the simple way
the simple way are a bunch of evangelical, activist hippies - yes, all at the same time. They sound like what Sojourners were when they started out, just updated for the 21st century.
Shane Claiborne, one of their members, has recently written a book, The Irresistible Revolution : Living as an Ordinary Radical, and an excerpt is available in one of the recent issues of Sojourners.
It's good to know that communal living/early church experiments continue to pop up, even in our cynical age, and this one sounds as cool and creative as any that have come before.
Even more interesting, the simple way are tied into a bunch of like minded groups and together they've taken the label 'New Monasticism'. They've even adopted the older, more experienced groups in the same vein like the Catholic Workers and the Bruderhof. The mainline Protestant magazine, The Christina Century, did an interesting write up of the movement recently.
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this story scribbled by jim at 11:07 am
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Here's some interesting quotes from the conservative, economically hardline neo-liberal, paper The Wall Street Journal.
WSJ: 'To combat poverty, Mr. Claiborne urges the creation of communities for the sharing and pooling of resources. All well and good, but surely there are other possibilities to contemplate at this point in history. The fallacy of finite wealth is a common one among progressives, including Mr. Claiborne. It has been disproved by the growth in general wealth over the past several decades, as well as by the evidence that property rights and other economic liberties have done more for the world's poor than redistribution.
I would respond that finite wealth may be considered a fallacy but finite natural resources cannot be. The fact that at this time in history we've converted these resources into a high standard of living and pollution at a rate that has seen some benefits (and much pollution) overflow to the poor is only persuasive if you maintain the practiced myopia of neoliberal economics which assigns no economic value to natural resources and sees pollution as a good thing because pollution cleanup will create work and raise the GDP.
WSJ:"The world cannot afford the American dream," [Claiborne] writes. In reality, the American dream is anchored in human freedom, from which stems the right to worship freely, among other things. Moral dissent of the kind the Simple Way practices would not be possible otherwise.
I'd respond that moral dissent is always possible, it simply isn't always legal. There is no more devastating example of this than Gandhi whose acts of civil disobedience broke the law in order to prove that the law was unjust.
Apart from the fact that "the American Dream is rooted in human freedom" sounds like it was written by speechwriters for President Bush, the notion the American Dream cannot be questioned because it is built on freedom lacks any kind of logic.
While challenging human freedom would amount to challenging the American Dream the reverse is not true - challenging the American Dream is not about challenging human freedom. So it is also not about challenging freedom of worship. The author has simply deliberately confused the American Dream with the thing it is built on top of.
WSJ:Mr. Claiborne takes pains to describe himself as just one among millions of "ordinary radicals" performing works in small ways, and he approvingly cites Mother Teresa's saying: "It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it." Yet at the same time, he suggests that most middle-class Christians are not doing enough. Unless he can see into their hearts, it is not clear how he would know.
This criticism is a little more to the point...
Ranted by
jim, at 8:44 am
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