Still sadder was that the one day recycling bins were set up, everyone threw their food trash into them… sigh…

Having brought my trusty metal water [...]]]> One of the saddest things about the Vineyard National Conference earlier this month was the lack of recycling. Hundreds of plastic water bottles were handed out like candy!

Still sadder was that the one day recycling bins were set up, everyone threw their food trash into them… sigh…

Having brought my trusty metal water bottle with me from Idaho, water was the least of my concerns. Nope, coffee was my bane.

Or, more specifically, the disposable coffee cup used to bring the liquid joy to my mouth.

At first, I started caring around an empty coffee cup and reusing it everything I could…yet that got annoying, and unhygienic…

Then I wondered into the Vineyard Church of North Phoenix’s coffee shop and noticed that they had reusable coffee mugs on sale. Having lost my good mug just before we left on the trip (i.e. Jadon dropped it on the floor and broke it), I decided to pick one up.

Problem solved.

I now could drink all the water and coffee/tea without feeling bad.

Yep. I think he should have titled his new book “Thinking UpStream: Fighting The Causes Of Poverty” instead of “Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God’s People“.

Why? Because Scott’s book isn’t just about being good stewards of God’s creation – it is a book geared towards getting past the [...]]]> Scott Sabin  “messed up”.

Yep. I think he should have titled his new book “Thinking UpStream: Fighting The Causes Of Poverty” instead of “Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God’s People“.

Why? Because Scott’s book isn’t just about being good stewards of God’s creation – it is a book geared towards getting past the symptoms of rural poverty and focusing on the root causes. It is a fantastic book showing the holistic nature of poverty and all the factors attributing to it.

For example, farmers in Haiti can no longer grow crops on their land due to the land being depleted, which leads them to cutting down trees to make charcoal to sell in town. The removal of the trees weakens the soil, leading to erosion that further destroys the land which washes downstream to the ocean, where it becomes a ‘hazard to fisheries and coral reefs.’

Meanwhile, the deforestation of the area leads to a decrease in rainfall and changes in precipitation – not to mention the fact that if there are no trees, then the water in the ground cannot get filtered properly, leading to polluted drinking water. Polluted water in turn causes sickness and disease which places more pressure on the farmer to find some kind of income in order to buy food and medicine for his family. Putting us right back to the beginning of the cycle.

The crazy part is that these farmers know what they are doing. They know that by cutting down the trees they are causing long term problems. But they also have a proverb, “Either this tree must die, or I must die in its place” (Haitian proverb).

In an effort to break the cycle, Scott and Plant With Purpose (the organization he leads) focus on repairing five different relationships:

“To heal humanity’s relationship with creation, Plant With Purpose encourages reforestation and sustainable agriculture. Providing economic opportunities by encouraging local enterprise creation addresses the relationships between people, as it levels the playing field for the disadvantaged and helps families stay together. Discipleship focuses on our relationship with God. By helping others follow Jesus and obey his commandments, thus fulfilling the Great Commission, we help to create a foundation upon which future development can be built.”

In a nutshell, if you are interested in thinking upstream and seeing how rural poverty can be stopped, then I would recommend reading Scott’s book “Tending To Eden.”  Then I would pick up Jayakumar Christian’s “God of the Empty-Handed: Poverty, Power and the Kingdom of God.” Read those two books and you will have a good foundation.

After that – well, go DO something.

• Go help those in your community that need help (i.e. food banks, homeless shelters, community gardens, etc).
• Support those who are both sharing God’s message of hope and thinking upstream (i.e. Plant With Purpose or other such groups).
• Be radical and change your lifestyle from a consumer driven one to a more sustainable one (i.e. buy less, use less, be happier)

And above all, pray. Pray for those in need and for those working along side them. Pray for His rule and reign to come on earth as it is in heaven.

_______________________________________________________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: Please note that I received this book free of cost from Plant With Purpose.  I was not required to write a positive review – meaning that all opinions expressed are my own and where not influenced by Plant With Purpose or Scott Sabin. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The premise of the article is that humanity has a “natural propensity toward guilt and indignation.” Throughout history, this guilt over “our very [...]]]> “Green Guilt” is the title of an article published last month (Jan 10th) by The Chronicle Review and written by Stephen T. Asma, a professor of philosophy at Columbia College Chicago.

The premise of the article is that humanity has a “natural propensity toward guilt and indignation.” Throughout history, this guilt over “our very existence” was challenged into aggression with each other. When that was not possible, due to social and religious rules, we “engage in a kind of self-denial, or self-cruelty.”

