I’m just back from the Wild Goose Festival in Chatham County, NC. Camp meetings like this have a history in American religion. Like Cane Ridge in the early 19th century, we had communion. Like Finney’s open air revivals in the late 19th century, we had some spit-fire preaching and calls to action. Like any camp out, there was lots of food and fellowship, catching up and having a good time while trying to stay cool in a North Carolina summer.... Read more
Most people today are skeptical of institutions and cynical about leadership. Politicians make promises they don’t intend to keep. CEOs serve their investors at all costs with little incentive to take care of workers or promote the common good. Even pastors are often caught up in sex scandals or money-making schemes. Those who are most eager to find an alternative to the selfish power-grabbing of our culture are often the most anti-institutional. In response to bad leadership, some think we’d... Read more
When a sister or brother comes to join the monastic community, Benedict says they must make a three-fold promise—to stability, obedience, and conversatio morum. The Latin phrase is hard to translate. It means, literally, “the monastic way of life.” That way is the whole of the Rule, the full reality of what it means to submit ourselves to God and other people in a particular place. But in the Latin conversatio you can also see the root of our English... Read more
In 2009, shortly after I published God’s Economy, I made a trip to Winnipeg, Manitoba to talk with folks there about the good news of God’s abundance in the midst of an economic crisis. At a particularly memorable church, St. Benedict’s Table (they played a Bob Dylan tune during the Eucharist), a couple was inspired to share an inheritance they’d recently received with a fellow church member as a no-interest loan. Three years later, the recipient of the loan shares... Read more
Despite the fact that we experience so little of it—indeed, precisely because we lack this basic human need—community is “in” these days. Marketing firms know that community sells. They don’t tell us how carbonated sugar water will help us or even how good it tastes. They show us pictures of people enjoying life together while holding cans of the drink they want us to buy. But we know that community is more than a soda shared with friends. We still... Read more
The North Carolina House of Representatives voted yesterday to approve an “amendment” to the Racial Justice Act that essentially repeals it, making it impossible for death row inmates to appeal their capital sentences as two have already done successfully in NC courts since the historic bill became law last year. Rev. William Barber, our NC NAACP President has been an important leader in communicating the importance of this legislation. He spoke out clearly today about the tragic error of yesterday’s... Read more
By Shane Claiborne Something really special happened last weekend. My friend Aaron Niequist, who leads worship at Willow Creek Community Church, and I collaborated to create a 30 minute liturgy from Common Prayer, which we did at all the weekend services. It was an incredible time. One of the aims of Common Prayer has been to remind one another that we are not alone in the world. As we pray and as we act we are participating in a beautiful... Read more
School is out here in Durham, which means it’s time for summer camp to start in Walltown. The counselors have been in orientation all week. We’ll be busy with Vacation Bible School at the St. Johns Baptist Church for the next four days, then the first week of summer wraps up with a block party on Friday night. This shift to our summer schedule always reminds me of a line from Robert Frost: “it takes all kinds of in and... Read more
Hardly anyone ever visits Rutba House without asking, “So what does Rutba mean?” Once someone confessed they thought it must be an obscure Old Testament character they’d forgotten. But I always say, “I’m glad you asked.” We named this place after a village in Iraq because we never want to forget what we learned there. During the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Leah and I traveled with the Christian Peacemaker Teams to Baghdad, believing that the way of Jesus... Read more
At the Duke Summer Institute this week, pastors and leaders in reconciliation ministries from 25 states and 10 countries heard a lament about the current state of our criminal justice system in America. Sarah Jobe shared about how if you care about racial justice, you care about prisons because the prison-industrial complex has been our society’s answer to the unfinished business of the Civil Rights Movement. If you care about domestic violence, she said, you care about prison, because 85-95%... Read more
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
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