I grew up in a conservative home, as a preacher's kid, the oldest of eight children. I was raised to be "pro-life." In my family that meant vehemently opposing abortion in all forms.

I walked the picket lines outside our local women's clinic every year as a child, carrying a sign that read, "Abortion Kills Children." Every time someone would drive by, roll down their windows and scream obscenities or flip us off, we felt like martyrs.

Those picketing days were the same Sunday every year. The church would be packed for the sermon on the sanctity of life. We'd all get fired up, go hold our signs, sing some hymns, then exchange stories of persecution over pizza. Afterwards, we'd retreat back to our safe, Christian homes. The message I received during this time (not in my own home, but around Christendom in general) was how evil those women who got abortions were. They were selfish . . . under the control of Satan . . . all liberals . . . they hated God . . . they were ushering in the destruction of America.

It might sound as if I'm disappointed with those chapters of my early life. Perhaps that's part of it, but I realize that was just my culture. The real sadness I have is this:

It wasn't until I was 23 that I actually met someone who'd had an abortion.

Last summer controversy erupted when Dan Cathy, president and COO of Chick-fil-A, gave an interview expressing his opposition to same sex marriage based on biblical teachings. Gay rights activists also reacted to the fast food company's financial support for organizations that sought to block SSM.

In the weeks that followed, supporters of Chick-fil-A and traditional marriage showed their solidarity by lining up at the restaurants for a fried chicken sandwich, and members of the GLBT community rallied protests to block the restaurants from entering some cities. The entire episode highlighted the widening divide between conservative Christians and the gay community, and few had hope that reconciliation was possible.

What we did not know was that Dan Cathy, rather than fighting this battle in the media, chose to pursue a more Christ-honoring way. He reached out to Shane Windmeyer, the leader of Campus Pride--the pro-LGBT organization that was leading the fight against Chick-fil-A. Cathy developed a friendship with Shane and his husband, and a foundation of mutual respect was created.

Earlier this week Windmeyer "came out" about his friendship with Cathy in a column for Huffington Post. He writes:

Throughout the conversations Dan expressed a sincere interest in my life, wanting to get to know me on a personal level. He wanted to know about where I grew up, my faith, my family, even my husband, Tommy. In return, I learned about his wife and kids and gained an appreciation for his devout belief in Jesus Christ and his commitment to being "a follower of Christ" more than a "Christian." Dan expressed regret and genuine sadness when he heard of people being treated unkindly in the name of Chick-fil-A -- but he offered no apologies for his genuine beliefs about marriage.

Two weeks ago Louie Giglio was invited to pray at President Obama’s second inauguration. The inaugural committee praised his efforts to end modern slavery and human trafficking. The day after the announcement, however, ThinkProgress discovered a sermon Giglio preached in the 1990s in which he identified homosexual activity as “sin in the eyes of God.” (The full sermon can he heardhere.) Less than 24-hours later the inaugural committee announced a new, gay-affirming, faith leader would be found to pray at the event and Louie Giglio withdrew.

The reaction by some evangelical leaders was swift and severe. Many said Giglio’s removal was a violation of his religious liberty.Russel Moore said, “When it is now impossible for one who holds to the catholic Christian view of marriage and the gospel to pray at a public event, we now have a de facto established state church.”Tony Perkins called it a new “moral McCarthyism,” and Gabe Lyons wrote that the White House had “bullied” Giglio.

The entire episode was poorly handled, and I sympathize for Louie Giglio. I absolutely disagree with the characterization of him in the media as “hateful” or a “bigot.” And while there is some reason to view his removal from the inauguration as a turning point for evangelical participation in the public square, it also provides the opportunity to reflect on how evangelicals themselves may be at fault. In other words, before we point out the speck in the eye of the LGBT activists who pushed Giglio out, perhaps we ought to see the log in our own.

In the LA Times, Michael McGough identified a fact overlooked by many of those condemning the Obama administration for religious intolerance. At the last significant gathering of Obama’s supporters, the Democratic National Convention in August, the President invited Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, to pray. Dolan’s views on sexuality are just as conservative as Giglio’s, and unlike Giglio Dolan has been an outspoken critic of numerous Obama policies. McGough asks, “Is President Obama guilty of a double standard when it comes to clergymen who condemn homosexuality?” Why are Roman Catholic leaders acceptable while evangelicals are not?

We may find an explanation by looking at evangelicalism and Catholicism through the lens of branding.

On January 10th, Louie Giglio declined the invitation to pray the benediction at the Presidential Inauguration over pressure relating to an "anti-gay” sermon that he preached almost twenty years ago. Depending on who you’re talking with, Giglio’s move was either a cultural victory because of his secret “hatred” of LGBT people; or it marks a definitive end to evangelicalism as we know it. But are these the only two ways to think about this? I don’t think so. Here’s my take:

1) The evangelical voice is still being heard.

Many opinionated evangelicals have little personal experience with those who advise and surround the President. I’m not talking about Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Jay Carney, or even Joshua Dubois. I’m talking about the people who are never in front of the camera but play significant roles in shaping public policy. As someone who has had occasion to know and work with them, I can say with confidence that there are more professing and practicing evangelicals throughout our government than most people suspect.

Regardless of what you think of the President, he does surround himself with a variety of worldviews, opinions, and experiences. Just because he “comes out” with definitive statements supporting the topics that matter most to LGBTs, doesn’t mean he is not genuinely listening to people behind the scenes from many different viewpoints. Intentionally included in these inner-circle conversations are conservative evangelicals.

In the aftermath of the presidential election, many conservative Republicans are doing some soul searching. Are they out of step with most Americans? Have they been pulled too far to the right by their base? And are the culture war issues that have kept evangelicals in lock-step with the GOP for the last 30 years now doing more harm then good?

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who is already testing the waters for a run for the White House in 2016, recently did an interview with GQ where he was asked about the age of the earth. Rubio ducked and dodged and finally said, “I’m not a scientist, man.” Mr. Rubio’s non-answer puts him at odds with last year’s slate of Republican candidates. Eager to win conservative Christian voters, many of them spoke openly about their distrust of evolution.

Rick Perry made headlines when he called evolution “a theory” with “some gaps in it.” Ron Paul was an outspoken creationist, as was Rick Santorum who garnered the early support of evangelical leaders. Mitt Romney, who ultimately became the Republican candidate, took a middle of the road stance saying he believed God created the universe, but he also said, "evolution is most likely the process he used to create the human body."

Even as President Barack Obama celebrates being re-elected, it’s clear he faces the monumental task of leading a deeply divided nation. Though the president won a decisive number of the electoral votes, the popular vote told a different story. Voters split their ballots nearly evenly between the candidates: 50 percent for Obama, 48 percent for Mitt Romney.

As pastors sit down to write their Sunday sermons, many will be mulling the stark division in our nation. They will encounter feelings of relief and anxiety, hope and despair, apathy and anger—sometimes in the same congregation. We asked several pastors to share the gist of the message they will be preaching in light of the election results. We hope their insights will help you as you prepare for Sunday.

John Ortberg, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church: This Sunday I will give a call of prayer for our country and its leadership, and a call for civility in political conversations. Romney supporters: don't despair. Obama supporters: don't gloat. Remember, the office that matters most has already been permanently filled with a God of eternal omni-competence.

The podcast is live this week from Arnold’s Park, Iowa and features Phil’s brother, Rob, at the Bible conference their grandfather founded. Rob Vischer is a former attorney who is the associate dean of the University of St. Thomas School of Law and writes about the intersection of law and religion. The crew talks about Chick-Fil-A, Wheaton College’s lawsuit against the federal government and anti-Sharia laws that are being debated across the country.

Rob Vischer serves as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. His scholarship explores the intersection of law, religion, and public policy, with a particular focus on the religious and moral dimensions of professional identity. He received his B.A. degree, summa cum laude, from the University of New Orleans, and his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Listen here or subscribe at iTunes.

In a previous post, we presented reasons churches should NOT oppose gay marriage. Now we present Matthew Lee Anderson's case for churches to oppose same-sex marriage legislation.

Few aspects of our public witness on ethical and political questions are as contentious and difficult as the questions of gay marriage and gay rights. The watershed announcement by President Obama that he too now supports full marriage equality for gays and lesbians (though he incoherently wants to leave that “right” to the states) has ignited introspection among many conservatives over whether it would be better to no longer defend traditional marriage in the public square. The danger is that articulating this particular social good has the byproduct of creating resentment and hostility from those who disagree, thereby corrupting Christianity’s attractiveness by unnecessarily aligning it with a political stance.

It’s worth noting, I think, that the legal developments around marriage have the appearance of being victories for conservatives but are essentially nothing more than rearguard actions. The moment a position has to be codified into law it has ceased to be the law of the land.

And yet, as someone with broadly conservative instincts I’m not yet ready to give up articulating a traditional view of marriage in public and working to support it theologically, socially, and by even by law. After all, gay marriage may not be the “foregone conclusion” that many folks think it is.

In this post, we present reasons churches should NOT oppose gay marriage. For our post presenting a case for churches to oppose same-sex marriage legislation, click here.

NOTE: Before you skip ahead to the comment section and start disagreeing with me based on the title of this post, please read the post in its entirety. Then you can post disagreements!

I live in the state of Washington, which recently passed a law legalizing gay marriage. Meanwhile, my native state of North Carolina voted to ban same-sex marriages. It’s a topic many states are dealing with in a variety of ways.

As states debate the issue and election year rhetoric heats up, many church leaders I know have denounced the legalization of same-sex marriages while backing measures such as North Carolina’s that ban the practice. I have other Christian friends who support the legalization of same-sex marriage based on their belief that homosexual practice should be permitted in society and the church. I think this fiercely debated issue can serve to help us clarify our understanding of how Christians should engage society and government.

Personally (and please note that this is my personal position and not that of any ministry or organization I work with), I doubt the legalization of same-sex marriage is a threat to the church. In fact, I think it could very well be a blessing, but not for the reasons you might guess.

Everyone thought he would wait until after the election. After all, same-sex marriage is still a wedge issue in most of the country. With just over half of Americans now supporting gay marriage, and with many religious conservatives already distrustful of the president, most did not think his administration would rock the boat on such a volatile issue.

But yesterday President Obama rocked it anyway, telling ABC News:

"I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don't Ask Don't Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married."

