Deep and Wide: On the Importance of Expanding One’s Worldview

Many of you remember the children’s church song “Deep and Wide,” which some say teaches kids the depth and limitless amount of God's love for us. Perhaps it does. But recently I have been thinking about those words in a much different way. Can we also have a deep and wide worldview? 

(Photo taken in Florida by Barbara Stellwagen)

Developing a deep and wide worldview is something that all of us who grew up as regular participants in Sunday School and church worship services needed, or maybe still need, to do. That is because our respective worldviews were largely shaped by what we learned there.

Few people would think that their understanding of history, science, economics, and the like that they had as children or teenagers would be sufficient for grasping the contemporary world. The need to have deeper and wider knowledge is readily acknowledged in those areas.

Why should it be different with regard to one’s worldview or theology? (Note that I am referring to theology not just as an academic study but as “faith seeking understanding.”) The search for greater comprehension of reality can and should be engaged in on several different levels.

As I have written in a previous blog post, I was greatly influenced as a third-year college student by D. Elton Trueblood’s book, Philosophy of Religion (1957), in which he emphasized that an unexamined faith is not worth having.*¹ An unexamined worldview is also far less than adequate.

My philosophy of religion college course with Trueblood’s book as the text helped me greatly in beginning to develop a deeper and wider understanding of Christianity, the foundation of my worldview. That process has lasted for more than sixty-five years now. Learning and growing must never end.

Jim Wallis has emphasized the importance of going deeper. Many of you will remember that I have spoken highly of Jim in the past. In fact, he is on my “top ten” list of stimulating/challenging speakers/writers I have heard/read in my lifetime.

Wallis’s book God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It (2005) is on my top ten list of favorite 21^st-century non-fiction books. It was probably there that I first saw the words, “Don’t go right, don’t go left, go deeper.”*²

Those words apply both to theology and to politics—and perhaps to many other aspects of our worldview as well. Even with a broader view of things, one can still be situated near the extreme right or the extreme left. More important is having a deeper understanding, not just a wider one.

In Jim’s newest book, The False White Gospel (2024), he tells how he became estranged from the conservative evangelical church and the theology that he had grown up in. He joined many others who were protesting the war in Vietnam, racism, and poverty.

He says that like many student activists at that time, around 1970, he was seeking answers by reading Karl Marx, Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara. But then he realized that he “needed something deeper.” He found that first by reading Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

Jim Wallis’s going deeper also led him to go wider.

In 1971 when he and his friends began publishing what became Sojourners magazine, it was mainly in protest of U.S. warfare in Vietnam. Now they say their mission is “to articulate the biblical call to social justice, inspiring hope and faith-rooted action” (from the August 2024 issue of Sojourners).

“There is a Wideness in God’s Mercy” is one of my favorite hymns. It was written by Frederick Faber (1814~63), an English clergyman.*³

1 There’s a wideness in God’s mercy / like the wideness of the sea.
There’s a kindness in God’s justice, / which is more than liberty.

3 But we make God’s love too narrow / by false limits of our own,
and we magnify its strictness / with a zeal God will not own.

4 For the love of God is broader / than the measures of the mind
and the heart of the Eternal / is most wonderfully kind.

Like Jim Wallis, many of us grew up in churches that had a theology that was too shallow and too narrow. I am grateful that Wallis has helped some of us develop a deeper theology/worldview—and also that Faber’s marvelous hymn text inspires us to embrace a wider view of God’s mercy and love.

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*¹ I wrote about this in a June 2018 blog article, which referred to that same subject in the 16^th chapter of my book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2019).

*² Even though this book was published nearly 20 years ago, Wallis still uses those words often. In The False White Gospel, his book published in April of this year, he writes, “As I always advise my students, ‘Don’t go right. Don’t go left. Go deeper’” (p. 35). He also has those words on his “God’s Politics” Substack opening page (see here; click “No thanks” at the bottom to read without subscribing).

*³ Faber was ordained in the Church of England in 1839, but he greatly admired John Henry Newman (1801~90) and followed him in converting to the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. His hymn was first published in 1854 and more verses were added later. The words above are from the Voices Together hymnal (2020), and the text is from an 1861 hymnal.

