by Andrew Stephens-Rennie

We had a great time with Shane, Chris the Psalters and Jon Brooks on the only Canadian stop of the Jesus for Prime Minister tour, just one day before Canada Day.

Again, we can’t thank our friends and partners enough for helping to make this event happen: PWRDF, The Meeting House, Church of the Redeemer and Freedomize Toronto. Thank-you all for all your contributions to the event’s success.

Despite some delays at the Border, some questions as to whether the bus was really powered by veggie oil (and was not, instead, a travelling meth lab), the JFP Crew made it for an incredible, packed evening at Church of the Redeemer in the heart of downtown Toronto.

“What are 400 people doing,” more than a few passers-by asked, “crowded on the front steps of a church in the heart of Yorkville?” It was quite the scene, to be sure! But why were we there?

We were there to listen to stories. We were there to listen to the story of the scriptures, and stories of living those stories out in 21st Century North America. We were there not only to listen, but to be inspired.

The spirit’s breath was with us, as we were challenged to think of Christians’ role in effecting change in this world. Faith means nothing without faithful living, and we were challenged to respond faithfully to the story of the scriptures, and God’s call on our lives to seek others’ welfare before we seek our own.

Monday evening featured three local groups - Sanctuary, The Gateway, and Sketch - we were invited to come alongside, and put faith into action. These are only three examples in the GTA, but they’re good ones - and so we’d encourage you again to call them up and get involved.

We’re reprinting the backs of programs below for those who weren’t able to attend, and for those who forgot their programs at the church:

A while ago, sometime during Holy Week, Brian had the opportunity to chat with Shane and Chris about what it might mean to bring the Jesus for President tour to the great white north. The following is the audio from that conversation:

Jesus for Prime Minister Interview

Don’t forget that you can catch all three together at Church of the Redeemer on Monday June 30th at 7pm.

Republished with permission from Byron Borger at Hearts & Minds Books in Dallastown, PA. Byron has a longer review to follow, which we’ll be sure to post

Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement by Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian J. Walsh (Eerdmans; $24.00) is a book that I can safely say will be one of the most important works of the year, a major contribution to Christian social analysis and cultural reformation. I’ve followed these friends a bit as they’ve worked out this material. I’ve had an early draft and have been awaiting this published copy for a year; I couldn’t be more excited that it has arrived. Thanks be to God, the ever-faithful home-making and Earth-restoring God who comes to us in Jesus not, as they ably show, to take us away to heaven only to leave behind a burning planet, but to help us image the God of creation here, now, in creation-caring stewardship, until that great day when Christ returns to consummate his covenantal ways in a new Earth.

Walsh has written widely as co-author about the shape of a Christian way of living, based on a Biblical worldview informed by the grand story of creation-fall-redemption (Transforming Vision, Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be, Subversive Christianity , The Advent of Justice, and, with his wife Sylvia Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed.) How this has transfigured—through, among other things, forming a friendship and working relationship with environmental studies scholar (and author of the brilliant For the Beauty of the Earth) Steven Bouma-Prediger, reading a lot of Walter Brueggemann and Wendell Berry and the new urbanists like James Howard Kunstler, and moving into a sustainable agricultural community farm)—to the metaphor and images of home-making/exile/home-coming, is itself quite an amazing part of the story of this book. The grand drama of Scripture is still the heart of this book, but the new insights about land and place and the hope (in Revelation 21 and 22) of a “gardened city” are fresh and generative. I do not say this lightly, I really don’t: this is brilliant.

The Biblical studies are profound (and there are creative Bible interludes between each longer chapter that will bring the insightful and provocative reflections of Colossians Remixed to mind.) The scholarly breadth is prodigious, the cultural awareness just amazing. From the stories to the science, the cultural criticism to the theological proposals, from the song quotes to the incredible footnotes, this is one really interesting read.

