about investing in the lives of artists of faith who show us God’s kingdom from a thousand different perspectives?

Shouldn’t God’s extravagant grace in our lives motivate such generosity?

Imagine what will happen if it doesn’t. ■

Both Bush and Kerry have a political philosophy that calls for some government taxation and spending to help the poor. But Bush favors huge tax cuts for the rich, and Kerry wants to reduce those tax cuts for the richest in order to have more resources to assist the needy.

(My analysis supports Kerry here.)

The choices are not easy. I find that in virtually every presidential election, each candidate is better on some issues and worse on others. In my next column, I will try to evaluate the Bush and Kerry platforms in light of what I consider a biblically informed evangelical political philosophy. But no mathematical calculus exists that allows one to reach an easy, certain conclusion. One must think hard, pray hard, and then vote, knowing one may be wrong. Politics remains a messy, uncertain art—even with a good evangelical political philosophy. ■

Pamela Robinson is a freelance writer and college composition instructor living in Mt. Vernon, Ind.

The free PRISM ePistle has gone weekly! Send an email to e-pistle@esa-online.org to subscribe.

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RON

Saying Goodbye to My Dad Editor’s note: On December 31, 2003, James P. Sider—farmer, Brethren in Christ pastor, and cherished father of ESA’s Ron Sider—passed away at the age of 90, going to meet his beloved wife of 59 years “on the other shore.”This column is based upon the sermon that Ron gave at his father’s funeral on January 4, 2004.

Immediately after learning that my Dad had died, I dropped to my knees to thank God for this wonderful man. I felt overwhelmed with gratitude that this special man—loving parent, caring husband, successful farmer, and faithful minister of the gospel—had been my father. He and our mother loved each other dearly, loved each of us children deeply, warmly, and abundantly,and above all loved their Lord.

They gave us the most precious gift that parents can bestow: a happy, loving, encouraging home centered on Christ.

Yes, Dad was a wonderful man, and in his ministry he blessed thousands of people. But as I reflect upon his life, I realize that he was just one of over 6 billion people living on a tiny planet in a small solar system in one corner of the Milky Way, which is just one galaxy in an almost incomprehensibly huge universe with 120 billion galaxies, each of which has billions of stars like our sun.

Dad’s 90-year life was just a momentary flicker of time in this vast system that has been changing and growing for billions of years. And in that flicker of time— those nine decades of good life that appeared for an instant and then disappeared again—Dad did not significantly change politics, science, or even the church. Dad appeared for an instant or

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two and then was gone again.

So what meaning does his life have now? I know what Dad’s answer would be, and I agree completely. Dad knew that his life had meaning—wonderful, powerful meaning—because he was a part, even though just a small part, of God’s great plan.

Dad knew that this whole vast universe came from the loving hand of an all-wise God who gently shaped our gorgeous, almost infinitely intricate world and then made human beings in his very own image and called them to be his stewards.The Almighty Creator invited us to be his “little creators,” developing fruitful farms, nurturing loving families, and shaping complex civilizations. But tragically God’s human stewards messed everything up. Instead of worshiping and obeying God and submitting to the moral order he built into the world, we proudly decided to pretend that we were gods.We chose to make our own rules and worshiped the creation rather than the Creator. The result was pain, brokenness, evil, and tragedy everywhere.

But Dad knew, too, that God refused to abandon the world he loved, even when we stubbornly rejected him and ravaged our neighbors. God began to speak in a special way to an Iraqi named Abram and his children. God sent mighty leaders and faithful prophets to show them how to live in peace, justice, and wholeness. But after brief periods of obedience and prosperity, they always rejected God’s way and created more brokenness and agony.

The Creator of the universe finally decided to come himself to this little planet to show us the way and offer a path out of our tragedy and brokenness, becoming a vulnerable embryo, a little speck of matter in the womb of a teenage Jewish virgin. This trembling maiden responded to God’s utterly astounding act with obedient faith, and the God of the universe became human flesh and blood.When she and her husband Joseph PRISM 2004

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could find no place in the inn, she gave birth to the Creator of the universe in a barn and called him Jesus, Savior, as the angel had instructed.

As an obedient son, Jesus learned from Joseph how to be a gifted carpenter, and on the outside he appeared to be just another Galilean craftsman as he cut and sanded tables and chairs. But in truth he was also the Creator of the galaxies teaching us by his physical labor the goodness and beauty of the material world, of everyday work and ordinary family life.At about 30 years of age this young carpenter became a wandering preacher and successful teacher: healing the sick; caring about the poor; welcoming dispossessed, marginalized folk like women and lepers; and challenging the status quo in all kinds of ways, especially in people’s attitudes toward the poor, the sick, women, and violence.