Resisting White Christian Nationalism

“Christian nationalism” has become a widely maligned target for many in the mainstream and left-wing news media, for many former (especially “exvangelical”) Christians, and for many “nones.” But there are also Christians who (mistakenly, I believe) promote that position.

The term “Christian nationalism” is used, and misused, in a variety of ways, and it is not easy to define it non-controversially. Here, though, is a succinct definition by two sociologists that gets to the heart of the matter:

Christian nationalism is a cultural framework…that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life.*¹  

MORE² is a local group in the Kansas City area,*² and its “clergy caucus” is actively resisting White Christian nationalism—and it should be recognized upfront that Christian nationalism is largely promoted and abetted by White (and male) Christians.

The picture above is of a poster given to each of us who attended the May 9 rally sponsored by MORE² and held in Quindaro, Kansas City (Kan.). Stephen Jones, co-pastor of the First Baptist Church of Kansas City (Mo.), is the leader of the clergy caucus, and his church emphasizes the Beloved Community.

There are many good resources for learning/sharing about the meaning of White Christian nationalism and its threat to democracy and religious freedom in the U.S. Here are some of those for you to consider:

◈ The Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty (BJC) has long been working on issues related to religious freedom and church-state separation. At the meeting on resisting Christian nationalism organized by Pastor Jones in Kansas City on March 7, a staff member from BJC was the guest speaker.

In 2019, the BJC launched a new movement called “Christians Against Christian Nationalism.” In December 2022, Time magazine ran a rather lengthy article about Amanda Tyler, the executive director of the BJC, and the work of that new group she started.

◈ The documentary movie Bad Faith was released on March 29, and it is a highly informative film depicting the growth of the Christian nationalist movement in the U.S. from the 1970s to the present. I encourage you to read about this powerful film on their website*²—and to see it, if possible.

In stark contrast to my high praise of Bad Faith, it is strongly criticized by some conservative evangelicals. For example, a review on MovieGuide.org says that it is “a bad, abhorrent piece of progressive propaganda” produced by “Christian socialists” such as William Barber, the “heretical black activist.”

◈ Jim Wallis’s new book The False White Gospel was published on April 4, and as I wrote in my review of that book,*⁴ he avers that the old heresy of white supremacy is now operating with a new name: white Christian nationalism.

That heresy, he says, is “the single greatest threat to democracy in America and to the integrity of the Christian witness” (p. 17). 

◈ The Summit for Religious Freedom, conducted by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AU) was held in Washington D.C. on April 14. The May issue of Church and State (C&S), AU’s monthly periodical, is largely about that. I encourage you to read about it here. *⁵

As Rachel Laser, the Jewish woman who is the president and CEO of AU, writes in the above issue of C&S, “The wall of separation between church and state is not a wall that divides us; it’s a wall that unites us—that ensures no one is favored, that allows us to thrive in our differences.”

In summary, we who oppose White Christian nationalism need to clearly state what we are for, not just what we are against (as Wallis emphasizes in the last chapter of his book). Broadly speaking, we are for the freedom of religion for everyone.

We are also for the freedom of Black people, Latinx people, Indigenous people, LGBTQ people, immigrants seeking asylum, and others who are so often mistreated and scorned by those who foster Christian nationalism. (I will be writing more about freedom (= Liberty) in my blog post planned for May 30.)

Let’s resist White Christian nationalism and welcome all into the Beloved Community!

_____

*¹ Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God (2020), p. 10. Whitehead is also the author of American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church (2023).

*² MORE² stands for the Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity. It was formed in 2004 and is financed by supporting “members,” most of whom are churches in the area, now including Rainbow Mennonite Church (where I am a member). Ruth Harder (my pastor) spoke at the beginning and end of the May 9 rally.

*³ One of the many prominent progressive Christians speaking in that documentary is Randall Balmer, an ordained Episcopal priest and a professor of religion at Dartmouth College. Balmer (b. 1954) is also the author of Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right (2021). Further, last month he wrote an important article on Christian nationalism, published here.

*⁴ The book review I submitted to The Englewood Review of Books (ERB) last week is available for your consideration here. It should be available on the ERB website before long.

