www.thedailyshow.com

…This week the Cornerstone Music Festival will host scores of bands, films and incredible people from all walks of life. This festival will become the epicenter for young Christians in America who cling to the beliefs of The Ordinary Radicals Film. The excitement builds as one person tells another how Christ has changed their life and is passed on to others throughout the week. A movement grabs traction and builds throughout the Heartland of America…. Many will never know… but those who are there will have their life changed forever. Are we giving it all or are we holding some back for a rainy day.

Read the rest of the post here, and check out the other postings that raise relevant questions and ideas on how to communicate faith and love in a commercially overwhelmed culture.

Here are the articles with more information:

Faith Leaders Re-Ignite Immigration Debate

Immigration reform, an issue that has been pushed to the backburner due to the state of the economy, was revived Wednesday when a diverse group of faith leaders launched a large-scale campaign to push U.S. lawmakers to quickly tackle the complex and emotionally charged problem.

Five religious leaders from Christian and Jewish traditions were joined by two U.S. congressmen to launch the “Prayer, Renewal and Action on Immigration” campaign. The campaign seeks to engage and educate congregations and people of faith on the immigration reform debate.

…All the speakers, from religious leaders to the U.S. Congressmen, criticized current U.S. immigration laws for breaking up families and mistreating illegal aliens. They call for new policies that provide a pathway for undocumented immigrants to earn residency.

“Immigrants are not the problem,” said United Methodist Bishop Minerva G. Carcano of the Desert Southwest Conference.

“Immigrants are part of the solution to our national problems,” contended Carcano, the first Hispanic woman to be elected to the episcopacy of The United Methodist Church.

“As people of faith, we cannot stand and will not stand while families are separated, while individual freedoms are ignored and the immigrant community in the United States is mistreated unjustly and inhumanely,” she said.

…“We have, literally, tens of thousands of American citizens whose wives are being deported, whose husbands are being deported,” said U.S. Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.). “We have millions of American citizen children who when they wake up in the morning to go to school fear all day long whether or not their parents will be there at the end of the day.”

Read the full article here.

Evangelicals Make Case for Welcoming Immigrants

Usually, conservative evangelicals are not known to support immigration reform. But several prominent leaders of the movement made their case Tuesday evening for new immigration laws, joining a growing number of Christians who refer to the Bible for support in “welcoming the stranger.”

The evangelical leaders – including Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals – urged American evangelicals to engage in the immigration debate and call upon the U.S. government to work on new immigration laws this year.

…“I get asked a lot, why this issue? Why as Christians and evangelicals, in particular, do we need to care about immigrants and policies in particular,” said Matthew Soerens, co-author of Welcoming the Stranger, at the book’s launch event on Tuesday. “It is because those people we talk about, those immigrants, those aliens, they are us as part of the church.”

Soerens, who works directly with immigrants as a World Relief staff, says he has met many Hispanic, Asian, and African immigrants in his line of work. What he realized was that the church, which the Bible says is the body of Christ, includes a lot of immigrants in the United States.

“Corinthians tells us if one part of the body suffers then the whole body is suffering,” he said. “As Christians, as part of the church, we don’t have a choice but to engage in this issue. And people are suffering, they are living in fear.”

The leaders also referenced the New Testament story in Luke 10 of the Good Samaritan – “a stranger or alien himself” – who stopped to help the Jewish man.

“This and other parables remind us that ‘we are all aliens sent out to help other aliens find a place of safety in this world,’” says a 2006 statement by World Relief in support of comprehensive immigration reform. The statement references Jonathan Robert Nelson’s 2006 remarks for The American Bar Association’s “Fortress America: The State and Future of U.S. Immigration Law and Policy” event.

…Anderson and other evangelical leaders talked about the inequality in current U.S. immigration laws and criticized how they break up families. He also called on the government to provide adequate finances to implement immigration laws and reduce the “enormous” waiting time for immigrants applying for legal status.

Pastor Derrick Harkins of the historic black Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., stated, “We are calling for nothing more than for those persons who are presently immigrants to be able to function and thrive within the context of what is just. We are talking about an earned right to citizenship. We are talking about them operating within the framework of a just set of laws.

“But we also talk about extending mercy. I hope that again – the language of the church thrives in this regards – that we understand that we are called to extend that measure of mercy. And that mercy means that the issue of family reunification act is indeed significant priority.”

Full article here

Immigration Reform Advocates Renew Calls on Postville Anniversary

To mark the one year anniversary of the Postville raid – the largest immigration raid in U.S. history at the time – proponents of immigration reform renewed their calls for new laws that protect workers and family unity.

Faith leaders joined with labor spokesmen to remind the public of the dire consequences that immigration raids have on communities. They recalled the hundreds of workers who were arrested and their children who had no one to care for them after the massive raid at a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, last year.

Speakers during the media call on Monday sponsored by Justice for Immigrants and the Interfaith Immigration Coalition urged lawmakers to quickly move on creating new immigration laws.