You can see our veiled value system better if you contrast it with the one that preceded Christianity. For the pagans, honor and pride were valued, but for the Christians it is meekness and humility; for the pagans it was public shame, for Christians, private guilt; for pagans there was a celebration of hierarchy, with superior and inferior people, but for Christians there is egalitarianism; and for pagans there was more emphasis on justice, while for Christians there is emphasis on mercy (turning the other cheek). Underneath all these values, according to Nietzsche, is a kind of psychology—one dominated by resentment and guilt.

With the decline of Christianity in the West, something had to rise up and take over the role of directing our “feelings of guilt and indignation”:

Environmentalism, as a substitute for religion, has come to the rescue. Nietzsche’s argument about an ideal God and guilt can be replicated in a new form: We need a belief in a pristine environment because we need to be cruel to ourselves as inferior beings, and we need that because we have these aggressive instincts that cannot be let out.

Instead of religious sins plaguing our conscience, we now have the transgressions of leaving the water running, leaving the lights on, failing to recycle, and using plastic grocery bags instead of paper. In addition, the righteous pleasures of being more orthodox than your neighbor (in this case being more green) can still be had—the new heresies include failure to compost, or refusal to go organic. Vitriol that used to be reserved for Satan can now be discharged against evil corporate chief executives and drivers of gas-guzzling vehicles. Apocalyptic fear-mongering previously took the shape of repent or burn in hell, but now it is recycle or burn in the ozone hole. In fact, it is interesting the way environmentalism takes on the apocalyptic aspects of the traditional religious narrative. The idea that the end is nigh is quite central to traditional Christianity—it is a jolting wake-up call to get on the righteous path. And we find many environmentalists in a similarly earnest panic about climate change and global warming. There are also high priests of the new religion, with Al Gore (“the Goracle”) playing an especially prophetic role.

My Thoughts

Now that you have the jest of the article, here a few of my thoughts:

1… Environmentalism – I first heard about this article through Dr. Albert Mohler’s radio program. During this program, Mohler, who is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, went on the offensiveness against anyone who supports taking care of the earth. For him, and a lot of Believers, to be a Christian means saving souls. Period.

This is where I disagree with Dr. Mohler.

The more I read the Bible, the more I see God’s heart for all of creation – animals, plants, earth, and humanity. This does NOT mean that animals and plants are equal with humanity – by no means! Humanity was made in the image of God with a purpose: to tend the garden – to be a steward of the earth and everything in it.

As such, I believe that we should care about “leaving the water running, leaving the lights on, failing to recycle, and using plastic grocery bags instead of paper.” I will even go as far as to stay that if we don’t care about these things, we are in effect, being very selfish and greedy – both of which are considered sins in the Bible.

2… Guilt – Yes, humanity has a bent towards guilt. It is a result of sin and the fallen state of humanity. Jesus came to destroy sin, death and all its effects – including guilt.

As Slaves and Followers of the One True God – the Creator of Heaven and Earth – we should be the most guiltless people on the planet. Paul told the church that “everything is permissible—but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible—but not everything is constructive”. (1 Corinthians 10:23)

In other words, we should not be the guilt ridden folks that we are. We have the freedom of Christ!! It is not about reading your Bible, praying, going to church, doing good deeds! Yes, those are good things – but they are to be done out of a heart of service; out of love for Jesus.

Not guilt. Not fear. Not manipulation.

Love.

Love that leads to joining Him in His mission of redeeming His creation for His glory and His honor.

If there was one sin that the church as a whole needs to repent, this would be it. We have followed the wrong voice into a pit of despair – laying aside the freedom of Christ for the chains of guilt.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a patch of ocean approximately twice the size of Texas filled with trash. Granted most of the trash is little bitty pieces of plastic – so small that [...]]]> I was reading my local newspaper today when I ran across an article about the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch".

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a patch of ocean approximately twice the size of Texas filled with trash. Granted most of the trash is little bitty pieces of plastic – so small that it is hard to locate the "Garbage Patch" from the air or to determine its boundaries.

The article I read today was all about these little pieces of plastic. Apparently, some scientists "took hundreds of water samples between the Farallon Islands near San Francisco and the notorious garbage patch 1,000 miles west of California, and every one had tiny bits of plastic floating in it."[@more@]

This is a problem because tiny jellyfish are eating the "tiny, confettilike pieces of broken plastic." While this doesn't sound like a problem, it becomes one when you realize that the jellyfish are eaten by salmon or tune, which in turn are eaten by humans.

