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.

Whenever I feel like whining about how the world works, there's a temptation for me to go to one extreme and wholly villify something like, say, "The Market", or else for my readers to likewise perceive me as doing such. Alternately, there is a temptation I also find to over-glorify some element of culture, such as "The Family" or "Government" as something worth defending even to the point of being nasty about it.

Really, these things are neither wholly good nor wholly bad.

As I mentioned yesterday, "government" falls into the category of the fallen structures (Principalities & Powers) which God instituted, maintains, and says are intended for our good. I've never been a big fan of government, first approaching it in my extremely Republican years with frustration and cynicism. I decended into the depths of libertarianism and was so adamently against government intervention in nearly anything (I thought taxation was always theft, and thus wrong), so as to be completely ridiculous and I think out of line with the Holy Scriptures.

Lately, though, I've come to see that government does serve some purposes in society and although often very very naughty and responsible for some of history's most epic tragedies (including killing God on a cross, some while back, though that didn't last too long). But before I delve into the "honoring and confronting" bit of this article, I'll be a good little evangelical and see what the Bible has to say about Government.

There is no target more fun for evangelicals of my generation to take potshots at than Organized Religion. We're sick of it, and yet our love for Christ and community keeps us in a local congregation.

And to be sure, Organized Religion is nothing new to me. I was raised attending charismatic churches of moderate size, until in third grade I attended a mega-church of several thousand. I won't exhaustively catalogue its shortcomings, except summarily that I was not well nourished there, and left it in 2002 nearly undiscipled in the Way of Jesus.

So now I float around in youthful angst, wondering where the Way became the Church, when God's people became God's sheeple. And what in the world am I doing at a bloody evangelical seminary?!

Yet I cannot escape that we know that our God has instituted Organized Religion, that it could be counted among the Principalities & Powers, and that though even God tires of it, He has instituted some formality and organization to his Saints. But what should or could that look like?

I think nation and country are also in some sense Powers that are both good but certainly fallen. America, the UK, Iraq, Israel, China, Iran, you name it. Good, but imperfect and fallen.

Again, there's room I think to be proud of where you hail from, but it can't be elevated above the first and second commandments -- Love God and Love People. So, when we're so proud of being Americans that it makes us a-holes to other people, then we've got a problem and granted this "Power" too much power over us. Our allegiance to King Jesus must be above any other allegiance.

Rather than list out my own list of Honors and Critiques, I thought it'd be fun to hear from you all what you consider some Honors and Critiques of your own nation/country/heritage/whatever.

While I expect that most will share about their nationality, I'll share some at the state/regional level from the area I hail from: the Pacific Northwest of America, also called Cascadia. So, here goes:

I honor and am proud of Cascadia's heritage of idealistic pragmatism and populism, embodied in our legislative legacy of the Initiative, Referrendum, the Bottle Bill, land-use planning, and public beaches laws..

I am ashamed of our region for being founded on racism, environmental devastation, and imperial hubris.

OK, ding ding ding, your turn! :)

"I looked and beheld a Green Horse, and the name that it said on him was Mammon, and Hell followed with him." (Book of Brandon 84:38)

The final Power that I'll focus on is the Market -- variously called "The Economy", "the Invisible Hand", "Capitalism", and "the free excange of goods and services." And I think some old ragamuffin rabbi once called it "Mammon." I believe it is the idol of our age, and I fear that we are sacrificing the lives and livability of our children to it. Thus, Jesus' ultimatum of choosing between "God and Mammon" will be the fateful question for this generation. Indeed, the fate of the world may hinge on our responding rightly to the God-ordained, fallen, and meant-for-our-good Power that is The Market.

Let me explain. :)

As Christianity became coopted by the Roman Empire, it got stuck in the tragically hegemonic ruts of institutionalization and establishment with imperial power, and so became more domesticated. The kind of Christianity that emerged has been called "Christendom." As it took the throne, it took many vital parts of the Way hostage. Among them: radical discipleship to Jesus Christ, nonviolence, wariness of worldly power, the doctrine of grace, and the church's sense of mission.

Martin Luther, himself a part of Christendom, sought to free grace from its 1000+ captivity. In doing so, he nailed the need for true grace so firmly to the church doors that it nailed the door shut to the ability for his contemporaries or future Christians to free any of the above hostages of Christendom. Reformed theology's death grip on grace has been so exclusive that it has held back the way of any future reform. Mission, nonviolence, radical discipleship, the whole lot -- they're still held bound and gagged, and the freed hostage of grace seems to be guarding the door.

Just as Luther was fed up with a millennium of a Christianity strangled by imperial Christendom, the time has come for another God-seeking revolt: this time, against Luther and the Reformers themselves.