So, what are we to make of this sudden turn of events? Over the last few years President Obama has said that his views on same-sex marriage were "evolving" along with the rest of the country's. But why has he chosen this moment to offer an all-out endorsement? Here are three things to consider:

Most evangelicals vote for Republican candidates, and for the last three decades the Republican Party has coveted evangelical votes by emphasizing the GOP's close link to Christian faith and values. But with Mitt Romney now the Republican candidate for President, many are asking whether his Mormon faith will be a stumbling block for evangelicals.

Last week a controversy erupted when Liberty University, the country's largest Christian college, invited Romney to be the commencement speaker. Some students and alumni are upset that the school invited a non-Christian to speak. They accuse Liberty of putting partisan politics ahead of it's commitment to Christ.

The Liberty U. controversy highlights a growing debate about the relationship between Mormonism and Christianity: are Mormons Christians? In these videos two prominent pastors take different perspectives. What are you telling your church members? And should it impact the way we vote?

Joel Osteen: Mormons are Christians

Rick Warren: Mormons deny the Trinity

As I get around the country there is one question I hear from pastors more than any other: How do we reach young people? They don’t need research from Barna, Lifeway, Pew, and Gallup to tell them young people are leaving the church. They see it every Sunday as the congregation gets a little more gray.

But the evidence is mounting that reaching or retaining the young is going to take a lot more than new music styles or even a systematic rethinking of church leadership and organizational structures. There is the larger cultural matter of politics.

An eye-opening article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs by David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam titled “God and Caesar in America: Why Mixing Religion and Politics is Bad for Both,” is a must read for pastors. Using research among young adults, Putnam and Campbell ask why the next generation is increasingly identifying their religious affiliation as “none.” They conclude that politics is a significant reason. They write:

“The best evidence indicates that this dramatic generational shift is primarily in reaction to the religious right. And Millennials are even more sensitive to it, partly because many of them are liberal (especially on the touchstone issue of gay rights) and partly because they have only known a world in which religion and the right are intertwined.”

Last week the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by an evangelical church regarding the ban against churches using public schools in New York City. The court's refusal to hear the case allows a lower court ruling to stand which means 60 churches will soon need to find new places to gather for worship.

One of those churches is Trinity Grace Church Brooklyn led by pastor Caleb Clardy. He has written an article for This Is Our City, a project with Christianity Today. Clardy reflects on the court's decision, and how churches ought to respond to the ruling.

Most troubling to Clardy is the disregard for local officials' relationship with the church. He points out that two other groups, a basketball league and a farmers' market, also use the school property on Sunday mornings. His church has an excellent relationship with both groups as well as school officials. Clardy writes:

Our country was founded on the right of its citizenry to make free and informed decisions. Yet it seems that more and more decisions of conscience are being made for us by high-level policymakers and by judicial fiat. Is this what we actually want for our city, and our nation? If MS 51 can choose to host the basketball league and the farmers' market and the theatre troupe and the voting stations, why can't they choose to host the church as well? I haven't yet heard a compelling answer to that question.

A reporter recently asked me, “As a Christian leader, does your faith have anything to say about Wall Street?” I said, “How much time do you have?”

Theologian Karl Barth said, “We have to read the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other.” For too long we Christians have used our faith as a ticket out of this world rather than fuel to engage it.

In his parables, Jesus wasn’t offering pie-in-the-sky theology… he was talking about the real stuff of earth. He talks about wages, debt, widows and orphans, unjust business owners and bad politicians. In fact Woody Guthrie breaks it all down in his song “Jesus Christ.” The song ends with Woody singing, “This song was written in New York City. If Jesus were to preach what he preached in Galilee, they would lay him in his grave again.”

The more I read the Gospels, the more they seem to confront the very patterns of the world we live in. At one point Mary, pregnant with Jesus cries out: “God casts the mighty from their thrones and raises the lowly… God fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty…”. You can’t help but think if she were alive in contemporary America some folks would try to accuse the Virgin Mother of being Marxist or promoting class warfare. But all through Scripture we see this–over 2000 verses about how God cares for the poor and most vulnerable.

What would Jesus say about Wall Street?

Last week death was interrupted. Duane Buck was set for execution. His execution would have been the second last week and the eleventh this year in Texas alone… and two more executions are scheduled soon. When Presidential candidate Rick Perry celebrated his 234 executions as Texas governor in a recent debate, the audience roared in applause. As a Christian I found that deeply disturbing.

There is an incident in the Gospels where Jesus is asked about the death penalty.
Here’s the scene. A woman has been humiliated and dragged before the town, ready to be killed. Her execution was legal; her crime was a capital one. But just because it’s legal, doesn’t make it right.

Jesus interrupts the scene – with grace.

He tells all the men who are ready to kill the woman, “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.” And of course he reminds us all that if we have looked at someone with lust in our eyes we are adulterers. If we have called our neighbor a fool we are a murderer. You can hear the stones start to drop, as the men walk away.

I was in Baghdad in March 2003, where I lived as a Christian and as a peacemaker during the “shock-and-awe” bombing. I spent time with families, volunteered in hospitals, and learned to sing “Amazing Grace”… in Arabic.

There is one image of the time in Baghdad that will never leave me. As the bombs fell from the sky and smoke filled the air, one of the doctors in the hospital held a little girl whose body was riddled with missile fragments. He threw his hands in the air and said, “This violence is for a world that has lost its imagination.” Then he looked square into my eyes, with tears pouring from his, and said, “Has your country lost its imagination?”

That doctor’s words have stayed with me.

In a country that is going bankrupt as it continues to spend $250,000 a minute on war, it is clear that it is time to re-imagine things. That doctor’s words have inspired a little something.

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of September 11, Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, and I are teaming up. And we have rallied a bunch of other artists and storytellers to create a 90-minute variety show and multimedia presentation to raise questions about violence and militarism and share stories of reconciliation and grace.

We’re calling it “Jesus, Bombs, and Ice Cream.”

I choose to belong to a strange tribe. Goshen College, my alma mater, made national news last month when its board of directors decided that the “Star Spangled Banner” would not be played before athletic events.

As could be expected, the decision was met with confusion and contempt. Wasn’t this just another example of our traditional values being trampled by the unrelenting march of political correctness? What sort of ingrates object to our nation’s anthem, anyway? Fluffy-headed campus philosophers? Lazy latte-sipping liberals?

The decision not to play the national anthem reversed last year’s decision to play it for the first time in Goshen College’s 116-year history. That, too, caught the media’s attention.

It also caused widespread concern and confusion among the college’s students, professors, alumni, supporters and, yes, donors - many of whom felt like playing the anthem compromised the college’s Christian values.

"What was the highlight of the conference?" I asked another attendee. I wondered if it was Kevin Kelly, "senior maverick" at Wired Magazine, talking about technology and theology. Or maybe actor/director Mark Ruffalo talking about faith in Hollywood.

"I know it sounds strange," he replied, "but it was seeing the relationship the churches in Portland have with the city government." He went on to explain that he was from Atlanta--a city where nearly every city official is a church-going Christian. And yet the church in Atlanta doesn't have nearly as good a relationship with the city as in Portland. "It was very convicting," he confessed.

He was referring to the interview between Kevin Palau, president of the Luis Palau Association, and Portland Mayor Sam Adams--the first openly gay mayor of a major US city.

A poll conducted by Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with Religion News Service was released this week that finds more Americans (44 percent) believe Christian values are at odds with capitalism than believe they are compatible (36 percent). However, a closer look at the research did find some exceptions.

White evangelicals, for example, were more likely than other Christians or the general population to think positively about free-markets. 44 percent of them said that businesses unregulated by the government would still behave ethically. (So much for the doctrine of total depravity.) White evangelicals also believe religious leaders should speak out about social issues but not necessarily economic matters.

Minority Christians, in contrast, said church leaders should be speaking about both areas. Economic issue like home foreclosures were at the top of their list; 76 percent of minority Christians considered it important, while only 46 percent of the general population.

Robert P. Jones, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute, said, "Minority Christians have a deep theological tradition of connecting faith and economic justice, and we see that link in the survey. Because minorities in the U.S. generally continue to have lower incomes than whites, economic issues are also more salient in these congregations."

Yesterday President Obama hosted the 2nd annual Easter Prayer Breakfast at the White House. Here's a video with his remarks, and how the resurrection puts things in perspective.

In attendance were Tim Keller, Louie Giglio, Gabe Lyons, Kevin Palau, T.D. Jakes, Joel Hunter, Andy Stanley, Leith Anderson, and others. Read Sarah Pulliam Bailey's full report on the CT Politics blog.

Imagine what would happen if a massive popular movement of ordinary Americans decided to voice their concern about military spending – by withholding $10.40 from their 1040 tax forms this year? A simple, small, symbolic, but concrete gesture of protest to the $200,000 dollars a minute being spent on militarism while programs that support life go bankrupt.

A few months ago I gathered in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with hundreds and hundreds of church leaders to ponder such a thing, and to launch a little project called 1040 For Peace. Many of the folks in attendance were from the Anabaptist “peace church” tradition of Christianity. Mennonites and Brethren, like the Amish, come from the Anabaptist movement, tracing back to the radical reformation of the 16th century. They, along with the Quakers, are known for their commitment to peace, a simple way of life, and for their suspicion of power. They also have a history of war-tax resistance.

Money has power. And so withholding money has power too, especially when a bunch of people do it together. If one percent of U.S. taxpayers held back $10.40 as an act of respectful protest, that’s nearly 1.5 million folks. Movements are like snowballs, they start small but get big pretty fast (as we can see by recent events in Wisconsin and Egypt). And movements grow even faster in an age of Facebook. That's why even the Mennonites are using the internet these days, albeit with a fair amount of caution.
As Christians, we have a particularly subversive example when it comes to economic imagination: Jesus himself.

I spent Tuesday in a room in San Diego with 400 pastors, academics and ministry practitioners. There’s no shortage of Christian conferences these days, but there seems to be something exceptional represented by these folks. You might get a sense of what I mean should you look closely at the diversity of the participants of the first Multi-ethnic Church Conference. But beyond the racial and ethnic makeup of the participants, it is the shared theological and practical interest in the non-homogeneous church that makes this conference unique.

Why did 400 people from around the country come to learn about a topic that is barely on the radar for much of American Christianity? I think the conference’s first three speakers each answered this question in their own way. I wonder, do any of these resonate with you?

Mark DeYmaz, pastor of Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas and author Ethnic Blends, gave a brief theological overview of the multi-ethnic church from Ephesians. In 2:11 Paul points out the massive and accepted separation between Gentiles and Jews. He goes on in chapter three to describe “the mystery made known to me by revelation.” And what is that mystery? That “through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body.” In other words, the most significant racial, ethnic and cultural divides have been bridged through the Gospel. My hunch is that many of this conference’s participants believe the emphasis on the Gospel’s reconciling power has been overlooked by too many of our churches.