It has deep integrity, too, remarkably so. From their work in classrooms and homeless shelters, to their work in homesteading and sustainable agriculture, they have lived out faithful and creative ways of being agents of God’s great homecoming. They’ve studied the meanings of home and homelessness, both among the very rich (who may have houses, but not homes in any meaningful sense) and the literally homeless (who may have homes in the sense of a community of belonging, even without houses.) They explored how the high modern culture displaces us, metaphorically and sometimes literally, from our “sense of place.” They’ve related the cultural angst and upward mobility culture with our disregard for the creation itself, related (as has their friend Bob Goudzwaard) the relationships between some of the key social problems of our time, from climate change to global poverty.

The insight of this important work is urgently needed, and I will be exploring Beyond Homelessness in greater detail in a longer book review over at our monthly column at the website. For now, please know of our very sincere gratitude for this remarkable work, our commitment to try to explain it well to folks so our readers purchase it, read it, discuss it, and deepen their ties to communities and places, living out the transforming vision that underlies this profound gift of insight, courage and hope.

by Erika Kivik

Where I’m from, it’s hip to live simply.

And, as a socially-conscious-urban-type, I usually don’t mind if simplicity is thought to be sexy: “the simple life” is a game I have often played. I have even congratulated myself for doing so—after all, if doing good doesn’t hurt my self-image…so what?

Plus, when I try to live simply, I am sometimes rewarded by even bigger amounts of small—money saved, chemicals reduced, simpler thoughts thunk, and so on.

Yet, moving from a population of 3 million-plus to a town of 140, has thrown me: after several monotonous days of sorting simple things to distribute to a community of people with simple needs (like food, clothes, running water, bicycle tires, and rides to the doctor), I’ve learned something about the simple life: it can be mundane.

I’m ashamed to admit my surprise that “living simple” is different than celebrating simplicity. The latter (that is, what I do in Toronto) usually results in a choice to buy local and organic food; a decision to purchase used furniture, clothing, books and music; and a desire to brew my own tea and coffee, or to ride my bike.

But when there’s no 24-hour grocery store, and—for goodness’ sake—no Tim Ho’s for the days I sleep in (dammit!), I find that I am no longer celebrating simplicity, but living simple.

Here are some examples that I hope will illustrate the difference.

I was sitting in “Karmeli Koguduse” church a few days ago with a headache that had started small but soon began to radiate (the electricity had been out all day and the combination of no caffeine and almost-24-hour sunshine had taken its toll).

As the minutes passed, the two-hour service transformed from an environment in which I was enabled to seek God into one where I didn’t care about anything—that is, except to run to out for a blessed cup of coffee, or even better, to a pharmacy that would sell me relief in pill-form…precisely what I could not do.

I was at the mercy of the environment I was in. I was living simple.

…Also, last week I finally got the chance to visit Rakvere, the biggest “city” around (that’s a population of 14,000, for you urbanites who would challenge my definition of city). I was in heaven, gliding freely through the “crowds,” and waiting in line to use the ATM; while Mati, aged 6 (who is always showing off and doing tricks on his bike at home in Avispea) nervously slipped his hand in mine in innocent, and gut, reaction to “all” the people.

As the day progressed, I began to notice more acutely something that I’ve been seeing since I arrived in Estonia (which is an unusual mix of “first” and “third” world at present—meaning the memory of living simple—the mundane kind—is fresh in everyone’s mind, even those who aren’t, anymore). What I have noticed is an awful lot of people dressed in sleek, hip hop, designer styles. Make no mistake—if you have the means to decide how to to express yourself, in Estonia, you dress to show your status.

Gradually, I found myself frustrated that no one, was appreciating my “I-don’t-care-what-I’m-wearing-je-ne-sais-quoi-urban-student” wardrobe…and suddenly it hit me: Oh snap!…What happened to living simple?

by Ericka Stephens-Rennie

One of the reasons social capital is academically disparaged (see my last post) is because it’s so hard to measure. I posted recently about some of the ways we build social capital (by playing sports, joining committees and clubs, caring for friends, neighbours and acquaintances, and, basically, living our lives in a way that is repeatedly local).

I also wrote about who is able to build social capital (from kids to soccer moms to geeks to corporate suits to eighty-year-olds who love to lawn bowl). Remember, social capital “happens when we get connected.”

