Iliff School of Theology

University of Denver

The Journal of RELIGION, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS A GRADUATE STUDENT PUBLICATION BY STUDENTS OF THE JOINT DOCTORAL PROGRAM IN RELIGIOUS AND THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

The Civil Rights Legacy and the New Monastics: Shifting Identities among American Evangelicals in the Post-Civil Rights Era Author(s): Michael Clawson Source: The Journal of Religion, Identity, & Politics, August 2012 Stable URL: http://ripjournal.org/2012/the-civil-rights-legacy-and-the-new-monastics-shifting-identitiesamong-american-evangelicals-in-the-post-civil-rights-era/ Copyright 2012, The Author. All reserved. Published electronically by the Journal of Religion, Identity, and Politics on behalf of the Author.

The Civil Rights Legacy and the New Monastics: Shifting Identities among American Evangelicals in the Post-Civil Rights Era By Michael Clawson Baylor University, Department of Religion Since its beginnings in the early 1940s, the neo-evangelical movement has undergone significant shifts in its religious and social identity within American culture, in part because of its interactions with the black Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 60s. Led by evangelist Billy Graham and theologian Carl F. H. Henry, among others, neo-evangelicalism (now simply called evangelicalism) was an attempt by some conservative Protestants to move past the cultural disengagement of their fundamentalist forebears while still holding on to fundamentalist theological commitments (Henry 1947). Because of this new openness to cultural engagement, it is not surprising that some white evangelicals found themselves influenced by the Civil Rights movement. And while mainstream white evangelicals during the height of the Civil Rights era were highly ambivalent towards the political dimensions of the black freedom struggle, other, typically younger evangelicals, were less hesitant about getting caught up in the passions of the movement and its aftermath. This branch, which recently has been dubbed “the prophetic evangelicals” (Benson, Berry, and Heltzel 2012; Heltzel 2008), was inspired by the example of the Civil Rights movement to become more politically active in support of a wider range of political causes: gender equality, economic justice, environmental care, anti-war activism and pro-active peacemaking, racial reconciliation, and other pressing social issues. Because of this influence, I will argue that prophetic evangelicalism constitutes an ongoing legacy for the Civil Rights movement among the second generation of evangelical leadership. It is now over four decades since the first emergence of prophetic evangelicals, and a new younger generation of prophetic evangelicals has now come of age. Typically referred to as the 1

new monastic movement, this “third generation” of evangelical leaders are continuing the Civil Rights legacy in innovative ways as they are influenced by its remaining leaders and by the ideals articulated by Martin Luther King, Jr. and others from the black prophetic tradition. In this way, the Civil Rights movement continues to influence the shifting identities of white American evangelicals, playing a direct and decisive role in the formation of specific groups of young, prophetic evangelicals like the new monastics, who themselves are also influencing the broader evangelical community. Though some scholarly works have dealt with the mainstream evangelical response to the Civil Rights movement during the 1960s (Evans 2009) and others with the influence of Civil Rights on prophetic evangelicalism in the 1970s (Swartz 2008; Heltzel 2009), this paper will extend the narrative beyond these groups to the contemporary new monastic movement through an analysis of recent writings and interviews with several of its key leaders. It will demonstrate that the influence of the black freedom struggle on evangelicalism was not limited to the 1960s and 1970s but continues among younger evangelicals in the twenty-first century. This paper will not claim that the social concerns of earlier neo-evangelicals were in all instances more limited or more conservative, or, conversely, that the more socially prophetic agenda of new monastics is wholeheartedly embraced by all evangelicals today. As in any large movement, neoevangelicalism is diverse and holds within it many disparate voices. The concern of this paper is simply to show that within this diversity, the prophetic legacy of the black freedom struggle has been one important strand which continues to wield a significant influence into the first decades of the twenty-first century.

