Now this is what England is supposed to look like

It’s picture time again . . .

the peak district

bailey in all his leash-free glory

olney at sunset

Evangelicalism recovered

Several prominent evangelicals released a statement today called The Evangelical Manifesto. Definitely worth reading.

The statement and its signers seek to define evangelicalism in a way that, after 30+ years of Dobson/Falwell/Robertson holding the megaphone, may sound a lot like someone trying to put new spin on an old idea. But what this manifesto proposes is nothing more (or less) than a return to evangelicalism in its most classical, authentic sense.

This is evangelicalism as John Newton and William Wilberforce knew it.

Not surprisingly, James Dobson declined to sign it, citing a mostly unspecified “myriad of concerns.”

What I love most about this manifesto is its humility. The signers distance themselves from some of the more extreme expressions of evangelicalism in recent history—without becoming strident or self-righteous… or falling into the trap of making little more than a desperate appeal for acceptance.

Here are some of my favorite bits. But really, you should skip this part and download the whole thing…

As followers of “the narrow way,” our concern is not for approval and popular esteem. Nor do we regard it as accurate or faithful to pose as victims, or to protest at discrimination. We certainly do not face persecution like our fellow-believers elsewhere in the world. Too many of the problems we face as Evangelicals in the United States are those of our own making. If we protest, our protest has to begin with ourselves….

As the universal popularity of such hymns and songs as “Amazing Grace” attests, our great hymn writers stand alongside our great theologians, and often our commitment can be seen better in our giving and our caring than in official statements. What we are about is captured not only in books or declarations, but in our care for the poor, the homeless, and the orphaned; our outreach to those in prison; our compassion for the hungry and the victims of disaster; and our fight for justice for those oppressed by such evils as slavery and human trafficking….

Above all else, [evangelicalism] is a commitment and devotion to the person and work of Jesus Christ, his teaching and way of life, and an enduring dedication to his lordship above all other earthly powers, allegiances and loyalties. As such, it should not be limited to tribal or national boundaries, or be confused with, or reduced to political categories such as “conservative” and “liberal”….

First and foremost we Evangelicals are for Someone and for something rather than against anyone or anything. The Gospel of Jesus is the Good News of welcome, forgiveness, grace, and liberation from law and legalism. It is a colossal YES to life and human aspirations, and an emphatic NO only to what contradicts our true destiny as human beings made in the image of God….

We call for an expansion of our concern beyond single-issue politics, such as abortion and marriage, and a fuller recognition of the comprehensive causes and concerns of the Gospel, and of all the human issues that must be engaged in public life. Although we cannot back away from our biblically rooted commitment to the sanctity of every human life, including those unborn, nor can we deny the holiness of marriage as instituted by God between one man and one woman, we must follow the model of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, engaging the global giants of conflict, racism, corruption, poverty, pandemic diseases, illiteracy, ignorance, and spiritual emptiness, by promoting reconciliation, encouraging ethical servant leadership, assisting the poor, caring for the sick, and educating the next generation. We believe it is our calling to be good stewards of all God has entrusted to our care so that it may be passed on to generations yet to be born….

The other error, made by both the religious left and the religious right in recent decades, is to politicize faith, using faith to express essentially political points that have lost touch with biblical truth. That way faith loses its independence, the church becomes “the regime at prayer,” Christians become “useful idiots” for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology in its purest form. Christian beliefs are used as weapons for political interests. Christians from both sides of the political spectrum, left as well as right, have made the mistake of politicizing faith; and it would be no improvement to respond to a weakening of the religious right with a rejuvenation of the religious left. Whichever side it comes from, a politicized faith is faithless, foolish, and disastrous for the church—and disastrous first and foremost for Christian reasons rather than constitutional reasons….

We Evangelicals trace our heritage, not to Constantine, but to the very different stance of Jesus of Nazareth. While some of us are pacifists and others are advocates of just war, we all believe that Jesus’ Good News of justice for the whole world was promoted, not by a conqueror’s power and sword, but by a suffering servant emptied of power and ready to die for the ends he came to achieve. Unlike some other religious believers, we do not see insults and attacks on our faith as “offensive” and “blasphemous” in a manner to be defended by law, but as part of the cost of our discipleship that we are to bear without complaint or victim-playing….

