Barrier Breakers: Chris Haw and David Frenette

September 23, 2012 by

Click the cover to visit this book’s Amazon page.This week, ReadTheSpirit welcomes two Christian activists who are breaking down the high barriers that separate people into Christian camps—or that shove people away from Christianity entirely. Their ability to open new portals into Christianity’s spiritual riches comes, in part, because both writers have worked as collaborators of other prophetic figures.

Chris Haw is most famous as Shane Claiborne’s sidekick in their barnstorming Jesus for President tours that crisscrossed America. David Frenette is best known as a younger colleague of Father Thomas Keating, who at age 89 is widely celebrated as a father of modern centering prayer. Neither Haw nor Frenette are household names—yet. But they confidently stand shoulder to shoulder with their more famous mentors.

As these two authors emerge in their own right, both are saying: It’s time to topple the barriers that separate people. The Christian tradition is so deep and vibrant that we need to encourage people to reach freely for the best of the tradition’s spiritual wisdom.

Chris Haw once was associated with America’s most famous seeker-oriented megachurch: Willow Creek, often described as “nondenominational.” In From Willow Creek to Sacred Heart: Rekindling My Love for Catholicism, Chris tells how he decided to leave Willow Creek and become a Roman Catholic.

David Frenette was raised without any religious background and found his way, as a young man, in Hinduism and Buddhism. Now an active layperson in the Episcopal Church, Frenette is devoting his life to bringing the centering prayer practices long associated with Catholic monks like Keating to a far wider audience. In The Path of Centering Prayer: Deepening Your Experience of God, he’s not trying to convert anyone to Catholicism, nor does he teach that the deepest forms of prayer are only available to monks or to the ordained. These gifts of prayer are available to everyone, he says. And, in his books, he shows you how to get started—or to deepen your practice, if you are a veteran.

CHRIS HAW: ‘I carried a lot of anti-ness within me.’

Chris Haw begins by admitting in our ReadTheSpirit interview (and in his new book) that he has been guilty of manning the old barricades. In our interview, Chris says in part:

“When we identify ourselves as Protestants, we’re identifying with this movement that historically said: We are protesting what the Catholics are doing until they change X, Y or Z. Of course, I never thought much about that history until I began to spend time with Catholics. Then, I realized that I actually carried a lot of this anti-ness within me. Finally, I came to realize: I don’t believe in this Protestant-Catholic feud anymore.”

Chris is remarkably gracious in describing the many benefits of his years at Willow Creek, but now he clearly is rejecting Willow Creek’s approach to Christianity. In his new book, Chris argues that people who come to Willow Creek are mistaken in claiming that it is a nondenominational church. Here is how he puts it at one point in our interview:

“I have come to realize there is no such thing as nondenominationalism, no matter what Willow Creek and others may claim. Willow Creek reaches out to people who are sick of the traditions and hierarchies that they have seen around them. But it’s a mistake to think that we can escape into some sort of neutral Christian philosophy. Willow Creek claims that’s what they’re giving people: a nondenominational Christianity. But it’s really evangelical Protestant Christianity posing as neutrality.”

CHRIS HAW: Relaxing into worship

Many newly converted Catholics—especially evangelicals who migrate all the way to Roman Catholicism—talk like Chris Haw about the wonderment they enjoy in “coming home” to a church with traditions that reach back 2,000 years. Chris talks about that, too, but there is one striking difference in what Chris describes.

Chris says he loves the experience of relaxing into the liturgies of the Catholic church. That may sound like a strange word to use in praising the Mass and other Catholic liturgies. In fact, many Catholics—especially inactive Catholics—complain about the relative passivity of Catholic worship, when compared with evangelical and Pentecostal worship.

But, in his odyssey away from Willow Creek to Catholicism, Chris Haw says the Catholic Church helped him to realize that he didn’t have to turn every worship service into an emotional performance. In our interview, Chris says: “It was a breath of fresh air to feel that I didn’t need to express this outward emotional experience in worship every week. As a Catholic, worship now becomes more about relaxing and letting the liturgy shape me.”

Chris also has rejected the seeker-church willingness to rebaptize Christians—a practice also rejected by most mainline Christian traditions. One baptism is enough, most Christian leaders in longstanding denominations agree. Seeker churches and some other evangelical and Pentecostal churches baptize again—in some cases again and again.

“This gets to be ridiculous. People think they are taking charge of their own faith, so they start to think that they should get baptized about every five minutes,” Chris says in our interview. One baptism should be enough, he now argues. That reflects the real and timeless power within some of the long-standing traditions in mainline Christianity, he says.

DAVID FRENETTE: ‘Contemplative Research and Development’

Click the book cover to visit the Amazon page.David Frenette’s message echoes Chris Haw in several ways. On the surface, their new books are quite different. Chris Haw’s new book is about his personal journey from one denomination to another. David Frenette’s book barely mentions specific denominations. Instead, he has written a detailed guidebook to leaping into the deep end of centering prayer.

But, David’s book echoes Chris’s realization that Christian wisdom is more about “relaxing” than strenuously trying to promote the faith in outwardly emotional ways. In fact, David describes the life-changing practice of centering prayer as becoming still enough and aware enough to recognize that one does not need to circle the globe to find God. And, lest you wonder whether David Frenette is charting his own new course away from Keating’s core message, the book contains a Foreword from Keating that fully endorses what Frenette is writing. Keating’s Foreword says, in part:

“This book is an example of how God continues to enlighten practitioners of centering prayer, opening up new depths of meaning and new aspects of the practice that encourage long-time practitioners to penetrate the mystery of God’s infinite love and ultimately to be transformed into it. Although he is an accomplished teacher, advisor and spiritual director, this book shows that David’s primary spiritual gift is in bringing forth new dimensions and nuances of contemplative practice that are solidly rooted in the revelation of Christ that all Christian practices point to and flow from. This is an extremely important endeavor, for a spiritual tradition stagnates unless it continues to breathe new life into itself with practices and resources appropriate for longtime practitioners, new generations of seekers, and changing social conditions. David’s long experience … trained him for this work, which might be called ‘contemplative research and development.”