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White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement To fully appreciate the changes to evangelical identity with respect to race, civil rights, and issues of social justice over the past half-century, it is important to understand where the movement began. The neo-evangelical movement coalesced in the post-war years of the 1940s as a new generation of fundamentalist leadership began distancing itself from the attitudes of hostility towards secular culture held by their forebears. They instead called for both critical and constructive engagement by theological conservatives within the broader society. The landmark statement of the new evangelical mindset was theologian Carl F. H. Henry’s short book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, which “exploded like a bombshell in the fundamentalist camp” (Grenz and Olson 1992, 287). There Henry reaffirmed the biblical inerrantist and supernaturalist doctrines of fundamentalism while at the same time calling for a move beyond the separatism, anti-intellectualism, and cultural isolationism he perceived among fundamentalists (Henry 1947). He especially emphasized the need for deeper engagement by evangelical Christians with the great social evils of the day, among which he included “aggressive warfare, racial hatred and intolerance, the liquor traffic, and exploitation of labor or management,” though his specific suggestions on how, exactly, evangelicals ought to engage with such issues or for which particular solutions they ought to advocate was left vague (17). Despite this call, evangelicals like Henry remained ambivalent about the legislative demands of the Civil Rights movement and proved reluctant to voice support for that movement’s methods of direct action and civil agitation (however nonviolent). While decrying racism, Henry insisted that a socially engaged evangelicalism would not endorse specific political organizations or legislative agendas, but would instead preach “divinely disclosed ethical principles” which must then be put into practice by spiritually regenerate individuals

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(Henry 1957). While not rejecting the necessity of social reform, Henry saw such reform as being rooted first and foremost in the “the redemptive work of Jesus Christ and the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit” in the lives of individuals. “Christian social action,” Henry declared, “condones no social solutions in which personal acceptance of Jesus as Savior is an optional consideration.” Only through such personal redemption could social change occur (Henry 1964, 76-81; 1947, 45). In this way, the evangelical commitment to the primacy of evangelistic proclamation and individual conversion was maintained. This emphasis on personal salvation over social legislation also fit conveniently with Henry’s preference for political libertarianism. According to Henry, government’s role was to provide for just laws and social order, not to coerce compassion or show favor to particular groups or individuals (Henry 1966, 8-10). His solution to the problem of racial discrimination was instead simply to encourage Christian individuals to show neighborly love towards persons of color (Henry 1965). That Henry’s attitudes towards race and the Civil Rights struggle were representative of a much broader cross-section of evangelical Christianity can be demonstrated by the coverage of racial issues and the Civil Rights movement in Christianity Today magazine, the foremost news journal of the evangelical movement, during Henry’s tenure as editor from 1956-1968. Throughout the whole of the Civil Rights movement, the magazine gave very little coverage to race issues—fewer than two articles per year on average according to one count (Emerson and Smith 2000, 46; Fairbanks 1989, 34-41; Toulouse 1993, 246). By most accounts, Henry himself actually pushed for more coverage of race and the Civil Rights struggle but was under pressure by wealthy financiers and other conservative editorial advisors of the magazine not to speak out too critically against segregation (Henry 1986, 144-58, 182-83; Heltzel 2009, 83-84; Tapia 1997). According to one researcher, who surveyed the magazine’s entire coverage of racial

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issues during the period, when Christianity Today did give attention to the issue, editorials often waffled between support for segregation and hesitant opposition to it. While frequently calling for Christians to eliminate racial biases and cease discriminating against blacks in their personal lives, the magazine also typically criticized the confrontational tactics of the Civil Rights movement and advocated for what the editors considered to be a “moderate” position of voluntary segregation, thus placing themselves in opposition to the goals of both the Civil Rights leaders and ardent supporters of Jim Crow (Evans 2009, 263-69). A 1957 article by E. Earl Ellis, for instance, while acknowledging that injustices were often present under segregation, also argued that segregation was not necessarily a cause of bad race relations. He criticized those supporting “forced integration” as “self-righteous harbingers of a new world” and argued that they were responsible for worsening, not improving, racial tensions in the South (Ellis 1957). Later, in a review of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Stride Toward Freedom, Ellis describes King’s “racial philosophy” of integration as a dangerous ideology of “freedom from difference” that would lead to the horrors of interracial marriage and communism (Ellis 1959). Because of such expressed attitudes, one historian has described the magazine as “probably the most hostile, though the most widely read, of mainstream evangelical thought in its interpretation of the Civil Rights movement” (Evans 2009, 263). This “moderate” approach among evangelicals can also be seen in the ministry of evangelist Billy Graham, perhaps the single most influential evangelical leader of the twentieth century. On the one hand, Graham spoke firmly against racial prejudice and moved to integrate his crusades in 1953, more than a year before the Brown v. Board decision (“Billy Graham Makes Plea” 1956). Graham also had a friendly relationship with Martin Luther King, Jr., who he invited to give the invocation at his New York crusade in 1957 despite the considerable