For many centuries Jewish prophets had promised that sometime in the future a descendant of King David would come to forgive sin in a new way, to write God’s law on people’s hearts, and to bring peace and justice to the whole world. Secretly at first, and then more and more openly, Jesus claimed to be that Messiah. Slowly, too, he made even more stunning claims—to possess the divine authority to forgive sins, to be Lord of the Sabbath, even to be the very Son of God. So the Jewish and Roman authorities collaborated to kill him as a dangerous social radical and a heretical blasphemer. After they killed him, they buried him—assuming that would squelch his threatening ideas forever.

But three days later Jesus burst from the tomb and appeared to his astonished disciples, demonstrating by his bodily resurrection that death had been conquered for all who would believe and teaching them that his death on the cross offered total, unconditional divine forgiveness for all who would humbly recognize their sin and ask God to wipe it away. And the Risen Lord promised

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to return some day to complete his victory over every evil, brokenness, sin, and injustice and to restore the entire creation to wholeness.

This true, utterly astounding, story —of Christ’s earthly life, undeserved death, and redeeming resurrection— spread like wildfire. Within three short centuries, it conquered the most powerful pagan empire of human history.

Century after century, more and more broken people, no matter how wrecked their lives, found liberating forgiveness and transformed life in this wondrous story. By the time Dad ended his ministry as a preacher of this glorious story, over 2 billion people across the globe were followers of this amazing carpenter.

Yes, Dad knew that his life had meaning because he was a part of this glorious story. He knew that in every act of kindness to friend and neighbor he was responding obediently to the way the Creator made the world and was joining his grand design for the universe. In all his activity as a faithful farmer— growing good crops of corn, wheat, oats, and red clover; developing a great herd of registered Holstein cows—Dad was fulfilling the Creator’s mandate to care for the creation and create new things.

In all his activity as a loving husband— delighting in and serving his darling wife of 59 years—Dad gave his children and the world a picture of the wondrous goodness and joy of faithful marriage.

In all his activity as a wonderful father—loving each child uniquely; setting clear, firm family rules; slowly allowing each maturing child to make his own decisions even when he and Mom disagreed; continuing to love and support us even when we stumbled and fell—Dad offered a tremendous model of excellent parenting. In all his activity as a church leader—teaching biblical truth, preaching revival services, inviting people to personal faith in the Savior, counseling and encouraging struggling church members—Dad was playing his

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small part in nurtur ing that everwidening circle of disciples of Christ his Lord.

In every part of Dad’s life—his family, his farming, his ministry—Dad’s seemingly insignificant daily activities were a part of God’s glorious divine plan of creating a stupendously beautiful, complex world and restoring everything in that world to the wholeness the Creator placed here at the beginning. In joining and playing his part in that good design, Dad found strong meaning and powerful joy that lasted for a lifetime.

And from the Author of that grand design, Dad also found the strength to live the way he knew the Creator made us to live. Satan tempts all of us to selfishness, to temporary thrills that soon sour and turn to bitterness and pain.

Dad discovered that the same Almighty God who raised his Lord Jesus from the dead was now at work in his personal life raising him to a new life of increasing unselfishness and growing kindness, providing the daily strength to live with integrity, love, and faithfulness.

I know that at this point Dad would want me to add just one more thing— the amazing truth that the loving Creator of the universe continues to invite every person on Earth to join God’s grand plan and find meaning, healing, and joy in this glorious story.

We don’t have to be famous to play an important role in God’s grand design.

Every single one of us, as we are thriving children, faithful parents, and loving grandparents—as we change diapers, kiss away children’s tears, and work faithfully to provide for our families—brings joy to the Creator.

Every single one of us, as we are faithful to our calling—as electricians, secretaries, artists, teachers, scientists, philosophers, plumbers, farmers, pastors, tour guides—serves our neighbors and makes our small contribution to the kind of wholesome civilization that the Creator intends.

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Every single one of us, as we are active in Christian ministry—whether in the local congregation or beyond, as faithful church attendee, Sunday school teacher, bookkeeper, usher, pastor, national board member, missionary, evangelist, mentor of youth—plays a crucial part in God’s grand design, helping more and more persons find their place in Jesus’ wondrous story.

