ken wilson online

If you’re a young pastor in the United States, you’ve grown up with the culture wars.  You may be sick to death of them, but you may also find them hard to shake.  In the middle of the noise, let me offer this counsel: don’t let the loudest voices intimidate you.  Do the work of an evangelist.  Keep your heart open to the heart of God for those who are the outside of faith looking in.  Like Billy Graham, in fact, who in his later years has had some pretty surprising things to say.
Read the rest of this entry »

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

Because we need to work together to solve problems that cannot be solved without our working together.  It’s a simple as that.  During the era of culture war (the 1980’s through the beginning of the new millenium), the basic structures of society were functioning.  We had a highway system, a phone system, an energy system, a political system, an economic system, that more or less worked for the majority of people.  We had the luxury of being sharply divided.  People could gain power by highlighting our divisions, rather than focusing on what we had in common.

Sadly, many religious people fell for this power grab, listening to voices of paranoia and fear. (Did anyone see the letter from James Dobson imagining 2012 if the hated liberals took over?  As paranoid as the anti-religion zealots who see faith as the root of all evil.)
Read the rest of this entry »

Got your attention, didn’t I?  Yes, I’m going to post on abortion and birth control.  Because we have to start talking to each other across the culture war divide.

But first: pause for a moment, lower your hackles, and consider the term, “war.”  What does it evoke?  A battle unto death.  Prepare to kill, prepare to die, that’s what war is about.  And there are times, perhaps, for war. But the followers of Jesus who care about the teachings of Jesus are not to be war enthusiasts. The war that counts, we’re told, is the one that is NOT waged against flesh and blood.  Can we agree on that?  So when we are talking with another human being, when we are struggling with other human beings over issues, war may be the LAST metaphor we should rely on to frame our discussion.   If the teachings of Jesus matter to us, that is.
Read the rest of this entry »

Yes.  We may be witnessing the end of the culture wars as the primary cultural drama of American life.  I suspect that for a time, the pitched battle between cultural-political conservatives and their liberal counterparts may intensify after a post-election pause, but it is inexorably now drifting from center stage. It’s a simple and unrelenting matter of demographics.
Read the rest of this entry »

I came of age under the spectre of wars and rumors of war.  My father fought in WW2, and I grew up with the movies of victory over tyranny. My generation learned to hide beneath our desks as the rumors of nuclear holocaust swept over us during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Then I watched my city burn with helicopters circling overhead and tanks rumbling down eight mile, a block away from my house. I sweated out the draft during Vietnam as a young father and lucked out with a low (or was it a high?) lottery number.  No surprise then, that my generation, approaching mid-life, fueled the culture wars.  So I wonder what’s to become of a generation coming of age in a time of bursting bubbles and collapsing towers?
Read the rest of this entry »