Not Your Father's Christian Community Development
Creation Care: In 2011, CCDA launched a workshop track at its annual conference dedicated to health and the environment. One of the coordinators of this workshop track was environmentalist Rusty Pritchard, the president and co-founder of Flourish, who lives with his family in urban Atlanta, where he is involved in community development. In a recent interview, Pritchard emphasized that addressing environmental issues is an important facet of caring for our neighbors and places. Air pollution, for example, makes breathing difficult for children. "Those are things that are part of the landscape that are broken, where shalom doesn't exist, and I think it's really important for Christians to take responsibility for those places where they live and do what they can to restore them."
Diversity, Leadership, and Theology
As an extension of Perkins's work in Mississippi, CCDA was focused in its early years on reconciliation between white and black Christians. One Spanish speaker served on the original CCDA board, says Castellanos, but it took a while for the Hispanic voice to grow in prominence. "I've been to every conference since 1994," says Castellanos, "and I began to invite my [Spanish-speaking] friends to the conference and others started to do the same," and eventually there was a significant Latino contingent.
Native American voices have also begun emerging within CCDA. The late Richard Twiss, a CCDA board member who belonged to the Sicangu Lakota Oyate from the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, was one of the most memorable keynote speakers at both the 2011 and 2012 conferences. At the close of his 2012 talk, he challenged CCDA members to consider an indigenous Christianity, with the poignant words of Cayuga theologian Adrian Jacobs: "Weep with us and sing with us, the pain will be so deep that its only consolation is in our creator. The great sin against our dignity is answered by a love that brings arrogant violence to its knees." Leroy Barber, vice chairman of the CCDA board, notes a correlation between this diversifying of CCDA's membership and its forays into advocacy described above. "The broadening of CCDA's conversation beyond just blacks and whites," he says, has led to "the advocacy part of CCDA growing with [exploration of] issues like immigration, education, and violence in our cities."
We Want Your Common-Good Stories: Introducing Our Second Essay Contest
Here's to the Misfits
RSS
TWITTER
FACEBOOK
Comments
Displaying 1–5 of 7 comments
See all comments
Jim Ricker
Isaiah 58 is also required reading and God speaks clearly about what kind of fasting is right and the kind of 'sacrifice' he is interested in (feeding the hungry, helping the poor, breaking the yoke of the oppressed, etc).
Jim Ricker
The book of Amos in particular will help remove the idea that redistribution of wealth accumulated through immoral advantage over people is quite biblical. We can all debate whether or not a government and a people without a specific covenant with YHWH should mandate the wholesale redistribution of wealth by its own power but, the Scriptures put the idea that it is socialism or started with Marx or Hegel to rest. Amos 2: "Thus says the Lord, For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals..." Amos 4: “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, ‘Bring, that we may drink!’The Lord God has sworn by his holiness that, behold, the days are coming upon you, those who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of the afflicted..."
Rick Dalbey
Derek, this is a social movement, this is an economic movement, this is a justice movement, this is social engineering, it is just not the gospel. It has more kinship with the French revolution or the soviet revolution of 1918. Where are the healing of Jesus? The blind seeing, the crippled healed? Where is the deliverance of Philip? Demons cast out? Where is the prophecy of Philip's 4 daughters or Agabus or Cornelius or the 12 Ephesian men? Where are the gifts of the Holy Spirit? Where are the 3000 saved under Peter's first sermon? The crippled healed under Peter. Does this look like the Bible or Dr. Zhivago? Does this look like Ephesians, Galations, Romans, Phillipians, Titus, Corinthians, Revelation or are we making it up as we go along. When we strip out the supernatural from Christianity it becomes a social movement.
Derek C
@Rick, could you clarify? Are you critiquing the article or CCDA? What is the link to what happened in China? Are you saying the CCDA does not reflect the Father's heart? How are they off theologically?
Hannah N.
Thanks for this. It's great to see how John Perkins' vision is being embraced and evolving with the next generation.
Add your comment *