There is a sinister trend gaining momentum in the days leading up to the mid-term elections. It is not initially obvious to many of us, but it has significant implications for the American church. The code language associated with this trend goes unnoticed by many majority-culture Christians despite how alienating it can be to our non-white brothers and sisters. It is a trend that both threatens devastating consequences to the unity of the church and presents powerful opportunities for Gospel witness to a cynical country.

Different code words summarize this trend: us, ours, mine—the possessive language many politicians and pundits use to describe the need to retake America. The aim of this trend is to identify the insiders and outsiders, those on the right and wrong side of American history. This language hearkens back to an ideal America when things were as they should be now.

Pamela Geller, an influential blogger and speaker and a major force behind the opposition to the so-called ground zero mosque, put some of these code words to work in a recent interview with The New York Times. “Growing up as the sort of tail end of the baby boomers, there was this feeling of invincibility in America…We were free. The good guys won. The good cop is on the beat. I certainly don’t get a sense of that anymore.”

Tom Steers, founder and co-director of Asian American Ministries for The Navigators, recently wrote a guest opinion column for Christianity Today (July 7, 2010). The column is entitled, "Needed: More Monocultural Ministries". Mark DeYmaz, founding pastor of Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas, and a leader in the multi-ethnic church movement, has written a response to Steers' article. Read part one of DeYmaz's rebuttal.

In arguing for more monocultural ministries, Tom Steers reveals the all-too-common misunderstanding of generations past committed to the Homogeneous Unit Principle as a pragmatic tool for local church planting, growth, and development. It is long-past time to recognize, however, that there is a significant difference between the need for evangelism focused on specific ethnic groups (more is needed, I agree) and the New Testament’s expectation that following salvation believers are to walk, work, and worship God together as one - in and through the local church - for the sake of the gospel.

Monocultural evangelism then? Absolutely. More monocultural churches? I say, absolutely not. What we really need is more multiethnic churches that understand and practice the HUP in their own context by providing for evangelism and basic discipleship of first generation internationals for precisely the reason the Steers suggests.

Steers believes monocultural churches avoid the problem of unrealistically expecting that “each of these groups assimilate to one another or to multiethnic congregations—at the same time they are trying to assimilate into U.S. culture.” This problem, by the way, is not always rooted in one’s ethnicity; personality is also a factor that plays a role in how soon or slowly 1.0s (a common name for first-generation immigrants) desire to engage the greater body. In fact I address this very thing in my latest book, Ethnic Blends: Mixing Diversity Into Your Local Church. In promoting a model I call, “Graduated Inclusion,” multi-ethnic churches can and will apply the HUP strictly for the purpose of evangelism and initial discipleship while simultaneously providing for the needs of 1.5s, 2.0s and beyond, all from within one local church.

Tom Steers, founder and co-director of Asian American Ministries for The Navigators, recently wrote a guest opinion column for Christianity Today (July 7, 2010). The column is entitled, "Needed: More Monocultural Ministries".

In the opinion piece ("not necessarily representing the opinion of the publication," as CT makes clear in the footer), Steers argues that a multicultural society demands more monocultural ministries. In so doing, however, he does not clearly state what he means by use of the term, “ministry.” Consequently, I believe he a) confuses evangelism with local church development, b) wrongly exegetes Scripture in attempting to support his claim, and otherwise c) speaks from assumption in stating what advocates of the multi-ethnic church truly believe. With this in mind, the following blog entry respectfully, but critically, challenges Steers' thinking.

Steers writes:

“Some argue that since we are an increasingly multicultural society, our churches should become more multicultural. There is a certain logic to that. As long as there are people who want to be culturally and socially multicultural, or multiethnic, there also must be structures for them. Such ministries are crucial for healing America's racial and ethnic wounds. They potentially model the unbiased oneness that Jesus prayed for in John 17.”

Theologically informed “advocates” of the multi-ethnic church however (at least, none that I know) are not suggesting, as the author states, “since we are an increasingly multicultural society, (that) our churches should become more multicultural.”

This excerpt is taken from "Always Personal, Never Private" in the Summer issue of Leadership.

"We have a special responsibility to make sure our brothers and sisters in Christ are cared for. Beyond that it is appropriate to care for the poor outside the church, but that is something for all humans made in the image of God to do, and Christians can certainly help. But the church isn't called to solve social ills."

Mark Dever is the senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. To read the rest of the interview with Mark Dever and Jim Wallis in context, pick up the Summer 2010 issue of Leadership journal or subscribe by clicking on the cover in the left column.

The summer issue of Leadership is about a week away from mailboxes. The theme is "Beyond Bono: Doing justice God's way is more than a fad." In the last few years, there has been a dramatic rise in pop-cultural engagement with issues of justice and poverty. This trend is captured best by Bono--lead singer for U2. This video from a few years ago illustrates the celebrity-driven focus around justice.

But what about the rise of justice as an issue within the church? Can it be explained away by the visibility of stars like Bono, or is there something more going on? And what does it mean to move beyond emotion and guilt toward a biblical and theological foundation for our justice efforts? These topics and others are addressed in the summer issue of LJ. Some of the voices in the issue include:

John Ortberg on prophetic preaching
Bethany Hoang on the justice generation
Eugene Cho on the risks of getting personally involved in justice
Jim Wallis and Mark Dever debating the role of justice in the gospel
Mark Labberton on the cultural and theological roots of the trend

We'll be posting excerpts, quotes, and videos from the summer issue in the coming days. And if you haven't yet subscribed to get all the great content in each issue of Leadership, click on the cover on the left side of the screen for a special offer.

The national debate (or is it an argument?) about immigration has provided a huge opportunity for churches to proclaim and demonstrate the Gospel to an anxious country. However, rather than responding with courage and grace, many of us have either kept silent or responded in fear, nervous about an unknown future. Three recent stories reveal the weight of this cultural moment and show why churches need to engage the issue with increased wisdom, mercy, and justice.

On April 23, Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed into law the broadest anti-illegal immigration legislation in the country. The legislation has been celebrated by some and strongly opposed by others, because it instructs police to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.

Also in April, Alabama gubernatorial candidate Tim James released a television ad that quickly propelled him from YouTube sensation to a guest on The O’Reilly Factor. The ad promises to administer driver’s license exams only in English. “This is Alabama, we speak English,” the candidate says. “If you want to live here, learn it.” James claims his ad is not about immigration, but many are wondering who the “you” in the ad is if not non-English speaking immigrants.

Following this blog, I figured the best way to rack up comments was to write about health care. So I thought I might explore one element of the recently enacted health-reform legislation that grabbed my attention as a prospective pastor. Though I worked for a short time on Capitol Hill, much of the far-reaching legislation eludes my understanding. We will be sorting out the implications of these reforms for years, if not decades. But one provision stands out as noteworthy, because it exposes a major social change with questionable merit. Until young adults turn 26, insurers are now required to let their parents retain them as dependents, no matter whether they have married or found gainful employment.

The move will benefit many of the 13.2 million Americans between the ages of 19 and 29 who currently do not have health insurance. According to the Commonwealth Fund, almost 30 percent of this age group foregoes health insurance for a variety of reasons. Students may continue from college to graduate school through at least their mid-20s. An unhealthy job market directs others into internships, residencies, or part-time positions that do not provide benefits. Youth (with its high risk-tolerance) convinces some to take their chances that no catastrophic illness will befall them.

This new insurance mandate matches the new social reality for 20-somethings who cannot or do not become independent adults when they turn 18, or even 21. According to the Brookings Institution, about 70 percent of 30-year-old adults in 1960 had married, started a family, and achieved financial independence. That figure had dropped below 40 percent by 2000. More young men and women are attending college, but the median number of years needed to complete a degree has risen from four to five since 1970. Men between the ages of 25 and 34 without college degrees earned less money in 2002 than did men from the same age group in 1975, when adjusted for inflation. But their 2002 peers who finished college and completed at least some graduate school earned more than both groups. So if you want to achieve economic independence in your 20s today, college and perhaps even graduate school has become something of a necessity.

The email provided a helpful link and instructed me to “Tell Glenn Beck: I’m a social justice Christian.” The blunt Fox News pundit had recently outed “social justice” as code language for socialism. According to Beck, should you uncover this sinister conspiracy at your church, the best course of action is to run “as fast as you can.” As Skye pointed out on this blog, the interesting thing about Beck’s claim is not its validity or his sanity but how “the church engages this issue of social justice and its role in the life and mission of God’s people.”

In the days following Beck’s rant, links were posted via Twitter and Facebook to articles and videos lampooning Beck’s character and claims. I was invited to join virtual groups to demonstrate my opposition to any version of Christianity that doesn’t claim social justice as a central tenant.

Why the stampede to distance ourselves from this talking head’s pontifications about social justice? I’d like to suggest two motivating factors—the tarnished public image of the American church and personal insecurities about our Christian identity—that, unfortunately, cannot sustain the actual pursuit of social justice.

This morning—the day after the U.S. House of Representatives passed the health-care measure—I feel a sense of gladness. I am glad that millions of Americans, many of them children, will have access to health insurance. I am glad that people with pre-existing medical conditions can no longer be denied coverage by insurance companies. And I am also glad that some effort is being made to curtail rising medical expenses, and that certain special interest and business groups will be held to a greater accountability, and that the growing gap between the rich and the poor might be slowed.

I am glad not because I am a Democrat or a Republican but because I think that Jesus, who seemed to take great interest in health issues, is glad. Looking back on his life among people like us, he often acted as a healer. He seemed to delight in curing diseases, restoring disabled people to wholeness, and rewiring damaged minds. You cannot divorce these encounters from the rest of his public ministry. Health-care was in his frame of reference.

My favorite of the Jesus-healing stories is the one where a group of men rip open a roof and lower a friend into the presence of Jesus. I love how the Lord flexed with the moment and used the healing to offer people a vision of holistic health: physical and spiritual. I try to imagine the freshly healed man rolling up his mat and heading out the front door, walking unassisted for the first time in who knows how long.

Then, too, I wonder about all the people (apparently including religious leaders) who had crowded into that house and who’d made it impossible for the man in his original condition of paralysis to get to Jesus in a more conventional way—through the front door. How does it happen that people rationalized, that since they got there first, the suffering guy outside should be left to his own devices?

