![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/122\/2013\/03\/TheWorldIsNotOursToSave.jpg\" "\\"TheWorldIsNotOursToSave\\"")
<\/a>I\u2019m grateful to Tyler Wigg-Stevenson and the conversation he\u2019s invited with his new book, The World Is Not Ours to Save<\/em>. It is a challenge for high-strung activists who come from privilege to acknowledge our limits and learn to lean on the Lord.<\/p>\nFor folks who consider themselves \u201cprogressive,\u201d it is a call to more conservative religion.<\/p>\n
The confession at the heart of Tyler\u2019s book is one that exposes how much the early 20th century Social Gospel and the late 20th century Religious Right had in common\u2013namely, the assumption of power and privilege. At different times and in different settings, these movements had differing opinions about which way to steer history. But the purchase of each\u2013the energy that drove the activists in both movements\u2013was the belief that it is our job to save America.<\/p>\n
As a white person who was captivated by the latter movement in my teens, I know this temptation well. But as someone who has spent the past fifteen years learning social engagement from America\u2019s black-led Freedom Movement, I don\u2019t see \u201ccause-fatigue\u201d as our greatest challenge. True, if you\u2019re a 20-something who thinks you\u2019re going to change the world by ending nuclear armament or drilling a million wells in Africa, you\u2019re going to wear out. There\u2019s not a smart phone smart enough to keep you fighting windmills like that into the second stage of life.<\/p>\n
But such a realization has always been part and parcel of youthful idealism in the Western liberal tradition. You set out to change the world only to learn by the time it\u2019s all said and done that God has saved you. And it\u2019s all grace.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t for a minute deny the importance of this realization. But it is increasingly clear to me that this is not the end of the story\u2013especially for evangelicals in America today. For after so-called \u201cprivileged people\u201d have learned our own limits and seen clearly what Augustine diagnosed as the \u201clust for power\u201d in all worldly cities, we still have to somehow learn what it means to pray and work with all God\u2019s people for a new world here and now. That is, after we\u2019ve learned that privilege doesn\u2019t help us follow Jesus, we still need saints to show us the way.<\/p>\n
In my experience, the black-led Freedom Movement in North America is one great source of the wisdom we need. For since before the early abolitionist movements, black folks in America have known that it\u2019s not their job to \u201csave America,\u201d but rather to proclaim liberty to captives and to carve out spaces where that liberty can be exercised. Strikingly, their religion has consistently been more conservative than that of progressive white allies. The sort of radical dependence on the Lord that Tyler\u2019s story points toward is one that many educated people in the Western liberal tradition have struggled to accept.<\/p>\n
But I think of someone like Bryan Stevenson, my fellow Eastern University alumus who\u2019s doing incredible work for justice in Alabama. The identity out of which Bryan\u2019s lifework flows is the conservative realism and radical hope of his grandmother and Ms. Rosa Park\u2019s faith.<\/p>\n