In theory a ‘good’ or ‘healthy’ society should have a large and growing amount of social capital. But how the heck do you track that? Usually social scientists use indicators. Indicators are stand-in variables for when you can’t access the real deal.

How do you measure ‘connectedness’? The same way you measure ‘democracy’, or ‘faith’. By using stand-ins. The indicators often used by social scientists to track social capital include things like: newspaper readership and letters to the editor; number of community events and the percentage of community attendance at those events; membership and participation in organizations; church attendance; perceptions of ‘safety’ and ‘trust’; size of social networks; intensity of relationships outside the family; voter turn-out; etc. Do these things exactly measure social capital? No, but they get at aspects of it.

A lot of the time, social capital research is done at the national level. That is, these indicators are collected and then compiled to make national averages. There’ve even been continent-wide averages, which tend to show, quite impressively and irrefutably that social capital is on the decline. After proving that social capital is in decline, these social scientists inevitably turn to a model that I will (with little affection) call the Disparage the Youth model.

According to the Disparage the Youth model (aka: the Deficit Model), young people are ‘less good’ citizens. Social scientists often report finding that young people aged 18-35 are less likely to have newspaper subscriptions to a national paper, less likely to vote in national elections, less likely to volunteer for the Big Charities (eg. most diseases, United Way, hospitals, etc.), and less likely to be a part of Animal Clubs (eg, the Moose, the Eagles, etc.).

These social scientists go on to note that variables which, in the past, could be correlated with higher levels of social capital don’t seem to have such a strong correlation for younger generations. For example, if our parents and grandparents attended university they were much more likely to be involved in their communities and, therefore, contribute to higher levels of social capital. Now, despite the fact that education levels are rising, we see a decline in social capital.

In summary, the Disparage the Youth model goes like this: Once upon a time people were good citizens, who read newspapers, joined clubs and voted. Then they had kids. And something went wrong with those kids, because those kids read the newspaper less, participate in community less and vote less. Heck, those kids Just. Don’t. Care.

This is a narrative of social capital decline, democratic decay, and, ultimately, an unhappy ending.

But…

But what if we’re measuring wrong? What if this isn’t the case? What if we start with the Hope in the Youth model (aka: the Engagement model), and start to investigate whether or not there’s been a shift in how young people engage?

Maybe the youth aren’t reading the newspaper like Dad did because they’re reading blogs which they trust more because they’re not owned by transnational companies (TNCs) that also own stakes in the military-industrial (and I would add, entertainment) complex. So maybe you can’t count newspaper readership as a legitimate indicator for social capital.

And maybe the youth don’t attend the big denominational churches, but choose to attend small church plants and house churches, where they are challenged, used, and known by and in their communities. So maybe you can’t just count church attendance at mainstream denominations as an accurate indicator for social capital.

Maybe people aged 18-35 homeschool their kids because they have ethical problems with mainstreaming issues like disrespect and bullying, and don’t support kids getting streamed out because the curriculum is boring or irrelevant to their lives. Maybe instead these parents form small associations with other homeschooling parents. So maybe you can’t just count Parent Advisory Councils, and kids’ participation in school sports days if you’re seeking a good indicator of social capital.

And, hey, maybe youth vote less because they feel the process is not inclusive, more pseudo-interactive than interactive, because there are no good choices, or because they know that politicians will just do as they please (or as Big Business pleases) once elected.

Maybe instead they vote (or even run) in municipal elections where they have a hope of making some difference. Or maybe they just say, “To hell with voting,” and just get their hands dirty with community gardens – how’s that for H.O.P.E.? – and community, neighbourhood, and street organizations.

Maybe young people have found other (equally? more?) effective ways of engaging in their city. So maybe national and provincial voter turnouts aren’t great indicators for social capital.

What kind of narrative do these things yield? Well, for starters, it’s a narrative that tells social scientists about an academic imperative to discover and test new indicators for measuring social capital, or else their work (my work – yikes!) may soon be irrelevant. This will not be easy work. But it is important work.

