Thanks for the Dialogue

Aerin, thanks for the dialogue. I wrote this last week about today...

The Day After

As the 2008 Presidential campaign draws to a close, I've become increasingly less concerned about the specific outcomes of election night and more concerned by what we will have positioned ourselves to accomplish the day after. What are our prospects for success in meeting the tremendous challenges we as a country now face, when we've painted our countrymen and neighbors out to be devils and villains? How do we commit ourselves to meaningful action for the good of all God's creation and not become immobilized in our bickering over who is most right? I'm almost afraid that too much damage has been done: the fear mongering and race-baiting and name-calling and prejudice rationalizing. How do we begin to engage one another and work together if indeed I am (by your definition or my own) a tree-hugging, homo-loving, abortion-permitting, other-embracing, terrorist-empathizing, socialist-leaning un-real black man, whom you've been socialized to resist at all costs?

As I write, a song invades my consciousness, refusing not to be heard. I believe it echoes a way forward through this mess we’ve made for ourselves. The song is "Belfast to Boston," by James Taylor (listen). It's been my prayer for peace for about two years now…

There are rifles buried in the countryside by the rising of the moon.
May they lie there long forgotten, 'til they rust away into the ground.

It's a song of grace: blood bought, divinely inspired, blessed assurance that as followers in the way of Jesus we are not condemned to give as good (or as poorly) as we get. We can give better. Yes…

Who will bend this ancient hatred: will the killing to an end?
Who will swallow long injustice: take the devil for a countryman?

We can. This is the grace that is ours. "Freely you have received; freely give," Jesus says.

continue reading on GP>>>

Resurrection: Writing New Stories

I manage to write my first 750-word anything (well actually a thousand words when you add in the quote from Debbie Blue, but who's counting) and GP decides to post it in 2 parts—such is life...

As did McLaren, I too recently read the conversation between N. T. Wright and Bart Ehrman, hosted by Beliefnet.com. I must admit my incredible bias upfront. I came to this assignment with a deep appreciation for Tom Wright and embarrassingly was quite ignorant of Bart Ehrman. Wright had given me the language and academic credibility for a narrative theology at which I had arrived serendipitously. Furthermore, I had long appreciated Wright's scholarship for challenging the Christian tradition to reckon with the contextual realities that shape biblical claims. Although my faith may require less now in terms of traditional apologetic constructions to substantiate it, I am grateful for Wright's insistence that Christians strive for intellectual honesty when interpreting scripture.

So I freely admit that I brought this bias to my reading, but was immediately captivated by Ehrman's story. It was the best thing he could have done for me. While a fan and student of the quality of thinking that Wright epitomizes, I adamantly believe that everyone has the right to tell his/her own story.

Ehrman's concern for the pain of others, sounding very Jesus-like, completely resonated with me over the course of the first 3 postings. But then Wright's comments took a turn that was seemingly unexpected for Ehrman. Wright introduced Resurrection as God's unprecedented response to suffering that, in a linear sense, infuses the pain of suffering with a promise that heretofore had not existed. Wright's insistence as to the significance of resurrection is not landmark within the Christianity, but his understanding of resurrection is somewhat different from what has come to be viewed as traditional. From that point on, Wright's conversation took a trajectory that embraced the legitimacy of suffering but asserted that it was not the end of the story. Ehrman, however, continued to make his case against the church's traditional and, for Ehrman, insufficient or contradictory explanations of suffering. It seemed as if he could not hear Wright's disassociation from penal-substitution as the only way to tell the story of God at work in the world.

There is a quite subtle form of intellectual dishonesty that dismisses others concerns and insists on making parallel presentations that are not open to conversational refinement. I did not get the sense that this was what Ehrman was doing. Rather Ehrman seemed so use to hearing the language Wright uses (the basic claims of Christianity) aligned in such a way as to bracket out any possibilities except the party line, that he did not appear to recognize that it was not happening quite that way this time.

My heart ached for the experiences Ehrman must have suffered that make his expectations and response ever so reasonable. I wonder how many others have grown accustomed to having their concerns bracketed out of the Christian conversation.

Read more on God's Politics blog>>> Part 1 (comments), Part 2

Don Imus and VA Tech—A Year Later

This is a re-write of some thoughts I posted a year ago after the VA Tech tragedy. It's a tough one, because it asks us to identify with those we viscerally (an perhaps rightfully) despise. But isn't that the message of Jesus on the Mount...

It was only a short year ago that "shock jock" Don Imus chose to refer to the accomplished women playing in the NCAA Basketball Finals as "nappy-headed hoes," later billing the match-up for his listeners as the "jiggaboos" versus the "wannabes." Imus' disrespect came as little surprise. He had a long history of slur and slander against Blacks, Africans, Asians, Latinos, Jews, Arabs, women, homosexuals, the poor, and just about anyone he considered unlike himself. And he had been paid handsomely to be so. The absurd brevity of his time spent off the air is perhaps only surpassed by the financial profitability of his return.

But the story that a middle-aged white man of means in the U.S. showed himself to be (or made his living as a) racist and sexist is not news to me. He is not the first, nor will he be the last. Not that what he did was not news-worthy, but his misogynistic or otherwise bigoted views seemed almost beside the point to me.

The thing that captured my attention regarding the Imus coverage the first half of April 2007 was the power dynamic. You see, power matters, and Imus had plenty of it, which he used unrepentantly to pummel with impunity the dispossessed, disenfranchised, or otherwise already marginalized. Don Imus, who is now with ABC, at the time had a nationally syndicated CBS radio show that was simulcast on MSNBC (how much money was he making?), which NPR reporter David Folkenflik further characterized as attracting "an educated, affluent audience." Most interesting to me, again, was not that this was the case; however, I was floored by the sheer number of "educated, affluent" folks who unreservedly championed Imus' "right" to do what he had been doing. It was as if the unapologetically privileged got together and declared, "How dare you have a problem with us continuing to exercise our privilege at your expense? This is the way it's supposed to be. Haven't you gotten the repeated memos?"