DAVID FRENETTE: Rediscovering ‘our true home in God’

While Chris Haw and David Frenette both are important barrier breakers—ultimately, they describe a yearning for home. In David’s interview with ReadTheSpirit, he talks about how centering prayer really is a process of settling fully into an expanded awareness that we already are at home with God. In other words: God is not a distant, hidden treasure—past barricades we must breach in an arduous quest. Nor can anyone control or own or rope off God from others. We always are at home with God—if we only have our senses and spirit attuned to realize this truth. In the interview, David puts it this way:

“Coming home or realizing that we are home—that’s a wonderful image that lies at the heart of the contemplative life. Unfortunately, we seem to be alienated from our true home in God—our true home in the deepest sense of who we are as men and women created in the image of God. We are distracted in so many ways in our daily lives. These days, there is so much technology stimulating us, drawing our attention. Yet, God is closer to us than we are to ourselves—that’s also one of the great teachings of the contemplative life.

We don’t have to search for God—rather, we allow ourselves to be loved by God. When we quietly sit and pray at the start of the day, even for 20 minutes, we are brought into an awareness of the divine presence. As we cultivate this, we remain aware of this presence throughout our day. We discover that we don’t have to be in a monastery or a church to be at home with God. We can be at home with God while driving a car, working at a desk or doing dishes in the evening. What we are talking about is the awareness that: Wherever we are, home is possible.”

Read our interviews:
First, with Chris Haw about his journey From Willow Creek to Sacred Heart.
Second, with David Frenette about The Path of Centering Prayer.

Here is our interview with Chris Haw.

Please help us to reach a wider audience

We welcome your Emails at [email protected]
We’re also reachable on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Huffington Post, YouTube and other social-networking sites. You also can Subscribe to our articles via Email or RSS feed.
Plus, there’s a free Monday morning Planner newsletter you may enjoy.

Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

Inspiring Zombies and Vampires and Ghouls (oh my!)

August 26, 2012 by

First, enjoy Part 1 of our coverage of Clay Morgan’s UNDEAD: Revived, Resuscitated, Reborn.
Also, meet historian, educator Clay Morgan in our author interview.

From the Zombie Psalm to Twilight:
3 Millennia of Popular Milestones

A look at some of the many pop-culture references related to Clay Morgan’s UNDEAD.

3,000 YEARS AGO: THE ZOMBIE PSALM

Tommie Harris and what Clay Morgan calls The Zombie Psalm.Search the precise phrase “The Zombie Psalm” (in quotes) in Google today and you’ll see an amazing sight—less than 1 page of results. That’s because Clay Morgan is just now trying to coin that phrase to describe a very popular and downright haunting passage in Psalm 91. It’s the passage that declares:
You will not fear the terror of the night,
or the arrow that flies by day,
or the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
or the destruction that wastes at noonday.
A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
According to Clay, the Psalmist probably was envisioning the ghastly death and pestilence associated with ancient battlefields. Thousands were dead or dying; disease was running rampant and into this zombie landscape, the faithful warrior was stepping once again. In fact, this isn’t as crazy as it sounds. Psalm 91 has long been known as The Soldier’s Psalm. Wallet-sized copies have been carried into battle by countless men and women. How popular is it today? Pro football defensive standout Tommie Harris writes Psalm 91 on the adhesive breathing strip he sticks to his nose before each game. Tommie has said in interviews that the particular Psalm 91 passage Clay highlights is his own prayer on the football field.

2,600 Years Ago: EZEKIEL AND DEM DANCING BONES

Do you doubt that our current fascination with the undead stretches back to ancient roots? Just start singing along with “Dem Bones,” which retells a famous story from the prophet Ezekiel. That vision inspiring African-American slaves to trust in God’s power to overturn the cruel system that bound them. We have the poet James Weldon Johnson to thank for writing the melody and preserving that spiritual for us today.

2,000 Years Ago: UNDOING DEATH BECOMES A CHRISTIAN HALLMARK

For more on this, see Part 1 of our coverage of UNDEAD: Revivied, Resuscitated, Reborn.

Around 400 AD: CHRISTIANS CLING TO SKELETONS OF SAINTS

Reverently preserving the bones of the dead began long before Christianity. Then, after Jesus, some of the earliest Christian worship services during the era of Roman persecution were held near the graves of martyrs. Later, when Rome officially recognized Christianity, many of the faithful focused their faith on the spiritual power of relics associated with Jesus and the first Christian saints. By around the year 400, the competition for relics was growing, partly because relics drew pilgrims to major shrines and pilgrims brought money. St. Jerome felt that this was becoming enough of a problem that he had to clarify the practice: “We do not worship, we do not adore, for fear that we should bow down to the creature rather than to the creator, but we venerate the relics of the martyrs in order the better to adore Him whose martyrs they are.” There’s not a wilder tale of the competition for relics than the holy hopscotch involving John the Baptist’s head. THIS WEEK brings one of the oldest commemorations in the worldwide Christian church, involving that dramatic beheading.

IN THE YEAR 1300: DANTE TAKES A FAMOUS TOUR OF HELL

The brilliant Italian poet Dante Alighieri lived until his mid 50s before dying in 1321, but he cast himself as 35 in the year 1300 as he set off on his famous tour of hell, purgatory and heaven. He produced one of the world’s greatest literary masterpieces (and undead-fest supreme), The Divine Comedy. This lengthy epic is packed with sophisticated word play and symbolic twists and turns. The souls being tortured in hell for the sin of lust, for example, are forever pushed this way and that way by a powerful wind. Those being punished for the sin of anger find themselves endlessly fighting other lost souls—or sinking into a deep swampy pool of anger. Dante supposedly was warning readers of the dangers of temptation, and the pathway to heaven, but he also gave us all a deviously imaginative vision of foul play. Mystery writers in particular have found themselves drawn to Dante. In fact, one of Dante’s many famous translators was the British mysery writer and outspoken Christian activist Dorothy L. Sayers.

1690: NEW ENGLAND SCARES MILLIONS OF KIDS … TO SLEEP

It’s tough to pinpoint the origin of the terrifying bedtime prayer, but by 1690, it was distributed to American families in the form of The New England Primer. Remember the prayer?
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I shall die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
In his book, Clay Morgan says this is just a glimpse at “how terrifying” it was to live with the prospect of earlier understandings about the fate of our souls upon death. Today, he writes, he doesn’t know a parent who would make young children recite this prayer.

1818: FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER IS BROUGHT TO LIFE

Mary Shelley lived in a maelstrom of creative energies—surrounded by her husband, a great Romantic poet, and their friend Lord Byron—not to mention other like-minded writers, artists and activists. She created the first of the great monstrous figures of 20th-century pop culture in Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus. But she also turned out other books as well. That includes a pioneering work in what we would call today science fiction: the apocalyptic The Last Man. One can only imagine what Mary Shelley and her crowd would make of our fascination with the undead, today.