But enough about stories for social scientists – this is a story that pertains to all of us! Turns out if we look through the lens of engagement, we easily find a narrative of civic optimism, and of democracy renewed. A Happy Ending.

by Andrew Stephens-Rennie

You know, it used to be that being on the outside of town was not such a desirable place to be. That’s where we used to cast lepers. That’s the place where society cast those who were considered to be of little worth, those who were considered ‘impure’. And in old Jerusalem, that place was a burning rubbish dump, a place called Gehenna, not terribly far outside the south wall.

Loosely translated, Gehenna means “suburb.”

Well not quite, but…In Judaism, Gehenna was a real place. It was metaphorically linked to the underworld, and not without reason. A place of loneliness, despair and destruction. A place of punishment where the bodies of the dead were burned. Not a spiritualized place. A real, live, burning garbage heap. And it’s from this real-life place that our more modern understandings of hell are derived.

Perhaps I’m going too far, but doesn’t this precisely describe the suburbs of today? Suburbs exist in a constant state of flame. A whole hell of a lot of fire is required to keep things moving. The drive to the 24-hour Super! Market! after dropping off the kids at youth group across town at the most seeker-friendly megachurch then leads to the Swiss Chalet drive-thru, because, well, because, it’ll take from now til youth group is over to prepare something for yourselves.

And we keep on burning fuel. Sure, gas prices haven’t even come close to hitting the levels they’ve been in Europe for quite some time (they do okay with public transit, and seem to get by y’know?), but we complain all the same.

$1.30 a litre? $4.00 a gallon? You’ve got to be joking! Why. Why I remember when a litre of gas went for 40 cents. 40 cents! And we complain because (not coincidentally) we’ve built these hellish places that subsist on the incessant burning of fuel (and our Hard Earned Cash) to operate.

So back to this whole walkability thing. Our fuel prices in North America have been highly subsidized for quite some time. Which has led to our (thick-skulled) sub-urban “planning” that has been predicated on the wide availability of cheap oil. Even the church has bought in.

And, will we be surprised when folks stop flocking to churches they have to drive to? Of course we will. Because long ago we traded in the idea of the neighbourhood church for a gas-scented dream of parking lots full of shiny SUVs, and this is the model on which we’ve built our churches in the last half-century. All the while, we’re selling off the inner-city churches because (under our 50-year paradigm) they’re no longer good investments.

I for one am looking forward to the steep increase in gasoline prices. It may just be the salvation of the local church.

by Ericka Stephens-Rennie

I’m generally a fan of such academically fluid (and often disparaged) concepts of ‘civil society’ and ’social capital’. To me it seems self-evident that our ‘connectedness’ – and the derived norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness – is important to community. Unfortunately, my research, and the research of other social scientists has been chronicling the ‘demise’ or ‘decline’ of social capital, and even of democracy for decades.

What’s all this mumble jumble mean?

Robert Putnam, author of the book Bowling Alone, describes social capital by first pointing out the agreed on value of a screwdriver – physical capital – or a college education – human capital – to increase productivity. Physical capital is made up of physical objects, and human capital is made up of the soft skills individuals have.

Social capital refers to “connections amongst individuals” that include both networks and norms such as reciprocity, neighbourliness, and trustworthiness. Why is this important to community? One reason it is important is because it is only the individuals who are networked and who share norms who are able to share human and physical capital.

Another reason is that communities seem to function “better” when there are high levels of social capital – crime goes down, kids do better in school, marriages are healthier, people self-identify as ‘happy’ or ‘fulfilled’, poverty goes down and even health indicators go up (who knew voting was so good for you?).

Social capital has even been known to cause a whole social network to quit smoking en masse! It really does appear to be some sort of cure-all for some social problems we’ve been trying to sort out for years. Best of all, there’s no contraindications, and it’s safe for all ages!

Anyone can build social capital from kids to soccer moms to geeks to corporate suits to eighty-year-olds who love to lawn bowl. It happens on the playground, in the church, at the grocery store, in the office, or in the public square.