Dad often said that nothing, absolutely nothing, matters as much as embracing Jesus’ astounding story. He knew that was true both for this life and for all eternity.

Over his 90 years among us, Dad discovered in his own personal experience that submitting to God’s way and living within God’s grand design is the best way to happiness, meaning, and joy in this life. And now, as he stands on the other shore in the very presence of the Risen Lord Jesus, Dad knows with a clarity we cannot have here that Jesus’ wondrous story is the way to joy unspeakable, not just for this life but for all eternity. Dad would not want me to end without reminding us all of the blessed simplicity of embracing this wondrous story.

Jesus promised: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

That is the divine offer to every one of us today—those who embraced this promise many decades ago, those who came to rejoice in this truth much more recently, those who may just now surrender their hearts and welcome this truth as the center of their life.

In the last few years, as Dad’s longing to go home grew ever stronger, I prayed with him many times that God would take him soon. And I promised him as I promised Mother, that I would, by God’s good grace, meet them on the other shore.They stand together now on the other side with arms outstretched, inviting each one of us to promise the same: Dad, Grandpa, friend, pastor, I’ll meet you on the other side. ■

RON

The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience My friend Graham Cyster, an evangelical church leader in South Africa during the struggle against apartheid, was once smuggled into an underground Communist cell. “Tell us about the gospel of Jesus Christ,” they said. So Graham talked about the way reconciliation with God leads to a reconciled body of Christ where there is neither Jew nor Greek, black nor white. When he’d finished, a 17-year-old boy who had been listening intently said, “That is wonderful. Show me where I can see that happening.”

My friend’s face fell. He admitted sadly that he did not know of any good example in South Africa.“Then the whole thing is a piece of f—kin’ shit,” the young man yelled.Within a month the youth left the country to join the military wing of the anti-apartheid movement.

That experience led Graham to resolve never again to preach what he was not trying to live.

One of the greatest scandals today —at least as devastating as the “scandal of the evangelical mind” bemoaned by Wheaton College historian Mark Noll —is that vast numbers of evangelicals do not practice what they preach.The polling data is clear.“Gallup and Barna hand us survey after survey,” evangelical theologian Michael Horton says,“demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general.” One wonders if the central evangelical belief —in a new birth through personal faith in Christ who sends the Holy Spirit to

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transform us into the very image of Christ—is in reality a farce, a fraud, or a false promise.

George Gallup, Jr., speaks of an “ethics gap—the difference between the way people think of themselves and the way they actually are.” The following statistics—taken from recent polls by Barna, Gallup, Green, Ronsvalles, and Smith— are disturbing: • Only 8 percent of those who identified themselves as “born-again” Christians tithe—that is, give 10 percent of their earnings to the work of the church/charity (Barna, 1999).

• The more money Christians make, the less likely they are to tithe: 89 percent of those making less than $20,000 a year tithe, while 4 percent of those making $40,000-$59,999 tithe, and only 1 percent of those making $75,000$99,999 tithe (Barna, 1999).

• General giving of Christians to their churches declined as a percentage of income from 3.14 percent in 1968 to 2.48 percent in 1994.And evangelical giving, which had been dramatically greater than that of other Christians, crept closer and closer to the average (Ronsvalles).

• In the early 1990s when the average church member gave $20 a year for global outreach (evangelism and social ministry), the average American church member spent $164 in soft drinks and over $1,000 on recreation—while over one billion people tried to survive on $1 a day (Ronsvalles).

• 77 percent of evangelicals say that volunteering in local community organizations is “very important,” but only 32 percent actually volunteer “a lot” (Smith).

• The percentage of “bor n-again” Christians who have experienced divorce is higher than that of nonChristians: 26 percent vs. 22 percent (Barna, 1999).

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opposite sex without getting married (Barna, 2001).

• Born-again adults spend 700% more time per week watching television than participating in an activity such as prayer, Bible reading, and worship (Barna, 2000).

• Evangelicals are more likely than Catholics or mainline Christians to object to having an African-American neighbor (Gallup, 1989).

• 26 percent of the “high-commitment” evangelicals and 46 percent of the “lower-commitment” evangelicals think pre-marital sex is acceptable (Green, 2001).

• 13 percent of “high-commitment” evangelicals even think it is acceptable for married persons to have extramarital sex (Green, 2001).

Whether the issue is marriage and sexuality or money and care for the poor, evangelicals today are living scandalously unbiblical lives. Large numbers of evangelicals live in flat contradiction to biblical norms. Our lifestyles contradict our theology and undermine our witness.