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amount of negative feedback this decision generated among his supporters (Evans 2009, 257). Graham clearly saw his integrated crusades in the South as his contribution to the struggle for racial reconciliation and even claimed (after King’s death) that King had personally absolved him of any responsibility to join the Civil Rights marches. According to Graham’s account, King felt that Graham’s integrated crusades were important in preparing the way for King in the South, and cautioned that if Graham joined the marches he might lose his following among white southerners and thus the opportunity to continue this important work (Graham 1997, 426). Indeed, one should not underestimate the power of such seemingly simple actions. As Michael Long suggests, Graham’s crusades “offered his followers an actual experiment in reality, a real opportunity to enter into a stadium and realize the unrealizable—a place where whites and African Americans would sit side by side and worship their common God . . . without violence, anarchy, and [without] a noteworthy loss of white power” (Long 2006, 96). On the other hand, Graham’s views on social change were not substantially different from Carl Henry’s. Graham continued to believe that the solution to all of America’s social ills was the transformation of individual hearts through the process of Christian conversion (Graham 1953; Graham 1965, 181). Social sins, he believed, were “merely a large-scale projection of individual sins and need to be repented of by the offending segment of society,” not corrected through coercive legislation (Graham 1960a). He was therefore opposed to most governmental efforts to enforce integration on the South, asserting that he was “convinced that forced integration will never work. You cannot make two races love each other at the point of bayonets” (Graham 1960b). Instead he counseled President Eisenhower on a path of moderation, encouraging the Supreme Court to “go slowly” in order to give “extremists” on both sides a chance to cool down and allow for a “peaceful social readjustment” (Evans 2009, 254).

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Likewise, while King was locked away in the Birmingham jail, Graham urged the Civil Rights leader “to put the brakes on a little bit,” hoping for a “period of quietness in which moderation prevails” (“Billy Graham Urges Restraint” 1963). Furthermore, as the civil unrest and urban riots escalated during the later years of the Civil Rights struggle, Graham recoiled with horror, denouncing even peaceful demonstrations as “freedom out of control!” (Long 2006, 131) Graham, it would seem, was as conflicted and half-hearted in his support for the Civil Rights movement as other white evangelical leaders of his time. In their book, Divided by Faith, sociologists Michael Emerson and Christian Smith suggest that the failure of many mainstream evangelicals like Henry and Graham to fully embrace the projects of racial justice and civil rights is due to a lack of the necessary cultural tools to comprehend fully the nature of the problem or the appropriate solutions. They define “cultural tools,” a term which they borrow from sociologist Ann Swidler, as “ideas, habits, skills, and styles” that “create ways for individuals and groups to organize experiences and evaluate reality.” Emerson and Smith note that for many evangelicals, past and present, religion plays a key role in defining their cultural tool kit, providing them with certain transposable cognitive strategies for interpreting all kinds of new experiences and ideas, including those regarding race relations (2000, 75-76). Emerson and Smith identify the relevant evangelical cultural tools for evaluating racial issues as “accountable freewill individualism, relationalism (attaching central importance to interpersonal relationships), and anti-structuralism (an inability to perceive or unwillingness to accept social structural influences)” (76). The kind of individualistic focus we saw in the salvation theology and social ethics of both Henry and Graham seems to be at the heart of all three of these tools, leading many evangelicals to interpret nearly every social problem primarily in terms of individual choices and personal responsibility with only minimal