1827: A MUMMY UNWRAPPED FOR THE WORLD TO SEE

Something amazing was stirring the women in Britain in this era of Romantic arts and letters. The second of the great undead figures of 20th-century pop culture, The Mummy, debuted as an 1827 novel by the English botanist Jane C. Loudon. (That’s right, she and her husband were most famous for serious studies of plant life.) Before penning her own classic, Jane Loudon almost certainly had read Mary Shelley’s influential novels. Plus, historians say that Loudon, as a little girl, is likely to have attended a public unwrapping of a mummy in a London theater in 1821. In that era, European exploration of Egypt was yielding widespread fascination with all things having to do with the wonders of the ancient pharoahs.

1842: PULLING THE MASK OFF THE RED DEATH

The Brits didn’t have an exclusive corner on fantasies of the undead. The Romantic movement had crossed the Atlantic and one of the chief proponents of a very dark romanticism was Edgar Allen Poe. Before he died at a youthful 40, Poe had written some of the most haunting tales of death and the undead that the world has ever seen. His Mask of the Red Death debuted in Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine in 1842. The genteel publication, aimed pointedly at women as well as at male readers, is another sign of the huge popularity of undead tales with female readers.

1843: GHOSTS PERFORM A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Even Clay Morgan admits that his favorite version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is one of the comic versions: Bill Murray in the 1988 movie Scrooged. What with musical versions and a very popular Muppet rendition, it’s easy to forget that Dickens wrote a flat-out ghost story that featured bone-chiling warnings from the undead. That’s why Dickens opens his classic Christmas story with these lines: “Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail. Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did.” Get it!?! Despite all the songs and laughs that we associate with Scrooge today—this is truly a tale of the undead.

1863: LINCOLN EMBRACES THE DEAD

In our recent coverage of the noted historian of American religion, Stephen Prothero, he describes Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as “the greatest American speech ever.” A lot of historians of religion—including Clay Morgan—refer to the speech at the Civil War battlefield as a turning point in our collective religious culture. Some scholars have argued that the leaders of the George Washington era invoked a Moses-like image of the nation’s religious destiny. At Gettysburg, Lincoln invoked the dead, sacrificial blood and summoned a Jesus-like image of our American spirit. This is such a rich chapter in our history that Clay Morgan also focuses on the spiritual lessons of Lincoln’s life.

1897: COUNT DRACULA TAKES A BOW

Before the 19th century ended, a man who was well known in London for his work as a theatrical manager gave the world the last of the great 20th-century undead monsters: Dracula. Bram Stoker spent a long time researching European folklore on vampires before writing his horrific novel. The book was not a runaway bestseller, but it receive high praise from British literary lights. The Daily Mail lauded Stoker as surpassing both Mary Shelley and Edgar Allen Poe.

1921: WWI AND THE COTTINGLEY FAIRIES

Earlier this summer, ReadTheSpirit published a two-part story about Sherlock Holmes’ creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and his embarassing declaration later in life that he had scientifically proven the reality of fairies in the English countryside. At that point in his life, Doyle was crushed by a series of deaths in his family that clustered around World War I. That horrific war also scarred other writers, including C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. In Doyle’s case, the loss of a series of relatives around WWI led to a period of deep depression. It also led Doyle to embrace spiritualism and a fond hope that either science or the Christian faith would find a way to pierce the wall between life and death.

1922: TREASURES OF KING TUT (AND A MUMMY’S CURSE?)

Almost exactly a century after little Jane Loudon is likely to have watched a public unwrapping of a mummy in London, explorer Howard Carter rocketed Egyptian mummies to front-page news around the world. (That’s Carter in the photo at right.) In late 1922, Carter and his sponsor Lord Carnarvon caused a sensation by entering the tomb of King Tutankhamun. Not only did mummies leap back into pop culture with a vengeance—but also with distinctly evil intent after rumors of an eternal curse of the pharoahs. That myth arose after Lord Carnarvon died in 1923 while still in his 50s. He died of a mosquito bite that became infected and resulted in blood poisoning—enough to fuel nightmares of mummies reaching from beyond the grave. Today, serious historians call the “mummy’s curse” nothing but hysteric claptrap, but that didn’t stop a steady flow of shocking headlines. The King Tut tomb also shaped a century of fanciful media. For example, the oldest surviving Dr. Who science-fiction series from 1960s television is The Tomb of the Cybermen. The robot-like creatures later became regular foes of The Doctor on British television, but the original multi-part series was designed by BBC producers to mirror the opening of King Tut’s tomb in the 1920s.

1931 AND 1932: BIRTH OF THE ANCIENT/MODERN MONSTERS

Most of the 20th Century’s great undead monsters stepped onto the silver screen in the era of silent film. The most chilling of the silent horrors was the 1922 version of Dracula, called Nosferatu. The eerie imagery of Max Schreck as the vampire—sometimes just Schreck’s shadow cast on a wall—hasn’t been surpassed since the creepy film was first shown in theaters. When sound began bursting from Hollywood, Bella Lugosi brought Dracula back to life in a sleek new style and Boris Karloff gave us Frankenstein’s monster complete with the bolts in his neck and an over-sized physique. One year later, in 1932, Karloff gave us his classic Imhotep, aka The Mummy.

1930’s: HAITI AND OUR FEAR OF ZOMBIES

As Clay Morgan points out in his book, our current love of zombies dates back roughly to the 1930s with the movie White Zombie. Of course, American assumptions about zombies in that era are mingled with cultural bias and racism related to the Haitian roots of what Haitian’s refer to as Vodou. Zombies are not a major part of the faith that blends elements of African and Christian cultures. In fact, from a Haitian perspective, Vodou’s proudest moment was the Bois Caiman, a 1791 Vodou invocation of the spiritual power to throw off the nation’s slave-owning powers. Within the complex spiritual tradition, zombies are regarded as a dark art in which powerful drugs are used to control a person’s will.

1968: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (AND ZOMBIES WE LOVE)

For all intents and purposes, Clay Morgan points out, our current obsession with zombies was born in 1968 in the gritty, black-and-white, low-budget horror film, Night of the Living Dead. Clay writes: “Tragedies struck in quick succession in 1968—the Vietnam War had already divided the country before January of that year when the Tet Offensive showed anxious citizens that the end of the conflict was not coming soon. Then both Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy were assassinated within one moth of each other. Racial divisions and protests drove national conflict as many found ways to escape the madness of it all. By that point, flesh-eating zombies fit in quite well with the absurdity of life that millions of people found so hard to understand.”