Think of the witness we would have for Christ if virtually every time that non-Christians met evangelicals they discovered joyful people in committed marriages, leaders in overcoming racism, and generous partners in empowering the poor.

Instead we have been seduced by society’s individualistic, adulterous, materialistic values. We have neglected our fundamental belief that a living personal relationship with Jesus Christ produces marvelous, lifelong conversion.What an irony that just when evangelicals are loudly supporting governmental faith-based initiatives (based on the assumption that spiritual faith can transform broken people), the polling data suggest that in many crucial areas evangelicals are not living any differently from their unbelieving neighbors.

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Heard was a talented musician who possessed the vocal lilt of James Taylor and wrote lyrics that deeply probe the mysteries of the human condition, and the author presents him positioned on the periphery of the Christian music industry, someone who intuitively knew that his gifts deserved a wider hearing yet was unwilling to make the compromises necessary to obtain acceptance.

Heard’s father refused to allow his son to sign a mainstream recording deal with Columbia Records back in 1972, feeling that the then 20-year-old should continue his education rather than launch out into the murky waters of a music career.

Despite his father’s protestations, the young artist eventually signed record deals in the contemporary Christian recording industry with Larry Norman of Solid Rock Records in the mid-’70s and Chris Christian of Home Sweet Home Records in the ’80s. But neither of these were particularly fruitful relationships.The interplay between artists and proprietors of intellectual property has always been strained, each of them feeling they bring more to the table than the other. And while in time Mark Heard gained understanding of the “game,” it disillusioned him, and he ultimately refused to play on the terms that were offered him.

Dickerson should be praised for not following in the footsteps of those biographers of Christian artists (like those who have written about Keith Green, for example) who opt for hagiography rather than deal with the complex realities of their subject. Heard is portrayed as a deeply contemplative artist overtly contemptuous of anything superficial.

Friends wonder aloud whether they were really liked or how such a softspoken man could sometimes be so brusque with them.The author wrestles with Heard’s decision to sidestep regular church attendance, preferring instead the embrace of a loose gathering of likeminded musicians.

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But as much as I enjoyed this book, I craved a more cohesive and topical (or at least chronological) approach, one that would tease out the obvious themes that emerge from Heard’s catalogue of music and would support them with a sound biographical sketch. Regardless, this is a good first foray into the life of an important artist whose musical legacy will be

discovered again and again by thirsty spiritual pilgrims, uncovering water in the parched desert of a banal Christian subculture. ■ David Di Sabatino is the editor of The Jesus People Movement: An Annotated Bibliography and General Resource (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999).

Postcards continued from page 26. ations of leaders, incorporating interns from other ministries, churches, and theological schools, and moving people into key leadership positions who have demonstrated Christ-like servanthood in “the little things” (Luke 16:10a).

Finally,“long-haul” churches understand that it is often necessary to go after root causes rather simply treat symptoms.

Churches that not only survive but also thrive for longer periods find it’s important (and biblically mandated) to go

beyond acts of mercy, charity, compassion, and relief to ministries of empowerment (both personal and communal), development (community and economic), justice (individual and system), and advocacy (being a voice for the voiceless).

What has been your congregation’s experience over the long haul? What would you add to or change on my list?

I’d love to hear from you (phil@esaonline.org) so I can better answer the question next time I’m asked. ■

Ron Sider continued from page 36.

Unfaithful evangelical lifestyles are a blatant denial of Jesus’ gospel. If the gospel were merely the forgiveness of sins, then we could accept the gospel and go on living in the same racist, adulterous, materialistic way. But if the gospel is the Good News of the Christ’s kingdom, as Jesus taught, and if part of the good news is that right now a new redeemed community of transformed persons living in the power of the Holy Spirit is breaking into history, then whenever so-called Christians live as the world does, their very lives are evidence against Jesus’ teaching.

We need to recover the biblical truth that God is blazing holiness as well as overwhelming love.We need to recover

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the biblical teaching on the egregiousness of sin and the necessity of repentance and sanctification.We need to turn away from American individualism and recover the New Testament understanding of mutual accountability.We need to bring all our people into small discipleship groups of genuine accountability so we can, as John Wesley said,“watch over one another in love.”We need to rediscover the almost totally neglected biblical teaching on church discipline.

The scandal of the evangelical conscience today mocks our evangelistic efforts and breaks the heart of our Savior.