They said it was a First Amendment issue, to which my only response can be: Neither hate, discrimination, nor any other form of exclusionary practice or language is a First Amendment issue. Freedom of speech does not guarantee one the right to be heard. Hate does not deserve a publicly facilitated audience (e.g. radio and television air waves), and those who resource it privately deserve whatever nonviolent (particularly financial) backlash they get.

Then came the story of Seung Hui Cho. The Western world cried out in horror at the massacre Cho perpetrated on VA Tech's campus—"the single largest act of recorded handgun violence on U.S. soil in American history" (the qualifiers "recorded handgun violence" and "on U.S. soil" are important because they help to conceal our selective recollection and shocking history of violence, particularly that which has involved what we would call "state-sponsored terrorism" if it were directed at us from the outside).

And we wept. And so should we weep again in the upcoming weeks, but not just for Cho's victims. We should weep for Cho and others like him, who are victims as well ... of the Imuses of the world.

Complete the post at God's Politics blog>>>

Exorcising Our Demons

This is a Home-Training essay...

If properly understood, Senator Barak Obama's remarks today at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, PA, constitute one of the most significant and honest public addresses ever made on America's 400-year struggle with race. Had we heeded DuBois' 1903 prophetic warning, The Souls of Black Folks, it would have found voice in the 20th century. There is a conversation America has, literally in some cases, been dying to have. That conversation is not in favor of any particular presidential candidate. Please don't relegate and dismiss it on those grounds. However, it is unlikely that we would be so inescapably confronted with such issues outside of a person of color experiencing some measure of success in a bid for the highest elected office in the land.

In her God's Politics post, "Putting Rev. Wright's Preaching in Perspective," Diana Butler Bass implored us to listen better to one another. Now let me suggest something to listen for. The thought is simple, but the lesson is not: Not everyone has experienced America in the same way. And we must lay down the self-absorption that makes us think this doesn't matter, if we are ever to begin to appreciate each other.

Permit a timely example. If you are not Black, you may not know that the Black church is the theatre in which Blacks have historically exorcised their demons—with the pastor as both theologue and thespian embodying the collective process of redemption for his/her people every week. Initially, church was the one place we could go that we weren't under massa's whip, which is why we relish it. Eventually, it became the center and sustainer of our community. So most of us understand Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a way that may escape others.

Church equaled life for us. Where else could we go to exorcise the demons of injustice and intransigence? Where else could we go to exorcise the marginalization and invalidation, the defeat and depression, the struggle and scorn? Where else could we go when our children asked—as my daughter did while coloring just the other day—if Jesus were brown or white? My answer was that he was born to Jewish parents, people of color, whom we usually refer to as olive-skinned. And her heartrending response at 5-years-old was: Why can't he be white? In all the pictures, he's white! Where else could we give cathartic voice to our inner demons in hopes of being transformed like the phoenix into "the better angels of our nature?"

Continue reading on God's Politics blog>>> Part 1 & Part 2

“A More Perfect Union”

Did you hear Obama's speech today?!!!

If properly understood, it should go down as one of the greatest speeches of the early 21st century and, if we had heeded DuBois prophetic warning, should have found voice in the 20th century.

This is the New Politics, and it is as noble as we've dared to dream! (Sorry to disappoint George Will.)

The fact that some have dutifully taken up their roles as cynic is just sad for them. I pray we don't allow them to rule the day.

Here's the video:



And for those who cherish the written word here's the full transcript:

“A More Perfect Union"
Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
Constitution Center
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
(full manuscript, as prepared for delivery)

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

CONTINUE READING "A More Perfect Union">>>

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

Farrakhan and Buckley

"If we think about [our] conversation happening not just here and now but in that larger communion of [all those who have come before us], we are opening up conversational space for people who once killed each other. That is very gentle [work], and you can't just say, 'That [distress, grief, pain or harm] never happened!'"
-Diana Butler Bass

What I am about to say may prove difficult for many of my white and Jewish friends to hear, process and respond to justly. For it not to be difficult would require persons with the power of privilege to imagine a world in which that privilege does not exist—a just world. Not a world in which one's greatest fears have come true and power has been taken from one group and given to another with an ax to grind, but rather one in which equity is not an ideal, but a reality.

In that world my comments could be considered without fear of my assumed agenda. But that world does not exist. We are left with this one, in which the power dynamics are what they are, and have persisted that way for so long that many have confused their homeostasis (acceptance and even contentment) with the way things are with a legitimate equilibrium (justice and fair play) in our society. I am about to disturb that homeostasis by pointing out that equilibrium is a myth and does not exist; this will disorient and unsettle many severely. The knee-jerk reaction in a situation like this is to lash out, but I beg you to consider.

I was upset by Tim Russert's insistent questioning of Senator Barak Obama's ties to Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam in the mist of the last primary-season debate between Democratic candidates Obama and Clinton. Even after the question had been asked and answered more than once, Russert persisted trying to establish for the record a link between Obama and Farrakhan through the person of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a world-renown and widely respect minister, senior pastor (emeritus) of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Obama and his family are members. In 1984, Wright had traveled with Farrakhan to Lybia and returned to refer to Farrakhan as a "great man". In a post-911 world, any other Christian-Muslim pilgrimage resulting in such interfaith appreciation of one another would be applauded. But not this time, for upon his return 24 June 1984, Min. Louis Farrakhan gave this assessment of the West's policy in the Middle East:

"...America and England and the nations backed Israel's existence. Therefore when you aid and abet someone in a criminal conspiracy, you are a part of that criminal conspiracy. So America and England and the nations are criminals in the sight of almighty God. Now that nation called Israel, never has had any peace in forty years and she will never have any peace because there can never be any peace structured on injustice, thievery, lying and deceit and using the name of God to shield your dirty religion under His holy and righteous name."