*⁵ Last week I learned that after 20 years of writing for Baptists Today, Baptist News Global, and Good Faith Media, Thinking Friend Bruce Gourley has become the new editor of Church and State.  

 

Hopeful, But Not Optimistic

A good friend recently wrote, “My usual optimism is fading.” I responded, “I am sorry to hear that your optimism is waning—but that is not necessarily a bad thing, for it is better to be realistic than optimistic. And don’t give up hope; there is a difference between hope and optimism.”

So, what is that difference, and can a person actually be hopeful but not optimistic?

Defining Terms

Some definitions of optimism and hope sound as if they are synonyms. Here is the definition from Dictionary.com for optimism: “a disposition or tendency to look on the more favorable side of events or conditions and to expect the most favorable outcome.”

By contrast, hope means to work for and to wait for something with the confident expectation and anticipation that it will at some point, sooner or later, be fulfilled.

Optimism is an aspect of a person’s disposition or temperament. People with a sunny temperament are usually optimists, people with dark dispositions are mostly pessimists.

Hope, though, is a theological virtue. As Jim Wallis writes in his 2019 book Christ in Crisis, hope “is not simply a feeling, or a mood . . . . It is a choice, a decision, an action based on faith. . . . Hope is the engine of change. Hope is the energy of transformation” (p. 264).

Later in that book, Wallis reiterates what he has often said: “Hope means believing in spite of the evidence, then watching the evidence change” (p. 281).

And here are wise words from an Irish poet: 

So, yes, a person can be hopeful even if he/she is not optimistic. Thus, I like what Black theologian/philosopher Cornel West tweeted back in January 2013: “I cannot be optimistic but I am a prisoner of hope.”

Emphasizing Action

A key difference between optimism and hope, as defined/described above, is this: optimism doesn’t demand anything of us (everything is going to be all right!), but hope entails effort as we endeavor to actualize that for which we hope.

Like the Kingdom of God, hope also demands that we work for what we hope for, knowing that it might well be a long time before that hope will be realized.

The New Testament says that “now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13, NRSV). But faith and hope are a close third and second.

Further, the New Testament also declares that “faith without actions is dead” (James 2:26, Common English Bible). But isn’t it true to say that not just faith, but both love and hope without actions are also dead?

Love is not simply a feeling or an emotion. It is often said that "love is a verb,” and I believe that is true. Love is something that is best expressed not in words, but in action.

And so it is with hope.

Assessing the Future

So, linking this to my 10/25 post, what about the future of this country under the current President and Congress?

To be honest, I am not very optimistic about this year’s pending legislation or about the elections of 2022 or 2024. But I am hopeful for the future. If this year’s legislation doesn’t turn out well, I will do what little I can to help elect better members of Congress in 2022.

And if the elections of 2022 turn out to be a disappointment, again I will do what little I can to elect the best President and Congress possible in 2024.

If the latter is also a disappointment, then I will begin working for 2028 (although there may be little I can do, for that is the year I turn 90, if I make it that far).

Regardless of what happens, though, I will continue to be hopeful, believing that things will get better later, if not sooner. That is because I trust in the “God of hope.” Accordingly, these words from Romans 15:13 (NIV) is my prayer for all of you. 

Fifty Faithful and Fruitful Years: Jim Wallis and Sojourners

During the academic year of 1971-72, my family and I came back for a year in the States after living in Japan for five years. Those were turbulent times in the U.S. and only a little less so in Japan. During that year, I learned of a young man named Jim Wallis and a new publication, The Post-American.

The Beginning of the Sojourn

Jim Wallis was born in Michigan in June 1948, so he is nearly ten years younger than I. But he is a thinker/writer/activist from whom I have learned much over these past 50 years. 

Jim Wallis in the 1970s

Wallis enrolled in Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS) in 1970 and on his very first night in the dormitory, he talked with a next-door student about his disillusionment with the evangelical church’s support of the war in Vietnam and its indifference to racism.

Jim tells his story in Revive Us Again: A Sojourner’s Story (1983). Chapters two and three narrate the main contradictions he saw between the teaching of Jesus and the evangelical church at that time: racism and “the war.”