It happens when I meet you, and you tell me you’re interested in issues of poverty, and I introduce you to my friend Joe who works alongside low-income folks in Parkdale, and he introduces you to his friend Phyllis who works through various arts mediums to help street-involved young people, who introduces you to some guys who were streamed out of the education system and now use hiphop to get in touch with students to change mindsets…

It happens when I spend time at my fav local wine bar where I not only enjoy fantastic food and wine, but make a connection with the owner, his brother, the guy who always sits at the bar, and random Parkdalians who do really cool things. It happens when you help a local business person carry an armful of stock down the street to the store, and when one of those business people feels like he knows you well enough to act as a neighbourhood reference for you on a job application.

The point is, it happens when we get connected. It’s these connections that link individuals into, throughout, among and between community(ies).

Since moving to Ottawa I’ve realized just how connected I was in Toronto…and the converse, how unconnected I am in Ottawa. I feel this frenetic urge to ‘plug in’ somewhere (anywhere?!), to find a place where I can get connected, get my hands dirty and get to work. But where do I start? Ottawa’s so big, and I don’t know my way around, or what kinds of organizations live here and might need my help. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

But where did I start in Toronto? With a few small faith communities. With shopping almost exclusively at small local businesses and the local farmers markets. With eating at local restaurants. With baking, caring for, and loving neighbours. With the garden in the back yard.

It started with repeatedly living locally.

Connectedness – social capital – by its nature is best created in a small geographic area in which you can repeatedly meet the same people. One of the key proofs of this is that people in rural areas tend to have higher levels of social capital. So how should we create social capital in the city? By constraining the area in which we live, shop, eat, take walks, and, yes, go to church. Attending a local church is, I think, a key part how to effectively create higher levels of connectedness in our communities.

So don’t just do it for gas prices, do it because even in exile, you believe in the importance of seeking the welfare, peace and prosperity of your neighbourhood. Pray for it – yes! – but embrace it, join organizations in it, walk through it, buy groceries in it….

Live in it.

by Brian Walsh

So what’s wrong with being “born again”? In my last blog I suggested that the term “born again” is a ‘shibboleth.’ You remember where this word ‘shibboleth’ comes from, right? In Judges chapter 12 the Gileadites engage in genocide against the Ephraimites. But how do you know who an Ephraimite is and who is not an Ephraimite?

Well, when the men of Gilead met someone who they suspected of being an Ephraimite they asked him to say ‘shibboleth’ and if they replied ‘sibboleth’ then their accent and their inability to make the ‘sh’ sound in this word was proof that they were Ephraimites and they were then killed.

Nice stuff.

So when I say that being ‘born again’ is a shibboleth I am saying that this term functions as a foundational boundary marker of who is in and who is out, and that such boundary markers are a matter of death to those who are out.

Wait a minute, you say. Is Walsh saying that born again Christians want to kill anyone who is not one of them? Umm, well … yes, that is what I am saying.

Think about if for a minute. If you are not born again, then what are you? Well, you are not a Christian. And in ‘born again’ theology what happens to those who are not born again? They go to hell! So yes, I am saying that this particular shibboleth functions as all shibboleths function, to justify death – eternal death and damnation – to any who cannot or will not use this particular language.

That’s a bit of a stretch you say. It’s not as if born again Christians are going around killing people. At worse, their theology leaves the killing for God to accomplish.

I’m not so sure. To begin with, as a campus minister and lecturer I have met hundreds of people who have been killed by born again Christianity. Hundreds of people who have had their faith sucked out of them because they could not say ‘born again’ with the proper evangelical accent and enthusiasm. Hundreds of people who had their Christian faith killed because it could not conform to the constricted and narrow theology of the evangelicalism in which they were raised.

So yes, born again Christianity is killing people. Indeed, it tends to sacrifice its own children, and such a thing is not uncommon amongst idolatrous religions. And you may reply that this is a metaphorical killing. But killing it is.

Murder by metaphor.