This is the speech from which the infamous account of Farrakhan referring to Judaism as a 'gutter religion' is surmised. However, as we can read, that's not actually what Farrakhan says; rather in language steeped in religious allusion and metaphor, he takes issue with what he believes to be the unjust actions of Israel against Muslim people, namely Palestinians. Farrakhan seeks to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, the majority of whom are fellow Muslims.

I do not mean to suggest in any way that what he does say is not hostile, even malicious: it indeed is. Notwithstanding, as an African-American, I've been asked repeatedly and have had to come to grips with the fact that every hostile comment made against me is not automatically racial. I'm not saying this is one of those instances: frankly, I do not know. Being as intimately acquainted as I am with the socio-religious rhetorical patterns of those from African decent, it is honestly a toss up. "Dirty religion" in this context could just as honestly be interpreted 'dirty religious practices' as it relates to the common Christian and Jewish religious justifications for how the Palestinians are treated (in which case the Hebrew and Christian Bibles have harsher things to say). I will say, however, that we seem to suspend the need even to try to make such a determination whenever anyone has anything critical to say about Israel. Bishop Desmond Tutu and former-President Jimmy Carter years later were both maligned for suggesting that Palestinians have virtually been asked by the West to agree to a form of apartheid in relationship to Israel. Whether one agrees with their assessment or not, we should be certain that neither man harbors anti-Semitic feelings.

This conflagration of thought had consumed my attention when I heard that William F. Buckley has passed, and I was immediately filled with ambivalence. On the one hand, I felt the sorrow I always feel anytime I hear of a death. On the other hand, Buckley was the champion of a self-interestedness that I believe can only harm, no matter how civil. Then I remembered a quote I once read from an article Buckley had written:

“The central question that emerges…is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.”
—National Review, 24 August 1957

At that point I became resentful, for I knew that I would soon begin to hear all manner of tribute to this man from the same persons who would spend the remainder of the week trying to "clarify" Obama's relationship to Farrakhan.

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Now, you have to understand how duplicitous this automatically seems to any person touched with the feelings of the marginalized in this world. Yet again, I am asked to commemorate the life of a man who by inference unabashedly thought of me as a member of an 'undeveloped race,' and at the same time "reject" a man for expressing the same sentiment about white people (never mind the irony). In tribute to Buckley, it has been said that he had a “refined, perspicacious mind”. Furthermore, he is the one, we are told, who “elevated conservatism to the center of American political discourse.” These same tributes can essentially be made regarding Farrakhan vis-a-vis black nationalism (a definite form of conservatism). So what makes it so easy to revere Buckley and demonize Farrakhan in the same breath?

In the time since their articulation of disdain for the Other, the perspectives of both men seem to have evolved. Buckley reportedly renounced racism by the mid-1960s, "in part because his horror at the terrorist tactics used by white supremacists to fight the civil rights movement, in part because of the moral witness of friends like Garry Wills who confronted Buckley with the immorality of his politics." Many see the fact that some of his friends from the 1950s remained adamant racists—notably Revilo Oliver who moved from National Review to the John Birch Society to the fringes of neo-Nazism—as evidence that Buckley’s conversion "was by no means pre-ordained". There were several other issues on which Buckley is reported to have moderated his politics. In the 1980s, he reportedly admitted that if he were a South African black he would likely support the ANC, a thought that "shocked fellow conservatives." Although his evolution in no way involved the radical reorientation of the privilege he benefited from and the power he exercised pre-conversion, it was seen by many as further evidence of his greatness.

There are three things you must understand from the perspective of the historically unprivileged in America. First, at some time Buckley was an unequivocal, unapologetic racist—not because he held bigoted views, but because he exercised his bigotry in a manner that inconvenienced, at times severely, the lives of people of color. This exercise of power against the Other is what makes racism different from simple prejudice. The concepts are not interchangeable. Outside of the ability to negatively impact another's life, a person not liking another for racial reasons is more of a nusance than anything else. Secondly, it is hard—not impossible, but very difficult—for me as a black man to deeply admire or appreciate a conversion of the sort that Buckley went through that does not appear to have cost much. Not saying that it was not sincere, just that it was not expensive, while his racism cost everyone and particularly those unlike himself. Thirdly, despite the zeitgeist of the age of segregation and Jim Crow in American history, I will be forever ambivalent, hopefully understandably so, toward celebrated public persons who do not have the courage to stand up for justice before it is popular and there is a wealth of incentive (economic and otherwise) to do so. None of these caveats has any reason to naturally factor into one's thinking unless she is touched with empathy for the marginalize or formerly colonized.

Farrakhan's evolution has followed a similar trajectory as Buckley's, though met with a significantly more cynical response. In the past 20 years, he has repeatedly expressed in statement after public statement these sentiments:

As a Muslim, I revere Abraham, Moses, and all the Prophets who Allah (God) sent to the children of Israel. I believe in the scriptures brought by these Prophets and the Laws of Allah (God) as expressed in the Torah. I would never refer to the Revealed Word of Allah (God)—the basis of Jewish Faith—as "dirty" or "gutter" . . . Over the centuries, the evils of Christians, Jews and Muslims have dirtied their respective religions. True Faith in the laws and Teaching of Abraham, Jesus and Muhammad is not dirty, but, practices in the name of these religions can be unclean and can cause people to look upon the misrepresented religion as being unclean."

Say what you will about his sincerity, but the exact same thing was considered enough to canonize Buckley not among the fringe but in the mainstream of the dominant culture. In the 1990s, Farrakhan reached out to a group of non-Zionist, orthodox Jews to establish conversation and camaraderie. Repeatedly in the Million-Man March and in other public initiatives, he has called for an "end to the cycle of hate." This may not make him fully chastened, but in as much as is required of others, definitely evolving.