Part of what drew me to Sojourners was that the two main criticisms I had heard during my first three years of teaching in Japan (1968~71) were of “Christian” America’s racism and involvement in the war in Vietnam.

Here is the link to the foundational statement of the original Sojourners community (before they used that name).

The small group of Christian “radicals” that formed at TEDS published the first issue of their new magazine in August 1971. They named it The Post American, as an indictment of the civil religion in the U.S. which was supporting the Indochina War in contradiction to the Gospel of Jesus.

Fifty Years for Sojourners

In 1975, the community moved from the Chicago area to downtown Washington, D.C., and took a new name, also changing the name of their publication to Sojourners.

Last year, dissension at Sojourners resulted in Jim being replaced as editor-in-chief in August, and in November, Adam Russell Taylor replaced Wallis as president of the organization. Then last month, on June 24, Jim published “My Farewell to Sojourners.”

Wallis wrote, “I am deeply thankful for the last 50 years with Sojourners; I am honored to be its founder...and will remain an ambassador of this unique organization going forward.” This marked the end of fifty faithful and fruitful years.

In that article, Jim also announced, “I have accepted an invitation from Georgetown University to become the inaugural Chair in Faith and Justice at the McCourt School of Public Policy and the founding director of the new campus-wide Center on Faith and Justice.

My Sojourn with Sojourners

For nearly 50 years I have read and been influenced by Sojourners magazine, including the years before it took that new name in 1975. I learned from Jim Wallis, of course, but also from the wide range of perceptive authors who wrote for the publication.

In January 1977, during our second “furlough” from our work in Japan, I was able to make a two-day visit to the Sojourners’ house in Washington, D.C., spending the night with them. I was disappointed that Jim was not at home at that time.

Later, I did get to meet Jim on a couple of occasions. In April 2005, I heard him give a powerful public talk/sermon. In my diary, I wrote, “It was a wonderful talk... He stressed that religion should be a bridge, not a wedge. And he said that hope is a choice.”

My appreciation of Jim Wallis still runs deep. When I published my life story last year, I included him as one of the “top ten” stimulating, challenging speakers/writers that I have heard/read. Also, Jim’s God’s Politics (2005) is one of my ten favorite 21st-century non-fiction books.

I close this article with these words by Jim Wallis published in the first issue of The Post-American, words badly needed now as they were 50 years ago. 

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** For a list of many significant statements by Wallis, open this link to the Goodreads.com quotes page.

Whatever Became of Sin?

Chapter Eight of my book The Limits of Liberalism is titled “The Limits of Liberals’ Views about Sin,” and this blog post is based on that chapter, which I have updated and slightly revised this month. In it, I make reference to psychiatrist Karl Menninger’s 1973 book published under the same title as this blog article. 

Defective Conservative Views of Sin

As is true with other matters that I have previously discussed in my book, the liberal ideas that I have often found defective are reactions to defective ideas that are prevalent in fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism.

For example, in the popular mind, sin is basically thought of as bad deeds, and sinners are thought to be bad people. That popular idea reflects the religiosity of the Puritans, whose ideas were rooted in Calvinism. They identified many “sins” they thought faithful Christians should shun.

In addition to the obvious sins of breaking the Ten Commandments, until the middle of the twentieth century, and even later, evangelical Christianity that was based on Puritanism commonly condemned “sins” such as drinking alcoholic beverages, smoking, social dancing, playing cards, going to the movies, and the like.

That trivialization and narrowness of sin among conservative evangelicals led progressive Christians to cease talking about sin. Several years ago, I heard a long-time professor at William Jewell College publicly state that he rejected the use of the word sin, saying that it no longer signified anything meaningful.

Defective Liberal Views of Sin

On the other side of the theological spectrum, some liberals began to talk about human goodness and potentiality and to neglect ideas about human sinfulness.

Many liberal Christians of the past and present regard(ed) sin primarily as imperfection, ignorance, maladjustment, and immaturity.

What was popularly called sin was, they thought/think, largely a vestige of the animal nature of human beings that could be, and is being, overcome by Christian education, moral instruction, and spiritual striving. Some “sins” were, perhaps, problematic, but they could be overcome by human endeavor.