On another note, today’s SojoMail, a weekly update from Sojourners (which included a feature on the Evangelical Manifesto) had what might be one of the more ironic pairing of banner ads I’ve seen…

Awesome. (I know… Rebecca St. James hardly qualifies as “rock star” material, but still… it’s a LITTLE funny…)

I didn’t do it.

CNN: Stinky manure smell engulfs London

Boxes, boxes, and more . . . snow

Today was “drive to a sketchy warehouse on the east side of London and pick up our stuff” day. This involved sitting for two hours on the parking lot otherwise known as the London Orbital (aka the M25—not nearly as cool or spacey as it sounds), driving round and round an industrial complex looking for the only business not bothering to put its name on the front, and asking for directions at a place called the Rumbling Belly Cafe. (I didn’t eat there.)

But I drove away with 16 boxes of pots, pans, books, clothes, etc., so all turned out well. Who knew a few pieces of silverware and some familiar decorations could make a place feel more like home.

One more photo for now . . . and no, this is not a repeat from the last post. This is yesterday. What is going on??

Easter Sunday in the UK

I don’t think Easter is normally supposed to look like this here (this is our backyard—I mean, garden) . . .

And this is the church we went to on Easter Sunday (it was once pastored by John Newton) . . .

And this is one of the sights we saw in London over the weekend (a pub—still in operation—once frequented by the likes of William Shakespeare and, later, Charles Dickens).

We are a long way from home . . .

The neighbourhood

Tomorrow we move into a house in Olney. About a five-minute walk from our front door is the church John Newton served at when he wrote the song “Amazing Grace.” Not to mention a couple really good fish and chip shops . . .

I suppose it’s time I posted something . . .

Gone a long time without posting anything, but I figure gearing up for a transatlantic move is as good an excuse as any. As of this month, our new address ends with “UK” instead of “USA.”

Suffice it to say it’s been an eventful few weeks, starting with a cross-country drive from Seattle to Michigan before flying across the pond . . .

They like snow in Snoqualmie . . .

Snake River in Idaho

One hundred miles of ice in Wyoming . . .

Then there were Nebraska and Iowa, but there’s not much to take a picture of there (unless you like corn).

Happy 490th birthday, Protestantism (a few days late…)

It’s easy to forget—what with that other holiday that falls on October 31… last Wednesday marked 490 years since a hefty German monk posted his 95 Theses (apparently, this title was preferable to “Nearly 100 Reasons Not to Like Those Pointy-Headed Romans”). He nailed them (his theses, not the pointy-headed Romans) to the door of the church in Wittenberg (which, as all good theology students—and Germans—know, is pronounced with a V, not a W.)

Some Protestants have attempted to reclaim the last day of October in honor of their forefather Martin Luther, christening it “Reformation Day.” I even saw a poster at work advertising a Reformation Day Hymn Sing (which seems like the perfect way to threaten would-be trick-or-treaters if they misbehave).

Luther was one of my favorite theologians to read in seminary, mostly because of his raw humanity. Luther was a hothead. He was a reactionary. He probably flailed his arms and spat when he talked. The man drank and cursed—while preaching, no less. (Well, the cursing, anyway.) He had a twisted sense of humor which he kept to the end. (On his deathbed Luther announced that the worms were about to get a very fat doctor to feast on.)

And I haven’t even gotten to his dark side yet. The man who ignited the Reformation was anti-Semitic. (Back then, a lot of people were anti-Semeitic, but that’s no excuse, especially when the object of your worship is a Jewish rabbi.)

When European peasants rebelled against the nobility (being on the butt end of feudalism apparently wasn’t all it was cracked up to be), Luther didn’t just fail to counsel the nobles to show restraint. He did the opposite, urging the ruling class to “smite, slay, and stab, secretly or openly.” Luther compared peasants to a “mad dog” that must be struck down before it strikes.

Luther also had his quirks, like arguing with the devil—out loud. In one of his writings, he claimed that once the devil started prowling in the kitchen below his room, making all kinds of racket just to distract him. (I hate it when that happens.)

One of my favorite things about Luther was his personal journey—especially the way he encountered God’s love. Luther spent much of his young adult life in terror, convinced that God, angry and vengeful, was about to strike him down at any moment for some unknown sin. Luther was an obsessive-compulsive confessor, badgering his priest and mentor, Johann von Stauptitz, who finally told Luther to come back when he had some real sins to confess. Luther admitted to hating God. But when he finally discovered the implications of grace—that God is for us, not against us—he was transformed. Previously consumed by his fear of God, he was now consumed by his love for God.

