Advertisement During a question-and-answer session at a conference in St. Louis last week, a young Christian with a lip ring and red hair touching his shoulders wondered this: How do you vote when God isn’t on the ballot?
Standing in the front of the room, Shane Claiborne, a young Christian with whiskers and a bandanna over his long dreadlocks, answered with a story.
During a recent election, some of Claiborne’s friends paired with undocumented immigrants and cast their votes for candidates the immigrants chose. Through this, the voiceless gained a voice.
In the dominant narrative of our nation, the left cringes at the idea of God on a ballot and the right cringes at giving undocumented immigrants a voice. But a new narrative is emerging.
Describing their movement as a “new monasticism,” groups of Christians are relocating to what they describe as “the abandoned places of the empire,” and questioning capitalism and complacency, wealth and war.
“One thing I’ve learned from conservatives and liberals,” Claiborne said to hundreds of young Christians in the seats, “you can have all the right answers and still be mean.”
Claiborne, who was speaking at the Christian Commu-nity Development Association conference, is one of the best-known voices of the movement.
He lives in a community in Philadelphia called The Simple Way.
He’s been a guest on National Public Radio’s “Speaking of Faith” and authored the book “The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical.”
The Tennessee native speaks with a smile and heavy southern drawl, grew up in an Evangelical tradition and pointed people to Bible passages throughout his talk, “Jesus for President.”
And he’s just one of many who are living and articulating this new vision.
At other workshops at the conference, which together with Claiborne’s were named the School for Conversion, Christians spoke about justice in the suburbs, how the rich don’t know the poor, of farmers around the world committing suicide due to scandalous economic systems, of a schoolyard transformed into a garden and how baptism might mean you can’t live as a white or black person anymore.
Each one used the word “empire” to describe the United States.
Their movement also isn’t new. While last week’s speakers come from Evangelical traditions, they talked about
St. Benedict and St. Francis, Bonhoeffer and Mother Teresa, and quoted the Bible throughout.
Jonathan Wilson-Hart-grove, after giving a talk on race with Chanequa Walker-Barnes, told me a story in which the Good Muslim replaces the Good Samaritan.
It’s that mix — imagination based on an old, holy book — that’s creating the energy around these folks. I couldn’t help but wonder how these rabble-rousers might grow as hundreds of young people sang with Claiborne last week:
Come now and join the feast
From the greatest to the very least.
Come now and join the feast
Right here in the belly of the beast.
Joe Orso can be reached at (608) 791-8429 or jorso@lacrossetribune.com.
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Michael Welch wrote on Oct 20, 2007 11:57 AM: