Young Anabaptist Radicals

Last month IsaacV posted a preview of the Jesus for President tour stop in Raleigh. Here’s my review of one stop on the tour, cross-posted from As of Yet Untitled.

Last week Charletta and I spent 5 days at the Cornerstone Music Festival promoting Christian Peacemaker Teams. For me, it was an inspiring awakening to the "Revolution in Jesusland" as Zack Exley calls it. That is, the increasing openness of young American Evangelicals to God’s vision for shalom. It’s an awareness that Jesus’ redemption is not just an individual soul thing, but an invitation to transformation of relationships, communities and creation as a whole.

Charletta and I joined Jim Fitz at a booth that he has been staffing for the past 5 years. When Jim first started out, no one at Cornerstone had ever heard of CPT. Furthermore people were openly hostile. "Are you really Christian?" was the frequent challenge. Over the years, responses have begun to change. Even the one person who sat down and argued for half an hour about the efficacy of nonviolence told us he gets our newsletter. Part of the reason for this is Jim’s persistant witness. Many people come by with a familiar greeting for Jim. His beard and his hat are well known. But Jim’s perseverence is not the only influence on changing attitudes.

A week ago, Zach Exley posted the story of a young man titled Put one back in the Mennonite column. It’s a story that resonated with many readers of the post (see the comment from Tyler for example). And judging by the conversations I had at the CPT booth, it’s an increasingly common story. One young man told me that he used to thing CPTers were hippies and peaceniks and then he read the The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne and now he really thinks we’re doing great work. We talked for 20 minutes and he told me about the challenge of discussions about pacifism with his middle-aged Republican friend.

(more…)

As many of you may have read, the Supreme Court today made the tragic decision to overturn the hand gun ban in Washington D.C.

I’ve written here before about America’s view of the gun as holy. So I shouldn’t have been surprised by Senator McCain’s response:

“Unlike the elitist view that believes Americans cling to guns out of bitterness, today’s ruling recognizes that gun ownership is a fundamental right — sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly.”

But it made me wonder. What other things does McCain see as a sacred? (more…)

Cross posted from As of Yet Untitled.

From Thursday through Saturday of last week, Charletta and I attended PAPA festival. This is the People Against Poverty and Apathy festival that is a "convergence of communities and movements coming together to share, dream, and create." The gathering has happened twice before, first in 1997 and then again in 2006.

Plow Creek Mennonite Church and Fellowship hosted the event on their. I’ve visited Plow Creek a number of times over years, but the PAPAfarians had trasnformed the place. When we arrived on Thursday morning, the stubble on the oat fields was still visible between the veggie fueled bus campers and the 500 gallon water tank. But by that evening, the fields had sprouted tents like mushrooms in warm manure. Over 750 people showed up for the four day gathering that all told. Our entrance fee was on a donation basis since the event was run completely by volunteers, including most of the attendees themselves.

On Thursday afternoon we gathered to watch the opening festivities on the main stage, two hay wagons pushed together in a field. The welcome events which included an address by Tony Campolo (via cell phone) and an anarchist beat poetry band from St. Louis. More eccentric musical combinations were to follow in the ensuing days with musical acts ranging from a celestial harpist to a wild concert by the Psalters, a traveller/tribal/punk band that played hymns, folk songs and very loud worship songs.

(more…)

I recently finished reading Rebecca Solinit’s Hope in the dark: untold histories, wild possibilities (find it at a library near you). It’s a small, wonderful window into hope, written in the midst of the apparent failure of the anti-war movement. It inspired me to watch a little more closely in the news for hopeful stories in the news. I came across two stories about inspiring victories that will both (hopefully) lead to large new areas of land being protected and allowed to return to their natural state. They also show case an interesting contrast in tactics. (more…)

This is an expanded version of my review that first appeared on As of Yet Untitled. Available here with exclusive additional quotes from the book!

To put it simply, Tom Sine’s The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Timeis an encyclopedia of the new movement in the Evangelical church in Australia, Canada, Britain and the United States.

I received a review copy of The New Conspirators: just before leaving for Vietnam a month and a half ago. I carried the book with me through 3 long train journeys, fully intending to read it on each one. Then, quite unexpectedly I found myself with a large amount of time in a clinic room while my traveling companion recovered from a collapse due to altitude sickness.

We were in the mountain village of Sapa (see photos). A fog hung over the region the whole day, broken occasionally by rain. Indigenous people were the main clients of the medical facility and their colorful woven clothing gave the place a distinctly exotic feel. I found the setting infused my reading of The New Conpirators with a certain immediacy. His chapter on “Coming Home” stood out to me in particular. (more…)

I’m pleased to announce a new feature on YAR. When adding a comment you can click the “>>” button above the text field and you will see a whole row of useful buttons pop out. These buttons will allow you to do all sorts of nice things, like easily add links (”link” button) or put nice styling around quotes (”B-quote” to open and “/B-quote” to close). Try it out and experiment. Remember that you often need to close a tag after you open it. Just don’t overdo the styling.

