merefaith: two friends on pilgrimage

Clarence Jordan, that fiery and folksy Baptist-on-the-edge, changed the spiritual center of the world from Jerusalem to Atlanta in his Cotton Patch editions of the Gospels. In a prescient move, that meant Washington was equivalent to ancient Rome as the capital of the empire! Badda-bing, badda-boom.

Years later, Tom Key's musical version of "Cotton Patch Gospel" featured a rousing song by Jesus' excited disciples after learning from their master that he had set his face to go to Atlanta. They understood him as meaning it was time to party, for surely their Messiah was ready to claim his rightful authority and light up the fireworks. The disciples rang out:

We're going to Atlanta for the hoedown!
We're going to Atlanta for the sho-o-ow!
We're going to Atlanta for the bright lights, big time,
sho' enough, it's time for us to go!

But Jesus, of course, knew that they were running headlong into treacherous waters and that his message of God's kingdom was not something that would be defended by force of arms. Jesus would willingly face the fury of the powers with no worldly armor. The price could be too steep. He began to sing softly and slowly:

What does Atlanta mean to me?
What does Atlanta seem to be?

In a moment he started to pray to the Father and concluded with the hope that "there won't have to be a lynching."

His hope was for naught.

Political pundits and speechwriters like to point out how, during this presidential election, the nation may be standing at a decisive historical moment. The "New World Order" optimism of the early nineties has faded amidst ongoing turmoil. Islamist radicalism, tribalism, the gap between the haves and have-nots, and climate change hang like ominous clouds over the cheery, and often false, promises of globalism. Are we at a crossroads?

I'm not sure where we stand globally, but I think the Christian communion is also at a very decisive point in history. Christian faith is growing rapidly in Africa and southeast Asia. The pope is sticking his scepter in the ground and taking a stand for re-Christianizing Europe. Meanwhile, the bright hope of ecumenism in the 20th century has largely given way to conflict over sexuality and biblical interpretation. The Christian world is also agitated (along the spectrum) between "traditionalists" who favor established liturgical forms and the wisdom of older communions seated at Rome, Canterbury, or Istanbul, and the "restorationists" who repeat the mantra that we must sing a new song and who favor the revivalism and fervor of the still-ballooning Pentecostal movement.

Here in America, efforts at unity such as the National Council of Churches, Christian Churches Together in the USA, and the National Association of Evangelicals compete for churches and for vision. The quest for visible unity and harmony is complicated by the incredible rise of nondenominational and consumerist forms of Christianity, which overlap but are not one and the same. Perhaps we're even witnessing the end of evangelicalism. I won't even go into the confusion caused by the emergent movement...

And yet...and yet...there's always the hope that things can be different. On Wednesday I and a couple dozen other students with the Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School will depart for Atlanta, which is in fact a spiritual center for Baptists-in-the-South-who-happen-not-to-be-Southern-Baptist. We will join a projected 20,000 other Baptists for a celebration of the New Baptist Covenant, which is a statement of fundamental agreement of gospel ministry between Baptist organizations that are members of the North American Baptist Fellowship, a wing of the Baptist World Alliance. While there, we will supposedly discuss our unity, or much-needed unity, in evangelism, alleviating poverty, and overcoming racial divisions. Sadly, it took two former presidents (Carter and Clinton) to get Baptists to come together in this way.

At its worst, the meeting could be a rah-rah party for being Baptist, and for not being *that* kind of Baptist over there (i.e., fundamentalists). In that case, important theological challenges and the biblical imperative for unity might be left off the table. At its best, the meeting could foster the kinds of dialogues and questions that will encourage Baptists in North America to continue conversation and prayer to the end that "they may all be one." But I worry that old wounds from the battle over the Southern Baptist Convention will encourage many to accept our currently divided state, and even embrace it as a God-given blessing.

We're going to Atlanta for a hoedown, but we should go to Atlanta in the footsteps of Jesus. We need much prayer and confession. We need much yearning for something different. We need to see our present pain for what it is, and we need to envision hope in what Martin Luther King eloquently described as "the daybreak of freedom."

Come, Lord Jesus. Come meet us in Atlanta and change us.

