Those of you who know my blog know that in the past I have blogged quite a bit on the nature of Evangelicalism, and I think I’ve made it clear that I have no problem calling myself an Evangelical. At the same time, I hope I’ve made it equally clear that in calling myself an Evangelical I do not align myself with institutions that claim to speak for Evangelicals, for instance, the National Association of Evangelicals and the institution that is Christianity Today International. I laud and appreciate the work of many persons within these institutions, but as with anything else, commending and criticizing these persons and institutions does not mean that I feel they somehow speak for me.

I begin this way because CTi and the NAE are important institutions behind the recently penned work, “An Evangelical Manifesto.” The work confronts many issues I’ve brought up on my blog, (I’m sure not in answer to me personally) like whether to capitalize the “E” in Evangelical! So I feel indebted to answering the Manifesto. First, I think it is a mistake to use the word Manifesto instead of Credo. This manifesto begins by describing Evangelicalism theologically rather than culturally or politically, and yet it is a manifesto and not a credo. Francis Schaeffer did this in his “Christian Manifesto” as a response to the “Humanist Manifesto.” I for one find this decidedly mistaken.

Secondly, I disagree that anyone can claim that Evangelicalism is creedal and theological but not social. What this does in essence is seek to strip the Evangelical movement of responsibility historically and socially. And to me, that is impossible. We could really learn from Catholics in this regard. The Manifesto claims further that Evangelicalism predates Protestantism in its concerns. This just doesn’t work. To claim to transcend the interests of the Protestant movement, embracing an ecumenical agenda that is at once both based on sola scriptura and catholic in its scope is just plain silly. As a theological statement this is naive. I’m not saying many people aren’t doing it, I’m simply saying you can’t be both theologically Catholic and Protestant at the same time.

Now for what I like about the document. There is a lot of repentance in this work. There’s a lot of pride and repentance at the same time. For that reason I like it. It’s a very human document. I like that it wants to embrace the social concerns for the poor and human life that it does. I like that it wants the movement not to be hierarchal. (But I think honesty demands that we say that Evangelicals are not known for their love for the poor or their egalitarian posture. You can put in on paper and have all the PhDs you like sign it, but it won’t magically make it so.)

My final issue with the document is that at least a few of the names I see appearing (Kay Arthur, Jack Hayford) are unapologetically engaged in an enterprise known as Christian Zionism that blatantly ignores so many of the tenants of this document. Their welcome signatures displays what the manifesto won’t do, namely hold signatories accountable.

I’ve said some harsh things here. I should temper them by saying that I love the signatories as brothers and sisters in Christ. I’m personally grateful for the legacy so many of them leave. I cannot however sign on to this document any more than The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy or any number of other NAE public statements. While noting and dialoging with their concerns, I cannot publicly sign on.

News of this earthquake in Sichuan, China hits home to me. In 1995 I visited this very area of China. To realize now that the population equivalent of a modest city have died is more than I can fathom. Dear God, be close to this place now.

My family and I are gearing up for our grandest outing in recent memory: a journey to the land of Yellowstone. We’re planning four days to get out there. Day 1: Fairmont, MN., Day 2: Custer, SD., Day 3: Cody, WY., Day 4: Louis and Clark State Park in southern Montana.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the Badlands, the Black Hills, and Yellowstone. I’m not sure how it will effect me. I’m bringing along some really happy reading, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, and I hope to finish my reading of Bethge’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer biography. Yeah, I know what happens. He gets executed. Happy reading. To round it off I am also bringing Trauma and Recovery: The aftermath of violence from domestic abuse to political terror by Judith Herman, MD. (I hope to do a paper on Trauma and community in the fall.)

We love camping and usually do our best to drive and survive on the cheap. We live in tents and cheap cabins in state and national parks. We did this down the Blue Ridge Parkway from southern Virginia to Asheville, North Carolina nearly a decade ago now. Most memorable was losing a bunch of clothes off the top of our roof going down the highway. Martha has made some luggage with her sewing machine this time so as to pack lighter.