This is where I believe the comments of Diana Butler Bass become particularly instructive. She uttered them while participating in a panel discussion at the last American Academy of Religion conference, the subject of which was the emerging phenomenon in the Christian church. The original context of her comments was the pursuit of friendship (referred to as "convergence") between post-mainline and post-evangelical Christians, yet when I heard them, they struck me as a way forward in my own internal-external debate that wouldn't involve vilifying one side or the other. Her thoughts were as follows (emphasis added):

"One of the things that I sort of genuinely wonder about in any kind of convergence—and perhaps this is because I am a mainliner and I've seen all of the worst that the ecumenical movement can possibly do—is that there was a really bad part of the ecumenical movement that basically did not allow us to have our identities. And one of the things I hold onto when I'm in rooms of clergy and theologians and working with them and we start talking about post-conservatism and post-liberalism is I always remind them that those "posts-" come out of a very distinctive historical experience. And those historical experiences are always going to remain part of our identity. They don't just go away because… [we] say we want to be friends. We're going to be standing in our conversations having coffee[, and] I've got Schleiermacher standing with me all the time, not John Stott. If we think about that conversation happening not just here and now but in that larger communion of saints… we are opening up conversational space for people who once killed each other. That is very gentle [work], and you can't just say, 'That never happened!' We're going to be doing this convergence work, but holding onto the things that we love and the things that make us who we are. So I wouldn't want us ever to slam into [each other].... It is a potential, terrible misstep for people who have been schooled in liberal Protestantism to let go of their identity for the sake of one happy big family. We need not to do that. We need to be who we really are. So post-liberal, post-conservative are 'post-' separate streams, but it doesn't mean we can't form something new together."

Change the context by switching the protestant ideological references to racial and socio-cultural ones and the gist of her argument remains credible. While you may stand with George Washington as the great hero of the American Revolution, I stand with Crispus Attucks. While you may have reconciled with John Brown, Emerson and William Lloyd Garrison—of whom I am ever appreciative—I also stand just as proudly with Nat Turner, Geronimo, and Harriet Tubman. I stand with Frederick Douglass, while you may celebrate Robert E. Lee. To any conversation I will also bring Olaudah Equiano, W.E.B. Dubois, Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston, Paul Robeson, Vernon Johns, MLK, Malcolm X, James Baldwin and many others of varying ideological stripe, and in welcoming me you welcome them as well. As a person of color in America, I have since childhood been constantly asked to honor, even celebrate, white men and women of historical and contemporary note, over and apart from less-than-honorable, glaring, even odious aspects of their public lives. Isn't it time we all saw fit to afford one another the same grace, instead of holding one another completely hostage—I have no issue with accountability—to our previous short-comings? Can we be that vulnerable with one another?

Even if you totally disagree, please don't make the ridiculous accusation that I am professing bigotry or racism in any form or in any way aligning myself with Farrakhan theologically, philosophically or politically. However, I must be able to own that I am inextricably bound to him in a common history of what it means to be black in America and that be okay. Perhaps we would not say we are completely ready for this conversation, but it is the one God appears to be sending us from God's dreams for our future.

In this brave new wiki-world, the privileged must stop making the ahistorical demand that the under-privileged take a moderate, conciliatory, even deferential posture to all past, present and future acts of disrespect, hostility or excess (and vice versa)—if we are to create something more beautiful, conversant with one another. This is, perhaps, the only way we can paddle forward together with so much water under and over the bridge.

*For a practical example of this, learn the story of Robi Damelin and Ali Abu Awwad,
Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers.

This Changes Everything: An Interview with Brian McLaren

A statement like "this changes everything" or "everything must change" is what one might call idiomatic hyperbole: rhetorical exaggeration for the effect of conveying an overall meaning that is larger than the sum of its parts. Thus, when I came to the book Everything Must Change, I didn't expect it to be a literal "theory of everything." That would be too much expectation for any treatise to bear. However, I was hoping for a way forward out of the gridlock of integrity that occurs when people of faith no longer expect of themselves that "words of wisdom would be ways of wisdom" (Arrested Development, 1992).

However, I do understand why some might take exception to Brian McLaren's most recent book , released October 2007. One major reason for consternation may be that Everything Must Change offers a hearing of the Jesus message that takes the gospel out of the battle for primacy in the global theater of self-aggrandizement. McLaren deconstructs the age-old debate of whose religion deserves top billing by conspicuously not participating in it. As opposed to hearing in the message of Jesus an exclusive call for Christians and the Christian church to be central in world affairs, he implores any (Christian or otherwise) who finds the way of Jesus inspiring to become integral in seeking justice, truth, peace and beauty in dealing with the biggest problems facing the world. Such a subtle yet profound shift undoubtedly unsettles many.

John Wilson, Editor of Books and Culture for Christianity Today, was certainly among those unsettled by Everything Must Change—in ways that he apparently did not appreciate.

I attended the launch of McLaren's Deep Shift Tour in Charlotte, NC. We gathered in a most beautiful urban arts commune, Area 15, embedded in the reconstituted NoDa neighborhood of Charlotte. The artists' home is an old warehouse that has been converted into gallery, gathering and prayer space and has had such an affect on the community that the City of Charlotte has asked the creatives of Area 15 to open a second studio in another distressed portion of the city. While there, I took the opportunity to invite McLaren's clarification of any of the issues raised by Wilson's article.

You may ask who am I to seek to challenge the collective wisdom of the Evangelical world's foremost public marketplace of ideas. To be honest, no one of much significance. Publicly, I am a simple storyteller, writer, activist and friend. Nonetheless, in a brave new wiki world, post-modernity, we are finally coming to recognize everyone's stake and the value of everyone's voice. And it just didn't seem right for Wilson's review to be the final word in Christian circles for what I and many others have found to be a most unsettling yet also inspiring declaration of revolt.

Q: Were you surprised to hear about the Christianity Today review?

