OrganicJesus.org

[This is an extended bit of my speech given at Saturday's Faith and American Values Summit. I'll follow up later this week with part two, which attempts to build a theology to buttress the directions of this article... --BDR]

As many of you know, I work for an environmental-Christian non-profit. Our goal is to foster a cultural shift in American Christianity by making it culturally and theologically safe to love, serve, and protect God’s creation.

In our work, we find that some Christians affirm that creation-care matters biblically, but say it cannot be second to mission and evangelism, or are afraid to take it to the political step because of preexisting political allegiances. We try to correct both of these positions.

[On Monday I talked about the next generation of evangelical Christians becoming increasingly "politically ambidextrous." This is underscored, but not contingent on, some bigger re-evaluations of the faith. Please bear with me as I submit some of my own theological musings to bring into clarity what shift is really going on in the Emergent Church movement. Some of this is what the Emergent Church is waking up to, and as someone in that movement, it’s particularly what I am waking up to. For more on what I’m talking about, I’ll now point you toward the writings of N.T. Wright, Brian McLaren, Shane’s book, and the online community at www.opensourcetheology.net. -- BDR]

This generation is reconsidering what the gospel is, exactly, and from there, how we “do” the gospel or “be the church”. The consensus has been growing for many years now in theological circles that the gospel isn’t only “how to get into heaven after you die,” but more prominently how to share little bits of heaven here on Earth before you die. To put it in the vernacular of the Lord ’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.” So we’re realizing that the gospel of Jesus is that the kingdom or reign of God is at hand, among you, among us. For those who have been raised to believe that “the gospel” or “evangelizing” is all about fire insurance, preventing people from going to hell, this is a pretty radical shift. The gospel suddenly becomes much, much, much bigger. It’s now also about getting hell the hell out of God’s Earth.

God, of course, has seen Peak Oil and all its consequents coming for a very long time. He has a plan for His children through all this, and has had plenty of time to begin preparing His church for it. There appears to have been a stirring of the Holy Spirit among those who listen, and it has sparked a couple trends in Christianity which seem to anticipate petrocollapse. God’s purposes are, as St. Paul wrote, being fulfilled “in the fullness of time.”