Sigh

It is crazy how much plastic is produced globally…granted, some plastic products have a long life cycle (like picnic tables or computer monitors).

Unfortunately, most of the plastic products we use are designed for one-time use (water bottles, food packaging, etc)….

I don't know….I don't have any answers…. I just knows that it is hurts to see our oceans covered in tiny pieces of plastic just because of convenience.

Yet, a few years ago a young man named Ben Lowe volunteered to wait in the Boise airport for an additional hour so that he could car pool with another conference attendee. [...]]]> Airports are not fun places to wait. They have hard seats and, depending on the location, very few stores to browse.

Yet, a few years ago a young man named Ben Lowe volunteered to wait in the Boise airport for an additional hour so that he could car pool with another conference attendee. As the “designated taxi service”, this was a HUGE blessing to me as it meant one less trip to and from the airport.

It also meant less fuel used and less carbon exhaust – a big thing concerning Ben was in Boise to attend the 2007 Let’s Tend The Garden environmental stewardship conference.

Such was my introduction to Ben Lowe.

Side note: Writing this introduction makes me think of the last evening of the conference. That night after the conference had ended, Ben, Lyndsay Moseley (Sierra Club), Richard Cizik (VP for Governmental Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals) and myself went downtown and stayed up late talking about everthing under the sun. Ah – good memorizes.

Two years later it is my pleasure to review Ben’s first book, Green Revolution: Coming Together to Care for Creation.[@more@]

As you all know, I read a LOT of books: theology books, history books, environment books, and some fiction books. Most of the books I read aren’t very…let’s say…captivating. They are powerful, but not in a senses that they drawn you into the pages and focus your attention.

Green Revolution was different.

It drew you in – not just into the pages, but into a movement that is sweeping the country. No longer was I an individual trying to be a good steward of the God’s wonderful earth. I was a part of something greater then myself.

Unlike some environmental books – Christian or not – Ben does not “preach” at you through the pages. There no lists of shoulds or should nots – nor were there any chapters condemning one group or another. Instead, Ben told the stories of regular people serving God through their personal lives, church, university and/or non-profit organization. These stories were held together by the greater theme of God’s work in the land.

I can’t help but smile as I think about my feelings as I read Green Revolution. Feelings of joy, excitement and happiness at hearing about the hand of God across this nation and world.

Green Revolution isn’t about global warming or any kind of political addenda – it is simply God at work.  

Out of all the Christian environmental stewardship books I have read, this one is at the top of my list. It is well worth the investment.

Good reading.

Ben is currently working as the Co-Coordinator for Renewal, a Christ-centered creation care network that focuses on living in right relationship with God. Check out their webpage here.

Warning: the article is quite long as it was written for [...]]]> A while back I mentioned that I was interviewed by Sojourners Magazine for an article about young evangelicals and politics. Today I’m proud to bring you the completed article as reported online (the printed magazine won’t be out for another few weeks).

Warning: the article is quite long as it was written for a magazine not a blog… But I’m sure you all will enjoy it.

FYI – you can listen to my interview with Sojourners online here. Note that you have give them your name and email before you can listen to the interview…but it’s there.

The Meaning of 'Life'

Once thought to be in the pocket of the Religious Right, many American evangelicals today are discovering a deeper understanding of what it means to be pro-life.

by Jim Rice and Jeannie Choi

Joshua Hopping of Sweet, Idaho, helped put George W. Bush in the White House, and four years later helped keep him there. As an evangelical Christian, Hopping was part of the so-called “values voters” bloc that some pundits credit with Bush’s electoral success.[@more@]

But this year, Hopping isn’t a lock to support the Republican ticket. He says he’s open to consider which candidate best embodies his Christian values—and that very openness represents what could be one of the most significant shifts in this election season, because evangelicals, especially those under 30, are no longer a safe bet to vote for the furthest-right option on the ballot.

Why the loosening of party attachment? The questions that matter most to Hopping, 28, aren’t as narrowly defined as they used to be. He says he’ll be paying close attention to what the candidates are saying about the issues most important to him, which now include not only abortion and same-sex marriage but also the environment, poverty, and immigration—“and that’s not even counting the war in Iraq, health care, social security, and all those other things that are important,” Hopping told Sojourners. Looking at the records of the two parties on those issues, Hopping says, gave him pause about the unquestioned convictions he held in the past. “I said, ‘wait a minute,’ I want to take another look and see who’s out there, who actually cares about life beyond the womb.” Hopping says this line of thinking feels outside of his conservative comfort zone, but he cannot ignore his new convictions, particularly about the environment.