A: In early or mid-January, a friend called me to express his condolences about a negative review in CT and to tell me not to let it get me down. I said, “What review?” It was a couple weeks before I actually saw the review, so over those weeks I imagined the worst. The review ended up being less negative than I had imagined it would be. John Wilson is arguably the best-read Evangelical in America and editor of a premier Evangelical publication in America, so I’m pleasantly surprised that someone of John’s stature would take the book seriously enough to engage with it.

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Q: The review compares your book to George Lakoff’s Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. He says that Everything Must Change is even more ambitious than Moral Politics, in that you are trying to reframe Jesus. How do you respond to the comparison?

A: I think John overestimates my ambition here. In the book, I integrate the work of a number of respected theologians and biblical scholars to do the reframing of Jesus, to which I add comparatively little that could be called original. And on the global crisis side, I integrate the work of a number of economists, sociologists, and other scholars, adding even less if anything original. My more modest goal was to try to assimilate and synthesize their scholarly work in relation to two questions that I have not been able to stop thinking about for many years: what are our top global crises, and what does the message of Jesus have to say to these crises.

I was interested in John’s decision to use Lakoff’s term “frames” to describe my work instead of my own term “framing stories.” One of the major themes of my book is the way that our social lives are guided—not just by ideological systems or “world views,” but by stories or narratives… or perhaps even metanarratives, depending on how one defines that contentious term. Then over several chapters I explore the way that Jesus’ good news of the kingdom of God functions as an alternative story to the dominant narratives of Jesus’ day. So by “reframing” my article in terms of Lakoff, this important theme of the book gets downplayed a bit. Maybe I can quote one passage where I talk a bit about the importance of stories:

Maybe you’ve never considered yourself this way, but you are a complex society of sixty trillion cells. In fact, there are about ten thousand times the number of cells in your body as there are people on earth. These cells are organized into ten organ systems: skeletal, muscular, circulatory, nervous, respiratory, digestive, excretory, reproductive, endocrine, and immune. All of these systems are integrated and unified into one person—you—in a completely unique way, through what we could call the framing story of you. Your story may unify your cells and systems to become an Olympic gymnast and father of three children, while someone else uses her cells and systems to become a drug dealer or astronaut or kindergarten teacher. The unique framing story of you describes how you have unified your ten systems so far, and the story then frames how you will do so in the future. Similarly… our societies are unified, integrated, motivated, and driven by the framing stories we tell ourselves as groups. (66)

Q: Having read Everything Must Change, when I saw Wilson's substitution of the term "frames" for "framing stories," I made the misguided assumption that you and Lakoff were expressing the same concept. How might this same assumption create misunderstanding for those who've done the opposite, read Lakoff and not Everything Must Change?

A: People might assume my message is, like Lakoff’s, largely for liberals and against conservatives. But what I’m actually saying in the book challenges both liberals and conservatives, although in different ways.

Q: Wilson says, “McLaren intends to correct an overemphasis on Last Things in the 'conventional' view of salvation.” What are you saying about eschatology in Everything Must Change?

A: Strictly speaking, my concern isn’t an overemphasis on Last Things. If anything, I affirm in the book how important eschatology is (e.g. pp. 143-147). Rather than reduce emphasis on Last Things, I’m trying to correct what I think are popular and dangerous misreadings and misapplications of the Biblical texts on Last Things. Perhaps in some circles (maybe John’s?), the prevalence of “left-behind” eschatology isn’t very evident and so is easy to dismiss and consider passe. But in my neighborhood (and this is also clearly seen in some of the comments posted in response to John’s review on the CT website), I can’t avoid noticing the ongoing influence of what some of us call the eschatology of evacuation on domestic and foreign policy… relating to the environment, the Middle East, warfare, and so on. Although I think this kind of determinist eschatology of evacuation is past its prime, I would say its continuing influence is still pretty strong this year in our presidential elections, where it is often associated with the term “Evangelical,” to which John and I both claim some humble relation. Rather than a determinist understanding of the future which leads to an evacuation gospel, I’m advocating a participatory eschatology of warning and hope.

Q: Twice in the review, Wilson uses the term apocalyptic. In what sense is this book apocalyptic?

A: I’m curious about that myself. The word has a number of colloquial connotations—from extremist to hopeless to crazed. The word can also mean catastrophic, and so in a sense, to speak of global crises is to speak about potential or actual catastrophes. In its etymology, the word means “unveiling” or “uncovering” or “revealing,” and I certainly hope that my book exposes some things that are hidden to a lot of people.

Q: Some might say that heretofore environmentalism, conservationism and other such movements have been very much focused on staving off the catastrophe that is our inevitable future. In this perhaps they find some small common ground with the predominant trends in eschatology. In what ways do you believe the way of Jesus speaks into these convergent themes of inevitable doom, transforming them into meaningful efforts of hope and sustainability?

A: Many Christians seem to believe that God’s relationship with the universe is deterministic, that God has already filmed the future in his mind, and what we’re seeing unfold in history is the showing of a movie that’s already “in the can” so to speak. I don’t believe that. I believe God’s relationship with creation—including us—is interactive. God gives us warnings, which are an invitation to change our ways. God gives us promises, which are an invitation to persevere when the going gets tough. A great example is the prophet Jonah. He was sent to Nineveh to prophesy doom, in hopes that the people would repent so the prophecy wouldn’t come true!

Q: Wilson says that he found resonance between a lot in your book and conversations he has had with colleagues over the last decade, and he says he shares your dissatisfaction on some points with the conventional presentations of the gospel. But he criticizes you for not including the work of Robert Fogel or dealing with the subject of rising expectations, and he says, “the actual picture is considerably more complicated than McLaren presents.” Could you respond?

A: John is spot on here, at least in part: there was no way I could—in a reasonably short and (I hope) accessible book—deal with all the complexity I am aware of, not to mention the far greater complexity that John is aware of… and not to mention the even greater complexity neither he nor I can possibly be aware of. Of course, this is true of anything we write, isn’t it. For example, I imagine that the actual picture I present in my book is considerably more complicated than the one John presents in his review. Whenever one writes anything, one becomes vulnerable to the accusation that he should have included this, referenced that, or otherwise accounted for something else.