1972: A KINDER, GENTLER DRACULA—COUNT VON COUNT

Clay Morgan actually begins his book with his own childhood memories of Count von Count, who first appeared on Sesame Street in 1972. After all the other ghastly associations with zombies, vampires, ghouls and other forms of the undead, a warm and fuzzy version of Dracula ushered in a whole new era of vampire love.
REMEMBERING THE ORIGINAL COUNT: Millions, like Clay Morgan, immediately recognize the Count’s look—but they also know his voice and distinctive laugh. The original voice of the Count, Jerry Nelson, recently died. CNN online has a tribute to Nelson that includes several memorable Count video clips.

2002: VAMPIRES ON VACATION
30 DAYS OF NIGHT

Flash forward 30 years from Count von Count and there is absolutely nothing warm and fuzzy about the sharp-toothed, blood-dripping vampires in the comicbook epic by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith. 30 Days of Night refers to the odd geographic phenomenon of long-term darkness in Barrow, Alaska—a natural allure for light-sensitive vampires. Clay Morgan is a fan of comics and graphic novels and calls this comic tale “a blood-sucking Mardi Gras.” And, no, he’s not talking about a family-friendly Mardi Gras. Clearly, Americans may want to fall in love with the undead sometimes, but we also want to scare ourselves silly along the way.

2005: GIRLS, MEET SOME VAMPIRES YOU’LL JUST LOVE!

By 2005, the stage was set for chills and thrills—horrors and hugs from the undead realm. Originally published as children’s literature (Breaking Dawn won the British Book Award in 2008 for Children’s Book of the Year), Twilight now has crossed over from girls to adult women. Stephenie Meier has sold more than 100 million copies—and the Twilight odometer keeps spinning.

2005: HAD ENOUGH FOOTBALL? TRY HUMANS VS. ZOMBIES

That autumn, HvZ debuts at tiny Goucher College near Baltimore. Now supported by a non-profit website, Humans vs. Zombies is turning into a worldwide phenomenon.

2010: THE WALKING DEAD STUMBLES INTO NETWORK TV

The AMC network, crowing about its rave reviews for Mad Men and Breaking Bad, jumped into the realm of the zombies in 2010. The third season of The Walking Dead starts in autumn 2012. Clay Morgan says our current zombie fad is strong evidence of widespread anxiety in American culture. He writes: “Tragedy and zombie popularity are inversely proportional. The worse things get, the more we buy into the apocalypse. The 1980s and 1990s weren’t perfect, but they were relatively peaceful and prosperous. Not surprisng then that you won’t find massive mainstream appeal to zombies like we see in a post 9/11 world.”

2011: UNDEAD, YET OH SO CARING—THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

By last year, American culture was overloaded with zombies. The 2006 novel, World War Z, has given way to a big-budget movie version starring Brad Pitt, due to hit theaters in summer 2013. Even the federal government is getting involved through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Starting in 2011, the CDC began producing some of its most popular guides to public health using tongue-in-cheek zombie themes. Most famous is Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse by the CDC, posted online in 2011. Now, in 2012, the CDC is back with a graphic novel called Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic (cover at right). We think the staff at the CDC should be praised for the creativity. In this era of dire budget cutting, the CDC is finding a way to put the undead to work for the public good!

2012: TWILIGHT’S LAST GLEAMING (MAYBE)—BREAKING DAWN, 2

Apparently, the Twilight film series will end with the debut on November 16 of Breaking Dawn Part 2—although some online rumors suggest that more films with the Twilight characters might follow. You may think that we have strayed far from Christian connections, but that’s not true. Enjoy our coverage of Jane Wells’ Glitter in the Sun, a Twilight Bible study book.

Got a question or an update that we shouldn’t miss in our chronology?
Email us at [email protected] with your thoughts.

And, enjoy Part 1 of our coverage of Clay Morgan’s UNDEAD: Revived, Resuscitated, Reborn.

Meet Clay Morgan in our author interview.

Please help us to reach a wider audience

We welcome your Emails at [email protected]
We’re also reachable on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Huffington Post, YouTube and other social-networking sites. You also can Subscribe to our articles via Email or RSS feed.
Plus, there’s a free Monday morning Planner newsletter you may enjoy.

Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

Awakening Hope: Wilson-Hartgrove on St. Benedict

July 25, 2012 by

THIS WEEK, we’re welcoming Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a chief architect in a nationwide renewal movement focused on neighborhood congregations.
PART 1: Find out about Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove’s different approach to building healthy congregations and healthy neighborhoods.
PART 2: Today, read the beginning of our interview with Jonathan, focusing on his new edition of the Christian classic, The Rule of St. Benedict.
PART 3: The portion of our interview on The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture.
PART 4: Conclusion of our interview focusing on The Awakening of Hope.

HIGHLIGHTS OF
OUR INTERVIEW
WITH JONATHAN
WILSON-HARTGROVE

DAVID: Let’s start by telling readers how to find you online.

JONATHAN: I usually direct people to my author site, which is my name dot com. There’s also the New Monasticism website.

DAVID: I want to call our readers’ attention to one small section within that New Monasticism website. It’s the section about visiting with one of the small communities within your network. As we publish this interview, more than 30 openings are listed on the Weekend Visits page either in the Durham or in the Philadelphia areas.

JONATHAN: That’s right. Nearly a dozen communities participate in the visiting program, but—at any given time—there are just a few upcoming dates listed. Throughout an entire year, we plan for about eight or ten different communities across the country to host visitors and participate in the community for a few days. We get about 150 folks visiting with us each year.

DAVID: You, your colleagues and many of your networked communities regularly communicate through Internet sites and email newsletters. I’m curious about the Wikipedia page for New Monasticism, however. People who aren’t already in connection with you may wind up going to Wikipedia to find out information about your movement. How accurate is that page?

JONATHAN: I don’t have anything to do with editlng that Wikipedia page, but I think it seems to sketch out pretty well some of the conversation that has unfolded about the new monasticism. The list they have in the Wikipedia article about our 12 Marks of New Monasticism was a statement we signed some years ago, when we invited people from about 30 communities to come and talk with us about what is happening.

