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The Consistent Life organization reports demonstrations on April 13 at the White House and Planned Parenthood. Bill Samuel reported: “While we were at PP, one woman who had paid for an abortion changed her mind after talking with folks witnessing. PP refused to give her money back. Pat is helping her with that. Then we joined the anti-drone action called by ANSWER at the White House. The crowd there was diverse, with people from countries which have suffered drone strikes. There were no negative reactions directed to us with our message connecting the abortion and drone issues, and several positive ones, both from others witnessing and from tourists.”

For more photos, see Consistent Life’s Facebook page.

With spring semester nearly at an end–and my wife’s comprehensive exams done (and passed!)–it’s time to start blogging again.

For evangelicals, tragedies like the Boston Marathon bombing prompt fervent prayer. For many progressive evangelicals, such tragedies also spark the counterintuitive sensibility of “loving the enemy,” even those who commit senseless violence. Here’s an example of such a call from Red Letter Christians:

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy on me, a sinner. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, on all of us, sinners.

Father, we don’t know who was behind the tragedies in Boston, but we do know that they were human. And we know we are to pray for our enemies.

In Jesus we see humanity’s true identity as ones who are to be agents of life, not death. Jesus, as first of New Creation, invites all humanity to reflect and participate in New Creation.

Despite humanity’s sacred identity, evil often reveals itself through humanity. We must return to what we were created to be. May those behind this event return to who they were created to be.

We pray specifically that those involved in this violence return to their shared humanity as they confront the violence brought on fellow humans as a result of their actions.  We pray that we don’t lose ours in the midst of it all.

May we embrace our vocation as peacemakers who are to be agents of restoration and reconciliation rather than divisiveness, enmity and violence.

We pray for a collective grieving that fuels our ability to live with compassion, generosity and wholeness.

We plead for your justice to reign as we announce and promote your Kingdom reign through our words and deeds.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen.

Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, just released another book (his tenth, I think). I’ll comment more fully on On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned About Serving the Common Good in due course. In the meantime, here are some videos from the media push over the weekend:

• ABC News
• MSNBC
• And here’s the book trailer:

Some recent praise for Moral Minority:

• According to the Library Journal, Moral Minority is a best-selling book this year in the religion category.
• At First Things, John Turner asks Penn Press to “bring it out in paperback so that I can assign it to my students.”
• At Exploring the Study of Religious History, Jonathan Yeager includes Moral Minority in his 64-book “Religious History” bracket.

Click here for an “active” church experience.

I’m enjoying doing a little speaking on my research. Last month I gave a faculty colloquium lecture at Bethel College in Indiana. I had a delightful trip and saw many old friends and colleagues. My wife Lisa graduated from Bethel, and of course, we both did graduate school at Notre Dame, which is only a ten minute drive from Bethel. It was great fun to see Tim Erdel, Dave Schmidt, John Haas, Joel Boehner, and many others from ND, Bethel, and our old church. A special thanks to Cris Mihut (of Hotel Possibilia fame) for his wonderful hospitality!

Next month I head to Union College in Barbourville, Ky. I’ll be giving the Willson-Gross Lectures on “The Evangelical Left: Oxymoron or Opportunity” over April 10 and 11. If you’re in the area, come say hello!

Many evangelicals are remembering the life of Gordon Cosby, longtime minister at Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C.

Here are a couple of tributes:

• Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
• Brian McLaren
• Church of the Savior
• Interview at Baylor University

And here is an excerpt from Moral Minority describing Church of the Savior:

Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C., one of the most prominent urban evangelical churches in the United States, also nurtured a strong sense of social justice. Inner piety and prayer, member Elizabeth O’Connor contended, ought to spark an “outer journey” that addresses a multitude of social issues such as “alcoholism, dope addiction, the aged, the blind, the sick, the broken in mind and spirit; there are slums, with all the problems of housing and education; there are nuclear warfare and the problems of automation and leisure.” Church of the Saviour worked with the Welfare Department to restore crumbling homes in the District, befriended youth in the Lily Ponds Housing Development, established a coffee shop and arts center called The Potter’s House, and aided alcoholics and mentally handicapped persons in the Renewal Center. Many members practiced intentional poverty. In the 1960s and 1970s Church of the Saviour became a haven for evangelical government bureaucrats, social service workers, and those otherwise disillusioned with the apolitical tendencies of their tradition. The church mentored several important evangelical moderates and left-wingers—Bob McCan, a former Baptist minister who sought to establish “a polycultural college, which would be a miniature world community”; Jim Wallis, founder of the Post-Americans; Wes Michaelson, an aide to Mark Hatfield and future general secretary of the Reformed Church in America; and Richard Barnet, a leftist historian and State Department bureaucrat in the Kennedy administration. The evangelical left in turn often cited Church of the Saviour as a model of spiritual and social engagement.

The new Pope reminds me a lot of consistent-life progressive evangelicals: into simple living; conservative on theology, abortion, and sexuality; and progressive on capital punishment and economics. From a Washington Post profile:

Bergoglio couldn’t prevent Argentina from becoming the first Latin American country to legalize gay marriage, or stop its president, Cristina Fernandez, from promoting free contraception and artificial insemination. When Bergoglio argued that gay adoptions discriminate against children, Fernandez compared his tone to “medieval times and the Inquisition.”

This kind of demonization is unfair, says Rubin, who wrote Bergoglio’s authorized biography, “The Jesuit.”

“Is Bergoglio a progressive — a liberation theologist even? No. He’s no third-world priest. Does he criticize the International Monetary Fund, and neoliberalism? Yes. Does he spend a great deal of time in the slums? Yes,” Rubin said.

Critics also accuse him of failing to stand up publicly against the country’s military dictatorship from 1976-1983, when victims and their relatives often brought first-hand accounts of torture, death and kidnappings to the priests he supervised as leader of the Jesuit Order in Argentina

Like other Jesuit intellectuals, Bergoglio has focused on social outreach. Catholics are still buzzing over his speech last year accusing fellow church officials of hypocrisy for forgetting that Jesus Christ bathed lepers and ate with prostitutes.

“In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don’t baptize the children of single mothers because they weren’t conceived in the sanctity of marriage,” Bergoglio told his priests. “These are today’s hypocrites. Those who clericalize the Church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it’s baptized!

Bergoglio compared this concept of Catholicism to the Pharisees of Christ’s time: people who congratulate themselves while condemning others.

“Jesus teaches us another way: Go out. Go out and share your testimony, go out and interact with your brothers, go out and share, go out and ask. Become the Word in body as well as spirit,” Bergoglio said.

HT: 22 Words

 

 

 

Since attending Notre Dame for graduate school, I’ve been fascinated by the Catholic hierarchy. The last time there was a Conclave, I was just about to take my comprehensive exams, so I really didn’t get to devote much time to the drama. Not much better this time (now it’s my wife who’s about to take her exams), but blogs help me keep up. Here are my favorites:

• Whispers the Loggia: Up-to-the-minute updates on developments during the sede vacante and conclave. Lots of detail on papal discussions, machinations, ritual, and dress.
• Papabile of the Day: Every day the very literate John L. Allen profiles the papabile cardinals. These mini-biographies are fascinating and offer a helpful glimpse into contemporary Catholicism.
• Sweet Sistene bracket