Back in January I wrote a post on “The Battle Lines Over Justice.” As more evangelicals are rediscovering the sections of the Bible that highlight God’s compassion for the broken and abused in this world, there is a fearful response by some that we will slide down the “slippery slope” of liberalism into a social gospel and evangelicals (particularly the younger breed) will abandon the cross of Christ. To prevent this repeat of history, some have their ear to the rail prepared to warn the faithful at the first hints of a justice train coming down the line.

I concluded that earlier post with this caution:

Is the stage being set for another church rift in the 21st century paralleling what happen 100 years ago? Are you feeling the tremors in your church of a conflict over the scope of the gospel and the proper role of social justice? And where are you turning for informed theological reflection on this subject? How we address this controversy, and not simply which side we land on, may impact the evangelical world for decades.

I’ve been trying to faithfully inform the members of my congregation about church history, the scope of the gospel (as it relates to their lives and all of creation), and what Scripture says about justice. I’ve been trying to offer informed theological reflection and create room for dialogue and understanding. In other words, I’ve been trying to avoid the name calling, paranoia, and finger-wagging rhetoric that too often accompanies the social justice issue in evangelical circles.

And then today I read that Glenn Beck, the conservative talk radio host and chalkboard wielding Fox New Channel star, begged Christians to “run as fast as you can” from their church if they encounter the words “social justice.”

This week leaders from throughout the world are meeting in Copenhagen to discuss the impact of global warming. The issue is still hotly debated in the US (pun intended), while polls in many other secular Western nations reveal wider agreement with the theory.

Best-selling author Michael Crichton became an outspoken skeptic of man-made global warming before his death in 2008. In this video Crichton uses his background in anthropology to explain why environmentalism is based more on religion than science. Do you agree? And how do you think the church ought to respond to the popular green movement?

The peaceful, neutrality-loving citizens of Switzerland voted last week to ban the construction of minarets in their country-a decision not welcomed by the country’s 400,000 Muslims. For those unfamiliar with Islamic architecture, minarets are the steeple-like towers attached to mosques from which the call to prayer is broadcast.

The referendum was not a matter of preserving the alpine skyline, and some are saying it shouldn’t be interpreted as a restriction upon religious freedom either. Rather it’s the latest battlefront in Western Europe between advocates of traditional European culture and the recent influx of non-European immigrants. This is from The Washington Post:

While many leaders in Switzerland’s government and churches opposed the ban, the measure won with a significant 57.5 percent of the vote.

But backers of the measure said from the outset they were not seeking to prevent Muslims from practicing their religion. The goal, they explained, was to prevent what they described as the growing political impact of Switzerland’s Muslim minority, which they said is symbolized by minarets pointing into the sky; women wearing full veils; and observance of sharia, a Koran-based legal system.

“The minaret is the power symbol of political Islam and sharia law,” Walter Wobman, a People’s Party member of parliament, told the Reuters news agency at a rally near Bern, the federal capital.

Is the backlash in relatively liberal Switzerland a glimpse of what may soon happen in the US?

Here's an excerpt:

Much of the controversy is reckless, baseless, and plainly irrational. Some have called the speech an effort to recruit America's children into socialism. Others have argued that any presidential speech piped into classrooms is illegitimate. But a presidential speech to students is hardly unprecedented. This speech by this president has led to an unprecedented uproar.

At this level, the controversy is a national embarrassment. Conservatives must avoid jumping on every conspiracy theory and labeling every action by the Obama administration as sinister or socialist...

My life and worldview will never be the same after living seven years in Uganda. My wife and children, our mission team members, and I all made friends with and learned from people who were struggling out of poverty but still lived full of joy and hope.

Unfortunately, few Western Christians have the opportunity to learn from believers in other cultures. As a result, we impose our own perspective on Christians worldwide.

In The Next Evangelicalism, professor and pastor Soong-Chan Rah says the evangelical church has been held captive to Western-white power and must be released in the same way the early Christian church was released from Jewish ethnic control. Nearly 95 percent of Christian churches in America have more than 80 percent of one particular ethnic group. Most evangelical churches are white monoliths.

"Racism," he says, "is America's original sin." Our culture and economy were built on the backs of Native Americans and black slaves. But American individualism and consumerism keep Christians from understanding and confessing corporate sin.

According to Rah, today's "slavery issue" is immigration.

A poll conducted by Time has revealed that The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart is the most trusted news anchor in America. He beat Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson, and Katie Couric. Walter Cronkite, having just entered his grave, must already be turning over in it. Stewart won with 44 percent of the vote. Brian Williams came in a distant second with 29 percent. See the results here.

Like many others of my generation, I enjoy The Daily Show. I find Jon Stewart to be intelligent and his irreverence is often refreshing, if occasionally too snarky or foul for my palate. Still, I wonder what it says about my generation when we vote someone like Stewart to be the most trusted voice in American news—especially when The Daily Show makes no claim of being a reputable journalistic enterprise.

When Stewart appeared on CNN’s Crossfire in 2004, an argument ensued with Tucker Carlson about The Daily Show’s lack of journalistic rigor. Stewart responded, “I didn’t realize that the news organizations look to Comedy Central for their queues on integrity…. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls. What is wrong with you?”

Indeed—what is wrong with us?

A political dissident is arrested for leading a movement that threatens the stability of a region. He is ambushed and apprehended by his enemies, detained without a public trail, and tortured by soldiers at the command of their political leaders. No, I'm not describing Kalid Sheikh Mohammad or any other detainee held at the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I'm speaking of Jesus of Nazareth.

The fact that Christians draw their faith, life, and identity from a Messiah who was the victim of political torture seems ironic in light of new research by the Pew Forum that indicates 62 percent of white evangelicals believe torture of suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. The research shows that people who attend church regularly were more likely to rationalize torture than those who do not go to church.

How do we explain these findings? Are Christians being more influenced by Jack Bauer than Jesus Christ?

Lurking behind this passive support of government torture is a utilitarian ethic that believes the ends justify the means - torture is justifiable if the information attained will save innocent lives. But David Neff, editor of Christianity Today, points out a problem with this argument:

The CNN headline echoed hopeful reflection I've been hearing in churches: "Shaky economy forces Americans to rediscover community." Optimistic Christians suppose the community they will rediscover is a local church that demonstrates how putting your faith in markets or government is a fool's errand compared to the incomparable power that comes from knowing Jesus Christ the Lord.

But the article by John Blake qualified the stark headline. And by qualified, I mean the article proved the headline wrong. It turns out the economic collapse has forced Americans to watch more movies. Blake reported that Netflix profits have increased 45 percent since the beginning of 2009. Gross movie ticket sales have jumped nearly 20 percent.

The headline writer might have avoided this mistake by reading Robert Putnam's comments to Blake. Of course, Blake called the famous Harvard sociologist and author of Bowling Alone by his middle name, David, so you can understand the confusion. Putnam explained that economic crises do not ensure that people will come together.

"Almost everybody believes that during the [Great] Depression that everyone got cuddled up next to each other and said, 'We're all in this together,'" Putnam told CNN. "I'm not denying that some of that occurred, but what's more typical is that people hunker down and pull in."

If the Great Depression didn't promote community, at least World War II did. And during the decades of prosperity that followed, civic pride flourished. So did local churches.

"They had just been exposed to five years of war bond drives, scrap metal drives, and Boy Scouts asking people to give up rubber mats in their car for the war," Putnam explained. "They lived with a sustained notion of we're all in this together."

But while the American economy boomed, European nations were crippled by the second global conflict that century. So were their churches. The wars shook Europeans' confidence in public institutions. Organized religion did not escape their ire. And the churches have never fully regained that trust.

Stephen Colbert doesn't know his own race. The host of The Colbert Report, a satirical television news program on Comedy Central, claims to be colorblind, unable to discern his skin color. "People tell me I'm white," he said during one episode, "because I own a lot of Jimmy Buffet albums." The colorblind approach to race and racism makes for amusing television but is the height of na?vet? in real life. Yet for many churches this seems to be the preferred method of talking - or not talking - about all things related to race.

The beauty and peril of our diverse culture is impossible to miss. A quick snapshot reveals a president who shares a heritage with both Kenya and Kansas, a New York Post cartoon of a dead chimpanzee that stirs up memories of racist stereotypes, and teenage pop star Miley Cyrus photographed pulling back her eyes in an attempt to "look Asian." Stephen Colbert isn't the only TV personality who finds comedy in this racially charged atmosphere. Michael Scott, the hilariously insensitive manager of The Office, manages to repeatedly offend each of his diverse staff - no one is safe from his absurd stereotypes. A more nuanced primetime treatment of race can be seen on Lost where the island's castaways epitomize the global, ethnic, and class diversity and divisions of our day. In a society increasingly conscious of race and ethnicity, the silence of our churches grows more notable by the day.

Sarah Pulliam at Christianity Today has just posted her interview with Rick Warren. He talks about the controversy surrounding his invocation at President Obama's inauguration, the uproar over his support of Proposition 8 in California banning same-sex marriage, and the thousands being baptized at his church. Here's an excerpt:

I know a lot has been happening recently at your church. Just a few weeks ago, you baptized 800 in one day.

I was in the water for over five hours. I had webbed feet. It had to be a record. You know, it says in Acts that at the day of Pentecost, 3,000 were baptized and added to the church that day. We had 2,400 added to the church that day. The world belongs to Saddleback. When we started Saddleback, it was a white suburban church. We speak 65 different languages. It's the United Nations. I baptized an Egyptian General; I baptized probably 50 or 60 nationalities.

After you posted an invitation to the baptism and membership, some bloggers criticized the promotion. In the promotion, you said new members could have their photo with Pastor Rick and get a free one-year subscription to The Purpose Driven Connection. Why did you advertise the event that way?

In the first place, I think every person should take a picture with the pastor who baptizes them. That's a memento, that's a spiritual hallmark. That's not anything new. It wasn't like, oh, this is something we've never done that's going to attract people. In the past 10 years, Saddleback has baptized over 20,000 new believers. We are, without a doubt, the most evangelistic church in America. There are churches that are bigger than Saddleback, but there are no churches that reach more people for Christ than Saddleback. There are no churches that send as many people into the missions field. There's not a church that has sent 8,000 people into the missions field.

Read the entire interview here.

Unless you've been hibernating (which isn't a bad idea given the economy and weather lately), you know that President-elect Barack Obama has asked Rick Warren to pray at his inauguration. The news networks (apparently needing something controversial to fill up their 24 hour broadcast schedules) have been buzzing about Warren's stance against gay marriage.