Some people travel all the time. Others, like me, travel on two legs the distance from my room across the street to this chair in my office. So when we do a vacation like this it is like a moon orbit or something. Pray for us that we don’t fall into any geysers, get mauled by any bears, lose any children, or run out of gas money. You get the picture. Really, I’m sure everything will be just fine. Yellowstone is west of Chicago right?

I’ve been offline a great deal. The last few months have yielded some of the most fervent writing/publishing activity around JPUSA in a great while. The fruit of six months of my efforts are up in the air at the moment, and I’m learning patience. I’ve continued to read for book reviews, but the last three work days have been dedicated to intensive proofreading. Those of you who know proofreading, know that at times it feels like “Cleaning Desitin out of a large white shag rug. Inch by inch.” At least that’s how Jon put it to me once.

I’m currently reading Dan McKanan’s book The Catholic Worker After Dorothy: Practicing the Works of Mercy in a New Generation. A review is coming, but for now, I highly recommend it. Through it I’ve learned about Casa Juan Diego and the Houston Catholic Worker Newspaper. On their site I found Peter Maurin’s “Easy Essays” which I’ve quickly added as meditative reading on my Ipod.

I’m reading online today about Missouri’s history of the Civil War. I was born and raised in Missouri, moving from St. Louis to Central Missouri, and finally living in Southwestern Missouri for a number of years. When I think back to the people and places where I lived I can’t help but feel the effects in my mind’s eye of the ghosts of the atrocities committed across the state. There is no other name for the Missouri bushwhackers but terrorists. And yet, I see that their actions were in retaliation in-kind, tit for tat, for what they’d suffered. When I look at the Middle East today, Gaza and Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, I see a land ravaged by terror. Missouri can teach us about military occupation, neutrality, and how violence never completely spirals down until all are dead. There are humans everywhere. . . and always memories. William T. Anderson and William Quantrill were a few of Missouri’s most notable guerrillas. The families of the innocents who died in their raids are still very alive. The sense of injustice and bitterness, the culture of mistrust and fear are still very much alive generations later. Wikipedia has this on Missouri’s plan before the war to keep peace.

Armed neutrality

By 1860, Missouri’s initial southern settlers had been supplanted with a more diversified non-slave holding population, including many German and Irish immigrants. With war seeming inevitable, Missouri thought it could stay out of the conflict by remaining in the Union, but staying neutral—not giving men or supplies to either side and pledging to fight troops from either side who entered the state. The policy was first put forth in 1860 by outgoing Governor Robert Marcellus Stewart, who had Northern leanings. It was reaffirmed by incoming Governor Claiborne Jackson, who had Southern leanings. A Constitutional Convention to discuss secession was convened with Sterling Price presiding. The delegates voted to stay in the Union and supported the neutrality position.

The rest of the page tells you how well that turned out. A state with bitter allegiances to both sides doesn’t sit out the fight just because the authorities call in the National Army and gives them the guns. Does this sound familiar? It should? Mission Accomplished? Ask Missourians.

Christianity Today recently posted an editorial titled “The Problem with Juicy Memoirs,” directed pointedly at Frank Schaeffer, asking, “What does it mean to honor one’s father and mother in this therapeutic age of the self?” If you haven’t been following along, CT and Books and Culture have volleyed back and forth with Frank in open letters and reviews that have been, well, depressing.

Son of a Preacher Man by Betty Carter

Fathers & Sons by Os Guinness

Full Disclosure by Frank Schaeffer (Frank’s response with a rejoinder to fess up, Os!)

I’m bemused by all this coverage. If anything, this volley lacks any real content, and CT’s pedantic call to “honor father and mother” will certainly fall on deaf ears to Frank. In Frank’s rejoinder to Os he says,

Os has built a career on an evangelical reputation based in part on his association with my late father, Francis Schaeffer. Os has a continuing stake (in every sense of that word) in the Schaeffer brand name.

I think this comment, more than anything else, reveals what this is all about. Publicity. Reputation. Brand Name. It’s ironic to me that Frank would go on Cspan Book TV telling the world about what’s wrong with Binny Hinn and the Evangelical personality cult, even as he knows that the celebrity he now seeks from mainstream press exposure is devoted to forming his own following.