Labels: Baptists

Posted by Chris Schelin at Monday, January 28, 2008 | Permalink | Comments

For much of my semi-adult life, economics has stood out in my mind as a discipline that is, in its very maddening way, simultaneously practical and relevant but also opaque and confusing. The stock market is only now starting to make sense to me...well, I think. Perhaps I shouldn't put too much money on that. Or should I say, I won't invest in that option. Who knows?

But ever since participating in a wonderful Manna and Mercy retreat at Duke upon the conclusion of my first year of study, I have been burdened by the sense that Christian theology and discipleship must shape me to take economics seriously. I realized that most of us who claim Christ's Lordship have not asserted it adequately when matters of GDP or personal finance arise. Sure, we believe in simple and accessible virtues such as generosity and moderation in our consumption of the world's goods, but economics appears too complex to us for us to attain systematic and articulate rigor. So it seems we adopt slogans from our trained positions on the political spectrum without really knowing what they mean or if they're true. That is, a Christian who tends to be politically conservative may talk of trickle-down economics and will assert that "a rising tide lifts all boats." A Christian who tends to be politically liberal speaks the language of class warfare and "two Americas."

Imagining that the free market and socialism are the only viable options for a sensible economics that will generate wealth and prosperity, we quickly find ourselves stuck. Soviet-style economies fell apart in the twentieth century and the countries that still carry the socialist banner are plagued by poverty, corruption, and authoritarian rule. Yet unmitigated capitalism is spiritually corrosive. Here in the United States, we are increasingly plagued by materialism, socioeconomic divisions, and monetary evaluations of success and happiness. Meanwhile, our sense of community and place is shattered by our status as a mobile - and upwardly-mobile - culture. And we're not any happier for our outstanding wealth.

Does the Christian tradition offer an alternative to this catch-22? I am growing more hopeful that it does - and that this alternative is sensible and applicable and not merely an otherworldly utopianism. I do not believe that a Christian take on economics is going to win the day anytime soon, or perhaps anytime ever - but I think it calls for us to present a critique to our prevailing social and cultural assumptions when it comes to money and resources. This is part of what leaders in the "New Monastic" movement call living on the fringes of Empire. What are some of the voices that give me hope?

1. Catholic Social Teaching and "Distributism." - I first learned about distributism this past summer while living at Koinonia. It all began when a fair-trade coffee roaster who operates out of Americus, GA, spoke one evening at the church where I worshiped. When asked about living an alternative economics, he suggested we read Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher. The book appeared nearly thirty years ago and was a critique of traditional assumptions by a major economist in Britain. Google searches on Schumacher led to the discovery of a group of generally traditionalist Catholics who speak favorably of him, as he was a convert to Catholicism and his economic ideals reflect their own thoughts. The distributists take their cues from a set of papal encyclicals written around the turn of the twentieth century and from the writings of G.K. Chesterton, among others. In short, distributism favors the broad distribution of property and capital and encourages the development of fairly self-sufficient local economies.

See The ChesterBelloc Mandate for one helpful and thorough distributist site.

2. Neo-Agrarianism - I'm a born and raised city-slicker, and so when I first heard the term "agrarian" the natural suspicion of my kind bubbled up in my thoughts. I imagined nostalgic idealists who romanticized farming and who ignored the educational and economic difficulties of rural living while despising the cultural and social opportunities afforded by cities. This shallow critique can be readily found anywhere one may turn, but ultimately it's just not true. Yes, agrarians like Wendell Berry highly value farming as a cultural and even spiritual practice, but their goal isn't to empty the cities and destroy professional vocations that don't involve hoeing weeds. Rather, the main objective is to reorient our cultural terrain so that everyone - rural, urban, and suburban - appreciates and values our undeniable dependence upon, and connection with, soil and air, flora and fauna. Of course, agrarianism goes deeper than this, with concrete interest in renewing agriculture, conserving land, and reconstructing community life. I've recently discovered that the agrarians and the distributists are essentially on the same page, even though they may have somewhat different emphases. The agrarians, for example, give more attention to restoring family or community farming.

I recommend reading The Essential Agrarian Reader.

There's more that could be said, but since I haven't posted anything in a while, I'll just go with this and introduce more as I keep learning, studying, and reflecting.

Labels: Discipleship

Posted by Chris Schelin at Wednesday, January 02, 2008 | Permalink | Comments