“Eight years ago, I began working in the environmental field, and it really hit me that God tells us to take care of the environment. The more I read the Bible, I see that the environment affects the poor, the young, and the old—the same people God said to go reach,” he says.

While Hopping may seem like an anomaly, recent reports show that he is not alone. “Since about 2005 we have seen a sharp decline in the number of people calling themselves Republicans,” reported Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center, based on surveys released in early September. “Evangelical voters have displayed a great deal of dissatisfaction with the current state of things, including the Republican Party,” said John C. Green, senior fellow in religion and American politics at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

And while polls showed a surge of evangelical support for the Republican ticket after the nomination of Sarah Palin, Keeter said that it was unlikely to last: “Some of what we are seeing now may be, if not ephemeral, subject to change with further events in the campaign.”

Since there has not been a correlating increase in young evangelical affiliation with the Democratic Party, some observers feel that the evangelical vote is much less predictable than in years past—and may hinge on the question of whether a narrow concept of what it means to affirm life is enough.

To get a better picture of how evangelical views are changing, Sojourners interviewed 21 people from nine cities—including Seattle; Columbus, Ohio; Boston; Leawood, Kansas; Atlanta; Houston; Pittsburgh, and Boise, Idaho—representing six different ethnicities and ranging from ages 26 to 66. The conversations suggested a significant shift in evangelical viewpoint—a transformation with the potential to shake up not only political assumptions but the very face of evangelicalism in the years to come.

Upholding All Life

For most evangelicals, being “pro-life” continues to be the central factor in their political discernment. That fact has led some political observers to declare that evangelicals will once again support the Republican ticket this fall in overwhelming numbers (in 2004, George Bush won 79 percent of the 26.5 million evangelical votes, according to exit polling).

But this year, many evangelicals, especially among those born since the 1970s, are coming to understand “pro-life” in broader ways, and the impact of that new perspective remains to be seen. As Time Magazine’s Amy Sullivan put it in early September, “While Palin is inspiring rhapsodies from the lions of the Christian right, her appeal to more moderate and younger evangelicals—as well as independent swing voters—may be limited.”

For instance, a self-described anti-abortion evangelical commenting on “Jesus Creed,” a leading blog of the emergent church, wrote that policies that fight poverty, work for health-care justice, and generally improve economic conditions for poor and working-class people will likely result in the number of abortions decreasing much more than under an administration that simply declares itself opposed to Roe vs. Wade—and thus supporting the former initiatives should arguably be considered more “pro-life” than the latter.

Those efforts to address the root factors that have been shown to contribute to increased numbers of abortions—“abortion-reduction” measures—speak to the desire of many evangelicals to move from divisive rhetoric about abortion to actual results. Adam Hamilton, founding pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resur rection outside of Kansas City, Kansas, says a key question is, “‘Are you interested in actually reducing the number of abortions even if you can’t completely sway people to your opinion?’ I think that’s where the abortion debate needs to move.”

The abortion-reduction issue became a focal point at both of the national conventions this summer, with the parties moving in opposite directions. The Democrats, pushed by evangelicals, Catholics, and others, added abortion-reduction language to their platform: “We also recognize that … health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions. The Demo cratic Party also strongly supports a woman’s decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre- and post-natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs.”

The Republican Party, on the other hand, took a step back from abortion-reduction language. As The Wall Street Journal put it, “For all their pro-life pieties, the Republicans at this year’s convention, while asserting their opposition to Roe, dropped platform language that invited ‘all persons of good will, whether across the political aisle or within our party, to work together to reduce the incidence of abortion.’”

Commenting on the party platforms, Cameron Strang, editor of Relevant Magazine, said that commitments to reduce the number of abortions could appeal to young evangelicals who have a more “holistic” view of the meaning of “pro-life.”

For some evangelicals, even those who consider themselves strongly pro-life, the issue of abortion doesn’t have a lot of influence on how they vote in presidential elections. For example, Bo Lim, a member of Quest Church in Seattle, said that abortion, along with several other moral concerns, “don’t rise to the top of my list of issues in regard to the election because of the limited role the president or our government can do in regard to these issues.”