Frank’s problem lies in his easy readiness to speak for his mom and dad. To reframe their legacy the way he wants, all the while admitting that he waited until they were out of the picture to do so! For instance, when Frank says, “Dad could have easily been a tool of the left as he was for the right. There was nothing about him that would have kept him out of that camp.” Ahem, other than the fact that the household was crazy fundamentalist?

The book publishing world these days is all about starting a movement. Get people talking, get them spending. I sort of wonder what Frank meant by “Almost All” in his subtitle: “How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back” I wonder whether what he won’t take back are his beliefs about money. (Is Capitalism Christian? Toward A Christian Perspective on Economics, 1985) His book on economics was a flame at socialism in all it’s hidden forms. (Ooh scary.) If Frank has ever been anything, he’s been an opportunist. He helped “found the Religious Right as a teenager because he wanted to make movies.” Maybe it’s time we stop funding his little mid-life crisis the way we funded his teen angst.

I can safely say I’m actually now proud of my middle name. . . Lawrence. When I was a child I read the story of a martyr who gave his life in behalf of his flock of Christians from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. This man was the Martyr Lawrence of Rome. Here is the account according to Ambrose:

For when the treasures of the Church were demanded from him, he promised that he would show them. On the following day he brought the poor together. When asked where the treasures were which he had promised, he pointed to the poor, saying: “These are the treasures of the Church.” And truly they were treasures, in whom Christ lives, in whom there is faith in Him. So, too, the Apostle says: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.” What greater treasures has Christ than those in whom He says He Himself lives? For thus it is written: “I was hungry and ye gave Me to eat, I was thirsty and ye gave Me to drink, I was a stranger and ye took Me in.” And again: “What thou didst to one of these, thou didst it unto Me.”What better treasures has Jesus than those in which He loves to be seen?

I remembered this story, but couldn’t remember the name until today. My middle name is Lawrence because it’s my dad’s name and my grandfather’s. But I love the story of the Martyr Lawrence of Rome. I love the reminder that our true treasure is the people of God! BTW, Lawrence died at the ripe old age of 33.

If you’re like me, nothing is more exciting, more liberating, than theology texts without cost. Oh yes, I know, those who can afford to pay should, but on a sliding scale, free is about right for me. This is why I love websites like religion-online.org and archive.org. I was delighted to learn that there are quite a few Karl Barth texts, such as Church Dogmatics: A Selection on archive.org for free download right now! Here’s a link index of what’s there now. Let others quibble about intellectual property and ethics. The rest of us on a budget will get what we can when the copyright expires!

Wow. Just noticed two Bonhoeffer titles as well! Act and Being!

I was out walking yesterday with Jon and we were talking about great forms of exercise. I told him that there is a part of me that really misses hard work. Like wood chopping with an ax. “Oh yeah!” He said. “Do you know how many calories you burn doing that?” This morning I’m thinking about it again and, after a hard day’s work in our community kitchen, cooking for a few hundred people, I’m remembering what wood chopping really looked like the few times I did it. If I had to pick just one thing I really thank my dad for it’s instilling in me a hard work ethic. I remember him trying to teach me the proper way to use a felling ax—in the yard next to our house in the city! Neither of us were very good at it, but it was fun. I must have been eleven or twelve, my son’s age now. I remember blisters that never quite became callouses, until I started working in sheet metal. Then it was severe cuts, stitches and burns. And now it is all just memories. My hands are turning that ghastly pale pasty white color peculiar to musicians and typists.

I found this cool online book on the history and methodology of axes on the federal highway department’s website. An Ax to Grind: A Practical Ax Manual. Poring over this stuff reminds me that words and type and ideas are things, yes, important things, but they create the illusion of action. My body remains largely inert. This has so many applications. I for one am sick to death of the truth in all its forms without any intention toward action. Theories are important, for what they are. We must also remember what they are not. Next time I glory in the idea of doing, somebody please stop me and say, “Stop talking, start chopping!”