Tom Krattenmaker has an article up in USA Today on evangelical efforts in one of America's most secular cities, Portland, Oregon. The Luis Palau evangelistic association is making a special effort on behalf of the city's homeless population and is working in partnership with people that, in other places, they might have shunned, such as Portland's gay mayor, for example.
On multiple occasions, Adams has represented city government at Season of Service events held at theologically conservative churches packed with evangelical pastors. Judging from the culture-war rhetoric of recent decades, one might expect the evangelicals to give the mayor the cold shoulder...Yet Adams has never received anything but a warm welcome.
One wishes blessings on their work. Moderate evangelicals already do more on behalf of the poor than people probably think, and one can only hope that these efforts will continue and expand. (I ran across Luis Palau at a conference one time, and my most vivid memory is the bevy of well-dressed associates who accompanied him. I contrasted this with the presiding bishop of our denomination who usually travels alone.)
Krattenmaker makes the interesting point, quoting church historian Rodney Stark, that Christianity has always done better when it functions in a diverse, pluralistic environment. In that kind of competitive environment, it has to be "at the top of its game." Such environments would include the first century Meditteranean world, and also places like Portland, Oregon today.
Conversely, Christianity has handled the experience of power with less aplomb. "Think Western Europe at various points in its history," he says, "where the church's dominant status correlated with periods of arrogance and listless participation." This should not be surprising. Power corrupts, after all.
The way forward for Christianity is not to try to assert its old cultural dominance. That effort, favored by conservative evangelicals, will end in failure. The way forward, for all Christian traditions, is cooperative work on behalf of those on the margins. As Saint Francis once said, "Always proclaim the gospel. If necessary, use words."
Shane Claiborne, a Christian activist based in Philadelphia, described it this way when he came to speak in Portland earlier this year. The best way for Christians to make people know about Jesus, Claiborne declared, is by "doing fascinating things."
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