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recognition of social or structural failings (Toulouse 1993, 243). It is worth noting that each of these tools, and the individualism that underlies them, have deep historical roots in the traditions which inform contemporary evangelicalism—from German and Wesleyan pietism, to the freewill Arminianism of the revivalist tradition, to the anti-Social Gospel reaction of the fundamentalists. Because these tools often constitute foundational, non-negotiable beliefs for many contemporary evangelicals, it becomes very difficult for evangelicals to see racial injustices as based on anything more than individual sins, and thus to see the necessary solutions as anything other than personal conversion and repentance. Indeed, for evangelicals to do otherwise, these authors argue, would require challenging the very basis of their religious and political identity (Emerson and Smith 2000, 89). The Rise of the Prophetic Evangelicals Despite the difficulty highlighted by Emerson and Smith, a small handful of evangelicals in the late 1960s and early 70s did, in fact, begin to challenge the basic assumptions of their evangelical heritage, becoming more fully supportive of the Civil Rights movement and its legacy. Many of these, though reared and shaped in an evangelical context, were also influenced by the radical political trends of the 1960s. Both of these streams, evangelicalism and radical politics, were formative among these “younger” evangelicals, thereby shaping a movement not wholly one or the other, but a convergence of both. This convergence produced a breed of Christians who learned to apply their still conservative and evangelical theology not just to issues of personal salvation and individual morality, but to socially structured crises like racial injustice, militarism, poverty, gender issues, and ecology as well. Their distinction from Carl Henry’s own “socially engaged” evangelicalism was a tendency to look beyond the usual evangelical assumption that “changed individuals alone can bring about a transformed society,”

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and begin asking what specific social transformations such changed individuals might legitimately begin working towards (Quebedeaux 1974, 36-39). Implicit in this questioning was a strong critique of an evangelical theology that, despite its rhetoric of engagement, was perceived as doing little to nothing to actually change real social ills (Smedes 1966, 8-10). Because of this religiously motivated stance of prophetic critique regarding both the unjust systems of society and the complacency of mainstream evangelicalism towards such systemic evils, theologian Peter Goodwin Heltzel refers to this movement as “prophetic evangelicalism,” describing it as “biblical, christocentric, and activist” in relation to issues of peace and social justice (Heltzel 2008, 29-31). That this strain of prophetic evangelicalism arose, at least in part, out of direct contact and engagement with the Civil Rights struggle can be seen in the life of Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners magazine and perhaps the single-most recognizable and most frequently cited representative of the prophetic evangelicals (Quebedeaux 1978; Hunter 1980; Hall 1997; Bivins 2003; Swartz 2008; Heltzel 2009). Raised in a conservative white Plymouth Brethren family in the suburbs of Detroit in the 1950s and 60s, Wallis describes going through a period of youthful rebellion in his mid-teens typical of many others in his generation. As Wallis relates in his early memoirs, his feelings of alienation increasingly came to focus on the issue of racial inequalities and racial tensions (Wallis 1983, 36). Wallis’s own parents had taught him not to treat individual blacks differently, but, like most evangelicals, were insensitive to the problems of institutional racism. The teenaged Wallis, however, began asking increasingly uncomfortable questions around these very issues and sought out black Christians who could help him with the answers. He began attending a black Plymouth Brethren church in inner-city Detroit and engaged in numerous conversations with its leaders. He especially recalls meeting Bill Pannell, a traveling