The more liberal among Obama's supporters have voiced their anger over his choice of Rick Warren, but it's been hard to find an evangelical on television upset with Warren's close ties with Obama. You may recall that Warren hosted both McCain and Obama at his church during the campaign for a "civil forum" to discuss important issues. The megachurch pastor was widely praised for his balanced and helpful approach to the event.

Rick Warren's prayer for Barack Obama:

I'd like to know what you think about Rick Warren's presence at Obama's inaugural. Is Warren following in the tradition of Billy Graham, or is he succumbing to the lure of political power? And do you think Obama will be positively influenced by Warren, or is he using Warren's star-power among evangelicals to score political points?

I've included a couple of videos of both Obama and Warren discussing their relationship.

by Bob Hyatt

An excerpt:

...the state needs to get out of the "marriage" business. It should recognize that as long as it uses that term and continues to privilege certain types of relationships over others this issue is going to divide us as a nation and is only going to become more and more contentious. We need to move towards the system used in many European countries, where the state issues nothing but civil unions to anyone who wants them, and those who desire it may seek a marriage from the church. When I pastored in the Netherlands, couples got a civil union certificate at the courthouse and then had a marriage ceremony at the church. This division largely negated the culture war aspect, and allowed those churches who objected to same sex marriage on biblical grounds not only to opt out, but to be able to continue to teach their biblical view of marriage unchallenged by the state....

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Tony Jones, the former national coordinator of Emergent Village and the author of The New Christians, has articulated his beliefs about homosexuality on his blog. Jones, along with other Emergent leaders, has been questioned for years about his views on the debated cultural and doctrinal issue. Until now, Jones had always responded by saying he hadn't made up his mind on the question. "Homosexuality," he would say, "is one issue that I don't want to get wrong."

Well, it seems Jones has now made up his mind. The blog post, which can be read here, explains his journey with the issue from childhood. But Jones discloses that:

...all the time I could feel myself drifting toward acceptance that gay persons are fully human persons and should be afforded all of the cultural and ecclesial benefits that I am.

And:

I now believe that GLBTQ can live lives in accord with biblical Christianity (at least as much as any of us can!) and that their monogamy can and should be sanctioned and blessed by church and state.

(BTW, for those unfamiliar with the acronym GLBTQ it stands for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer or Questioning...depends on who you ask according to Wikipedia. And for those who are unfamiliar with the acronym BTW...are you kidding me?)

Clearly, Jones' statement is very carefully worded to convey his intent and nothing more. But for his critics and those suspicious of Emergent Village, this discloser will only add fuel to their fire. It should be noted that Jones no longer speaks on behalf of EV, and his remarks shouldn't be projected upon others within the Emergent conversation.

by Skye Jethani

Amazing. How else can you describe what happened last week when Barack Obama became the first African American elected President of the United States? However you voted, whatever your politics, the election reveals something about the progress of our society. As George W. Bush said the morning after the election, it "showed a watching world the vitality of America's democracy and the strides we have made toward a more perfect union."

Amid the reflections there have been numerous references to Martin Luther King Jr.'s pioneering civil rights movement and his "dream." One Chicago news commentator on election night said the day King delivered his famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial he could not have known that a two year old boy in Hawaii would become the fulfillment of his dream. That got me wondering - is Barack Obama really the fulfillment of King's dream?

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by John Ortberg

My son has a bumper sticker on his car that reads: "I poke badgers with spoons." Its significance is not self-evident to everybody who reads it, so let me tell you the story.

It comes from a British stand-up named Eddie Izzard. Eddie grew up in the church, and heard early on about the doctrine of original sin, but was a little fuzzy on the concept. He assumed that it meant that priests get tired of hearing the same old boring confessions time after time - greed, lust, gluttony, and lying to the tax man. Eddie thought the priests wanted to hear some truly original sins.

So he came up with something he figured no one had ever confessed before: "I poke badgers with spoons." My wife thought it was so funny that she had it printed on a bumper sticker and placed it on my son's car. Oddly enough, he sometimes fails to appreciate that his parents are two of the funniest people in the world. But he wanted the car. So he gets the sticker that goes with it.

Debates have raged for centuries now over the phrase "original sin," which of course doesn't actually show up in the Bible. Augustine argued that there is a fundamental flaw, a bentness, that gets passed on to every human being before they are even born. (He believed it was intrinsic to the sex act, which may be part of why he never had a little Augustine, Jr.--at least not legitimately.) The classic counter-argument was raised by Pelagius, who claimed that each human being was a blank slate, a morally neutral free agent who had a clean shot at maintaining perfect innocence. Pelagius clearly never had children.

The church came down, with a few caveats, on the side of Augustine and not Pelagius. But Eddie Izzard gets a shout out now and then. The Vatican recently published a list of sins (such as environmental transgressions) which, if not completely original, at least give an updated twist to the old seven deadlies.

Which brings me to the election...

The view of America from Manhattan was pretty bleak on the morning after November 2, 2004. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, typically a levelheaded observer of world affairs, watched America become "two nations under God."

"We don't just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is," Friedman wrote about the "Christian fundamentalists" who helped propel President Bush to reelection against Sen. John Kerry. "Is it a country that does not intrude into people's sexual preferences and the marriage unions they want to make? Is it a country that allows a woman to have control over her body? Is it a country where the line between church and state bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers should be inviolate? Is it a country where religion doesn't trump science? And, most important, is it a country whose president mobilizes its deep moral energies to unite us - instead of dividing us from one another and from the world?"

The view north of Chicago in Evanston, Illinois, was even more ominous. Northwestern University adjunct history professor Garry Wills declared November 2, 2004, "the day the enlightenment went out." No longer did America take after France, Britain, Germany, Italy or Spain. No, Bush's America harbored "fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity." In short, the new America shared more in common with Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Christian fundamentalists, still fuming over the embarrassment of the Scopes trial in 1925, had finally enacted a jihad Wills dubbed "Bryan's revenge." Now these Christians would be able to impose their irrational, bigoted opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. Thinkers like Wills could only ask: "Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?"

Has the economy got you worried? When pundits are throwing around statements like, "The worst market since the Great Depression," it's natural to get concerned. But Andy Crouch has a different take. He's written a really insightful article for our friends at Books and Culture titled "Why I am Hopeful." Here's an excerpt:

I am not hopeful because I envision an easy way out of the current economic mess. We are entering into the Great Deleveraging, where an entire country of consumers will have to pare back their reliance on cheap mortgages and abundant credit cards. (Remember when your mailbox was stuffed with credit card offers? Seen any lately?) The national savings rate might even rise above 0% - yes, that is zero percent, the proportion Americans have been collectively saving for several years now. But that means that consumption, a major engine of our economy, will have to decline dramatically.

I am not hopeful because I have confidence in whoever will be elected president in 15 days. I have grave concerns, as a Christian and as a citizen, about both candidates and will in all likelihood vote for neither. (Not for the first time - in 2004 I wrote in Colin Powell.)

I am not hopeful because I think we are well prepared for what is ahead of us. We are not. We are a terrifyingly unserious people, our heads buzzing with trivia and noise. This is more true, if anything, of American Christians than the rest of our country. The stark contrast between what I experience among Christians anywhere else in the world - and not just the "Third World," because Canada and Germany and Britain and Singapore come to mind as quickly as Uganda and India - and American Christians is astonishing. We are preoccupied with fads intellectual, theological, technological, and sartorial. Vanishingly few of us have any serious discipline of silence, solitude, study, and fasting. We have, in the short run, very little to offer our culture, because we live in the short run.

I am not hopeful because I think life is going to get easier in America. I am hopeful because I think it is going to get harder, and in a very good way. And I am hopeful because I think this means my children and grandchildren will live in a deeply and truly better world than I would have thought possible a few years ago.

Read Crouch's entire article here.

Election time again and, once more, we face a big decision. No, not the decision about our vote. That one is big, but this one is even bigger. It's the decision about our integrity.

I watch in amazement as every four years, well-meaning Christians who are otherwise committed to values of truth and controlling our tongues descend into the pit of partisanship, smears, and tale-bearing. You know how it goes. You have genuine concerns about the other guy (or gal) and so, with few qualms, repeat whatever was told to you by someone in the parking lot or that you heard on the talk radio show or read on that extremely well fact-checked source, the Internet. Of course, all the stuff the other side is saying about your candidate? Yellow journalism and lies.

People who balked at the Left's mention of George Bush's alcoholism repeat at the drop of a hat Obama's admission of drug use in his younger days. And people who on any other day are likely to decry the sexism of American politics suddenly become concerned that Palin went back to work too quickly after giving birth and that she can't be both VP and a mother of a special-needs child.

We believe whatever our side says, refuse to even listen to the other side, and generally put critical thinking aside.

by David Swanson

As on any other Tuesday, my wife and I hosted our weekly small group on Election Day of 2004. A quick scan of the TV stations after the Bible study showed that we'd have to wait until the next day to learn the results. "Just pray that John Kerry doesn't win," said one of the members on his way out that November night. Over early morning coffee a few weeks later another church friend expressed his relief that George Bush would serve a second term as president.

More recently, after a pizza dinner with some volunteers from church, someone asked where Barak Obama's home was. Soon a small caravan was driving through Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood to see the house of what many of these volunteers hoped would be the next president. A few weeks later I watched one of our worship leaders tactfully cover her Obama t-shirt with a jacket before our Sunday service began.

What happened between 2004 and the current election season to account for this shift in the political sensibilities of our community? Maybe the political priorities of some folks have changed. Maybe churchgoers feel taken for granted by the "Grand Old Party." Or perhaps Americans, including those within the Evangelical tradition, are just ready for change.

Or maybe not. What changed was that between these two elections we moved from an established suburban church to a 6-year old-church plant in Chicago. And that, as they say, has made all the difference.

You can listen to every stump speech and read every position paper, but nothing compares to evaluating presidential candidates side-by-side during a debate. Their contrasting styles and views emerge in ways you hadn't noticed during the long primary season. The candidates practice their lines and prepare their strategies, but the format allows for precious moments of spontaneity and even humor. The best candidates deftly address issues in ways that lodge them in the public consciousness.

Perhaps the best example of this is President Reagan, who in 1984 famously said, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience." His 56-year-old opponent, Walter Mondale, could only look on in laughter.