Evangelicals across the country tell stories of their own transformation from a narrow concern for one or two issues to a broader understanding of the Christian call. Eugene Cho in many ways exemplifies these “new evangelicals.”

When Cho started Seattle’s Quest Church in 2001, he began with a handful of people meeting in his living room. Quest Church has grown to a congregation of more than 500 members, many of them young evangelical Christ ians.

“Personally, I don’t want to be defined by one or two issues,” Cho says. “Obviously two of the bigger issues that are highlighted by certain groups of the Christian segment are gay marriage and abortion. And while I acknowledge that they are important to me, I simply don’t elevate them over other issues. I must juxtapose them with the war in Iraq, local and global poverty, and human rights.”

That opinion is shared by Rich Nathan, pastor of Vineyard Church of Columbus in Columbus, Ohio, and host of last spring’s Justice Revival, co-sponsored by Sojourners. As the pastor of one of the largest churches in the Vineyard movement, with more than 6,500 members, Nathan considers the importance of the sanctity of life and the “least of these” when thinking about the upcoming elections.

“I believe that the measure of a culture is how we treat the weakest person in the culture, the most defenseless,” Nathan says. As a result, a serious abortion-reduction plan remains one of the most important issues for Nathan as he decides whom to vote for in November. But the weakest and most defenseless people in a culture do not only include unborn children, Nathan says.

“God is always on the side of the marginalized, the people who are the weakest and poorest. That includes the unborn and their mothers, but it also includes people who lack health insurance and folks who can’t find jobs in a global economy. It includes children and women who are being trafficked into sex slavery, and it includes the people of Darfur,” Nathan told Sojourners.

This broader perspective has loosened party attachment for many evangelicals. As Marlon Hall, pastor of The Awakenings Movement, a Houston church, put it, “I’m not voting for a candidate or a party; I’m voting for principles.”

Similarly, for Teresa Norman, a member of Cho’s Seattle congregation, being pro-life is more than just a side to take in the abortion debate; rather, it is a consistent ethic with which to consider other issues.

“To be consistently pro-life would mean being pro-everyone’s-life, not just the lives of the unborn and not just those who are demographically, economically, racially, culturally, or religiously similar to us,” she says.

The Impact of the War

Support for the sanctity of life affects the views of many evangelicals on the Iraq war. That’s the case for Sokol Haxhi nasto, a member of Park Street Church, a historic evangelical church in Boston, founded in 1809, where William Lloyd Gar rison delivered his first major public address against slavery. Since 2003, Haxhinasto has been dismayed by America’s presence in Iraq.

“From the Christian point of view, the war does not send a message of loving your enemies,” Haxhinasto, a doctoral student at Harvard Medical School, told Sojourners. “The war is certainly not pro-life, and so I wonder, how can you be pro-life on abortion and then go into a war that isn’t pro-life?”

Pat McWherter, a member of Vineyard Church of Columbus and a retired Vietnam War veteran, agrees. For McWherter, his Christian convictions and his firsthand experience with war are enough for him to believe that the war in Iraq must end.

“We got into the Iraq war, right or wrong, and now we have an obligation to develop and execute a political and military endgame that will ensure that the Iraqi people have a stable and viable government to conduct their country’s affairs and provide for their sovereignty,” McWherter asserts. “Once accomplished, U.S. troops should be compelled to come home.”

Haxhinasto and McWherter are not lone voices for peace in the evangelical community. For Cho, dissatisfaction with the Iraq war grew over time. “This issue has become increasingly important over the last four years,” Cho says. “I am eager to carefully scrutinize not only the respective candidates’ views on the war, but their overall vision in engaging the larger world—both friend and foe.”

That raises an issue that many evangelicals consider equally important to a timely exit from Iraq: fostering improved relations around the world. For Dan Ra, 26, a member of The Living Room, an emergent community in Atlanta, U.S. foreign policy in recent years has altered his political perspective. “Eight years ago I was a freshman in college, and I didn’t know who to vote for,” Ra says. “Most of my Christian friends were voting for Bush and my non-Christian friends were voting for Gore, and I guessed it would have been appropriate to vote for Bush, since I had aligned with what my Christian friends believed. Since then, though, the more aware I became, the more upset I became.”