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African American evangelist and Brethren youth pastor in the Detroit area, whose book My Friend, the Enemy had left a deep impression on the young Wallis (38-39). Pannell himself eventually became a major figure in the evangelical world as the first African American on the Trustee Board of Fuller Seminary in 1971 and a highly regarded professor of evangelism there since 1974. Pannell would also be a contributing editor to Wallis’s own Sojourners magazine. Other currents of the black freedom struggle also influenced Wallis. He cites, for instance, The Autobiography of Malcolm X as one of the most influential books on his life, along with Charles Silberman’s Crisis in Black and White. Wallis also describes seeking out first-hand experience with the more militant and radical streams of black thought, especially among the young black workers and students he met during his summer factory and custodial jobs. Meeting with their families in the inner city ghettoes of Detroit transformed Wallis and created in him an ongoing passion and preoccupation with the place of black people and the black community in American society. Wallis recalls studying the Kerner Report in-depth following the 1967 “race riots” in Detroit as he struggled to understand the systemic, structural injustices that underlay his own personal experiences in the black community (Wallis 1983, 39-46). These experiences also helped Wallis to realize that his evangelical gospel had social dimensions equal in importance to the message of personal salvation. Wallis was not alone in this discovery. “To many of us,” wrote Donald Dayton, another younger evangelical like Wallis who later became a professor of historical theology at Northern Baptist Seminary, “the Civil Rights movement and its principles of fundamental human equality seemed not only more right, but more biblical and Christian than positions taken by our elders” (Dayton 1976, 4). This assessment was supported by the fact that many young evangelical students on numerous Christian college campuses joined in Civil Rights protests during the early 1960s (Swartz, 154-65).

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Following the path of many other sixties radicals, Wallis’s early exposure to the Civil Rights movement and racial tensions in America’s northern urban centers led him into other forms of activism, especially in protest against the Vietnam War. Eventually growing disillusioned with what he saw as the social dysfunctions and ideological inconsistencies of the New Left, Wallis gravitated back towards Christianity after college, enrolling at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, a seminary north of Chicago in the conservative Evangelical Free Church denomination. There he gathered a small group of like-minded seminarians who eventually became the founding group for the People’s Christian Coalition, a communal living experiment on the north side of Chicago which later moved to an impoverished African American neighborhood in Washington, D.C., changing its name to the Sojourners Community in the process. They also began a monthly publication called the Post-American (later changed to Sojourners). This magazine featured a strong critique of both the Vietnam War and institutional racism in America along with other pressing social issues. It also often included African American evangelicals among its contributors (Wallis 1983, 72-108). From the beginning, the response to the magazine was strong—55,000 subscribers to the Post-American at its highest circulation, compared to over 100,000 for Christianity Today during the same period from 1971-74 (Swartz 2011, 82), and Sojourners (and Wallis in particular) soon became a prominent voice for the younger, prophetic evangelicals. Though their relative numbers were small compared to mainstream evangelicalism, the growing coalition of prophetic evangelicals was exceptionally vocal and highly visible, and tended to have an impact far beyond their organizational strength. A watershed moment for this new movement was the signing of the Chicago Declaration for Evangelical Social Concern in November 1973 by a workshop of nearly fifty prominent evangelical leaders. These included not just Jim Wallis, but many other younger

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prophetic evangelicals as well, including Tony Campolo, Sharon Gallagher, Richard Mouw, Bill Pannell, John Perkins, Ronald Sider, Tom Skinner, and Robert Webber, who would each continue as increasingly prominent leaders in their own right in the decades to come. It also was signed by a number of evangelical leaders from the previous generation, including Carl Henry himself. The statement included the following confession: We acknowledge that God requires justice. But we have not proclaimed or demonstrated his justice to an unjust American society. Although the Lord calls us to defend the social and economic rights of the poor and oppressed, we have mostly remained silent. We deplore the historic involvement of the church in America with racism and the conspicuous responsibility of the evangelical community for perpetuating the personal attitudes and institutional structures that have divided the body of Christ along color lines. Further, we have failed to condemn the exploitation of racism at home and abroad by our economic system (Sider 1974, 1). The emphasis on structural injustices, both economic and racial, evident in this statement marks a major shift in evangelical thought compared to the individualism seen among the older generation of leaders during the previous decade. The subsequent rise of these younger leaders also indicates a shift in the broader evangelical identity. Indeed, as Mark Toulouse suggests, “The Chicago Declaration, if anything, marked a passing of the torch to a younger generation of evangelicals who would fulfill Henry’s call in ways he had not really ever imagined” (2006, 238). The aftermath of this Declaration included the formation of Evangelicals for Social Action led by Ron Sider, organized to implement the vision of the Chicago Declaration, along with numerous other ministries focused on issues of social justice and racial reconciliation. This Chicago gathering also helped draw various black-led racial reconciliation ministries into closer association with the leaders and institutions of white evangelicalism. These included John Perkins’ Voice of Calvary ministry and evangelist Tom Skinner’s own ministry association, of which Bill Pannell was then the Vice President (Quebedeaux 1978, 156-59). Despite occasional 12