DAVID: How do you describe yourself religiously today? Your name is well known to readers of books by Paraclete Press, a publishing house that specializes in Catholic-themed books. Your newest book is published by Zondervan, a major evangelical publishing house.

JONATHAN: I do laugh over some of the ways I am introduced these days. I was going to talk to a group of Lutherans last year and the woman who was going to introduce me asked: “Should I describe you as a liberal Baptist?” I scratched my head at that and said, “Uhhhh, maybe call me a Martin Luther King Baptist.”

The truth is that religous labels don’t tell us much anymore. In answer to your question, I am a Baptist and have been all my life. I’m a lay person, even though I do serve in my local congregation in pastoral ways. But I am not ordained and I am intentionally a lay person. I’ve learned a lot from Benedictines and other Catholics and I have great respect for folks in many places from many different religious traditions.

DAVID: And the name of your own home community?

JONATHAN: The name of the community where I live is Rutba House. We are 14 people who are living in the household as members of the community and then we have an extended family around us of people who eat with us, pray with us, work on neighborhood activities with us and that’s about 100 folks in all. Right now, we are living in two houses and doing work and ministry out of four houses in our neighborhood. We’re in the Walltown neighborhood of Durham, North Carolina, which I always say was a historically segregated Southern town. Historically, it was a black neighborhood; today, it’s got a significant Latino population. When we organized Rutba House, we didn’t want to start a new church. We want to support existing local churches. So, I’m active at St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church—for 100 years, it’s been an anchor in the Walltown neighborhood.

WHY ST. BENEDICT IS RELEVANT TO CONGREGATIONS TODAY

DAVID: The first of three books that we will talk about in this interview is your easier-to-read paraphrase of The Rule of Benedict, a book that has helped organize religious communities for 1,500 years. There are several reasons that this book is a radical departure from contemporary culture. One major reason is: St. Benedict believed that faith isn’t complete if we live our lives in isolation. The full expression of Christianity requires other people. That may sound like a simple idea—but it runs 180 degrees opposite from our current obsession with go-it-alone spirituality. Harvard’s Robert Putnam and others call it The Church of One. That idea was rejected by Benedict, right?

JONATHAN: I feel Benedict truly is a prophet for our time. He lived in a period when the Roman Empire was fading and no one knew what was coming next. That era was very much like this global transition we’re a part of now. Benedict’s wisdom was a great gift in that time and I think he still is today. His message is incredibly hopeful. He points to scripture and shows us that there is a way of life that we can begin living now—and that will prepare us for the world to come. Benedict saw both the desert tradition of early Christianity and he saw the monastic communities that were emerging. Practical living today—adapted from the ideas Benedict showed us—can help our communities to become a kind of school for what we will need in the world to come.

DAVID: In your introduction to the book, you make it clear: This is not a self-help book. This is a book about coming together as Christians to form communities. At one point, you write that this book “cannot be read honestly as a guide for my ‘personal spiritual journey.’ To listen to it at all is to consider how it is telling me to pray and eat with other people.” That’s radical stuff in our Me-obsessed culture, right?

JONATHAN: What we’re experiencing today in our culture is the ultimate expression of American individualism and the Protestant impulse to divide over theological disagreement. For so long, we’ve taught ourselves that we’re supposed to go it alone. Don’t like something? Well, we should all go establish a church for ourselves. Ultimately, following this line of thinking does leave us alone in our own spiritual journey. Benedict was teaching that we can’t establish a church alone.

Now that we are coming to terms with global climate change and the new global economy that’s emerging, we need to realize that we’re at the end of this dream that our lives can be fulfilled by simply trying to become all you want on your own. We’re at a point in history when we need to conceptualize a common good. That’s why Benedict’s wisdom is so relevant. He allows us to do the very personal work of dying and being born again, which is essential to become a real member of a local community—and more broadly a member of the larger community.

That’s precisely why his message is so important: He says that we do need the larger religious community. Yes, community often is troubling and annoying and we face all kinds of challenges and problems in community—yet community is the heart of the experience of faith.

Benedict points us to a 1,500-year tradition of stability and community.

DAVID: That’s a great place in this interview to switch over and talk about a second recent book you’ve published.

READ more of our interview with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, next focusing on his book The Wisdom of Stability.

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Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

ONE & Oprah converge! (We’ve got free movie extras)

June 3, 2012 by

Sit back! Grab a cup of coffee.
If you don’t have time now, then bookmark this page for a moment of pleasure and inspiration later in your day. (And please tell a friend? Perhaps click the Facebook button below?)

THE NEWS TODAY: Finally, ONE and Oprah are converging. Over the years, Oprah individually welcomed many of the religious sages who appear in this feature-length documentary film about the world’s diverse spiritual pathways. Now, Oprah has announced that she will broadcast ONE to the world on her OWN channel this year. Later this week, we welcome filmmaker Ward Powers to share the startling story of ONE’s creation and expansion as a message of peace.
Even before ReadTheSpirit was founded in 2007, Editor David Crumm was reporting nationally on this remarkable independent film production, which was created by first-time filmmakers and now has circled the globe in festivals and theaters.

TODAY’S FREE MOVIE EXTRAS: We’re giving you an All Access Pass, today, to dozens of inspiring extras from ONE that you won’t see on Oprah.
So, grab a cup of tea to sip. And, if you don’t have a moment now, then save this page for later!

ONE THE MOVIE TRAILER: GET THE BASIC IDEA

Let’s start with the basic Movie Trailer, so you’ll have an idea of this project’s origins and scope. Click on the video screen below to watch this short clip. (NOTE: If you don’t see a video screen in your version of this story, click here to reload the story in your browser.)

ONE THE MOVIE, AN EXTRA: SUFI MASTER LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE

On June 1, ReadTheSpirit featured our first in-depth interview with Sufi master Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, a major voice for peace and religious unity in the world. Llewellyn also appears in the ONE movie, but of course the original Powers interviews with him were far longer than the final length of ONE could hold. So, Ward Powers is releasing additional clips, this summer, including this one on the problem of suffering.

ONE THE MOVIE, AN EXTRA: CATHOLIC FATHER THOMAS KEATING

We also have featured Father Thomas Keating in the pages of ReadTheSpirit. Now, a world-famous spiritual figure for his innovative teaching on contemplative prayer, Keating is rare among spiritual sages for his depth of learning in science as well as religion. In this 4-minute clip about the natue of suffering in the world, Keating ranges widely from theology to contemporary science.