The first debate between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama provided no such memorable moments. But it did highlight important distinctions between the Republican and Democratic candidates. Namely, McCain and Obama represent key differences between modern and postmodern cultures. Analyzing their debate through this lens reveals similarities to the church's own debates about how to respond to shifting cultures.

This election season, a group of about 30 pastors plans to challenge the IRS law that prohibits churches from endorsing a political candidate from the pulpit. As part of the "Pulpit Initiative," organized by the Alliance Defense Fund, many of these pastors chose to explicitly endorse one of the presidential candidates as part of his Sunday sermon yesterday.

The pastors say that the IRS regulation violates their First Amendment rights by permitting the government to restrict the free expression of religion. The government should have no authority to restrict what a pastor says from the pulpit to his or her congregation, they argue.

Minnesota pastor Gus Booth, who encouraged his congregation to vote for John McCain yesterday, says, "If we [pastors] can tell you what to do in the bedroom, we can certainly tell you what to do in the voting booth."

On the other side, supporters of the IRS code also appeal to the First Amendment saying the church should stay out of political affairs, and those that choose not to should lose their tax-exempt status.

Here's more from CNN.com:

Read more on this story at Christianity Today Online or at the National Public Radio website.

Do you agree with these pastors? Is such civil disobedience warranted?

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by Scot McKnight

Somewhere between 6pm and 8pm, Central Time, on November 4th, 2008, the eschatology of American evangelicals will become clear. If John McCain wins and the evangelical becomes delirious or confident that the Golden Days are about to arrive, that evangelical has an eschatology of politics. Or, alternatively, if Barack Obama wins and the evangelical becomes delirious or confident that the Golden Days are about to arrive, that evangelical too has an eschatology of politics. Or, we could turn each around, if a more Democrat oriented evangelical becomes depressed and hopeless because McCain wins, or if a Republican oriented evangelical becomes depressed or hopeless because Obama wins, those evangelicals are caught in an empire-shaped eschatology of politics.

Where is our hope? To be sure, I hope our country solves its international conflicts and I hope we resolve poverty and dissolve our educational problems and racism. But where does my hope turn when I think of war or poverty or education or racism? Does it focus on November 4? Does it gain its energy from thinking that if we get the right candidate elected our problems will be dissolved? If so, I submit that our eschatology has become empire-shaped, Constantinian, and political. And it doesn't matter to me if it is a right-wing evangelical wringing her fingers in hope that a Republican wins, or a left-wing evangelical wringing her fingers in hope that a Democrat wins. Each has a misguided eschatology.

Now before I take another step, it must be emphasized that I participate in the election; and I think it makes a difference which candidate wins; and I think from my own limited perspective one candidate is better than the other.

"People cannot tell the difference between a conservative evangelical message and Rush Limbaugh, or a mainline Protestant message and Howard Dean. Because of the media, any news item related to a major social issue...is politicized in 24 hours. By the time I get up to preach about it on Sunday, it's been spun and polarized a hundred times over."

-Efrem Smith is pastor of The Sanctuary Covenant Church in Minneapolis. Taken from "Does Your Preaching Touch Politics" in the Summer 2008 issue of Leadership journal. To see the quote IN context, you'll need to see the print version of Leadership. To subscribe, click on the cover of Leadership on this page.

Where I grew up in the South, the three big holidays on the church calendar were Christmas, Easter, and Fourth of July Sunday. Now I live near Chicago, where many churches let Independence Day slip by without a word from the pulpit. There are, no doubt, historical and theological reasons why Christians in one part of the country (or in one denomination or another) are more inclined to link the church to the state in its worship. But in my experience, people simply don't give the issue a lot of thought; they just do what they've always done.

That's why I'm excited to introduce the Church and Politics Quiz, a tool designed to help you uncover your assumptions and blind spots regarding the role of the church in politics. How should the church relate to the state - as chaplain or prophet? Is it appropriate to display flags in the sanctuary? In the spirit of the Hermeneutics Quiz from earlier this year, there are no right or wrong answers. Rather, we hope this tool will help you think critically about the church's role and responsibility in this historic election year.

Take the quiz here, and then come back to Out of Ur to post your results and comments.

Shifts happen all the time - shifts in economics, politics, theology, church, and culture. But we usually don't comprehend the full nature of the shift until much later. One subtle shift happened in Beijing last week. You may have missed it amid the pageantry of the Olympic opening ceremonies.

Many consider it an historic event for modern China to host the Olympic Games, and the show proved to be amazing. It was an experiential canvas of creativity few have ever seen before on such a scale: techno-utopian shows, creative and innovative artistry, massive numbers of participants synchronizing poetry through dance and song. The opening ceremony masterfully put the world on notice: a shift has occurred. Here's what I saw communicated:

1. China is increasingly more open to the "barbarians"
In one of the most beautiful sequences in the ceremony, the dancers displayed the Great Wall reflecting one of the most notable metaphors of China. It was a reminder to the world that barbarians weren't welcomed. Things have changed. The dancers transformed the walls of China into a bridge of flowers. Sure, the doors may still be closed in many respects--human rights and religious freedoms are still lagging in China--but there seems to be a growing openness in the culture. This is probably the result of many who have prayed and fueled the movement of the Holy Spirit.

"If there's anything I've learned from both conservatives and liberals, it's that you can have all the right political answers and still be mean. And nobody wants to listen to you if you're mean. One of the things we can do is learn to disagree well. I think there is a new conversation happening within evangelicalism in post-religious-right America that is much healthier. We can actually learn to disagree well."

-Shane Claiborne is a founding member of The Simple Way, a new monastic community in Philadelphia, and the co-author of Jesus for President. Taken from "Body Politic" in the Summer 2008 issue of Leadership journal. To see the quote IN context, you'll need to see the print version of Leadership. To subscribe, click on the cover of Leadership on this page.

I'm not Rick Warren's biggest fan. Don't get me wrong; I admire his godly character and zeal to claim this world for Christ. But I could live without the hokey acronyms and, especially, his "felt needs" approach to evangelism.

That said, I was impressed with Warren's hosting skills at the Saddleback Civil Forum on Saturday night. Warren is the only Christian leader in America who could pull off this event. Sen. Barack Obama wants to peel away more of the evangelical vote, and he trusts Warren not to play gotcha with him on the issues where he disagrees with evangelicals. Sen. John McCain needs to bolster his credibility with evangelicals, and he knows Warren harbors no long-standing vendetta against him for sometimes bucking conservative political orthodoxy.

"Too many Christians today are trying to improve on the gospel. The gospel is what it is: the Cross of Christ. Christians on both the political right and the left are downplaying the effects of the Fall, and instead buying into a secular myth of progress through market economics or socialism."

-Mark Dever is pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. Taken from "Does Your Preaching Touch Politics?" in the Summer 2008 issue of Leadership journal. To see the quote IN context, you'll need to see the print version of Leadership. To subscribe, click on the cover of Leadership on this page.

Last month the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. Some are predicting that the California ruling will open the door to gay marriage throughout the country. How should church leaders respond? Skye Jethani, managing editor of Leadership, recently spoke with Dan Kimball, pastor of Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, California, about how his congregation is handling the controversial decision.

To download this episode of Audio Ur, click here.

P.S. For those wondering when Audio Ur will be on iTunes...we're working on it.

I've got a special treat for you to commemorate Independence Day - a preview of the summer issue of Leadership due out later this month. The issue focuses on the intersection of church ministry and politics (not an irrelevant subject this year). Here is a snippet featuring Charles Colson and Gregory Boyd debating the biblical basis for loving one's country:

Charles Colson: I don't think that you can simply forget the fact that we live in a kingdom and a state. Our job is to make the state as righteous and conformed to God's standards as possible. But you can love the Lord your God with your heart, mind, and soul and also love your country as a way of loving your neighbor.

Gregory Boyd: This is the fundamental difference between us. In your book you speak a lot about our dual commitments, our dual allegiances to God and country. I just don't know where in the New Testament you get that. I can't imagine Jesus or Paul saying such a thing. God tells us to obey the laws of the land and to pray for peace. Those are our two engagements. But I don't feel we have any kind of duty to love or defend our country.

As you can see, this issue is sure to spark some debate. Share your thoughts here, and look for more thought provoking discussion on Out of Ur in the coming weeks.

What is an "evangelical"? According to almost 80 prominent pastors, theologians, and activists, the word "evangelical" has become "a term that, in recent years, has often been used politically, culturally, socially - and even as a marketing demographic."

The group signed and released a 19 page "Evangelical Manifesto" last week in Washington D.C. The goal of the document is to "reclaim the definition of what it means to be an Evangelical." They believe that theological, rather than political, principles should define evangelicalism, and they offer a strong rebuke to those who would equate the word with either end of the political spectrum. When evangelicalism is politically defined, they say, it makes Christians "useful idiots" for politicians and parties.

The manifesto's signers are a diverse bunch including Timothy George, dean, Beeson Divinity School; Os Guinness; Richard Mouw, president, Fuller Theological Seminary; David Neff, editor in chief of Christianity Today; and Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners magazine. Absent are some high profile Religious Right folks like James Dobson. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, has written about why he won't sign the manifesto even though he agrees with 90 percent of its content.

One commentator has noted that the manifesto represents a divide between the "old-style populist evangelicals" (think Religious Right, Moral Majority, pro-life, anti-gay marriage) and what he calls the increasing ranks of "cosmopolitan evangelicals" (think global awareness, social justice, poverty, AIDS). He says this bunch (shall we call them Cosmo-Christians?) are "the new public face of the evangelical movement."

Anybody but me notice that this is an election year? I have loved politics since I was a kid; one of my first and favorite books was a little Cold War classic called Being an American Can Be Fun.

But it's an odd thing. The church - where we're supposed to be fearless; where we're supposed to challenge people on sin, and be prophetic, and face martyrdom - the church is also the place where we're told, "Don't talk about politics!" Or at least we're told that in the kind of churches where I grew up. Other traditions are different. In the African-American church, for instance, for decades church was the one place where politics could be safely talked about; leaving a legacy that is reverberating pretty loudly this year.

Here's the problem: politics is an important sphere of human activity, and as such God is keenly interested in it. It was the Dutch theologian and politician (why don't we have more of those?) Abraham Kuyper who famously said, "There is not one inch of creation about which Jesus Christ does not say: ?This is mine!'"

However, as soon as human beings (including church leaders) start assuming they are in a position to pronounce God's political leanings, things get a little dicey.

Let's make a couple of assumptions about a church leader who reads Jesus for President. First, he or she actually finishes the book despite the occasional punch in the gut. Second, that this same church leader agrees (on some level) with the premise that too much of our American church life has been shaped by our comfortable relationship with the state. If one accept both of these assumptions, what then?

