Am I lame for wanting a "love wins" sticker?

This is pretty great. Rob Bell made it into Time Magazine, or at least the online version, and they actually did a pretty good job with the article. I really wish I had been there to see him bring a live goat on stage. I also wish that I knew what his band's name was. Guess I'll wiki it. I'm thinking Pavement style shoe-gaze. He's the right age for it. Weezer cover band maybe? I can only dream.

At any rate, it's encouraging to see two pretty sane depictions of Evangelical Christianity in less than a month. Audible sigh of relief. Especially with Mike Huckabee running around. Quick, someone get a time machine and stop him from opening his mouth between 1989 and 1994. Seriously.

While we're talking about Rob Bell, does anyone know where he stands on women in ministry? It's been a debate between some friends for a while. I'm on the "he's pro women in ministry side," but who's surprised by that? Thinking about it further, that little debate reminds me of another good reason to like Rob: Focus on the Family doesn't trust him.



update: He's been in several bands. The first one referenced in the article seems to be _ton bundle. And they sound(ed) like R.E.M. I guess. That could be good. This update has been brought to you by wikipedia. Wikipedia: Best friend to lazy bloggers around the globe.

Exile from Mainstream

Josh Marshall really knows the way to a boy's heart. Talking Points Media have a post up from Brian McLaren talking about his new book Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope.

The post itself isn't really life-changing, but the fact that TPM gave him the chance to promote it is encouraging news. What I sometimes forget is that the real world has no idea what Evangelicals are really like. And if the past year has taught me anything, it is that the information they do receive about us/them is not very encouraging. See: "Jesus Camp," anything James Dobson related, the Creation Museum, and President Bush. Basically, we are only known for doing bad and crazy stuff. The good stuff just doesn't penetrate. The parts of me that have stopped identifying as Evangelical really don't care that much. If they want to ruin their reputation then that's there prerogative. However, there is a part of me that will always identify with being an Evangelical. I can't walk away from that any more than I could walk away from W.N.L., or my Michael W. Smith tapes, or "true love waits." So in a roundabout way this really is important to me. Donald Miller has stated that the church needs to stop trying to do a P.R. campaign for Jesus. That's true. Love speaks for itself. But having the church shown as a destructive force isn't good either.

To have a rational, sane Evangelical preacher with rational, sane thoughts on the world is refreshing, healthy, and helpful. Even more so when that person is given a national platform. Talking Points Media is extremely influential right now and deservedly so, they do important work. Serious people take this place, well, seriously. With this post people who have heard about "Jesus Camp," but don't actually know any normal Evangelical Christians, now have some exposure to someone who both loves Jesus and speaks in a really humble way. Great, huh?

I am, by the way, really looking forward to reading this book. Especially since Just Coffee is the OFFICIAL coffee of his book tour. Seriously).

Evangelical + Progressive + Radical + Loving = Sexiness

If you've ever thought: I'm way too conservative to be a "liberal," but there's no way I'm a Republican.

It's really dumb that the same people who get so worked up over abortion don't seem to have a problem with the death penalty at all. Those both seem like pretty bad ideas.

I want something different for my life. I want my life to be like the book of Acts, not like The Real World.

Women make really great leaders.

Drinking, smoking, and swearing seem like really silly reasons to send someone to hell.

Secular progressives really don't get me. Christian conservatives? I think they get me even less. Neither of them speak for me.

I really want to live faithfully, but sometimes it seems like the system is stacked against me. What does it mean to love people when I buy shoes? Go to my job? Decide where to live?

I like my sketchers, but I LOVE my Prada backpack.*

I wish that there were more singers/preachers/authors/prophets/leaders like Bart Campolo/Shane Claiborne/Rob Bell/Anne Lammott/Donald Miller/Derek Webb.

It's not my revolution if I can't dance to it.

Sex is so much more important than my friends make it out to be.

Fighting gay/lesbian/bi/trans/queer people just doesn't feel like love.

It's so great how many amazing people I know who love Jesus, love people, and are changing the world because of it.

If you've ever thought any of those things, then I have a confession to make: So have I. Cool, huh?

And apparently so have a whole bunch of other people. Read this article. It's long, but it's very very important.

Did you read the article? Because that was the whole purpose of this post. Seriously.Read it.

Something Bryce posted got me thinking about the problem that we as thoughtful/progressive/evangelical/radical/beautiful/sexual/intellectual/artistic followers of Jesus have. Well, it's several problems really, but mostly it's an image problem. People just do not understand how many of us there really are, what we believe in, or what we are trying to accomplish.

Secular progressives, perhaps rightfully so, get freaked out and run the first time they hear the word Jesus. Ditto for religious folks of a different faith. Kudos to AlterNet for posting this. Secular progressives complimenting suburban Christians can only be called miraculous. If you say evangelical to any one of my secular friends from Pomona, you would get a negative response. Or they wouldn't know what you meant. That's not a good sign.