ONE THE MOVIE, AN EXTRA: FATHER RICHARD ROHR ON LOVE

We also have welcomed Father Richard Rohr to ReadTheSpirit, recommending his ongoing work on a variety of spiritual themes. Here, Rohr talks about the nature of “true love” and provides a definition that you may find very helpful to share with friends, yourself.

ONE THE MOVIE: DOZENS MORE EXTRAS

In preparation for the upcoming Oprah broadcast of ONE, Ward Powers has uploaded dozens of movie extras into a special new channel on YouTube. Use this link to the ONE Channel in YouTube to find links to a long list of these “extras” clips. The clips draw on spiritual wisdom far and wide, including Buddhist scholar and teacher Robert Thurman (yes, he’s Uma Thurman’s father), the Hindu-influenced writer Ram Dass, the Vietnamese-Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh—and many more.

You also can visit the ONE Project website, the home base for news about the movie, plus links to other showings, video clips and much more. There’s news on the ONE site, as well, about getting a copy of the movie for home viewing.

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Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

N.T. Wright on an explosive idea: How God Became King

March 25, 2012 by

Click the cover to jump to the book’s Amazon page.Millions of Americans know former Bishop N.T. “Tom” Wright as the man who defends the Bible against skeptics. It helps that Wright does this in a wonderfully resonant British accent with the confident air of a latter-day C.S. Lewis, who in his own day was a famous media personality. However, through several recent books, Wright has been trying to change the focus of his message to something he considers much more urgent for our tumultuous times. Wright certainly is famous as the Bible scholar who answers a hearty “Yes” to the question:
Are the Gospels true?
But, the question he is eager to answer is: What do the Gospels mean?

In How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels,he answers that second question. What’s more, he deliberately uses the word “explosive” to convey the kind of passion and power he believes can be unlocked through the Christianity we discover in the Bible to this day. What may shock some of Wright’s long-time fans is that the meaning of the Gospel is similar in important ways to messages writers ranging from Shane Claiborne and Brian McLaren to Rob Bell and John Dominic Crossan are penning today. There are even echoes of the late Pope John Paul II’s writing about God’s Kingdom as opened to the world through Christ. The Gospels aren’t intended as merely chicken soup for the soul, Wright and these other voices are arguing. Rather, the Gospels reveal a Kingdom in which God’s principles truly shape the way we live together on this planet. We certainly hear that message from Claiborne and McLaren; it’s there if you wade through the dense encyclicals of John Paul II and it’s in the pages of books like Crossan’s God and Empire or The Challenge of Jesus. It’s certainly one of the messages in Lewis’ own work.

Then, what are the principles in this new Kingdom? Well, that’s where the firestorm starts. There are many applications of Kingdom principles that would set off a heated debate between the writers listed above. In simple, broad-brush terms, Wright as an Anglican is more liberal than John Paul II in his applications of Kingdom principles (women’s ordination as one example), but Wright is far more conservative (or traditional) than Crossan on a number of issues.

Here is how Wright describes his overall position in the middle of his new book (page 167): Americans, these days “have simply baptized the  right-wing and left-wing politics of a deeply divided society and claimed this or that one as Christian, to be implemented and if possible exported. Listening to the sub-Christian language on display among those exultant at the killing of Osama bin Laden in the early summer of 2011 was an example of the right-wing tendency; anything that advances the world-view of Fox News is assumed to be basically Christian, wise, and automatically justified. But listening to many on the left, I have a similar problem. The left claims the high Christian and moral ground of a concern for the poor and the marginalized, but again this regularly parrots the elements of liberal modernism, not least its new sexual ethic, without any attempt to scale the true heights of the gospel vision in the New Testament.” (Oh, and he’s not only targeting Americans. In the next paragraph, he shares his disdain toward what passes for Christianity among his countrymen in the UK.)

ALSO ENJOY ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm’s interview with N.T. Wright.

For coverage on Wright’s other books, check out our N.T. Wright Small Group Resource page.

N.T. Wright video: The Bible’s true message is ‘explosive’

Finally, let N.T. Wright speak for himself in the following brief video. Harper One Executive Editor Mickey Maudlin appears in this video, asking Wright to distill the new book’s central theme. In part, you will hear Wright say: Most Christians in the Western world have been puzzled without even knowing that they’re puzzled as to what the Gospels are there for. The way the modern age was asking questions over the last 200 years has driven wedges between different bits of the New Testament. Now, we really ought to say: It’s time to put that lot back together again. When you do, it’s explosive! A lot of Jesus’ parables are told precisely in order to say: No, the Kingdom isn’t what you thought it was. The story the Gospels tell, which is How God Became King, is one that I think the whole Western world has not only not wanted to hear—but it has forgotten that it was out there in the first place.

CLICK THIS VIDEO SCREEN to view the video. Or click this link to jump to YouTube for the video.

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Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

Traveling new roads with ‘Wolf nor Dog’ Kent Nerburn

March 2, 2012 by

Longtime readers of Kent Nerburn’s spiritual adventures are likely to picture him in motion—driving along back roads, walking in the woods and, of course, taking us with him as companions on these journeys. At the heart of it, this is the enticing spiritual voice of a Nerburn book: Dare to open the cover. Risk reading the opening lines. Don’t even pack a bag—just travel with Kent.

The newly released Ordinary Sacred: The Simple Beauty of Everyday Life, opens with these words: “Years ago I was traveling across the great Saskatchewan prairies—a young man, alone, with a love the road and a dream in my heart. Evening was approaching, and long shadows were darkening the draws and skeching like fingers across the rolling golden land. A rancher, passing in a truck, saw me walking and stopped to pick me up.”

With those words, Nerburn readers are hopelessly hooked—once again. Where are we headed this time? In Part 1 of our coverage of Ordinary Sacred this week, ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm talks with Kent about using this book as a Lenten reader. The unfolding sacred adventure between these covers fits perfectly with that reflective season of the year for 2 billion Christians around the world. But the truth is: This kind of spiritual journey is timeless.

Remember that powerful little sentence in Genesis 12 that kicked off the Western world’s love affair with spiritual journeys? “So Abraham went.”
Or, recall the words of Homer that raise the curtain on The Odyssey: “Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide.”
Generations of American students have marched through the opening lines of Beowulf: “Forth he fared at the fated moment.” And, of course, millions have tagged along on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a boy who is brow-beaten by a home-spun sermon about the need to try to reach Heaven (and avoid going to Hell). In the face of such pressure, Huck defiantly stakes out his claim to the American journey: “All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn’t particular.”
Then, of course, there’s always Frost: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.”