That is why Menninger (1893~1990) contended in his book that sin “was once a strong word, an ominous and serious word. . . . But the word went away. It has almost disappeared—the word, along with the notion” (p. 14).

Chris Hedges is the author of a book titled I Don’t Believe in Atheists (2008). A sub-theme of that hard-hitting book is the pervasiveness of sin and flawed human nature. Here is one of his most striking statements in this regard:

We have nothing to fear from those who do or do not believe in God; we have much to fear from those who do not believe in sin. The concept of sin is a stark acknowledgment that we can never be omnipotent, that we are bound and limited by human flaws and self-interest (p. 13).

Between the Extremes

As I emphasize in the tenth and final chapter of my book, in Christianity there badly needs to be a broad and heavily populated position between the extremes of conservative evangelicalism and liberalism. Fortunately, there are now some indications of that sort of position with regard to sin.

For decades, progressive evangelicals have been emphasizing the importance of combatting social sins, not just personal sins as is prevalent in conservative evangelicalism.

For example, back in 1992 Jim Wallis and a colleague published "America’s original sin: A study guide on white racism." That publication has been updated and expanded several times and was last published in 2015 as America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America (with Wallis listed as the sole author).

There is also, significantly, at least some recognition of the reality of social sin by those who are not evangelicals. Recently, there have been references in the “liberal” media to America’s “original sin,” and mentions of “the sin of racism.”

Speaking in Kenosha, Wisconsin, earlier this month, Joe Biden declared that “we’re going to address the original sin in this country . . . slavery, and all the vestiges of it.”

So now, perhaps, sin is being more widely recognized than it was 50 years ago when Menninger was working on his book. I hope so.

Needed: Justice, Not (Just) Friendship or Even Money

Just as in 1968, racial tension in the U.S. has been rampant these last few months in 2020, and, again, just like back then, one presidential candidate is calling for LAW AND ORDER. But what is the most pressing need for People of Color, and how can the current unrest best be addressed?  

Are Reparations the Answer?

There have been strong calls by some for the U.S. government to provide reparations to the descendants of Black people who were formerly enslaved. In his long, oft-cited June 2014 piece in The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates makes a strong appeal for reparations.

If it could have been arranged, this month would have been a fitting time for reparations to be paid, for it was 170 years ago on September 18, 1850, that the Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the U.S. Congress, making the enslavement of Blacks in the South even more secure—and more odious.

Harriet Tubman escaped slavery in 1849, but then her daring work freeing other slaves by means of the Underground Railroad was made even more dangerous and challenging after the Fugitive Slave Act took effect the next year.

But there are many problems with reparations: how could it be satisfactorily determined who is eligible for reparations after all these years, and how could adequate funding be provided? With the massive expenditures on covid-19 relief this year, there is no possibility of funding being provided now, even if there were the will to do so.

Reparations are most likely not the answer to the problem of racial unrest in this country for the foreseeable future—or ever.

Is Friendship the Answer?

There has been much talk over the last sixty years about the need for racial reconciliation and for eliminating the segregation of Blacks and whites.

Near the beginning of “A Segregated Church or a Beloved Community,” the sixth chapter in his 2016 book America’s Original Sin, Jim Wallis recounts how in the 1950s Martin Luther King, Jr., sadly said, “I am [ashamed] and appalled that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in Christian America.”

Then Wallis went on to lament that still now “the racial segregation of US churches is nothing short of scandalous and sinful” (Kindle ed., pp. 97, 98).

While I strongly believe that churches should never be segregated because of unwillingness to accept people of different races/ethnicities and have long regretted not being a part of a church here in the U.S. with a significant number of People of Color, I now think that integration is not the primary goal we whites should seek.

Last month, Jennifer Harvey, a religion professor at Drake University in Iowa, wrote a powerful opinion piece for CNN. While her piece was largely in support of reparations, I was struck by her disparagement of all the work that has been done for “racial reconciliation” and the emphasis in recent years on “diversity and inclusion.”

Harvey insists that “we need to be clear that friendships are never a substitute for justice.”

Thus, while definitely important, friendship/reconciliation is not the primary answer to the problem of racial unrest abroad in the land.