But born again Christianity also engages in literal murder. On one level this is a theology that anticipates the suffering and violent deaths of millions of the world’s inhabitants during the Great Tribulation. It ought not surprise anyone that a faith that will condemn to hell those who will not use its particular shibboleth would then also have an eschatology that anticipates precisely such a genocide.

But there is one other way in which this is a murderous faith. There is no coincidence in the linking of the Religious Right and evangelical ‘born again’ faith. I know that there is a shift underway in the evangelical movement that has seen, or perhaps might see, the waning of the Religious Right. Check these sites out for more on that:

Emergent Village
Jesus for President
Revolution in Jesusland
Sojourners

And I see in this a movement of the Spirit of God. But we cannot move forward as a Christian community that seeks justice in the context of a dynamic relationship to Jesus and the kingdom that he brings, without facing the horrors of a born again Christianity that has legitimated a conservative politics that supports increased military expenditures, the ‘war on terror’, nationalism, unjust trade agreements, the death penalty, decreased support for the poorest of the poor, extreme individualism, capitalist greed, and despoliation of God’s good creation.

Okay, so I’ve been on a bit of a rant here. And I know that some of my friends are going to be upset with what I’ve written. But it seems to me that we have to face up to the evil that this ‘born again’ movement has been.

I was born again when I was sixteen years old. And it was a rebirth. I look upon that process of my conversion as a birth experience. My life, my true life as a child of God, as a son of my Father, began when I turned to Jesus. But the first time I walked into an evangelical church where everyone talked the talk of being ‘born again’ I had a disquieting feeling that what they were talking about wasn’t what I experienced when my life was turned to following Jesus and his kingdom. I’ve struggled with this all of my life.

So what do I do? Give up on the language of being ‘born again’ because it has become a murderous shibboleth? Or insist on reclaiming it?

You know, it’s one little metaphor in a Bible rich with metaphor. I think I can let this one go.

by Andrew Stephens-Rennie

In a previous post, I began to track the growing discussion around the impacts of current economic fragility on the future of the church. I quoted comments from Chris Marshall, Jason Evans and Alan Roxburgh, while also mentioning an exceptional post from Jordon Cooper.

Something that just popped up on my radar this morning, however, was a reflection from Malcolm Irwin over on the Just Comment blog:

The loopier, newer, and more scandalous thinking only starts to emerge when we honestly look at the potential impact of commuting less on our commuter-centric churches and the commuter-centric dispensaries of our social services.

What if people cannot get to church? What if people cannot make it to our centralized sites of professionalized help? What if we got to a point where we only went where we could walk? What could that mean for how we practice church?

And this, I think, is a helpful segue into something that I’ve been tossing around for a while. I think that my seminary education was deficient precisely because it did not ask me to contemplate the relationship of the church to the neighbourhood context. There really should be some sort of course on this…

A course that puts urban theorists such as Jane Jacobs in conversation with the theology of the church. I suppose that reading Mark Gornik’s “To Live in Peace: Biblical Faith and the Changing Inner City” during my time at school was one step in the right direction. Discovering the writings of Christian New Urbanist thinkers such as Eric Jacobsen has been helpful as well.

But I’m becoming more and more convinced that the issue of the church and her relationship to the local community is a big, gaping blind spot in the education of prospective ministers, pastors and priests.

An ability to think about the church in its local context is of the utmost importance. Luckily, we have megachurches in the burbs who take everything out of context. Just plop monolithic structures in the middle of large unwalkable fields, and then you don’t have to worry about contextualising the gospel. There’s no local culture to engage with. It’s out there, somewhere at the end of that vast expanse of asphalt, beyond the Wal-Mart next door.

On my more contrary days, I’d suggest we bulldoze all of it. The megachurches, the big box stores, everything. They’re all peddling the same cheap wares at discount prices. And Christ’s sacrifice has nothing to do with cheap grace. Nothing at all.

I speak in hyperbole. But perhaps a point lurks behind such an audacious proposition.

