Tread lightly on the things of earth

[2005-02-15: I’ve added my Mon and Tues post-sermon notes at end of this entry.]
[2005-02-16: Added direct links to audio and text as provided here.]

Jim Wallis’ prophetic voice has always nailed me to the wall. In a good way. I have not thrown in the towel on Christianity — in significant part thanks to Jim. I’ve cited his work and articles numerous times in my entries here.

Hope follows in his footsteps, which is the best thing I can think of to say about anyone.

Today I see this in my mailbox:

Jim Wallis is coming to Memphis on his book tour for
God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It!

You are invited to attend noontime sermons at Calvary Episcopal Church on both Monday and Tuesday, February 14–15th, 2005. …

For additional information, please visit
http://www.calvaryjc.org/sermons.html

As you may already know, God’s Politics has made #4 on The New York Times Best-Sellers list, thanks to partners like you! We hope you can come out and continue to support the national movement for an alternative perspective on faith and values.

Jim Wallis is founder and editor of Sojourners and convener of Call to Renewal.

Click here for more information on his book tour:
http://go.sojo.net/ct/07qbKl51PX24/Godspolitics

Feb. 14–15, 2005 Memphis, TN
Calvary Church Lenten Noonday Preaching Series
Calvary Episcopal Church (12 – 1 p.m.)
102 North Second Street
http://www.calvaryjc.org

I am there. Done deal from the first word. Yes!

And my favorite teacher from MTS follows the next day. Yes again!
(update: Mitzi Minor, “Cast Out, But Made Whole,” audio)

Mon 2005-02-14 notes:

Jim’s talk today, key points from memory
(update: “The Shackles of Ideology,” audio, text):

• Ideology is a principality (to use Pauline terminology)

• This principality has seduced many of us, especially the Religious Right, rendering many of us fearful, hopeless, and ineffective

• Our struggle is against this principality and its resulting politics of, and religiosity of, fear

• We’re called to find and follow our true moral compass (which has more than two directions, Left and Right, and navigates through many more than two moral issues, abortion and homosexuality)

• This new [unseduced] conversation on moral values must include many more values, and many more participants, than it does now (for example, the bible devotes 3,000 verses to caring about poor people; one may infer that to God, fighting poverty is a moral value)

• We’re called to build a politics of hope:

Hope is believing in spite of the evidence, then watching the evidence change.

Jim mentioned 1,000s of incoming emails following his Daily Show appearance (direct video link) that said, over and over, “I had no idea Christians cared about the poor, or the environment (creation), or promoting peace instead of war.” Yikes. Whereas I’ve been stuck seeing this as “we’ve failed utterly” [at representing Jesus to the world], Jim sees the emails as evidence of hope igniting. He says the Religious Right monologue is over; a comprehensive dialogue has begun.

Note that Jim’s and other speakers’ messages are being made available as RealAudio streams [and text transcriptions]. (I’ll listen and clarify any mis-recollections above. He may not have used the term “Religious Right” as often as I’m reporting, as his emphasis is clearly the Religious All.)

Tues 2005-02-15 notes:

Jim’s talk today, key points from memory
(update: “The Public God,” audio, text):

• God’s relationship with us is public as well as private

• Individualistic [privatized?] religion [that is, 100% personal experience, scrupulously divorced from community and the public sphere] is the greatest [heresy] of the 20th century [implied: … but when present in the public sphere religion can’t be the twisted, principality-driven ideology that passes for “Christianity” today, but rather the honest-to-God real thing that loves the neighbor, tends the poor, welcomes the outcast, cares for creation, works even unto death for peace, and so on]

• U.S. government promises safety, invulnerability to salve our fear — but vulnerability is an inescapable aspect of being human, hence …

• Government can never deliver invulnerability, and while we spend ourselves (and our grandchildren) dry trying, we’re not trusting God to do the protecting, as he asks us to do

• Jesus’ most frequent words: “Don’t be afraid”

• Micah, the Old Testament prophet, Jim’s “favorite expert on national security,” speaks with relevance:

He shall judge between many peoples and shall decide for strong nations afar off, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree [each with a stake in the social and economic system], and none shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken it.

Aside: I’m fascinated that the New American Standard Bible labels this section of Micah as “Peaceful latter days,” indicating a [prophesied] future rather different from the violent, apocalyptic latter-days [dispensationalist] vision in vogue in many U.S. churches.

• We need a [religious] conversion from this politics of fear

• Which is likely more important to God, the distinction between civil unions and gay marriage, or that [half his children on the planet] don’t have enough to eat? [Or that we have the means to provide food, water, and medicine to most of his children who need them, but not the will?]

• It is our job [religion’s job] to provide the will

Note these are my recollections/interpretations of Jim’s words, far from verbatim. Listen to him directly [or see text transcriptions] for the (short) verbatim sermons.

Jim seems unflappable to me, passionate but not emotional. I want to be more like that. What if lots of us are indeed being grown now, through all our fits and starts, into this kind of true faith-based effectiveness? He thinks we are.

Thanks, Jim.