While the book offers plenty of fodder for thought and conversation, it is not a how-to manual of subversive Kingdom living. Since most of us will not be leaving our churches to join a New Monastic community with Claiborne or Haw, what is our response? How do we serve and lead congregations that preserve Kingdom distinctiveness while demonstrating God's redemption to our neighbors?

One way to answer these questions is found in how Claiborne and Haw compose their book's last chapter: story telling. The authors claim, "Preserving the distinctiveness of the kingdom of God has always been the most important task for the church." And, "The only thing all Christians are called by the New Testament to imitate is Jesus' taking up his cross." Rather than tell us exactly how to do this, they've decided to show us in the final portion of the book.

A few months ago, while visiting a church out of state, I had a moment of crisis. Just before the sermon, the pastor stood to give the announcements. After wrapping up, he invited a young man in military uniform to stand. The young officer had grown up in this church and had just returned from his first tour in Iraq. The pastor thanked the congregation for their prayers for the soldier and his family. The congregation responded with enthusiastic applause. So far so good.

But then the pastor reminded the church of the dangerous and noble work America's soldiers were doing in Iraq. He said they were protecting our American freedoms and that we should be grateful for their sacrifice. The congregation stood to their feet and began clapping?and clapping?and clapping. I have never experienced a more enthusiastic and prolonged standing ovation on a Sunday morning in my life.

What would you have done? I sat.

After the service I admitted to my wife that I was uncertain what the right response was in that situation. The tenor of the pastor's remarks and the zeal of the congregation's response did not seem to reflect Christ's call to love our enemies. I wondered how a brother or sister in the Iraqi church, which has come under increasing persecution, would have felt about this Sunday morning display of patriotism. At the same time, I felt like a total jerk for sitting while the rest of the congregation demonstrated their gratitude to the military. This experience and the questions it raised came to mind several times while I read Jesus for President.

We are seeing more and more that the church has fallen in love with the state and that this love affair is killing the church's imagination. The powerful benefits and temptations of running the world's largest superpower have bent the church's identity. Having power at its fingertips, the church often finds "guiding the course of history" a more alluring goal than following the crucified Christ. Too often the patriotic values of pride and strength triumph over the spiritual virtues of humility, gentleness, and sacrificial love.

As you can tell, subtlety is not what Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw were aiming for when they co-wrote, Jesus for President. Apart from the provocative content - a mix of stories, biblical narrative, and political manifesto - even the look of the book provokes a reaction. The pages are filled with photography, artwork, doodles, and strange typesetting. Some will appreciate the book's creative format and others will find the style too different - not unlike the authors themselves.

For those unfamiliar with Claiborne and Haw, both are associated with what has been called the New Monasticism movement. Known for their emphasis on community, racial reconciliation, and peacemaking, many of these new monastics live and serve in what they call the "abandoned places of Empire."

For months presidential hopeful Barack Obama has been trying to dispel rumors that he is a Muslim. The good news for the Illinois Senator is that virtually everyone in the country now knows he's a Christian. The bad news for Obama has been playing on YouTube and the cable news networks all week - video of his pastor condemning white America from the pulpit. The candidate's opponents have used his connection to the controversial pastor to question Obama's central message - that he can unite the country across racial and political lines.

Barack Obama has credited Reverend Jeremiah Wright for bringing him to faith in Christ. Wright has been his spiritual mentor for nearly 20 years, officiated at his wedding, and baptized his daughters. And until Friday, Wright had been serving as an advisor to the Obama presidential campaign. He left the campaign when his fiery statements from the pulpit brought too much heat on the senator. Some have called his remarks racist, un-American, and anti-Semitic. Barack Obama called them "completely unacceptable."

He told ABC News that Reverend Wright is like "an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with." And the candidate said Saturday, "I completely reject" the statements Wright made in those sermons.

Barack Obama's bestselling book, The Audacity of Hope, takes its title from one of Jeremiah Wright's sermons. We were surprised to discover the transcript of that message in our PreachingToday.com archives. We've posted the entire sermon for you to read here.

Given my age and childhood in the South, I cannot remember a time when being a good Christian did not require being a devout Republican. I accepted the situation as a matter of course until I realized that Republican politics has no corner on virtue. The Republican platform opposes abortion and defends family values. But the Democratic platform seems more sympathetic to the poor, orphans, and widows - as is God. As a result, until we vote on ballots that allow us to punch our position on issues, rather than select the name of a politician, I'm not sure whether to vote Republican or Democrat.

It may not be news to some of you, but I was encouraged to discover that my political confusion is representative of a historical confusion among Christians. According to David Domke and Kevin Coe, authors of The God Strategy (Oxford Press, 2008), it was only in the 1970s, after integration and Roe v. Wade, that Christians and Republicans began going steady. Since then, the authors argue, Republicans have had greater success than Democrats in employing the "God strategy" to curry the Christian vote.

The race is on for the White House and it began with excitement last week in Iowa. Tomorrow it's New Hampshire's turn, and on February 5, "Super Tuesday," near half of the country will be voting to select the Democratic and Republican nominees. With one of the most open races in recent history many Christians are still undecided, and some are looking to their church and pastors for direction. Should the church wade into the murky waters of politics? And if it does what is the risk? Allen R. Bevere, pastor of First United Methodist Church in Cambridge, Ohio, and contributor to RedBlueChristian.com, has written to share what a church is legally allowed to do in this political season.

The Associated Press has reported that several pastors in Iowa, who have publicly supported Governor Mike Huckabee for President have received anonymous letters warning them that their churches are in danger of losing their nonprofit status. The fact that the letters are anonymous means that they are probably from someone opposed to Huckabee, who wants to silence these ministers who support him.

There is great misunderstanding, even in government, as to what tax-exempt status does and does not mean in reference to what churches are and are not allowed to say and do when it comes to politics and elections in particular.

First, for some history:

Historically there was no law in the United States restricting any church or other nonprofit organization from endorsing or opposing a candidate for political office.

From time to time this blog has addressed issues of faith and politics. In September, Isaac Canales shared his views about the church's response to illegal immigration. Brian McLaren has spoken here about the demise of the Religious Right. And we've debated Greg Boyd's belief that America's status as a "Christian nation" is a myth.

Yesterday, a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination gave a speech concerning "faith in America." Mitt Romney's Mormon religion has increasingly become an issue in the campaign - particularly as his sizable lead in Iowa has been lost to Baptist pastor turned politician, Mike Huckabee. But what impact will Romney's speech have on the crucial conservative evangelical voters that populate the base of the Republican Party? Will they overlook his Mormon faith and focus on common ground values? Or will theological differences trump political ideology?

Our colleague at Christianity Today, David Neff, has analyzed Romney's speech. We encouraged you to read his article on the CT website and then share your impressions here. Below are a few excerpts from the article:

After promising, "I will put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law," Romney resisted those who would want him to put distance between himself and his faith. "That I will not do. I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it.

You may think writing a sermon every week is challenging work, but imagine writing speeches everyday for the leader of the free world. That was Michael Gerson's job for six years under President George W. Bush. Last night I attended a benefit dinner in Chicago where Gerson was the keynote speaker. Prior to the dinner I participated in a small roundtable discussion with Gerson about his time in the White House and his perception of current challenges - domestic and international - facing the country.

Much of the conversation focused on Gerson's responsibility in crafting the President's response in the days following 9/11. Leading a nation in shock and grief is not easy, but simultaneously showing strength and resolve is a challenge few presidential speechwriters have faced. Gerson was almost universally praised for shaping Bush's tone in a way that comforted the nation and rallied the world. The President's address at the National Cathedral, which Gerson and his team wrote with less than one day's notice, has been celebrated as one of the finest moments of the Bush presidency.

A theology grad from Wheaton College, Gerson's faith has been a factor both in Bush's speeches and policy. U2's Bono, a friend of Gerson's, has said, "Mike is known as a ?moral compass' at the White House." As a senior policy advisor to Bush, Gerson was instrumental in the push to triple aid to Africa, and he's filled the President's remarks with passionate rhetoric about compassion, the spread of democracy, and the God-ordained dignity of freedom for all people. But at Thursday night's gathering Gerson was critical of the administration's execution of these ideals.

We are putting the finishing touches on the next issue of Leadership built around the theme of ministering to people on the margins. Isaac Canales, pastor of Mission Ebenezer Family Church in Carson, California, has sent us this provocative article about ministry among immigrants. We're posting it here first to hear your responses. Some of your comments may be republished with Canales' article in the October issue of Leadership.

I am a Harvard graduate and the son of immigrants. My story is not unique. In California, where I live, immigration has been an issue for decades. We've lived with it every day of our lives, long before it became a divisive political issue. In California, even our governor is an immigrant. But most immigrants here are not from Austria. Most, like my parents, came from Mexico.

Today's debate over "illegal aliens" is not new, but perhaps a bit of historical perspective will be helpful.

My mother was kidnapped by her father when she was four. He told his mother-in-law that he was taking his daughter to the market to buy her shoes. He never returned. Instead he brought my mother to Bakersfield, California, where he supported her by picking grapes, cotton, and fruit. Eventually, he became a naturalized American citizen and was proud of it. He bought a house with white columns and a wide porch. That is where mama grew up.

Brian McLaren believes the Religious Right movement has lost credibility, but what will replace it? In part 1 of our interview McLaren called for a more mature Chrisitian engagement with politics, and warned about linking political ideology with our identity as followers of Christ.

In part two, he discusses the various models of Christian political engagement that have been attempted, and why a more imaginative model is needed.

You travel internationally quite a bit. Do you see a place where Christians are having that kind of positive impact on the government outside the United States?

Let me first say the same kind of religious right rhetoric happening here is being exported through religious broadcasting all over the world. I've been in countries where abortion is illegal and the church is constantly talking about it, even though it's already illegal, because they think this is what Christians are supposed to do because they hear it from the US. So it's strange. But to answer your question, yes, I do see it working out in powerful ways but most often in very local ways. In terms of national affairs I think it's a little harder to find, but that's also harder to do.

Last month the politically polarizing founder of the Moral Majority, Rev. Jerry Falwell, died. Falwell has been credited with mobilizing millions of evangelicals to engage the political process. The religious right, as the movement came to be called, has been a dominant political force ever since.