Why is it that we’re happy to furiously engage in a 70+ comment discussion on what’s wrong with the blog, but when folks write thoughtful posts with probing, relevant questions for our generation, there’s barely any response?

Last week I shared the following reflection at an earth day service at Westminster College in Missouri. It’s an attempt to bring together the themes of creation care and peacemaking. The last 3 paragraph are a postscript.

The community I’m going to share about today is located in the San Lucas mountains in north central Colombia. They are small scale gold miners who work their own claims in 16 remote communities scattered around the Sur de Bolivar region. They work with picks and shovels to extract enough gold to feed their families and little more.

In early 2006 the Colombian military began a campaign of intensified military operations in the area. The small scale miners see it as an attempt to intimidate them and force them off their land to make way for the transnational mining corporation Anglo Gold Ashanti and its subsidiary Kedahda to begin industrial scale exploitation of the gold deposits in the region.

On September 19, 2006 Alejandro Uribe, a leader in the small scale gold miner’s federation was walking home from a community meeting when he was stopped by the Colombian army. The federation has been an important voice for the communities in organizing to defend their way of life and their right to the land. On that evening in 2006, the army shot Alejandra dead. Two days later soldiers told residents, "He won’t be your only death. There will be more dead leaders."

(more…)

Okay, it’s a corny rhyme, but given the wildly active response to Katie’s post, I’d like to propose a simple, concrete step to try to address the concerns Katie and many others of your raised. Way down the comment thread at slot #59 I mentioned a system that would allow users to rate posts and thereby democratically moderate what shows up on the blog.

I did a little more research today and discovered a way to implement the first part of this proposal: enabling voting on posts. This system could provide an easy way for folks to offer feedback on what posts they appreciate and which they don’t. Here’s an example of the system in action (see the stars at the bottom of every post):

http://lesterchan.net/wordpress/

The voting doesn’t have any effect on posts it just provides information for readers, writers and editors. What do you all think? Would this tool be a useful addition to YAR? Would it help to clarify what posts are useful? Or would it just end up being a tool for dissing people you don’t agree with?

Ever wander what the opposite of a boycott is? Wonder no more. An innovative nonprofit called Carrotmob this fascinating new strategy for environment action that remixes those old Hacienda fundraisers where everyone shows up for a meal and 5% goes to your local high school.

In this case, Carrotmob took bids for the highest percentages from various grocery stores. And instead of donating the money, the store commits to using the money to do environmental improvements as directed by Carrotmob. Then everyone and their brother shows up to buy stuff from the store at a appointed time.

Unfortunately it’s in San Francisco, but maybe if the idea catches on, it’ll come to a neighborhood near you!

(via BoingBoing)Cymbalta
Proscar
Bright Eyes Ringtones
Correcting credit reports
Credit card deal maker
Disputing your credit report
My credit score for
My credit report for
Buy Zovirax
Lil Flip Ringtones
Buy Tenormin
Buy Neurontin
Online Herbal Phentermine
Buy Lasix
Online Nexium
Valtrex
Buy Allegra
Differin
Shell credit card application
Credit card application
Just credit score
Trw credit reports
Cacu secured credit card
Luvox
Mac os x VPN
Online Acomplia
Buy Plavix
Buy Prednisone
Buy Elavil
Consolidate credit card debts
Alltel Ringtones
Ativan Online
Buy Soma
Voltaren
Fosamax
Buy Viagra
Lipitor
Debt credit report
Deceased credit card debt
Florida free credit report
Cheap Doxycycline
Configuration VPN
Flomax
Get a credit report
Buy Viagra Cialis Levitra
Remind Ringtones
Avapro
Buy Celebrex
VPN tunneling
Internet VPN xp
Buy Viagra Soft Cialis Soft
Credit score repair
Credit report gov
Buy Viagra Professional
Amoxil
Phentermine Online
Carisoprodol
Altace
Buy Viagra Soft Tabs
Buy Viagra
Valium
Levaquin
Cheap Viagra Cialis Levitra
Buy Hoodia
Meridia
Buy Lipitor
Download Ringtones
Credit card processing offer
Free Verizon Ringtones
Zyprexa
Torrente
Paxil
Cialis Soft Tabs
Plavix
Clomid
Discover secured credit card
Buy Ultracet

Back in September, Tom Sine emailed me asking if members of YAR could read over the manuscript for The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time. I emailed it out to regular contributors and invited feedback. The book looks at four streams of new Christian Expression - emerging, missional, mosaic and monastic. We’ll have a review of the book here on YAR coming soon.