The Need for Justice/Equity

In her highly acclaimed book Caste (2020), Isabel Wilkerson writes, “We are not personally responsible for what people who look like us did centuries ago. But we are responsible for what good or ill we do to people alive with us today” (p. 387).

Accordingly, rather than focusing on reparations for the past, what is needed most now is the creation of a more just, equitable society.

If we whites want to help People of Color (PoC) have better lives in this still-racist society, we need to focus most on legislation and law enforcement that, among other things, combats police brutality against PoC; corrects the inequities in the prison justice system; and eliminates discrimination in housing and discriminatory finance charges for both houses and cars.

To do this we can support various nationwide organizations, such as the ACLU, for example, which urges us to Demand Justice Now.

Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples' Day?

This coming Monday, October 8, is Columbus Day, a federal holiday in the United States. However, only about half of the states observe that day, and four states as well as many cities celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead.

The Issue

Columbus Day was first celebrated in the U.S. in 1792, and 100 years later President Harrison issued a proclamation encouraging Americans to celebrate the 400^th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage to the “new world.”

Then in 1937 President Roosevelt proclaimed Columbus Day as a national holiday, largely as a result of lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, the Roman Catholic fraternal service organization that was founded in 1882 and named in honor of Christopher Columbus.

In recent decades, though, there has been growing opposition to Columbus’s undeniable connection to the oppression of indigenous peoples and the beginnings of the transatlantic slave trade.

Beginning in 1992 (in Berkeley, Calif.), an increasing number of cities—as well as the states of Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, and South Dakota—now celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the place of Columbus Day. (In S.D., though, the day is called Native American Day.)

So, which holiday should be celebrated next Monday?  

The Issue Intensified

There are those who see the mistreatment of indigenous people and slavery as two aspects of “America’s original sin,” in the title words of Jim Wallis’s 2016 book.

Wallis asserts that “the near genocide and historic oppression of America’s Native American peoples and the enslavement and debasing of African peoples for profit were both sins—America’s original sin” (p. 57).

True, the activity of Columbus in the last part of the 15^th century may not be directly related to what happened in British North America beginning in the first part of the 17^th century—but the latter is definitely rooted in the ethos of Columbus with regards to both the treatment of indigenous people and the enslaving of both people of the new world as well as of Africa.

In a previous blog article (see here) I introduced Miguel De La Torre, an acquaintance for whom I have great respect, even though I sometimes disagree with him. One of the most challenging books I have read in many years is his book Embracing Hopelessness (2017).

In the Introduction, De La Torre makes this hard-hitting assertion:

Christians are behind all of this nation’s atrocities—the genocide of the indigenous people to steal their land, the enslavement of Africans to work the stolen land, and the stealing of cheap labor and natural resources of Latin Americans under the guise of “gunboat diplomacy” to develop the land (p. 4). 

Then in his second chapter De La Torre writes compellingly about his visit to the site of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado. That tragic event was under the direction of U.S. Army Colonel John Chivington—while the Civil War was still being fought!

(When Chivington, 1821~94, was a young man, he was ordained to the Christian ministry and even served briefly as a missionary to the Wyandot Indians in Kansas—of particular interest to June and me since our church is in Wyandotte County.)

Responding to the Issue

Reading De La Torre’s chapter about the Sand Creek Massacre strengthened my resolve to push for the observance of Indigenous People’s Day in the U.S. on the second Monday of October from now on. 

People of goodwill need to work diligently to rid society of the highly detrimental results of America’s original sin, striving to combat the evil effects of white supremacy both with regard to the indigenous people of North America as well as to those who are the descendants of enslaved Africans.

Ten Most Admired Contemporary Christians

Who are the ten living, and still active, Christian speakers/writers that you admire/respect the most? Recently I began to think about that question, and now I am sharing my (tentative) list with you.

Please note that these are “professional” Christians who are currently active (or not completely retired). They are people who primarily speak to or write for a “popular” audience rather than to academia. Thus, none are full-time religion/theology professors.

(My list of the contemporary theologians/professors that I admire most would be quite different.)

