This might be news to you

In a recent post, Andrew aka Tall Skinny Kiwi, who has been back in NZ for a spell, writes:

We are staying for a few days at Ngatiawa which is a monastery in the new-emerging fashion. This used to be a Presbyterian camp in a previous life but has been bought out and changed over and broadened in its use to become a monastic center for protestant youth, with a connection to the Anglicans. Good people here. There are actually 6 urban monasteries in this area under the Urban Vision banner and one rural monastery which adds some balance to the ministry. Ngatiawa is that rural piece of the puzzle - land, cows, gardens, daily prayer in a nice chapel, dung between your toes, etc.

In case it's news to you (as it was to me) that there was a 'new-emerging' monastery called Ngatiawa (which appears to be the joining together of the Maori tribal name Nga Tiawa but may not have particular connections) the following paragraphs from the NZ Urban Vision people may help:

We are a contemporary monastery set in the beautiful Reikorangi valley – inland from Waikanae, on the Kapiti Coast, north of Wellington. Ngatiawa seeks to give priority to nurturing a contemplative life within UV Vision and be an open community for others to experience. We offer prayerful rhythms, retreat and solitude. We enjoy and care for our land, seeking to live more sustainably. We also offer training and team building, as well as plenty of hospitality and recreation in a new way.

Our guest house hosts groups each week from Urban Vision, as well as other friends and neighbours, and church and community groups. Individuals also come to join us for retreat, support, recreation or to explore issues of faith, justice and community and personal wholeness. At least annually we host larger gatherings and festivals, and hope to be a place of connection for others committed to God's love and justice.

All this is great, although the more I read on the site the more it all sounds like what monasteries have been doing pretty much since they began. Certainly they were often more contemplative than active, but reaching out to the marginalised and working justly isn't exactly 'emerging' in regard to the history of monasteries. Just quibbling...!

Justice is the focus

In a video on the ABC news site, Dan Harris hosts a ten-minute interview with five young(ish) articulate evangelicals who are showing the 'new face' of Christians in the States (and elsewhere).    Pastor Jon Tyson, of Trinity Grace Church [photo at left], Gabe Lyons, the founder of Q, Shannon Sedgwick Davis of Bridgeway Foundation, Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, the founder of Two Futures Project, and Nicole Baker Fulgham of Teach for America.

These are a high-powered bunch, possibly not entirely typical of your average Evangelical.   Their big focus is on issues, and how Christians see justice and mercy in the world.   Between them this group is working on child trafficking and kidnapping, education, nuclear disarmament, to name just a few.

One of them points out that the world should be a better place for most people because there are Christians working alongside them.

In spite of its ten minutes, this is a very short introduction to several people who are worth following up in terms of what they're achieving.   They may not be household names yet, nevertheless, keep your eyes on them. 

Click on the links above for more information on each of these people and what they and their churches or organisations are doing.

And another brief post:

The satan, it seems, is a nonhuman being, a type of angel, perhaps in some accounts an ex-angel or fallen angel, and he or it (somehow feminists never campaign that the satan should be referred to as 'she') comes to be opposed to humankind, and then to Israel, and hence, not surprisingly, to Jesus.

From Evil and the Justice of God, chapter 4 (pg 108 of the hardcover edition), by N T Wright.

Jim Wallis

As I speak and listen to large and diverse audiences in every part of the nation, I find a deep hunger, especially among members of the younger generation, for something worth committing one's life to.... The two great hungers of our time are the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social justice--and the connection between the two has great power to motivate people to action. The world is especially waiting for a new social and political agenda drawn not from bickering partisan loyalties, blatant ideological bias, or corrupting special interests, but rather from our deepest moral values.

Jim Wallis
The Great Awakening

Give up those extra tax dollars

New Zealand's Government tax cuts came into effect October 1st. Most people will see it as a few more dollars in their pocket. Some will be a bit wiser and bank the extra. Even though for many it's not a lot of money per week, the $12 to $28 a week individuals save on their tax bill can make a real difference - especially for those who can get along without it.

