From Philcooke.com:

The Wall Street Journal reports today on some massive new media buys for advertising causes from the Christian left. As it reports, “The religious left has a long tradition of activism on social issues, including the civil-rights movement.” Left-leaning Christian groups also have started to attract funding from secular donors who share their political goals — and who see Biblical appeals as a promising way to broaden public support.

Martin’s commentary:

Money trumps mission statements. If salaries and status is being paid for by secular donors then sooner or sooner-still the organization will do what it takes to keep them happy. I know plenty of pseduo-spiritual political organizations, both liberal and conservative, that randomly toss out Bible quote to “religiousfy” what’s really just a secular political message.

I’m not against lefty big media or religious media but it’s important to remember they’re rarely the same. Jesus wasn’t a Democrat or Republican and he never made a big media buy.

Via @emergentvillage

Evangelical Friend AJ Schwanz writes about a new book from Mike King called Presence-centered Youth Ministry: Guiding Students into Spiritual Formation:

In my history of being part of faith communities I realized that those who are “group”-oriented seem more clubish, more “come in, be one of us”, more fractured, more self-interested. Those that were “ministry”-0riented thought of the bigger picture, had more awareness of the each other, practiced more over-arching hospitality. And in my faith gathering we have many ministries, but not a lot of groups … but the places where there are groups, we seem to have more lack of communication and conflict with each other.

Martin Commentary: On her post I asked AJ to tease out this distinction between “groups” that separate youth and “ministry” that keeps them in the church body.

I wonder if there’s some lesson for liberal Friends in this and not just for youth ministry. It seems like we have a tendency to compartimentalize our activities. Every purpose needs its own committee and we spend a lot of time starting and laying down committees. Why is “peace and concerns” separated from “earthcare” separated from “outreach” separated from “racial justice”? They’re all loving our neighbors.

My impression is that earlier generations of Friends did most things through two “committees”: ministers and elders. By divorcing our good deeds from ministry, we often secularlize them. How might we pull these functions together? Have any liberal Friends read out there Mike King’s work? Here’s the Amazon description:

How many programs does it take to change a youth group?

That question has bothered youth workers for decades, and the cracks in its logic are beginning to show. In place of the contrived, artificial mechanisms employed so widely in modern youth outreach and discipleship, Mike King proposes a ministry centered in the presence of God.

Young people encounter Christ not in the flash and pop of arena ministry, but in the sacred shadow of his presence. They learn what it is to love and follow Christ by observing others loving and following Christ—letting Christ shape their worldviews, their habits, their virtues. Presence-Centered Youth Ministry gives shape to such ministry through the classic disciplines and potent symbols and practices that have sustained the church over the centuries.

The sound and fury that has characterized youth ministry for so long has left too many youth workers tired and too many young people disillusioned. Come explore the deeper terrain; your students are sure to follow.

The NYTimes asked some religious pundits about Governor Mark Sanford’s repeated allusions to God and self-comparisons to King David. Some samples:

Chuck Colson:

When God created humans, His first act was to join the first man and woman as one flesh. Marriage is therefore a pre-political institution, the first of three institutions specifically ordained by God. It is therefore a sacred covenant between man, woman and God. Having read the governor’s latest statements about several prior dalliances (enough confessing already, please) I think he needs to go home, and get his own house in order before he can do much for the state of South Carolina.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach:

The paradox of American evangelicals is that they are Christian on the one hand and political conservatives on the other with utterly opposing views of redemption. Christians believe that no one is blameless and all must therefore ride the coattails of a perfect being into heaven. But conservatives espouse the gospel of personal accountability. The state cannot save them. Man must earn his bread by the sweat of his brow and not by welfare alone.

Steven Waldman (Beliefnet):

The problem with this is that Jesus never suggested that being cleansed of spiritual sin meant you were exempted from temporal punishment. A murderer who accepts Christ might still get to heaven, but he doesn’t get sprung from Leavenworth.

Colleen Carroll Campbell (whose book Julie & I reviewed a few years ago)

A politician who publicly champions traditional values while failing to faithfully live his own marriage vows may be a moral weakling, and he certainly loses a good deal of credibility on those issues when he fails to live his professed values in his private life. But his personal failings do not automatically discredit the causes for which he was fighting or serve as irrefutable proof that he never believed in those causes in the first place.

By Michael Nielsen:

A good example is the popular technology blog TechCrunch, by most measures one of the top 100 blogs in the world. Started by Michael Arrington in 2005, TechCrunch has rapidly grown, and now employs a large staff. Part of the reason it’s grown is because TechCrunch’s reporting is some of the best in the technology industry, comparable to, say, the technology reporting in the New York Times. Yet whereas the New York Times is wilting financially, TechCrunch is thriving, because TechCrunch’s operating costs are far lower, per word, than the New York Times… Unfortunately for the newspapers, there’s little they can do to make themselves cheaper to run…Here’s the kicker. TechCrunch isn’t being any smarter than the newspapers.

Via Tim O’Reilly.