I also agree with John about the importance of Robert Fogel. I didn’t mention Fogel in the book, although I am aware of his work and admire it. Fogel summarizes fascinating research about how human well-being has improved in the modern era. For example, life expectancy in pre-modern Europe was around 40 years; now in the post-Industrial West it’s nearly doubled. He details other dramatic changes as well: our body size has increased by 50%, our caloric intake by 250%, we’ve grown inches taller and much healthier by almost any conceivable measure. Fogel not only summarizes these changes, but he reflects on what they will mean as trends of increased well-being continue through the twenty-first century. Another work of his deals with what he calls the fourth great awakening, and it is widely regarded as a masterpiece.

So I agree with the point I think John is making by referring to Fogel: whatever we say about things that need changing now, we must remember that conditions were much worse in many ways centuries ago. Middle class people today take for granted comforts that pre-modern kings never imagined. But this is part of the tragedy I am trying to address in my book when I talk about the equity crisis: a child born in Eastern Congo today has a life expectancy closer to that of a Medieval European than a contemporary one. That’s one of the things that—nodding toward my title—must change. As Bono says—admittedly, no Fogel, but not chicken scratch either—whether you live shouldn’t depend on where you live.

But in spite of the good news of progress John rightly wants to emphasize, the bad news is that the gap between the most well-off and the least well-off is growing wider, and everyone’s long-term well-being is being mortgaged for the short-term rise in prosperity that some of us currently enjoy. Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, dependency on fossil fuels, and global climate change pose new threats that could, if we don’t wake up, erase the gains which Fogel celebrates.

Also, I do address the issue of rising expectations, though I focus more on recent decades than recent centuries. For example, I explain how “…over the last fifty years in the United States… we have doubled household incomes largely through the addition of wives and mothers to the paid workplace. We have also doubled the ratio of cars to people and we have doubled the frequency of eating out…” (211). But then I explore some findings that are somewhat counter-intuitive: the ways in which consumerism paradoxically creates increasing discontent with increasing prosperity. In other words, once we have passed a certain level of basic comfort, we don’t feel better off as we become better off. I quote David Korten, who concludes, “Over the last half of the twentieth century, inflation-adjusted U.S. gross domestic product per capita tripled, yet surveys indicate self-reports of satisfaction with life remained virtually flat.”

So, although I don’t quote Fogel, like John I certainly do admire his work, and I do actually address the issue of rising expectations in a number of places.

Q: Wilson and other's use of the phrase "rising expectations" sounds very much like the way many Christians misuse Jesus' words: "The poor you will have with you always." It often seems as if they want to absolve themselves from seeking the good of others. How do you see your responsibility to others differently?

A: I address that issue in the book. So often when I talk about poverty, well-meaning Christians come up to me and quote those words from Jesus about the poor being with us always. They seem to be saying, “If we eliminate poverty, we’ll make Jesus a liar” —as if the elimination of poverty is a clear and present danger!

I love to refer people to Deuteronomy 15, which Jesus is actually quoting. Right before saying, “There will always be poor among you,” Moses says, “Give generously,” and right after, he says, “Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.” Even more interesting, at the beginning of the same passage (15:4), he says, “There should be no poor among you” —because God is giving them a land capable of producing enough for everyone.

So, the point of the passage Jesus quotes is not, “There will always be poor people, so don’t worry about it.” It’s the opposite: “There shouldn’t be poor people, because the land is bountiful. But because of human injustice, there will be poor people, so be sure to be generous.”

Q: Although Wilson seems to affirm your hope for a new dialogue between just-war folk and pacifists, he is highly critical of your discussion of the addictive nature of war. He suggests your analysis is "sophomoric," "painfully naïve," and "patronizing"—which I imagine you anticipated hearing from someone. Why did you choose such strong metaphors (e.g. addiction, suicide, the worship of money), knowing the resistance they might arouse?

A: Well… to understate it, war is a life and death matter, and life and death matters call for strong language, especially when—as George Orwell and others have taught us - the rhetoric of war is carefully calculated to numb us to what it entails. Perhaps my description of war as addictive is not quite as sophomoric, etc., as it seemed to John when he wrote the review. When I speak of the addictive nature of war, I’m pointing to the economic addiction President Eisenhower warned of in 1961 under the term “military-industrial complex.”

And I’m also referring to the kind of psycho-social addiction that Rich Cizik of the NAE has noted more recently. I believe it was in a New York Times interview that he said that many people who had been formed by the Cold War era had, in the aftermath of 9/11, substituted Islam as the new evil empire in place of the Soviet Union. With the Soviet Union gone, we needed a new global enemy on which to externalize our fear and aggression. What I’m saying is that it’s too easy for us to define ourselves in such a way that we need a war and a flesh-and-blood enemy in order to know who we are and why we’re here. I’m sure that a well-balanced thinker like John would agree: not acknowledging this danger could be deemed downright sophomoric and dangerously naïve too.

Q: Are you suggesting that terrorism isn’t a real threat?

A: Of course not. I’m just saying it’s not the only threat, and it may not be the biggest threat either. It certainly isn’t a new threat. As I explain in the book, terrorism has a long history. Even in the Gospels, the Zealots functioned as terrorists—so Jesus actually is addressing a society no less touched by terrorism than our own.

Along with the threat out there, there are a whole range of threats in here – in our own individual and national psyches. And one of those threats is forgetting what Paul said: that our real enemies are not “flesh and blood.” Or as Alexander Solzenheitzen said, we make a mistake if we think the line of evil runs between people and nations, with the bad guys over there and the good guys over here. The truth is, he said, that evil is a part of us as well as them, and there is good in them as well as us. One of the dangerously addictive chemicals in the war cocktail is its invitation to tell us we are pure good and they are pure evil.