"Traditional" evangelicals/Christians think that we're a bunch of tree-hugging hippies who have cast our lot in with the devil and his kin. To be fair, some of us are tree loving hippies. Sorry Erik, you'll just have to live with it. The positions that some of us hold (Bart Campolo: Gay marriage is good, Donald Miller: post-modern thought is good, Jim Wallis: Jesus cares about the environment) are so foreign to people like Dobson and Ralph Reed that we may as well not be Christians. When pressed, they might agree that we aren't.

And finally, "we" isn't really a we. This article makes it seem like there is an "us," but there really isn't. It's a BIG tent. Reading Relevant does not mean that you read Sojourners. Liking Donald Miller does not mean that you think American global capitalism has serious problems. Going to a church with women in leadership does not mean that you think that gay marriage is ok. On the whole, I think that all of that is good. Clearly it's important to have beliefs. But it's also important not to exclude people for holding well thought out, faithful positions, that aren't your own. Jesus probably loves them too. But that puts us in a classic progressive bind. How do you make people who have a lot in common feel like they are connected, powerful, and influential (which they are) without resorting to essentialist tendencies (ex: you must believe x,y, and z or you just aren't with us)? Last year Bart Campolo said, more or less, that he doesn't believe in a God who sends people to hell. If evangelicals could excommunicate, he would no longer be welcome to communion. In some places he probably isn't. So obviously we have some issues. But we have a lot more promise. More and more churches across the country are being transformed in ways that are very, very good. I am having more and more conversations with people who are involved in completely amazing grassroots action, willing the kingdom into being by the sheer force of their love. But I don't think any of us has really realized yet how many people are having these conversations. Am I excited? You bet I am.

Are you in?

Thanks to Zach Exley for writing this. I've been thinking it for years.
Thanks to Zach Lind for posting this link over at Finding Rhythm. P.S.- Zach is the drummer for Jimmy Eat World. You're right, he IS the man.
Thanks to all of you for being revolutionaries in a whole bunch of ways. The world is changing.

(In the photo: Tony Campolo gets his preach on)
*Ok, I haven't thought that. But I do love Ten Things I Hate About You.

I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this.

Dear Dr. Albert Mohler,

"Just when I thought you couldn't get any dumber, you go and do something like this... and totally redeem yourself!"

Love, Aaron


Well, he didn't totally redeem himself, but I respect what he said about Coulter. He didn't totally redeem himself because in the first post, speaking about homosexuality, he said that if a "biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin."

In response, I give you Jeremiah 1:5.

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."


Albert Mohler, by the way, is the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He's sort of a big fish you might say.

Albert's probably right though. Using chemicals on a baby seems like what Jesus would want us to do.

*I've got a gold star for the first person to get the quote right!

I went to college with a girl who did a really good impression of Mothra vs. Godzilla

Boundless Magazine is a webzine targetting college students and twentysomethings that was started by James Dobson's Focus on the Family. I read it regularly, and disagree with it more often than not, but I always find it a really enlightening glimpse into more conservative Evangelical Christianity in America. A really good way to keep my finger on the pulse, if you will.
There's a new post up over there written by Boundless regular Matt Kaufman called "Gays vs. The Garden Guy" (http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001402.cfm) I'm feeling too tired to summarize both the article and the event which sparked it, so please head over there and at least skim the post if you are going to read on.

From the start I was worried about what I would find in the article, largely because I took offense to the way that Kaufman used "Gays" in the title as a catch-all for everyone who identifies as homosexual. Really, all gays are against The Garden Guy? All? Also, did you know that Christians were in a war "vs." Gays. I didn't. Turns out we are. Actually, I thought Christians were supposed to be peacemakers, ones who would be called children of God, but apparently that's off base as well.

There are really two major problems with the way that Kaufman addresses this situation. The first is that he labels the actions of the Farbers and their company an appropriate Christian response. For a direct contradiction to this I would have him check out Matthew 9 and Jesus' relationship to a tax collector. Apparently refusing to interact or do business with people is the 21st Century version of loving your neighbors. Who knew.

The second major problem with Kaufman's assessment is that he gets all bent out of shape about the way in which "gay activists" are trying to steal freedom away from the Farbers. Now, freedon isn't a bad thing. Look at Galatians 5 (yeah Erik H.) to see Paul's very enthusiastic comments on freedom. No freedom isn't bad, but freedom isn't the be all end all for Christians either. Jesus is. So when Kaufman rails on about how the Farbers would be less free if they were forced to work for gay men, he misses the point entirely. The Farbers always had the freedom to love those two men, and they willingly gave it up. The Farbers always had the oppurtunity to love like Jesus, and they took a pass. All Christians do that far more often than we would like, but celebrating it is another matter.

Both Kaufman and the Farbers have made a tragic mistake. In an attempt to stand up for what they believe in and defend their right to do so, they have decided that love is in fact not the most important thing, but being right is. I have fallen victim to this same thinking more often than I care to admit, so let me be the first to say to both Matt and the Farbers, welcome to the club. Thankfully for them, and for me as well, forgiveness, love, and grace, are still included free of charge.