The weekend before last, a bunch of folks (including a few from our sister network, the submergents) got together for the New Conspirators conference in Seattle. You can read Mark Van Steenwyk’s concluding report for the New Conspirators conference at Jesus Manifesto. It sounds an exciting time for folks from many streams to incubate ideas and imagine together. I very much wish I could have been there.

Today, I got an email from Tom with the following request:

Christine and I have been invited to keynote at the Mennonite Conference for North America in July. We would like to share bit of what you and your compatriots in the network are doing. Could you send me concrete examples of projects you are involved with? Could you also send me any creative examples of younger Anabaptists who are creating new expressions of church, community, advocacy, celebration and mission? We want to put older Mennos in touch with what you and other younger leaders are doing.

(more…)

For the last few days, I’ve been wanting to write something about the news from the region Charletta and I recently left. Today my teammates in Colombia released Border Tensions: A Prayer Request. This statement puts things a lot better then I could have. It also notes some details that I hadn’t heard, such as the claim by the Ecuadorian government that FARC commander Reyes was in “advanced stages of negotiations” with the Ecuadorian government for further hostage releases when he was killed.

I have to admit that I didn’t really shed any tears when I heard about the death of Reyes. Under his leadership the FARC has massacred indigenous people, farmers and North American activists and committed many terrorist acts. They’ve built a drug trafficking empire and lost any credibility as a positive force for change in the region. They’ve become a criminal enterprise acting with a thin veneer of ideology and in the process caused untold damage to Colombia’s authentic movements for social change. But the CPT release is a good reminder that this bombing represents a continued shift on the part of the Colombian government “to deal with the national conflict in a military framework rather than building on civil and diplomatic attempts.”

The team’s statement also mentions the “saber-rattling by neighbors in the region”. I’d like to look at that saber rattling a little more closely. Specifically, the war-mongering coming from the party that was not directly involved in the incident, Chavez. In the fall of 2006 I went to Venezuela on my honeymoon and wrote four posts here (1, 2, 3, 4) documenting some of the reactions we heard to Chavez from people we met along the way. At the time we saw that there were a lot of good things going on in Venezuela, but it was also clear that Chavez’s leadership was problematic. While we were there he made his famous Bush-is-the-devil speech that boosted Chomsky to #1 on Amazon. It was a stunt that brought up conflicted response for me. While it was great to have Chomsky get some exposure, Chavez was clearly setting a polarizing and divisive course for himself and his country. (more…)

So you may have read in the news a few weeks ago that US seeks the death penalty as six detained in Guantánamo are charged over 9/11. Though the process has been abominable, at least the decision to hold a trial (as opposed to indefinite detention) seems like a step in the right direction: away from the war on terror and toward a criminal justice response to terrorism. I wrote last year about Britain taking a step in the same direction.

Unfortunately, The Nation has an article today that suggests guilty verdicts in these trials may be a foregone conclusion. Here’s an excerpt from their article describing an interview with Col. Morris Davis , former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo’s military commissions:

When asked if he thought the men at Guantánamo could receive a fair trial, Davis provided the following account of an August 2005 meeting he had with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes–the man who now oversees the tribunal process for the Defense Department. “[Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time,” recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, something that had lent great credibility to the proceedings.

“I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process,” Davis continued. “At which point, [Haynes’s] eyes got wide and he said, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions.’”

(more…)

I just read John McCain’s victory speech after today’s primaries. This passage caught my eye:

They will paint a picture of the world in which America’s mistakes are a greater threat to our security than the malevolent intentions of an enemy that despises us and our ideals; a world that can be made safer and more peaceful by placating our implacable foes and breaking faith with allies and the millions of people in this world for whom America, and the global progress of our ideals, has long been “the last, best hope of earth.”

(more…)

As some of you may know, I’ve been working in Barrancabermeja, Colombia with Christian Peacemaker Teams since January 5. I’ve been writing regularly about my work here on my blog for the Mennonite, but I thought it was about time I wrote something here on YAR.

CPT’s work here in the Magdalena Medio has changed quite a bit since I was last here 3 years ago. At that time our work was still mainly focused on the Opon, an area where paramilitaries and guerillas threatened the civilian population as they vied for control. CPT’s work there has focused on a physical presence as a deterrent to human rights abuses, threats and killings by armed groups. CPT Colombia continues to accompany the Opon, but has also broadened it’s accompaniment to include other communities in the Magdalena Medio region.

The region is rich in resources including oil and the largest gold deposits left in South America. This means it is also a major target for multinational corporations and their proxies the Colombian government and paramilary groups. Communities across the region are finding ways to nonviolently defend their rights and their land. Today, CPT is accompanying many of the communities where that conflict is the hottest. (more…)