ken wilson online

It was an odd encounter, but not the first of it’s kind. I had been asked to speak at a Catholic conference on what Catholics might learn from evangelical churches.  The participants were kind, responsive and incredibly humble–sitting there listening to me, a pastor without a seminary degree for heaven’s sake.  When it was over, a very decent, thoughtful, intelligent–and I would presume kind–man approached me and asked why I wasn’t Catholic. Oh-oh, I I thought. Been here, done this. The conversation from hell–that circles endlessly and nobody leaves happy.  But when speaking to a group of people your pre-frontal cortex gets tired, and your willpower is weakened and you take the bait, and converse, knowing that that it’s not going to be a conversation.
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Carl Safina, the preeminent ocean conservationist alive today, and author of Song for the Blue Ocean will be speaking at the Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor this coming Sunday.  Why? Because he is the friend of sinners.  I met Carl in November of 2006 at a retreat bringing together top enviornmental scientists and a group of evangelical leaders.  It was an historic meeting inasmuch these two groups hadn’t done a lot of retreating together in the past.  We were asked by the organizers (Harvard and the National Association of Evangelicals) not to tell people where we were going, with whom, or why, because they didn’t want to draw media attention.  I think that was overkill, but it reveals the sense of nervousness surrounding the meeting.
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If I were a thoughtful reader of this blog, I could imagine being annoyed by the message coming through. What’s got this guy so hot and bothered?  Why does he even bother to identify as evangelical if he’s got such a withering critique of  American evangelicalism?  He talks as if he’s a Jesus freak, but most of the time (lately) he’s talking about issues: climate change, birth control, Darwin, and the rest. Why doesn’t he just listen to NPR instead of criticizing evangelicals for tuning in to Rush so often? I can imagine being annoyed by this, not because I have such empathy skills, but because I have dear friends who wonder about me.  People I respect and have the highest regard for. So here’s what’s bothering me: I think without really intending to, American evangelicals, as a movement, have turned half the country into the new Samaritans.
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