Mostly I wonder what Luther would make of the Reformation he started, almost 500 years on. It’s no secret that Luther meant to reform the Roman Church, not break from it. It wasn’t until being excommunicated in 1521 that reformation turned into revolt. Luther thought he was doing the Pope a favor by writing the 95 Theses—alerting a benevolent but naive ruler to the abuses being perpetrated in his name. (Little did he know at the time that indulgences being sold to Germany’s pious peasants were funding the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.)

Luther distanced himself from what he considered the more extreme elements of the Reformation. He condemned one of his colleagues, Andreas Karlstadt, for rejecting infant baptism and claiming the bread and wine of the Eucharist were nothing more than symbols of Christ and not a means of grace.

Still, perhaps thanks to his rediscovery of grace, sometimes Luther an amazing ability to share it with others—even those he disagreed with. (Luther was neither perfect or consistent in this regard, which makes the bright spots in his story even more amazing.)

A year after denouncing Karlstadt, Luther took in the former colleague in his moment of need. After publicly excoriating Johannes Tetzel, Europe’s most famous indulgence salesman, Luther comforted him on his deathbed, writing, “Don’t take it too hard. You didn’t start this racket.” Six years after being alienated from his spiritual mentor, Luther maintained that Staupitz was his “most beloved father in Christ.” Luther even said, “If it had not been for Dr. Staupitz, I should have sunk in hell.”

That’s the Martin Luther I like best.

Then again, I almost forgot to mention the ex-monk’s profound thoughts on matrimony. “There is a lot to get used to in the first year of marriage,” he wrote. “One wakes up in the morning and finds a pair of pigtails which were not there before.”

Dr. Phil, eat your heart out.

Conservative heroism / heroic conservatism (update)

Follow-up to the last post… here’s an interesting interview of Michael Gerson by Jon Stewart. (I would make it easy for you and embed the flash video here, but I just found out WordPress won’t let me.)

Conservative heroism / heroic conservatism

I read about this on the God’s Politics blog this evening…

Michael Gerson is regarded by many as one of the most talented (and controversial) speechwriters today. Having spent five-plus years as the top White House speechwriter, Gerson, a graduate of Wheaton College, is the man responsible for such memorable lines as the poetic “soft bigotry of low expectations” and the infamous “axis of evil.”

Gerson has a new book releasing this month, Heroic Conservatism. I don’t normally write about books I haven’t read yet, but the God’s Politics post got me curious.

According to the Washington Post (where Gerson is now an op-ed columnist), he writes in his book that “traditional conservatism has a piece missing—a piece that is shaped like a conscience.” In his own column, Gerson wrote earlier today that some conservatives are proposing a false choice between big-government liberalism and “freedom, reduced to a single principle of unrestricted economic choice.”

Gerson, an evangelical Christian, believes many of his fellow conservatives are drawing from the well of libertarianism. He proposes that Catholic social thought—which maintains the dignity of every human life, the importance of the family and community, and solidarity with the poor, among other things—would make a better foundation for those whose politics lean toward the right.

(As a side note, one aspect of Catholic social thought that conservatives especially resonate with—the sanctity of life—is also cause for discomfort among some of them. In addition to its opposition to abortion, this tenet of Catholic social thought maintains that war and capital punishment must also be rejected in favor of life.)

Focusing mostly on what Catholic social thought says about the poor, Gerson writes:

The difference between these visions is considerable. Various forms of libertarianism and anti-government conservatism share a belief that justice is defined by the imposition of impartial rules—free markets and the rule of law. If everyone is treated fairly and equally, the state has done its job. But Catholic social thought takes a large step beyond that view. While it affirms the principle of limited government—asserting the existence of a world of families, congregations and community institutions where government should rarely tread—it also asserts that the justice of society is measured by its treatment of the helpless and poor. And this creates a positive obligation to order society in a way that protects and benefits the powerless and suffering.

This obligation to protect has never, in Jewish and Christian teaching, been purely private. Hebrew law made a special provision for the destitute—requiring that a portion of harvested crops be left in the field to be gathered by the poor. The Hebrew prophets raucously confronted the political and economic exploitation of the weak.

Speaking as one who doesn’t feel at home among the labels or parties at either end of the political spectrum, I think both sides of the aisle (and everyone in between) would benefit from more thinking like Gerson’s.