Jacobsen states, in an interview on Mars Hill Audio:

The way we design buildings and cities, the way we configure roads and neighborhoods, can say a great deal about our understanding of human nature and the shape of human wellbeing. But because they have viewed the really important part of human nature to be spiritual and not bodily, most Christians have been content to allow a kind of utilitarian commitment to efficiency and individual comfort guide the development of suburbs and thus contribute to the concomitant decay of cities.

And if this is the case, if our suburbanization is contributing to the decay of the cities, how do we respond specifically to “seek the welfare of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7), or more broadly, to embody and enact God’s constant call the scriptures to be good stewards of the earth.

We need to spend more time digging deeply into our reasons for the varieties of our church’s built form, and the way in which such structures interact with their surrounding communities. Plant a church in a big empty field, surround it by a big empty parking lot, and then consider what such self-imposed, buffer-building isolation says about a church’s relationship to the socio-political life of any given community.

Certainly, some churches would affirm such dualism - a sacred/secular divide might be precisely what some they wish to promote. But those of a more reformed persuasion might argue that this is not what being in, and not of the world really means.

And this thought - at least I hope - this thought should bring us back to thinking about the church, walkability, and neighbourhood life. The local church doesn’t necessarily have everything figured out. Each community has its own struggles. Local, neighbourhood churches can be just as beset with problems as larger, regional churches.

But if churches are to seek the welfare of the cities where they live, well then it seems to me that they need to find ways of having more contact with the people who live and work there. The people who live their lives in darkened alleys. Politicians, too. They need to know the city streets. The parks. The community life. And church members need to know these people and places intimately.

If we don’t know our neighbours, if we don’t interact with the wider world, how on earth will we be able to embody our constant prayer to see God’s will done in our own communities as it is in heaven?

by Brian Walsh

Some years ago I was teaching a course on postmodernity and a biblical worldview. The material was difficult for some of the students, both intellectually, but perhaps more to the point, it was difficult spiritually. And before class one day a student was just kind of hanging around as I was getting my act together. He clearly wanted to talk. So I asked him if there was something on his mind.

“Well,” he began, “I did have a question.”

“Sure,” I replied, “go ahead.”

“Are you born again?” the student asked.

An interesting question, and certainly a deeply loaded question for this young man.

So I replied, “If by being ‘born again’ you mean, ‘do I root my life in a relationship with Jesus Christ?’ then the answer is clearly yes. But if you mean, do I find myself comfortable in a certain subculture of modern Christianity, then the answer is no.”

It was clear that this answer wasn’t quite getting at my student’s question so I continued. “But if the question means, ‘can I trust you?’” (at which the student quickly nodded his head), “then the answer is decidedly no. If all that it takes to get you to trust me is for me to say that I am born again, then definitely no. I am not born again, and you should not grant me any trust too quickly.”

The student thanked me for my answer, remained silent in the class that followed and did not return to the next class.

Now I’ve got lots of friends who find the language of being ‘born again’ to be at the very heart of their understanding of Christian faith and their own identity as Jesus followers. And I do not doubt the sincerity of their faith. I do, however, sometimes get the distinct feeling that they doubt the sincerity of the faith of anyone who does not use this same ‘born again’ language to describe their own discipleship. And that is deeply problematic. In the next post I’ll say some more about this, but let me just make one point here.

The metaphor of being ‘born again’ has only one occurrence in the whole Bible! Once! That’s it! In one place, in John’s gospel, we meet the language of being born again employed to describe Christian conversion. Once! And yet a tradition of Christianity that purports to place a premium on the authority of Scripture has taken this one metaphor and made it into a shibboleth of admission.

If you don’t use this language, then … well, then you aren’t “born again.” That is to say, you aren’t a Christian. This isn’t submission to Scripture, this is making all of biblical interpretation, indeed all of Christian self-understanding subject to an over-emphasis and an over-interpretation of one solitary biblical text. Certainly isn’t the “whole counsel of God” is it?

Now this is likely not all that revolutionary to most readers of this blog. It isn’t likely anything all that new either. In my next blog I’ll say a little more about why being “born again” is likely a pretty bad idea.