If we will not repent and change, we should admit that the whole thing is a fraud. ■

RON

Heaven Is Not My Home I grew up singing the gospel song, “This world is not my home, I’m just apassing through. My treasures are laid up, somewhere beyond the blue…”

Christians have been misled by Plato, the great Greek philosopher, to neglect the clear biblical teaching about the goodness of creation, the body, and the material world. Plato thought persons had a good soul trapped in an evil body.

His solution? Escape from the body and the material world.

That is the way many Christians think about the future that Christ will bring.

A few years ago Time magazine reported that two-thirds of all Americans believe they will be without bodies after the Resurrection. Since about 86 percent of all Americans claim to be Christians, that means that most American Christians apparently suppose that at Christ’s return they will be invisible, immaterial souls floating around in some kind of ethereal, spiritual “heaven.”

In many ways, evangelical Christians have a profoundly unbiblical view of the future, which undercuts our faithful work for justice now. As the incredibly popular Left Behind series (55 million copies in print) demonstrates, we are fixated on the End Times. As the saying goes, many pious Christians are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.

A few years ago, evangelical political scientist and theologian Paul Marshall wrote a superb response that every evangelical—especially every reader of the Left Behind series—should read. His marvelous book has an equally excellent title, Heaven Is Not My Home: Living in the NOW of God’s Creation (Word, 1998).

One of the most basic problems in much evangelical thought is that many

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believers have a dreadfully inadequate theology of creation. God made the world and declared it to be very good.

Made in the divine image, human beings were given the awesome task of caring for the earth and using its stupendous complexity and beauty to create wealth, art, music—civilization.

Sin, to be sure, messed everything up, including the non-human creation. But God’s plan of redemption was not to rescue trapped souls from a sinking ocean liner.The Bible clearly teaches that God intends to restore the whole of creation.

For starters, just as Jesus was raised bodily from the tomb, so believers await their bodily resurrection at Christ’s return.

But the restoration does not end with humans. Everything that sin messed up in the entire creation will be made whole (although that doesn’t mean everyone will be saved). At our resurrection,“the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rom.8:21). Even the best of human civilization will be purged of sin and brought into the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:22-22:2).

Nor is the New Jerusalem some ethereal “heaven”—it is this good earth purged of evil and made whole. It is true that Revelation 21:1 says that “the first earth had passed away” and that there is a “new heaven and a new earth.” But that passage simply echoes Isaiah 65:17ff which says God will “create new heavens and a new earth.” It is perfectly clear in the Isaiah text that the author means that this earth will be purged of all sin and thus be so different that we can only speak of a “new” earth.There will be no weeping or crying, but the people in the “new earth” will “build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit” (Is. 65:21).According to Revelation 21, the New Jerusalem comes “down out of heaven from God” and “the home of God is among mortals” (vv. 2, 3).That is what we await— PRISM 2004

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a bodily resurrected person living on a transformed earth in the presence of the resurrected Jesus who is God-inthe-flesh.

Within this biblical framework of creation and redemption, Marshall has marvelous sketches of the goodness of work, art, politics, rest, and play. He also begins and ends each chapter with powerful personal vignettes and poetic depictions of the natural world’s shimmering beauty. (Marshall also has a very helpful section on the oft misunderstood text in 2 Peter 3:7-10; see pp. 236-38.)

Given the solid biblical theology of Marshall’s book, it was a bit surprising at one point to see him slip back into the one-sided, individualistic definition of the gospel:“Through faith in Jesus Christ we have forgiveness of our sins and the sure hope of everlasting life with God: that is the core of the gospel” (my italics).

If the gospel is just forgiveness of sins, then it is a one-way ticket to “heaven,” and we can live like hell till we get there.

Jesus’ definition of the gospel as the good news of the kingdom fits far better with everything else Marshall says. Forgiveness of sins and everlasting life are, thank God, one central part of Jesus’ gospel, but so is the fact that the Messianic community—where now in the power of the Holy Spirit Jesus’ disciples can begin to live Jesus’ kingdom values—has already broken into history. In the faithful body of Christ, we already get a powerful glimpse of what “heaven”— the restored earth where we will live forever with the risen Lord—will be like.

That biblical view of the future does not call Christians today to escape the world. It sends us into the world to begin to change it because we know that eventually all things will be made new.

We now erect signs of that coming wholeness because we know that in God’s time the kingdoms of this world will “become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and forever” (Rev. 11:15). ■