Ra says that he’s “tired” of U.S. militarism. “I am tired of an America that plays the bully,” he says. “America needs to re-establish itself as a fair country, and what we’re doing in Iraq and what we’re not doing in Sudan, and what we’re not doing even in our own country by not closing down Guantanamo Bay, is sending a message to the rest of the world that we are a bunch of militaristic cowboys.”

For Nathan, pastor of the Columbus Vineyard church, improved foreign relations is as much a concern for the church as it is a concern for the government, and he says he’s troubled by “surveys that the rest of the world hold America in almost complete disdain. We rank lower than China and Russia across the globe as threats to global peace. As a result, it’s increasingly difficult for American missionaries to gain a hearing in and around the world, particularly in Muslim countries.” Missionaries recently came to Nathan to plead with him to tell American Christians to have a more balanced perspective regarding Middle Eastern policy, and particularly to urge Americans to care about the rights of Palestinians. For too long, Nathan says, U.S. Christians have maintained a narrow view of the world. Today, their ideas of justice and mercy must expand beyond this continent, into the furthest reaches of the world.

“I am a citizen of the kingdom and a citizen of the world before I am a citizen of America,” he says. “As a Christian, I can’t think only in terms of narrow American self-interest. I really do need to think about what will promote the kingdom of God and God’s agenda.”

Caring for All Creation

Considering oneself a citizen of the world, as Nathan says, has compelled many evangelicals to also view the environment as an important issue for the upcoming election—an issue that has, until recently, been largely considered a “liberal” cause. For many evangelicals, caring for the creation is inextricably linked to God’s mandate to Adam and Eve in Genesis.

“Creation care has certainly grown to become an issue of greater importance for me, more so than previous elections,” says Jason Chatraw, a member of Vineyard Boise church in Boise, Idaho, “but it has for every candidate in every local, state, and national election—which I believe is a good thing and probably a result of the growing number of evangelicals involved in this movement.”

Hamilton, Church of the Resur rection pastor in Kansas, sees this election as an important opportunity to address issues of waste and consumption in the United States. “People want to think differently about the environment, and it’s a wonderful moment to retrain people’s habits,” Hamilton says.

Tri Robinson, pastor of Vineyard Boise, began to see environmental matters in a new light after an eventful conversation with his two young-adult children. “They came to me and said, as Christians, they had nobody to vote for,” Robinson remembers. “On the one hand, they would have to vote against the sanctity of life, and on the other hand, they would have to vote against caring for the environment.” This conversation launched Robinson into a deep and careful look into the scriptures, where he was surprised to find an overwhelming call from God for creation care. This led to his writing several books about the Christian call to creation care, including Saving God’s Green Earth: Rediscovering the Church’s Responsibility to Environ mental Stewardship.

Several formative trips he took to Burma from 1982 to 1985 also informed Robinson’s understanding that the issue of creation care was linked to problems of poverty and even human sex trafficking in developing nations abroad. “There wasn’t a bird chirping or one moving or living thing in that land,” Robinson says, “and I realized that a bad environment leads to polluted water, which leads to infant mortality, world hunger, illiteracy, and even human trafficking in the face of a dying economy. You can’t deal with isolated issues. All of these problems are related.”

An Interconnected World

Robinson represents many of the new evangelical voters who are coming out of their conservative traditions and challenging themselves to see the world in a different way—as a world where one issue is connected to another through a series of systems. The fragile environment contributes to a broken economic system that creates a society of haves and have-nots. The resulting injustice is what is compelling most, if not all, of these new evangelical voters to look beyond wedge issues to fight for the rights of all people.

Social justice, then, remains at the heart of the new evangelical voters’ focus in this election year, as demonstrated by Irene Yoon, a member of Quest Church in Seattle and a fervent advocate of efforts to help African peacekeepers in Darfur and to aid people in North Korea, China, sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere.

“We must pursue justice to the best of our ability in our day-to-day lives. As we must love our neighbors, to me, that means taking care of each other,” Yoon says. Caring for our local and global neighbors is a more vital role for government to play than policing the issues of gay marriage and abortion, she says, which are personal issues between individuals and God. “God decides in the end who is righteous and who is not.”

For Emily Brixius, a church mate of Yoon’s at Quest Church, one of the key ways to care for our neighbors is adequate health care for all. “I really view health care as a moral issue,” says Brixius, 27. “If a country is going to uphold an ethic of life, then health care has to be a part of that.” Christian Chin, another member of Quest Church, agrees that access to health care is a central moral issue for Christians. “It’s a disgrace that nearly 50 million people do not have any coverage in a nation as wealthy as ours,” Chin says. “We need universal health care now.”