A simple suggestion has come from the Anglican Social Justice Committee: - give those extra dollars up!

By giving them up to those who do need it, and to those working to make a real difference, you can take an active part in changing our nation and our world into more of the kind of place we, and our children, might like.

The Give It Up! site has the look of a newspaper about, but there are plenty of links to check out, and plenty of ideas of ways to put that extra cash to good use. (Furthermore, the more you give away the more the Inland Revenue will give you back next year - it's one big merry-go-round!)

Kevin Rudd and Religion in Australia

In a blog post on the 7th August, Jim Wallis (of Sojourners) writes:

One of the stories I first heard on my recent visit to Australia was about what helped swing the vote last November to Kevin Rudd, the new Labor prime minister. I read some new political data by veteran pollster and researcher John Black, who is respected across Australia's political spectrum. Black reported that the pivotal swing vote to Labor this time was among evangelicals and Pentecostals, especially in some key seats in the states of Queensland and South Australia.

Kevin Rudd [is] a new kind of Labor candidate who speaks openly and comfortably about his faith. Rudd is a Catholic, is theologically articulate, and even likes to write articles about German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Though Jim has apparently got it wrong about Rudd being a Catholic - he was brought up as one, but is now a practising Anglican, that doesn't change the point. Here's a practising Christian in Australia's top job, and social justice issues are one of his major concerns.

Read the rest of the article here - it has some other good things to say about Australia (!)

And one other word about social justice:
Social sin is the crystallization ... of individuals’ sins into permanent structures that keeps sin in being and makes its force to be felt by the majority of people.
- Oscar Romero
Salvadoran archbishop, assassinated in 1980

Mking a point

These two quotes arrived in different emails this morning. Seems to be a bit of a point being made here!

Our Lord asks but two things of us; Love for [God] and for our neighbor. We cannot know whether we love God…but there can be no doubt about whether we love our neighbour or not.
- Teresa of Avila
Interior Castle

More than a few Christians might be surprised to learn that the call to be involved in creating justice for the poor is just as essential and nonnegotiable within the spiritual life as is Jesus' commandment to pray and keep our private lives in order.

Ronald Rolheiser
The Holy Longing

A few quotes from 'a forgotten man'

"No man shares his life with God whose religion does not flow out, naturally and without effort, into all relations of his life and reconstructs everything that it touches. Whoever uncouples the religious and the social life has not understood Jesus. Whoever sets any bounds for the reconstructive power of the religious life over the social relations and institutions of men, to that extent denies the faith of the Master."

"Jesus did not in any real sense bear the sin of some ancient Briton who beat up his wife in B.C.56, or of some mountaineer in Tennessee who got drunk in A.D.1917. But he did in a very real sense bear the weight of the public sins of organized society, and they in turn are causally connected with all private sins."

There are: "six sins, all of a public nature, which combined to kill Jesus. He bore their crushing attack in his body and soul. He bore them, not by sympathy, but by direct experience. In so far as the personal sins of men have contributed to the existence of these public sins, he came into collision with the totality of evil in mankind. It requires no legal fiction of imputation to explain that 'he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.' Solidarity explains it."

"Religious bigotry, the combination of graft and political power, the corruption of justice, the mob spirit (being "the social group gone mad") and mob action, militarism, and class contempt-- "every student of history will recognize that these sum up constitutional forces in the Kingdom of Evil. Jesus bore these sins in no legal or artificial sense, but in their impact on his own body and soul. He had not contributed to them, as we have, and yet they were laid on him. They were not only the sins of Caiaphas, Pilate, or Judas, but the social sin of all mankind, to which all who ever lived have contributed, and under which all who ever lived have suffered."

These quotes come from Walter Rauschenbusch, whose book Christianity and the Social Crisis was so immensely popular in 1907 when it was published it sold more copies for three years than any other religious text but the Bible .

Rauschenbuschian has entered the language as an adjective: for a review of the centenary reprinting of his greatest book, click here.