Right now, Kent Nerburn and his wife Louise Mengelkoch (a writer and editor who taught for years at Bemidji State University near their home) are quite literally on the move again. The next generation in their family has relocated far to the West, so Kent and Louise are planning to migrate in that direction.
Kent is even thinking of selling a landmark he created for the woods around their current home—a large wooden body of Christ that Kent sculpted and painstakingly weathered over many years. Countless Americans know Kent as a popular author, especially of Native American and on-the-road stories, but he was trained both in theology and in the fine arts as a gifted sculptor.

David Crumm speaks with Kent Nerburn in:

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH
KENT NERBURN ON ‘ORDINARY SACRED’

DAVID: I love the mental picture of what’s unfolding now, Kent! You and Louise are on the move, once again, but first you have to figure out what to do with Christ. Right there in that one line, we’ve got the story of your life. And, having visited you and Louise in your home—I know this is quite literally true. You are, indeed, planning to move from your little Eden in the Minnesota woods, but first you’ve got this life-size wooden representation of Christ that has to go somewhere. What are you planning?

Kent Nerburn, courtesy of the author.KENT: Well, I could move it with me, but I’d really like to find a church that would agree to buy it—and maybe help me pay for my kids’ education. Really, I would like people to have this piece and see it as a part of their community. I’m thinking of it as ideal for a church to purchase and place at a focal point for people to contemplate. I don’t have any offers at the moment, but I’m open.

DAVID: Perhaps we can suggest to our readers that they email us ([email protected]) if they’re interested in a major artwork for a Christian house of worship. This whole process you’re undertaking feels to me the plot in one of your books.

KENT: My whole life has been traveling but Louise just retired from Bemidji State at the first of the year, so she’s just getting her sea legs under her. Moving West is a difficult decision in some ways, but both of us are so smitten with our grandkids. Now, it’s time for us to fold up our tent here in Minnesota and move to the Pacific Northwest.

DAVID: Your body of writing and this book, too, explore American restlessness. I know that, overall, you’ve been trying to help sketch a kind of American theology—a spiritual sense of what it means to live on the soil and in the waterways of this continent. So, tell us how Ordinary Sacred fits into that larger quest you’ve been undertaking for years.

KENT: Earlier, I wrote books closer to home. A lot of readers still enjoy what I wrote about family and being a father. But, by the time I was working on this book, I wanted to cast a net farther afield. As a result, readers will find stories about encounters near and far. I take readers to Oxford University, to Italy and to New Mexico. I wanted to take people in many directions. My love of art is clearly a part of this book, too, and I invite readers to think about art with me at one point. Beyond the title on the book’s cover, you might call this Surprised by God. Through it all, I wanted to end with the core conviction I have that Native spirituality is the authentic spirituality for this American land. So, that’s why I placed the story called The Circle at the very end.

DAVID: I may be one of the few readers of classic writers who is drawn to their lesser-known travel books. I love Mark Twain’s travel writing, especially his remarkable account of visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. I love Charles Dickens’ non-fiction travel writing. And, I was thrilled to see that a little of Dickens’ non-fiction has been revived for his big bicentennial bash this year.

Click the cover to jump to Amazon for a copy.

KENT: I hope that readers do see the unity in the journey that runs through this book. I put this together from various pieces and I hope that I have stretched the sinews far enough and solidly enough so that readers see it all as connected.

The final story, The Circle, is something that I wrote originally with no knowledge of where it would wind up. Writing that story was like catching lightning in a bottle. I was there at a service and, as soon as I got home, I wrote up the story. Then, I felt strongly that The Circle fit into this book. In the end, that story becomes the linchpin for the entire book. This time, the book doesn’t feel like it is set around my kitchen table in the center of my family. Readers move with me far afield in these pages and then The Circle really brings it all home.

DAVID: This raises the question of ceremony or ritual—activities in our everyday lives that help us to see the sacred in the moment. In the course of this book, readers will stand at your shoulder as you eat with friends, as you tell stories, as you open a toolbox and as you attend this final burial. Part of what you’re teaching us in this book is that recognizing the sacred involves recognizing patterns in our lives that open windows to the rest of the world. Do you agree?

KENT: In The Wolf at Twilight, I write about the difference I see between ceremony and ritual. To me and in the Native sense of this, ceremonies are part of a larger framework of actions that have been honed and proven through generations to bring a person into spiritual awareness. Theologians might debate this point, but this is my own linguistic distinction. I see rituals more as: habit made holy.

Overall, I’m interested in what we can do, each day, through eyes that see the spiritual significance of a moment. Some of these things are very basic. One of the small graces in my life is my first morning cup of coffee. I always hold it, before I take that first sip of coffee. I regard that first sip as the coming of new life for the new day into my body. It’s a small thing but it’s meaningful.

‘Showing kindness … when we don’t feel like it’

DAVID: You have a hugely compassionate heart. In some ways, you look like a big, rugged, woodsy guy and some of your writing is quite muscular. There are strong emotions in your books. But there’s a deep compassion that runs through your body of work. I know that this stems from your childhood and runs throughout your life.

KENT: Yes, my father was the director of disaster services for the American Red Cross in Minneapolis. So, he would go out to all the fires and disasters that took place and would arrive usually at the same time the police and fire fighters were doing their work. I would go with him, starting when I was about 12 years old. An apartment building might have burned down and we’d be there getting ready to distribute clothes and blankets, food and water to the people affected by the fire. Sometimes, if it was winter, he’d put someone in a car to keep warm. I can recall sitting in a car at age 12 with a woman who had just gone through a fire.  She was in her 80s and was sobbing because her cat was left behind in the apartment. I knew that no one could go save this cat, at that point. I remember thinking: What can I say to this woman? So, what I did was: I sat and listened to this woman. I stayed with her in that car. Of course, my daily life as a kid was full of all the other things that fill a kid’s life: school and girls and sports and all the rest. But I found myself, at an early age, called to these moments of empathy. My life definitely was nurtured by those events with my father and the people we were serving. My role was sitting with people and listening to their stories.

