The recent news that 43 percent of white Ohio evangelicals voted in the Democratic primary might be heralded as evidence that the Republican Party no longer has a lock on religious voters.
Of course, it would be a mistake for the Democratic Party to coast on its good fortune and assume the demographic trends are tilting in its favor over the long run. The truth is there are stirrings of discontent within both evangelical (solid Republican voters since Reagan) and mainline Christianity (solid Democratic voters since probably Kennedy). Christians are yearning for transformation that is both spiritually authentic and socially grounded, which neither party is likely to be able to fulfill.
Some of these ideas can be found in the Revolution in Jesusland blog, self-described as “a plea to the progressive movement, to take another look and get to know the diverse and complex world of evangelical Christianity in its own terms.” The blog is authored, in part, by Zach Exley, a former union organizer, organizing director for MoveOn.org and director of online organizing and communications for the Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004.
On its surface, the blog might come across as a handbook to help the Democratic leadership cynically maneuver Christian true believers into the party's column, but consider the theology and lived experience discussed on the blog, and it's hard to not come away with the impression that this stuff is way too unruly to fit comfortably in either party’s agenda.
One term for the nascent movement: The New Monasticism. That doesn’t quite encompass the breadth and variety of the nascent movement though. It’s also Christianity as a critique of consumerism and extravagance, as radical community uplift, as rejection of status and power for their own sakes. Too, it's an old movement that can be traced back to the founding of the Catholic Worker in the 1930s.
Several communities where Christians are trying to figure out how to practice their faith in revolutionary modes are located here in North Carolina.
Durham’s Rutba House was recently featured in the Boston Globe, which also mentions the Dogwood Abbey in Winston-Salem.
Zach Roberts, dean of the Dogwood Abbey, doubles as interim associate pastor of education and spiritual formation at First Baptist Church in Greensboro.
"Allowing ourselves to be taught and re-taught by the revolutionary Jesus of the gospels" is how the Dogwood Abbey describes its purpose. "The white-American Jesus who saves certain individuals, according to a formula, for a better life later while the world disintegrates is not what we mean…. The focus of all that we practice is the God whose animating Spirit wore the flesh of Jesus of Nezereth. And like them, our dream is to see the kin-dom of God's grace, justice, and reconciliation come to life on earth as it is in heaven."
It would be easy to neglect the Beloved Community Center, because the radioactive reputation of its cofounder, the Rev. Nelson Johnson, so often overshadows the work that he actually does. A fusion of the black church, a singular liberated institution in the midst of overwhelming white oppression when it was established during slave times, and the transformational civil rights politics of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, which was founded in Raleigh in 1960 shortly after the Woolworth’s sit-ins here in Greensboro, the Beloved Community Center comes by its identity honestly.
Citing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ella Baker, a founding elder of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, as influences, the Beloved Community Center describes its mission as “to model a spirit of community that promotes social, economic, and personal relationships that affirm and realize the equality, dignity, worth, and potential of everyone.”
Perhaps King articulated a political third way of spirituality best. Here’s what he said in Atlanta in 1967 about the great ideological struggle of his day:
"Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated."
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