One more brief caveat: my list is skewed a bit (but not much) by my desire to include some diversity. I didn’t want the list to be completely of white, male, Protestants like me.

So here is my list, presented in alphabetical order (by last name): 

WILLIAM BARBER (b. 1963)

Rev. Barber is perhaps the person on this list I have known about for the shortest time. I probably heard about him for the first time when working on my 9/30/13 blog article about the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina. I have since seen him on several YouTube videos and then was impressed anew when I heard him deliver a powerful sermon in Kansas City last year. Here is the link to the blog article I wrote about him last September.

AMY BUTLER (b. c. 1970)

Rev. Butler has been pastor of the highly influential Riverside Church in New York City since 2014. I first met her when I visited a Sunday morning worship service at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., in 2012 when she was pastor there, and I regularly see/read her perceptive op-ed articles. 

SIMONE CAMPBELL (b. 1945)

Widely known as “the nun on the bus,” Sister Simone is the executive director of NETWORK, a nonprofit Catholic social justice lobby. She was the subject of my 9/20/14 blog article (see here). 

TONY CAMPOLO (b. 1935)

Stimulating writer and extraordinarily good speaker, in my 2/18/15 blog article I called Campolo “one of my favorite people.” He is one I would have long had on a list such as this. 

SHANE CLAIBORNE (b. 1975)

The youngest person on this list, Claiborne is the author of The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical (2006, 2016). He is a young man worth reading and listening to. 

POPE FRANCIS (b. 1936)

Perhaps this selection speaks for itself. 

JAMES FORBES (b. 1935)

A marvelous preacher and gentleman, I have long admired Rev. Forbes, who was pastor of Riverside Church in New York from 1989 to 2007. 

BRIAN McLAREN (b. 1956)

I have been an admirer of McLaren since I read his novel A New Kind of Christian (2001). Then in 2008 I marked that the best theology book I had read that year was his Everything Must Change (2007). As a primary leader of the emergent church movement, he is a very significant contemporary Christian leader. 

JIM WALLIS (b. 1948)

Founder, president, and CEO of Sojourners and editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine, I have been an admirer of Wallis since the early 1970s—and have written about him and his early activities in this article on another blogsite. 

PHILIP YANCEY (b. 1949)

I have personally met or seen/heard all of the above persons—except for Pope Francis, for obvious reasons. But I have never met Yancey; however, I have read, and been impressed by, several of his books. I especially recommend What’s So Amazing about Grace? (1997) and Soul Survivor (2001).

Since these are contemporary Christians that I most admire, I have also learned from them--and my faith has grown, I believe, because of them. 

Who's on your list?

Growing in the Faith

Is your religious faith, or lack thereof, the same now as it was, say, when you were twenty years old, or (for you mature adults) when you were forty years old? If not, how would you explain the difference? Is the difference due to growth or stagnation?

CONSIDERING A QUESTION

One of my church friends, who fairly recently became a Thinking Friend, is a young woman who had strong ties to Southern Baptists while growing up. Her family still has close ties with the Southern Baptist Convention: her sister, for example, is currently a student at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary here in Kansas City.

My friend, who is an activist and quite “liberal” in her social views, knows that I was a Southern Baptist for most of my life but that I now largely agree with her and share most of her “liberal” social views.

A few weeks ago my friend asked, “What caused you to change?”

My answer: “I would like to think it has been the result of growing in the faith.”

Indeed, I do think that—but I realize that there are others who knew me “back then” who would have a different assessment. They would likely explain my change as being due to abandoning the faith—at least the faith as was known and practiced by most Southern Baptists in the 1950s and by many SBs still.

CONSIDERING AREAS OF CHANGE/GROWTH

Two of the main areas in which I believe I have experienced change/growth in faith are (1) change from an exclusivistic view of God and God’s relationship to the people of the world to much more inclusivistic view, and (2) change from a predominantly other-worldly view of life to an equally dominant, if even not more prominent, this-worldly emphasis .

Perhaps reading J.B. Phillips’s Your God Is Too Small (1953), during my first year of college started me growing toward a view of God that was broader, more inclusive than what I had grown up thinking/believing.