What calls me to mindfulness most in my life, now, is making an effort to show kindness in situations where I don’t feel very kind. Showing our good and benevolent values, especially at times when we don’t feel like it—that’s important. This might mean spending extra time with someone, asking them about themselves, and really listening. It’s so easy to start a conversation and use it just as a springboard to talk about ourselves. In fact, this interview is not really natural for me because here I am talking all about myself. I’m glad that you called on me to do this, but on a daily basis I try to spend more time engaging with people about their lives. And, when I have a chance, I try to listen to the people who no one else listens to. That’s the kind of practice that most animates my life: the pursuit of kindness and giving of my time to listen, particularly to people who others won’t stop to hear.

CONNECTING WITH READERS WHO SEE ‘A GREAT MYSTERY TO LIFE’

DAVID: Throughout your writing career, you have drawn some extremely loyal fans. You’ve racked up a remarkable amount of 4-star and 5-star reviews on your book pages in Amazon, for example. What do you know about these readers?

KENT: At one point in my writing, I had two separate groups of readers: One group followed my Native writings and one group followed my general spiritual writings. In a way, this has become my own spiritual journey to try to connect these realms in my life. As I’ve said, I am trying to articulate an authentic American spirituality. I’ve followed that path in the sculptures I have created that try to combine Western-European art traditions with this American land. For some years, the Native track in my writing moved so far to the forefront that some of the readers of my more spiritual books felt a little betrayed. Yet, for the most part, they have come along with me because readers can see that I’m trying to inhabit the Native books with the same spiritual ideas that run throughout my work.

Among my readers, I know that I have more women who are readers, than men. I know that there’s a kind of male reader, who I think of as actually gentler than I am myself, who likes to follow my work. I’m seeing some younger readers showing up at events where I appear and I like to see that. People are drawn to my books if they have an eco-awareness, if they are interested in Native spirituality or if they have a Buddhist kind of sensibility about the world. The unifying picture across my regular readers can be summed up as: They’re people who describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. More than that, they’re people who embrace the idea that there is a great mystery to life, an overarching creative force and a permeating spirituality in our everyday lives.

Care to read more about Native American life?

ReadTheSpirit publishes Dancing My Dream, a memoir by Warren Petoskey. If you click this link, or the book cover, at right, you’ll find Warren’s homepage within ReadTheSpirit. A beautiful city on the shore of Lake Michigan still bears Warren’s family name.

Please help us to
reach a wider audience

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We’re also reachable on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Huffington Post, YouTube and other social-networking sites. You also can Subscribe to our articles via Email or RSS feed.
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Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

Lent is booming as a spiritual practice. Come along!

February 11, 2012 by

Even evangelist Shane Claiborne says that Lent is an essential part of the Christian year. In the opening weeks of Lent, Shane Claiborne will return to the pages of ReadTheSpirit for a fresh interview about his own book, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals—a guide to daily prayer that is circling the globe in all kinds of Christian communities. In his plain-talking style, Shane urges people to observe Lent each year because, “It is a good season to rethink how we live.”

Coming from one of Zondervan’s most popular authors—a preacher who draws big crowds in evangelical churches—that’s a major shift toward observing Lent. For many years, Lent was widely regarded by evangelicals as pretty much a “Catholic thing.” Of course, in this new century, Catholic parishes also are seeing a rise in Lenten observances. This trend makes sense in an era of turbulent change in our world. A return to spiritual practices—from praying daily to following the centuries-old traditions of Lent—is a journey that reconnects us with the timeless wisdom of our faith. That’s what writers like Claiborne and John Philip Newell are talking about as they circle the globe.

LENT IS ALL ABOUT SPIRITUAL SELF EXPRESSION

This sacred season recalls the heart of the Gospels that 2 billion Christians around the world regard as a sacred guide to living—so the diversity of our Lenten experience may seem surprising. Eastern and Western Christians sometimes converge on the same Lenten calendar—but this year they are one week different in their schedules. Western Christians start on February 22 in 2012; they count Lent’s 40 days as starting with Ash Wednesday but excluding Sundays; and Holy Week represents the final days of Western Lent. However, Eastern Christians, also called Orthodox, start on February 27 this year with Clean Monday; they traditionally count Sundays among their 40 days; and they are done with their 40 days of Lent before the week leading up to Easter. Just considering the differences between these two huge branches of Christianity—it’s obvious that the Lenten tradition of self expression is deeply rooted in this season.

WHY IS LENT RISING IN POPULARITY? A DEEPER REASON …

Beyond the impact of voices like Claiborne and Newell, why is this season rising in popularity?
As a careful observer of religious life over the past three decades, and now as Editor of ReadTheSpirit, I believe that Lent is the perfect Christian season for this 21st-century era of change, anxiety and spiritual transformation. Uncluttered by the commercial avalanche that has all but buried the Advent season that leads to Christmas, Lent retains much of its ancient religious potential.

University of Michigan sociologist Dr. Wayne E. Baker, in his landmark study “America’s Crisis of Values,” used the massive global waves of data from the World Values Survey to demonstrate the unusual nature of American religious values. Compared with other global cultures, Baker showed that Americans are unique: We are so overwhelmingly religious that we resemble countries like Iran in our spiritual intensity. But, when it comes to values concerning self-expression, Americans surpass Scandinavians in our zeal. We are people of deep faith coupled with an equally deep desire to freely share our religious experiences.

LENT: THE LORD OF THE RINGS OF BIBLE STORIES

In such an era, Lent is the perfect, untarnished blend of religious tradition and spiritual adventure—ancient roots still blossoming in self-expression. Or, to put it another way, Lent is the Lord of the Rings of scriptural stories—a fellowship of men and women fearlessly summoning traditional knowledge as they make their way toward a dangerous encounter in a city where the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Yet, unlike J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy, each of us is invited to make our own Lenten pilgrimage each year. That’s how millions of Christians experience the season—preparing their hearts, minds and daily lives in fresh ways for this epic quest. Lent is a life-changing, personal and communal encounter with the sacred.

OUR LENT: TAKE A LOOK AT SAMPLE STORIES …

Now, many religious leaders are aware of Lent’s rising popularity and are helping men and women to make fresh connections with this life-changing season. Thousands of churches now distribute devotional books to help shape this epic journey. As we established ReadTheSpirit in late 2007, one of our first projects was the production of the book, Our Lent: Things We Carry. The first edition had a white cover.
For the 2012 Lenten season, we have revamped, updated and redesigned this book. The new edition has a gold cover. Today, take a look at our re-launched web pages for Our Lent, the 2nd Edition. You’ll find several inspiring stories to help you plan ahead for this year’s Lenten season.

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Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.