New Wine, New Wineskins

Leonardo Boff—a Protestant Catholic

Neighbors in Racial Reconciliation: The Contribution of a Trinitarian Theological Anthropology

The Ethics of Jesus or, Why Christian Values are a Bad Idea

High Pressure Zone Spirituality

A New Vision for Faith and Politics in America

A Chance to Show Off Jesus

Caught in the Whirlwind of God

The Cossack and the Cannibal World Tour

“The Scopes Trial, Fundamentalism, and the Creation of an Anti-Culture Culture: Can Evangelical Christians Transcend Their History in the Culture Wars?

The culture wars did not begin in 2004. In many respects, the warfare can be traced back to the hostilities between liberal and conservative Christianity culminating in the Scopes Trial in 1925, which pitted the traditional understanding of the Bible against Darwinism. Historian George Marsden has claimed that one can hardly overestimate the significance of the Scopes Trial for understanding the emerging Fundamentalist psyche. Harper seeks to show how the trial’s legacy continues to shape Fundamentalist and Evangelical sub-cultures, impacting their engagement of the broader culture to this day. The essay also explores ways in which both Left and Right might move beyond isolationist and polarizing practices and attitudes, working together to find common ground to pursue shared values and build “beloved community.”

‘Who’s Fighting and for What?’: Finding a Use for the Culture Wars

As we look at the culture wars of our own time with their ranks of implacable antagonists, Zinn urges us to pursue beloved community, not through avoiding conflict, but through a better, more discerning practice of conflict. Conflict is not the problem. The problem stems from styles of conflict which lack charity, and from tactics of conflict which neglect “the tools of liberal study,” among other things. Through reflections on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and Abraham Lincoln’s “Second Inaugural Address,” Zinn illustrates the potential of tools of liberal study, including “critical thinking, historical understanding,” and “an appreciation for the variety of ideas.”

Bumping into Ourselves: Awakening from the Sound-Bite Stupor

As condensed statements of belief, bumper stickers serve as regular reminders that some people share our ideas and other people don’t. Baxter offers a brief discussion of bumper stickers as a metaphor for contemporary reflexes we often bring to understanding and engaging belief-conflicts: our range of responses to bumper stickers illustrates how sound-bite attitudes and expectations shape our perceptions of others and hinder our practices in public dialogue. This “sound-bite stupor” can be seen in the ways that familiar metaphors like “culture war” coach attitudes and practices counterproductive for collective life. Drawing upon the insights of social and linguistic theorist Kenneth Burke, psychologist Michael Nicoles, and religious historian John Woodbridge, Baxter suggests ways to awaken from the sound-bite stupor by attending to patterns of reactivity, cultivating more complex and patient listening habits, and practicing more accessible and civic-building discourse.

Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?

Reflecting on the complexity of her own religious experience and the complex nature of Jesus, who “turns everything upside down—all our normal expectations,” and who is so unlike us in so many ways, Marilyn Sewell contends that we are all too comfortable with limited responses to the Jesus we profess to follow. We fund soup kitchens, but rarely ask uncomfortable questions about structures that sustain poverty. As a “Christian” nation, we are all too comfortable with war. While religious in many ways, we fail too often to recognize the uncomfortable truth that Jesus often associated with the unreligious: with prostitutes and the tax-collector traitors of the nation. As the essay reiterates, what is ultimately lost is the point that Jesus’ radical message focused on others, not on ourselves.

Getting Along in the 21st Century: Building Beloved Community

Through reflections on her own experiences as a social advocate and radio-talk-show host, Rice explores what personal integrity in “getting along” might look like. Taking us beyond merely getting through life and putting up with one another, the essay explores the real-life contours of accepting one another’s differences, agreeing to disagree, and respecting each other’s right to be wrong. Rice argues for both the livability and urgency of the Christian calling to not be hostile toward opponents, but to be counter-cultural, through humility, sacrifice, and understanding.

Venturing out of the Comfort Zone

Dundas offers a personal narrative of how writing a feature on evangelicals took him, as a writer for an alternative newspaper, out of his own comfort zone and into an important insight. The narrative becomes emblematic of the social challenges we face in America: we exist in a diverse society full of segmented pods of special interest, with a perpetual invitation to cocoon ourselves with others who share our values, interests, and tastes. This, Dundas remarks, is okay—as long as we remember there are other worlds out there, just as valid and rich as our own. Every one of us should make periodic efforts to learn a little bit about people who are not like us. Dundas winsomely reveals how researching the story helped him recognize the limits of his own preconceptions through an experience of diversity.

Mutuality and Particularity: Contours of Authentic Dialogue

How can the Christian community engage in authentic dialogue with other traditions in search of the mutuality so necessary for civil society and yet remain true to the particular truth claims of the Christian faith? This paper attempts an answer to this question by setting forth a Trinitarian model of authentic dialogue, one that pursues mutuality while preserving the particularity of the Christian truth claims. It is even argued that the Christian community is called and enabled to pursue such mutuality because of the particularity of the Trinitarian faith. The essay concludes with insights regarding the nature of dialogue. Dialogue assists those from diverse traditions persuade one another to go more deeply into their respective traditions in view of what they can learn from one another in search of sources that will advance further a compassionate form of shared existence.

All Wounds are Our Own

The essay argues that no matter how great the wall that divides or separates, there really is no “other” place. The connectedness of “me” and “you,” “self” and “other,” “near” and “far”—the deeper sense that we are all of one community, one body, as it were, whether we are aware of it or not, and whether or not we accept it. Carlson contends that greater appreciation of our interconnection can help moderate the divisions and rancor occurring in even the most homogeneous groups—for every injustice or injury hurts all in some way.

Dining with the ‘Other’

The essay illuminates the way in which the desire for community can and should outweigh our differences. Offering a narrative of how the desire to understand the “other” led people from both camps, Buddhist and Christian, to sit down over one table as one family for one dinnertime discussion. The discussion between the followers of Buddha and followers of Jesus sought to draw closer to one another while growing in a deeper understanding of what it means to be players upon the world’s stage.

Building the Bridge Back

The essay reflects on periodic efforts to learn a little bit about those who neither share nor “validate” our views. As Donald Miller points out, Jesus was comfortable hanging out with people who did not validate his views. The essay explores attitudes that both hinder and help us in bridging the cultural divides that became entrenched after the Scopes Monkey Trial. “Building the bridge back,” as Miller puts it, is a kind of action Evangelicals are attempting, but are not yet fully comfortable doing.