With the passing of Rev. Falwell, and with the 2008 presidential campaign gaining speed, some are wondering if the religious right will continue to hold its political power. Or, is a new form of Christian political engagement on the horizon. We sat down with Brian McLaren to discuss the political scene and how he believes the church should engage.

What encourages you, and discourages you, about the church and its involvement in the political realm?
My sense is that the religious right has hit its high tide. I think on a whole lot of levels it has been somewhat discredited. But I think the true believers in the religious right will go down with the ship, and I don’t think they’ll be willing to change their thinking no matter what happens. It’s become a sort of ideology that has been absolutized and equated with gospel in their minds. I meet a number of people like this, and I like them but I can’t imagine them changing. No amount of evidence will change them.

My big concern is that with the collapse of the religious right there isn’t a mature and responsible Christian response that will fill the gap in a constructive way.

A bumper sticker I saw the other day asked, "Is it 2008 yet?" From the other stickers on the car, I surmised the political change the driver wanted - and soon. My reaction, after the chuckle, was the desire to skip a year of pointless arguing and name-calling. Can we simply hit fast-forward, and cut out the campaigning and haranguing by 12 or 14 months? Umm, no.

Gordon MacDonald's desire for the next year would appear to be the commitment by Christians to true scrutiny of the candidates, a year of asking hard questions about what really matters. His insight is below.

The other day I read this headline in our newspaper: "Christian Right Leaders Struggle to Find a Strong Candidate for President in '08."

It turns out that, a few weeks ago, there was an unpublicized meeting in Florida at a five-star hotel during which "Christian leaders" discussed who they would support in the upcoming presidential race. I worry about a situation in which a few people who are very adroit at seizing the microphone presume to make a movement out of all of us and then speak on our behalf.

I was not raised (by parents or mentors) to think politically or to participate in public political dialogue. My generation of men and women who felt called to the Christian ministry were told that our task was to develop deeply rooted Christians who would transform our discipleship into action items such as work ethics, family strength, financial responsibility, moral choices in entertainment, and responsible political decisions. It was not "ours," we were taught, to form or join political organizations and use our privilege as Christian influencers to pick and tout candidates from our pulpits or TV/radio shows or print publications.

But the rules seem to have changed.

This morning I attended a prayer breakfast in my town for World AIDS Day. Despite the blizzard conditions, leaders from local churches, schools, and relief organizations gathered for the event. More than a few people remarked about the odd group. My table had three evangelical pastors, a newspaper reporter, and a board member from an organization led by a gay man. Across from us were Roman Catholic nuns in their habits, Wheaton College students, and leaders of the gay community.

The two main speakers represented the polarity of the group. Ruth Bell Olsson is the leader of the HIV/AIDS ministry at Mars Hill Church near Grand Rapids, Michigan. Ruth comes with solidly evangelical credentials, and she also happens to be Pastor Rob Bell's sister. The second speaker was Dan Pallotta, founder of AIDSRides and Breast Cancer Walks. Pallotta's passion for AIDS awareness stems from his own experience as a gay man in Los Angeles watching many in his community die from the disease.

In a time when cultural divisions are as distinct as blue and red, the coming together of liberals and conservatives, evangelicals and gays, was refreshing - at least to me. But not everyone is happy about the emerging connection between evangelicals and those outside the conservative camp. Rick Warren, for example, has taken flak for inviting pro-choice Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) to Saddleback to speak at the HIV/AIDS summit today. Saddleback responded to the critics:

"We do not expect all participants in the Summit discussion to agree with all of our Evangelical beliefs. However, the HIV/AIDS pandemic cannot be fought by Evangelicals alone. It will take the cooperation of all ? government, business, NGOs and the church. That is the purpose of this Summit."

Last night I received an automated phone call warning that the Democrat running for Congress in my district wants to take my house and give it to illegal immigrants. I've received similarly ridiculous calls about the Republican candidate - apparently he wants to ban Dr. Seuss from the public schools. With mid-term elections just a week away, and the rhetoric speeding toward absurdity, we thought this would be a good time for a more intelligent political discussion. Here are some of the most popular posts from the last year about the intersection of faith, politics, and ministry.

From: Kingdom Confusion: Is the quest for political power destroying the church?
by Greg Boyd
I believe a significant segment of American evangelicalism is guilty of nationalistic and political idolatry. To a frightful degree, I think, evangelicals fuse the kingdom of God with a preferred version of the kingdom of the world (whether it's our national interests, a particular form of government, a particular political program, or so on). Rather than focusing our understanding of God's kingdom on the person of Jesus - who, incidentally, never allowed himself to get pulled into the political disputes of his day - I believe many of us American evangelicals have allowed our understanding of the kingdom of God to be polluted with political ideals, agendas, and issues. Read more.

From: Kingdom Confusion 2: The danger of believing in a Christian America
by Greg Boyd
The myth of America as a Christian nation, with the church as its guardian, has been, and continues to be, damaging both to the church and to the advancement of God's kingdom.

The world is shrinking. One can hardly go a day without hearing about events in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea, or Israel. Recently leaders from around the world gathered in New York for President Clinton's Global Initiative Conference to discuss the challenges we face. Pastor and Leadership's editor-at-large Gordon MacDonald was there.

I was recently invited to the Clinton Global Initiative Conference in New York City by the former president. As far as I know only a handful of evangelicals were present among approximately 1,000 political, business, and cultural leaders.

The CGI Conference is a crossroads of ideas and networking to reduce cultural and political barriers that separate human beings and create the grounds for conflict and disaster. Panel topics included (1) Energy and Climate Challenge; (2) Global Health Issues; (3) Poverty Alleviation; and (4) Mitigating Religious and Ethnic Conflict. They were populated by people like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell, Rupert Murdoch, Paul Farmer, Kofi Annan, Hamid Karzai, Pervez Musharraf, Bill Gates, and Paul Kagame (president of Rwanda). And I have named only a few.

Amazingly, there was little energy spent on politics. Rather there was an incredibly serious tone, a clear awareness that the world is in greater trouble today than it has ever been.

Last March, the conversation on Ur heated up when Greg Boyd posted excerpts from his book The Myth of a Christian Nation (Zondervan, 2006). Boyd believes the mission of the gospel is jeopardized when we confuse God's mission with our nation's mission. Wading into the turbulent political waters this time is Wes Haddaway, pastor of evangelism at Harmony Bible Church in Danville, Iowa. Haddaway sees an urgent need to create Christian communities that transcend the Blue State/Red State divide.

Two years ago our church was growing at the rate of about a hundred people per year and we were all very excited about what God was doing. As the pastor responsible for evangelism and assimilation, I had a unique perspective. One night after visiting a family that was new to our church, it occurred to me that no matter what walk of life a person came from to our church, there was one thing that I could be sure of; they had all watched the O'Reilly Factor on Fox News within the last week. They all voted for the same candidates and had conservative social views.

This bothered me because while I was very excited about what God was doing at our church, it was puzzling to me as to why God would do this. "Why would God build the church of people who all thought the same?" The fact is that there are a lot of people in our community that will never come to our church, and it isn't because of Jesus - it's because of us. Somehow we've mixed politics, ideology, and our vision for our country, with who we are as Christians. This is a barrier that causes many people who are not Christians to not even want to be around us.

When Gregory Boyd, pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, preached about the danger of mingling the mission of the church with conservative politics he ignited passionate responses on both sides, and 1,000 people left the church. In part two of an excerpt from Boyd's new book, The Myth of a Christian Nation (Zondervan 2006), he says much of this passion is fueled by the false belief that America is a Christian nation and that the church's role is to reinforce that belief.

What gives the connection between Christianity and politics such strong emotional force in the U.S.? I believe it is the longstanding myth that America is a Christian nation.

From the start, we have tended to believe that God's will was manifested in the conquest and founding of our country - and that it is still manifested in our actions around the globe. Throughout our history, most Americans have assumed our nation's causes and wars were righteous and just, and that "God is on our side." In our minds - as so often in our sanctuaries - the cross and the American flag stand side by side. Our allegiance to God tends to go hand in hand with our allegiance to country. Consequently, many Christians who take their faith seriously see themselves as the religious guardians of a Christian homeland. America, they believe, is a holy city "set on a hill," and the church's job is to keep it shining.

Midterm elections are heating up across the country, and many analysts expect evangelical voters to remain a potent political force. But not everyone is encouraged by the church's ascent in recent years to political power. Gregory Boyd, senior pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, has written a new book addressing the dangers of intermingling the gospel and the GOP. The Myth of a Christian Nation (Zondervan, 2006), outlines Boyd's concerns and chronicles his pastoral attempts to extricate the cross from the flag. Below is an excerpt.

Like many evangelical pastors in the months before the 2004 election, I felt pressure from a number of right-wing political and religious sources, as well as from some people in my own congregation, to "shepherd my flock" into voting for "the right candidate" and "the right position." Among other things, I was asked to hand out leaflets, to draw attention to various political events, and to have our church members sign petitions, make pledges, and so on. Increasingly, some in our church grew irate because of my refusal (supported by the church board) to have the church participate in these activities.

In April of 2004, as the religious buzz was escalating, I felt it necessary to preach a series of sermons that would provide a biblical explanation for why our church should not join the rising chorus of right-wing political activity. I also decided this would be a good opportunity to expose the danger of associating the Christian faith too closely with any political point of view, whether conservative or liberal. The series was entitled, "The Cross and the Sword."

The response surprised me.

Last week the Oscar nominations were announced and Brokeback Mountain, popularly known as the "gay cowboy movie," has been nominated for more awards than any other film. Although not a financial blockbuster, the film has been heralded by critics as a cinematic triumph. Newsweek's Sean Smith wrote, "Brokeback feels like a landmark film. No American film before has portrayed love between two men as something this pure and sacred. As such, it has the potential to change the national conversation and to challenge people's ideas about the value and validity of same-sex relationships."

Despite Hollywood's growing appreciation for evangelical viewers (and evangelical money), Brokeback Mountain was not marketed to church-goers. However, after reviewing Brokeback on ChristianityTodayMovies.com we received the following letter from one Christian who saw Brokeback Mountain, and believes there may be a hidden blessing in this film for the church.

Thank you for your honest review of Brokeback Mountain. First, I want to point out that I am a born-again believer who has known the Lord for many years. I have also struggled with homosexuality most of my life. Because I accept the written word of God as truth, and because it teaches that homosexuality is sin, I have never accepted homosexuality as an acceptable orientation and lifestyle. For obvious reasons, I wasn't sure if seeing Brokeback Mountain would be good for me. But, I saw the film anyway and I am glad that I did.