Back in 2015, I ended my Oct. 15 blog article with these words:

Without question, Christianity has often held to an exclusivism that has been divisive and restrictive. But a deeper understanding moves one from exclusion to inclusion and from restriction to expansion. – Maturing in faith impels a person to move from the us/them mentality of childhood to including “others” as a part of an inclusive circle of “we.”

Then, consistent with the evangelicalism/revivalism that I was nurtured in and embraced well into my 30s, the overwhelmingly important mission of the Christian faith, I thought, was “saving souls” for life after death, for Heaven. That is an “other-worldly” emphasis that many of you readily recognize.

But gradually I came to understand that human life and well-being in this world is of great importance--and, in fact, the Kingdom of God is as much about, or even more about, God’s desired reign now rather than after the “end of the world.” 

CONSIDERING EXAMPLES

Some of the contemporary Christians I admire the most, and by whom I have been influenced, have a story similar to mine. They also moved from a narrow, fundamentalistic type of Christianity toward a broader, socially “liberal” position on many issues.

Three good examples are Jim Wallis, Philip Yancey, and Brian McLaren—three “mature adults” in their 60s. I must write more about these three: to this point in my blog articles, I have “labeled” Wallis twice, Yancey once (here on 10/5/16), and McLaren not even once.

First, though, I plan to write about the ten Christian speakers/writers whom I admire most—and who have helped nurture my growth in the faith.

In Memory of Gordon Cosby, 1918-2013

Gordon Cosby, founding pastor of Church of the Savior, passed away last month and his memorial service will be held tomorrow, April 6. In contrast to Rachel Corrie (about whom I wrote last month) who was killed at the age of 23, Cosby lived to be just a few months shy of 95. His was a long and productive life.

I first heard of Gordon Cosby in the early 1960s when I was a seminary student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the school from which he had graduated in 1942.

After serving as a chaplain in World War II, in 1947 Cosby founded the Church of the Savior (CoS) in Washington, D.C., and continued in that ministry until he retired just four years ago (at age 91!).

Cosby was introduced to us seminary students as one who had attempted to “do church” and ministry different from the traditional way—and as one who emphasized the integrity of church membership, something that was quite different from the usual practice of Southern Baptist churches.

In January 1977 during our second “furlough” in the States, I met Gordon Cosby for the first time. I was visiting the Sojourners community, which had moved to Washington, D.C., partly because of Cosby. (You can read about that in Jim Wallis’s 3/21 article here.) And that evening I walked over to the Potter’s House, started in 1960 by CoS, one of the first Christian coffeehouses in the U.S.

Upon arriving, I asked if Gordon Cosby was there and was told that he was back washing dishes (as he seemed to do often). I went back to the kitchen, briefly introduced myself, and asked if he would allow me to take his place washing dishes and to talk with me as he rested. He would and he did—and I much enjoyed an hour of delightful conversation with him.

The last time I saw Cosby was at the Seekers Church, one of the “spinoff” congregations from the Church of the Savior now located in Takoma on the outskirts of D.C. Our son Keith and his wife have been core members of Seekers for more than 25 years now.

Seekers used to meet in the same renovated brick house on Massachusetts Ave. where the original CoS congregation met through the years, and I heard Cosby preach there a time or two. But after his retirement, the Cosbys were visiting Seekers one Sunday when we there with Keith and Brenda, and it was a joy to see him again.

Tomorrow’s memorial celebration will be held at Foundry United Methodist Church on 16^th Street. That historic church, which is within walking distance of the White House, is the church Bill and Hillary Clinton attended when he was President.

Cosby was never pastor of a church with a large building, such as Foundry Methodist. But he influenced pastors all across the nation, including Rev. Dean Snyder, the senior pastor at Foundry now. (Snyder’s recent comments in the Washington Post about Cosby are found here.)

And Cosby never sought the limelight, or took advantage of opportunities to receive adulation. Yet, it has been said that he and the Church of the Savior have had a greater impact on the Protestant church in America over the past 50 years than any other institution or movement.

It is impossible to measure how much influence someone has had, but it is certain that Cosby did make a huge impact on American Protestantism. Please join me and the many who gather at Foundry Church tomorrow in memorializing the long life and legacy of Gordon Cosby.