That’s why, I suggest in the book, that in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere, Jesus challenges us to see ourselves outside of the binary categories of us/them, friend/enemy. He invites us to repent from the warrior narrative. Instead, he calls us to live within a narrative of active peacemaking and reconciliation in the kingdom of God. My friend Jim Wallis, in The Great Awakening, and my friends Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw, in Jesus for President, also explore this theme of active peacemaking—probably more effectively than I have.

Q: Wilson says your title is misleading. He takes some jabs at it a couple of times, and he makes “Everything Hasn’t Changed” the title for his review.

A: My theme, of course, isn’t “everything has changed.” My point—allowing for admitted hyperbole—is that a lot of things haven’t changed that need to. Early on in the text (page 1, paragraph 2), I acknowledge that the title is hyperbolic, and since John’s title is equally hyperbolic, I don’t think he is against that literary device in principle. In Chapter 3 of the book, I tell in some detail the story from which the title derives, and that story, I think, justifies the hyperbole and places the title in a context.

Q: Wilson acknowledges that you “occasionally” add nuances and qualifiers, but he says that you are “a-historical” and “misleading.” Let me quote him: “McLaren is particularly misleading when he's suggesting, as he does quite emphatically at times, that somehow the church went off the rails early on, and that only now are (some) Christians beginning to understand what Jesus was really saying.”

A: That was one of the most puzzling sentences in the review to me. I’m glad John noticed some of my nuances and qualifiers, although I think they are far more common than his word “occasionally” suggests. I actually was quite careful to avoid saying—emphatically or non-emphatically—what John says I suggest, because I grew up with the same kind of a-historical narrative that he described later in the review—with an idealized version of the early church, then a sense that the whole thing became a disaster, and then pride that “our denomination” or whatever has finally gotten it right and restored the church to its original pristine status—whether that was done in the 16th century or the 19th or the 21st or whatever. I share his distaste for that naïve approach and I can’t imagine where he would find anything like that in my book. He may have been mistaking what I actually wrote with what he assumed I was going to write.

Q: Wilson is particularly frustrated about something you say about sweatshop workers. He says,

Do we, as McLaren suggests, decide not to buy a cheaper shirt that has been made in a factory where the workers receive terribly low wages and instead pay more for a shirt that has been made in a factory where the workers are better compensated? Or—as a number of economist friends of mine would maintain—would McLaren's well-intended gesture, insofar as it had any effect beyond producing a sense of virtuous conduct, actually tend to undermine the fortunes of those poor workers?

Nothing in this book will help you answer that question with greater confidence than you had before you started reading.

A: Here, I think, John dismisses a point I am considerably more nuanced about. I mention shirts once in the book. I say,

…a popular chain store sells brand-name shirts made by sweatshop workers, almost always women, in Honduras or China or Mexico. These corporations have minimized labor costs to perhaps .03 percent of retail price, which makes them, and American bargain hunters, very happy. But what about the women who sit at sewing machines for seventy hours a week and make a pittance: about thirteen cents per hour in Bangladesh, forty-nine cents per hour in Haiti, or $1.69 per hour in the Dominican Republic? Yes, even these wages are better than unemployment, but is there no sense of compassion or fairness among the sellers and wearers of clothes for their neighbors across town or the globe who make them? (197)

I then reference an article that raises the very debate of which John seems to suggest his economist friends are aware, but I am not.

Q: Well, how do you answer his question? Is it better to buy a sweatshop shirt or not?

A: When it comes to which shirt-purchasing strategy actually helps poor sweatshop workers more, top-drawer economists could line up on both sides of the issue, each side mounting vigorous arguments according to their ideology or economic school. I was less interested in taking sides on that argument than I was in encouraging my readers to see their economic life—including their wardrobe selection - as a succession of choices that connect us to a whole chain of people—from cotton growers to factory workers to corporate executives and truck drivers. As people seeking to follow Jesus, I am suggesting, we should see these people as our neighbors and be concerned about the ways our choices affect them. There are a lot of issues to be worked out as we pursue ethical buying or fair trade, but we at least need to begin by seeing our purchasing power as a real kind of power that must be stewarded for the good of our neighbor, not merely our personal interests. That’s a topic that I will continue to be engaged with in the future, I’m sure.

So regarding shirts: if I buy a cheap one produced in a sweatshop because I care a lot about my pocketbook and not much about the fortunes of the poor workers who produced the shirt, I think it’s pretty hard to say that I’m living out the values of Jesus in my daily life. If John buys a cheap sweatshop-produced shirt because he sincerely believes that doing so will actually help an underpaid sweatshop worker in China, I think his hypothetical motive is better than mine. But if John and I can both work together to mobilize growing numbers of buyers to demand shirts that are produced on farms and in factories that treat workers justly, and if we can inspire shareholders to nudge the corporations in which they have a stake to increase their corporate social responsibility, I think we can make a positive difference for everybody. Admittedly, it’s hard to find ways to make these changes, but stopping slavery and ending child labor and passing civil rights legislation in the US weren’t easy either. Unless we care, we won’t try, and unless we try, we won’t find the ways. So I’m focusing on the caring part, trusting that if we can build momentum for fair trade and ethical buying, with God’s help we can work out the details in time.

Q: In spite of his critical comments, Wilson seems to conclude the review on a more positive note. He says,

But this is not a counsel of despair, or an excuse for apathy. I share McLaren's wonder and delight at the power of new life in Christ, which should inform our thinking and our actions in every sphere. With God's help, there's plenty of work for us to do.

This type of "nonetheless-God-bless-you" or, as we say in the South, "bless-your-heart" closing—whether genuine or not—seems customary of Christians. But where do you think it leaves us in terms of making meaningful strides?

A: I really appreciated John’s magnanimity here. I don’t know John’s political leanings or economic philosophy, but my guess is that there would be some small differences from my own. Rather than ending on those differences, though, John is trying to focus on what we share in common in Christ, and this, to me, is truly important and exemplary on his part.