“As we commemorate this anniversary we stand in solidarity with the 389 workers who were detained,” said Sister Mary McCauley, BVM, who was the pastoral administrator for St. Bridget’s Parish in Postville at the time of the raid. “We vigorously call for comprehensive immigration reform, just labor practices, family reunification and an end to raids.

…Government officials carried out a massive immigration raid last May on Agriprocessrs Inc. – the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse. Dozens of federal agents and two law enforcement helicopters were deployed in the crackdown operation.

In the months that followed, church leaders reported that many families had left Postville to find jobs elsewhere, while a sizable number of illegal immigrants stayed behind taking refuge in churches. Those that lived in churches depended wholly on charity to survive on a daily basis since they could no longer work.

Some Postville pastors after witnessing the devastation caused by the raid urged politicians and Americans to not just look at the immigration issue as political, but to look at people as people and ask why they want to come to the United States and work.

“Although you might not find famine, you will find all kinds of political and economic problems [in their home country],” the Rev. Steve Brackett, senior pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Postville, said in a media call in December.

…Bishop John C. Wester, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Migration, called the current immigration policies “broken.”

He said that although he understands the “right and responsibility of the government to enforce the law,” the Postville raid did not solve the problem of illegal immigration but further added problems such as family separation and destruction of immigrant communities.

“Our religious and social response to such harm to our God-given human dignity is based on Scriptures, which call believers to welcome the newcomers among us, to treat the alien with respect and charity, and to provide pastoral and humanitarian assistance to individuals and their families,” Wester said.

Full article here

So what’s your take on this urge for reform?

Second, I wanted to share some updates with you that were passed on to us from Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and our other friends at the School for Conversion:

• Jonathan and Shane had previously shared a list of “50 Ways to Become the Answer to Our Prayers” in an article in Sojourners Magazine in preparation for the National Day of Prayer on May 7th, hoping to turn the annual event into a day of prayer AND action. Since then, they’ve received beautiful stories from people who have used this list at National Day of Prayer gatherings and in their own churches and families, making the day a success. You can order copies of their book Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers and read an excerpt at InterVarsity Press. You can also read their op-ed in Newsweek/The Wasington Post’s On Faith column.
• The new monastic community of communities, a partner of School for Conversion, is hosting weekend visits as a way of “introducing folks to community life in the way of Jesus”. You can go here for more information or to register for a visit. You can also visit the community of communities’ website here.
• Shane will be joining Kelly Johnson, Will Samson, and others in a conference on “economic faithfulness in an age of consumerism” at the Englewood Christian Church in Indianapolis on November 13th and 14th to discuss community, contentment, and creativity in the midst of economic crisis. You can visit the conference website for more information.
• Lastly, our good friend Jonathan has written a new book entitled God’s Economy: Redefining the Health and Wealth Gospel, that is due for release on October 1st of this year. For more information and to pre-order a copy, visit his website at jonathanwilsonhartgrove.com.

That’s all from me for now!

-Rebekah

More Athiests Shout It From the Rooftops

“Polls show that the ranks of atheists are growing. The American Religious Identification Survey, a major study released last month, found that those who claimed “no religion” were the only demographic group that grew in all 50 states in the last 18 years.

Nationally, the “nones” in the population nearly doubled, to 15 percent in 2008 from 8 percent in 1990. In South Carolina, they more than tripled, to 10 percent from 3 percent. Not all the “nones” are necessarily committed atheists or agnostics, but they make up a pool of potential supporters”

I want to apologize for the hokey title to the post, but let me explain…

“The Ordinary Radicals” is an official selection for the Ion International Film Festival, and each year ION holds their festival in a new location.  This year the festival will be held in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates!  We are very excited to be part of this unique festival.  From the festival’s website:

“ION FIlm Festival strives to bring awareness to individuals and organizations who are creating socially relevant films to positively impact our worlds.”

So, if you happen to be near Dubai, stay tuned as more info will be coming very, very soon.

ALSO, we’re very excited to receive an “Award of Merit” from the Acolade Film Awards!!!  We’re off to an exciting new year!!!

Peace-

Ryan

What a great time! Had a fantastic screening of The Ordinary Radicals at the Pacific School of Religion for their Earl Lectures and Leadership Conference. I had the chance to meet so many good folks, eager to watch the film and talk about all sorts of great stuff.  Special thanks to Mary Donovan Turner and John Davis for their commitment to the film!

I had a chance to spend a couple hours with Jay Bakker of Revolution NYC.  Turns out we know a ton of the same folks and had a great time chatting it up and talking about faith, the interconnection between Christian and Agnostic folks (plenty of room at the table), and the wonderful world of media.  I knew of him of course through his media famous parents Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker, but heard nothing but good things about him from Shane and folks.  Let me tell you, the stories are true: this guy is quality.  The quantity of drama he’s been through would make an average person throw in the towel.  He’s pretty much living out the “Love everyone, no exceptions” model and doing it well.  Check out a Sundance Channel mini-series about him called One Punk Under God on Netflix.  It’s currently at the top of my queue.

http://www.kentucky.com/158/story/552241.html

I’ll be in Lexington this week to screen The Ordinary Radicals.  Stop by and say hey!

~jamie

Peace-

Ryan