Walking the Religion-free Path of Christ

Wild Goose Festival 2014 | June 26-29 | Hot Springs, NC

A few months ago I submitted the following speaking proposal to the Wild Goose Festival. They had over 300 submissions this year! Unfortunately for me, I was not chosen. Fortunately for you, there will be plenty of incredible speakers more accomplished than myself, including Sara Miles, Mark Scandrette, Brian McLaren, Melvin Bray, Jim Wallis, and Frank Schaeffer. This year’s theme "Living Liberation!" explores how our walk with Christ can lead beyond our legacies of racism, sexism, homophobia, colonialism, and economic inequalities. Check out the speakers and musicians lists and consider going. Although I won't be attending this year, I have gone three times and have always been blessed and encouraged. The fellowship with like-minded folks in the beer tent is worth the price of admission! The blurb below includes some of what I've been involved in lately. Cheers!

Walking the Religion-free Path of Christ 

Former evangelical missionary to African Muslims and author of Confessions of a Bible Thumper, Michael Camp uncovers the critical importance of historical rather than “biblicist” faith in “The Religion-Free Path of Christ: Walking an Old Paradox in a New Paradigm.” He gives examples how ignorance of history and misreading the Bible have caused erroneous views on women, homosexuality, the church, evangelism, and the future, and offers a vision for religion-free but Christ-centered world service that fosters love, goodwill, and social justice. Michael co-leads a Seattle-based missional house gathering, facilitates theological discussions in pubs, and serves Rotary International on community development and microfinance projects empowering the poor in Africa based in a club in Bainbridge Island, WA.

Curing the Plague of Churchianity

Someone wiser than I once suggested that in many churches, what is needed is not a long, skillfully-delivered, scripturally-based sermon following a passionate time of worship but rather a short admonition. She imagined God wanting a pastor to simply stand up and declare, "Brothers and sisters, God's word to us today is 'Love your neighbor as yourself and love your enemies.' Go now and immediately put this into practice. There's no need to return next week unless you have completed the assignment. You're dismissed." That would be the extent of the service.

As I've written in my chapter on church, Save the Ales (from the Church), churchianity--the practice of making the demands of the institutional church more important than loving others--is a plague on evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity. Richard Beck made a similar point when he lamented how church and religious rituals (and I would add, believing the right doctrines) have supplanted the most basic Christian practice: being decent human beings. Rather than focus on what really matters, followers of churchianity put more stock in "church attendance, worship, praying, spiritual disciplines, Bible study, using religious language... and arguing with evolutionists..." (This is the short list). The outcome? As Beck says, churches become "jerk factories."

Churchianity rears its ugly head when we hear of spiritual abuse in denominations like Sovereign Grace Ministries and the Seattle Mars Hill church. I recently read the Mars Hill membership covenant and was shocked how lopsided it is. Members promise to "submit to church leaders, doctrine, discipline, and the authority of scripture," "not function as a member of another church," "commit to the mission of the church," which is to "make disciples (get other people to do the above) and plant churches" (get even more people to do the above), and promise to practice a long list in a behavior code having to do with sex, not living together before marriage, and refraining from pornography, alcohol abuse, and drug use. There was not one word about loving one another or loving the unlovely.

I'm not pretending that none of the things in their covenant are important, but that it's emphasis is on things only the church and its leaders can control (how they do church discipline, decide what's right to believe, decide what part of the Bible is authoritative, which interpretation to believe and which to ignore, what moral practices to follow, etc.). Churchianity is primarily interested in controlling others and empire building, not loving our fellow man, promoting social justice, and allowing people to govern themselves through Christ's superior law of love. These are the only cure for the plague. I welcome your thoughts.

Hope for Forgotten Prisoners

This year, there were at least two prisoners who caught our attention in the media: Troy Davis and Amanda Knox. Davis spent 20 years on death row for murder--a crime for which recent evidence strongly supported his innocence. Despite an Amnesty International petition signed by a million people worldwide to commute his sentence and other pleas by politicians, Davis was executed by lethal injection in September. "I know you're still convinced [of my guilt]... but I am innocent... I am so sorry for your loss. I really am," he said to the victim's family in his final words.

Then there was American student Amanda Knox from Seattle, held for four years in Italy on murder charges and finally found innocent and released on appeal last month. Knox, along with Raffaele Sollecito, was a victim of a miscarriage of justice by an Italian court. Despite their ordeal, compared to prisoners of conscience in corners of the world out of the spotlight, they were the lucky ones.

Today, hundreds of forgotten prisoners languish in detention, some in the most squalid conditions, for crimes they did not commit, and often for merely defending human rights. Because of the work of Amnesty International, there is hope for these prisoners. Next month, Amnesty is holding their Global Write for Rights initiative to get people involved to shine a light on these forgotten souls.
I helped organize two events last year and know from experience how effective they are. When you simply write a letter to a prisoner or a government official on behalf of a prisoner, a lost soul is encouraged, prison conditions improve, and sometimes the deluge of letters help to get people released. "I am alive today, after 34 arrests, because members of Amnesty International spoke out for me," said Jenni Williams, human rights defender in Zimbabwe. And there are many more successes.

I encourage you to get involved in a local write-a-thon (or just do it individually) and see how this small, strategic gesture--writing a handful of letters to several of the 14 cases highlighted this year--can help change the world and shine a light of hope to the oppressed. I'm helping to organize another event in Seattle with a local Amnesty chapter. Come join us.