In Rwanda in 1994, Christians let their common identity in Christ become less decisive than their tribal identity as Hutu or Tutsi. And here in the United States, especially this year, we can let our unity in Christ be eclipsed by various tribal identities—as Americans, as Democrats or Republicans, as “neocons” or progressives or libertarians, as “trickle-downers” or populists, as hawks or doves, or as left-wing liberals or right-wing conservatives, whatever we might mean by these labels.

I like what Jim Wallis has been saying for many years now: we can’t allow ourselves to be polarized and paralyzed in old ruts of discourse. Instead, we need to find common ground by seeking higher ground. That’s what more and more of us, I believe, are seeking. If we keep seeking common ground and the common good in the light of Christ, everything might not change, but some things, with God’s help, surely will.

Q: The subtitle of Everything Must Change is Jesus, Global Crises, and A Revolution of Hope. Many believe hope is too flighty and indefinite, but I love what Barack Obama reminds us about hope. As it relates to the unlikely dream that is the kingdom of God, "there has never been anything false about hope."

A: Yes, hope truly is downright audacious! It’s much easier to be a cynical observer or distanced nay-sayer than to throw one’s hat in the ring and act in love, faith, and hope. I’m certainly no stranger to the downsides of hope—as Proverbs says, when hope is deferred, your heart gets sick. But as Paul says of Abraham, there’s a time to “hope against hope”—to contemplate how impossible change seems, but to believe God anyway, trusting that the impossible is possible with God.

My friend Jim Wallis says that hope is believing against the evidence, and watching the evidence change. In 1956—the year I was born—Dr. King could have felt that ending segregation in the US was impossible—like some may feel tackling global crises is—but he acted in “hope against hope.” And here we are, a generation later, and an African-American has a great chance of being President. We’re seeing the audacity of hope in front of our eyes.

Yes, We Can!

This brought tears to my eyes...



The Yes We Can Song
by will.i.am

I was sitting in my recording studio watching the debates...
Torn between the candidates

I was never really big on politics...
and actually I’m still not big on politics...
but 4 years ago, me and the black eyed peas supported Kerry...
And we supported Kerry with all our might...
We performed and performed and performed for the DNC...
doing all we could do to get the youth involved...

The outcome of the last 2 elections has saddened me...
on how unfair, backwards, upside down, unbalanced, untruthful,
corrupt, and just simply, how wrong the world and "politics" are...

So this year i wanted to get involved and do all i could early...

And i found myself torn...
because this time it’s not that simple...
our choices aren’t as clear as the last elections ...
last time it was so obvious...
Bush and war
vs
no Bush and no war...

But this time it’s not that simple...
and there are a lot of people that are torn just like i am...

So for awhile I put it off and i was going to wait until it was decided for me...

And then came New Hampshire...

And i was captivated...

Inspired...

I reflected on my life...
and the blessings I have...
and the people who fought for me to have these rights and blessings...

and I’m not talking about a "black thing"
I’m talking about a "human thing" me as a "person"
an American...

That speech made me think of Martin Luther King...
Kennedy...
and Lincoln...
and all the others that have fought for what we have today...

what America is "supposed" to be...

freedom...
equality...
and truth...

and thats not what we have today...
we think we are free...
but in reality terror and fear controls our decisions...

this is not the America that our pioneers and leaders fought and
died for...

and then there was New Hampshire

it was that speech...
like many great speeches...
that one moved me...
because words and ideas are powerful...

It made me think...
and realize that today we have "very few" leaders...
maybe none...

but that speech...

it inspired me...
it inspired me to look inside myself and outwards towards the world...
it inspired me to want to change myself to better the world...
and take a "leap" towards change...
and hope that others become inspired to do the same...
change themselves..
change their greed...
change their fears...
and if we "change that"
"then hey"..
we got something right...???...

1 week later after the speech settled in me...
I began making this song...
I came up with the idea to turn his speech into a song...
because that speech effected and touched my inner core like nothing in a very long time...

it spoke to me...

because words and ideas are powerful...

I just wanted to add a melody to those words...
I wanted the inspiration that was bubbling inside me to take over...

so i let it..

I wasn't afraid to stand for something...
to stand for "change"...
I wasn't afraid of "fear"...
it was pure inspiration...

so I called my friends...
and they called their friends...
in a matter of 2 days...
We made the song and video...

Usually this process would take months...
a bunch of record company people figuring out strategies and release dates...
interviews...
all that stuff...
but this time i took it in my own hands...
so i called my friends sarah pantera, mike jurkovac, fred goldring, and jesse dylan to help make it happen...
and they called their friends..
and we did it together in 48 hours...
and instead of putting it in the hands of profit we put it in the hands of inspiration...

then we put it on the net for the world to feel...

When you are truly inspired..
magic happens...
incredible things happen...
love happens..
(and with that combination)

"love, and inspiration"

change happens...

"change for the better"
Inspiration breeds change...

"Positive change"...

no one on this planet is truly experienced to handle the obstacles we face today...
Terror, fear, lies, agendas, politics, money, all the above...
It’s all scary...

Martin Luther King didn't have experience to lead...
Kennedy didn't have experience to lead...
Susan B. Anthony...
Nelson Mandella...
Rosa Parks...
Gandhi...
Anne Frank...
and everyone else who has had a hand in molding the freedoms we have and take for granted today...

no one truly has experience to deal with the world today...

they just need "desire, strength, courage ability, and passion" to change...
and to stand for something even when people say it's not possible...

America would not be here "today" if we didn’t stand and fight for
change "yesterday"...
Everything we have as a "people" is because of the "people" who fought for
change...
and whoever is the President has to realize we have a lot of changing to do

I'm not trying to convince people to see things how i do...
I produced this song to share my new found inspiration and how I've been moved...
I hope this song will make you feel...
love...
and think...
and be inspired just like the speech inspired me...

that’s all...

Thank you for reading and listening...
will.i.am