Nimma Bhusri, a member of The Vineyard Church of Ohio, thinks that issues such as the global AIDS crisis, genocide in Darfur, and particularly child prostitution and human trafficking are important to consider in the upcoming elections, a realization she has come to in her own devotional life and in her career as a fashion designer.

“Living in central Ohio can become a bubble, but Darfur has been a huge issue that has been on the radar. I’ve been much more exposed to the cause, and also to the cause of human trafficking,” Bhusri says. “Therefore, I understand that even though I am a fashion designer in Ohio, I am responsible for AIDS in Africa and for caring for the global poor.”

“Social injustice is near to the heart of God,” explains Chatraw of Vineyard Boise. “It’s when as a Christian that I feed the poor, tend to the sick, and care for the orphans and widows that I fully embody the love of Christ.”

It is precisely this inclusive thinking that exemplifies the remarkable transformation that has come over a demographic whose votes in previous elections were predictably based upon two wedge issues. Many evangelicals today are no longer comfortable voting on a narrow understanding of what constitutes a “pro-life” stance.

“God is always on the side of life,” Rich Nathan insists. “Jesus said, ‘I am not only the truth, but I am the life.’ And so we always press for the preservation of life. We always press toward the inclusion of our neighbors.”

Jim Rice is editor and Jeannie Choi assistant editor of Sojourners.

First things first – that you all for your help with an anniversary ideas.  There was a TON of great suggestions… however, I’m going to go with:

Giving her an electrical toothbrush

What do you think?

I spent a lot of time and effort thinking this one through – [...]]]> What a headline!

First things first – that you all for your help with an anniversary ideas.  There was a TON of great suggestions… however, I’m going to go with:

Giving her an electrical toothbrush

What do you think?

I spent a lot of time and effort thinking this one through – and I’m sure it’s a winner!!!

Yeah – I’ll let you know how it works….. (if I’m still breathing and able to type)  [@more@]

The second item to be handled is the interview with the Sojourners Magazine:

It went very well – the lady asked me what political issues concerned me the most, and then she let me talk for 20 minutes. Yelp – she didn’t even interpret once! Which, honestly, was quite disturbing:

• Did she fall a sleep?
• Did she have a heart attack?
• Was she faking a heart attack?
• Maybe while she was faking a heart attack, she had a real heart attack…
• Was the phone even on?
• Can you hear me now?

As wild as all this is, do you know what the most disturbing / scary part of the whole interview was?  I stopped talking after 20 minutes!!!!

Horrors of horrors!!! I must be getting old!!! I can no longer talk for more the 20 minutes with out pausing for a breath of air (granted it was a yellow air quality day…) or a drink of water!  Grrrrrrrrrrrr   My life is no longer valid. I must take matters into my own hands – this MUST be corrected!

Right after I give Em her electrical toothbrush.

This led to a shortage of parking [...]]]> Downtown Boise was a mess this weekend!!  Not only was the Idaho Green Expo going on, but next door (literally) Beth Moore was hosting an event.  Not to be left out, the area between the two events was hosting it's own function – ie. a farmers market.

This led to a shortage of parking spaces, tons of exhaust flumes and a multitude of people. The later was welcome while the former items were despised…

Overall, this was the BEST conference or expo we've ever attended! News reports have stated that over 15,000 people went through the Expo – many of whom we got to talk too.  In fact, I believe we talked to more people and sold more items then ever before!  Shoot, we had to print more Re:From brochures Sunday morning as we ran out!

Here are few stories from the Expo:[@more@]

1) The Love Justice & LTTG combo worked great! I talked to one presenter who kinda understood the environment side of our ministry, but could understand how the human injustice part fit in. This opened the door for me to share the heart of God. It was a God moment!

2) The t-shirts were a great conversation starter – one guy even chased down M and asked him where he got the shirt. That led into a wonderful opportunity for M to share a bit about about God and what the church is doing.

3) We had a lot of people come up to the booth who had heard of the Vineyard, but didn't know anything about it. As such, we were able to answer their questions about the church and put them at ease about visiting. Lord knows how many coffee cards we gave out!!!

Coffee cards = small brochures about the Vineyard Boise with a free espresso coupon. Yeah – we have an espresso bar in the church. It is the Northwest after all!

The Kingdom of Heaven was advanced this weekend! 

Thanks for all your prayers!!!