setbacks and difficulties in bridging the racial divide between black and white evangelicals, these ministries grew throughout the 1980s, eventually coming together in a loose coalition known as the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA). John Perkins, who initiated the CCDA, sees himself in the theological and social justice tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., carrying forward King’s vision of the beloved community by promoting the three-R’s of Christian community development: reconciliation (between races), relocation (by persons of privilege to places of need), and redistribution (of talents, hopes, dreams, and materials). For the past two decades now, the CCDA has represented the spearhead of the reconciliation movement within evangelicalism (Emerson and Smith 2000, 54; Marsh 2004, 153-88; Heltzel 2009, 160-77; Marsh and Perkins 2009). The involvement of black evangelicals like Perkins, Skinner, and Pannell, along with provocative prophetic white evangelicals like Wallis who continue to model proactive partnerships with the black community (Heltzel 2009, 191), has attuned mainstream white evangelicalism to the need for racial reconciliation in the post-Civil Rights era. The explosion of events, resources, and organizational mergers and new organizational practices aimed at furthering this goal witnesses to this shift among evangelicals. After the mid-1960s, for instance, Christianity Today steadily increased its coverage of racial issues and published more on race in the last two decades of the twentieth century than any other time in its history. Add to this an increase of emphasis on reconciliation at Billy Graham’s crusades and the Promise Keepers events of the mid-nineties, and it is small wonder that in 1997 the Wall Street Journal could refer to evangelicalism as “the most energetic element of society addressing racial divisions” (quoted in Emerson and Smith 2000, 63). This new reality represents a significant shift in evangelical identity—from a movement espousing a highly individualistic theology and social theory to one

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which includes room alongside this traditional perspective for a more structurally focused social analysis and socially oriented ministries. The Emerging Generation of Prophetic Evangelicals For all of the emphasis on racial reconciliation among evangelicals over the past several decades, this strain of prophetic evangelicalism and the continuing Civil Rights legacy it represents has not become the dominant trend within the white evangelical movement, especially regarding the more complex issues of structural racism. As Emerson and Smith remind us, for many white evangelicals, racial reconciliation is still primarily conceived of only in terms of reconciliation between black and white individuals. Challenge to the broader social systems of inequality is almost wholly absent in many circles. Many white evangelicals still assume that changing individual hearts and minds is the only thing that needs to be done about the lingering problem of racism (Emerson and Smith 2000, 66-68). Some of this may be due to the eclipse of prophetic evangelicalism by the rising Religious Right in the 1980s, despite the fanfare the former had received in the mid-seventies (Schäfer 2011, 111-47). The conservative backlash to the radical social reforms of the 1960s and 70s was paralleled by (or perhaps even produced) a resurgence of social and theological conservatism within the evangelical movement, as marked by the emergence of “family values” leaders such as James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the potent media outlets they controlled. David Swartz further argues that this right-ward turn in evangelicalism also happened to coincide with an increasing fragmentation among the forces of the “evangelical left” due to the tensions created by the rapid spread of identity politics in the late seventies and early eighties (2011, 106). It became increasingly difficult for progressively-minded white males, evangelical feminists, racial reconcilers, and other minority or interest groups to see themselves as part of a

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broader coalition when so often their concerns seemed to compete for attention and resources. For these reasons, many prophetic evangelical leaders and organizations remained relatively minor players within the evangelical world throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century. Despite this relative marginalization, prophetic evangelicals kept a toe-hold in certain key locations within the evangelical world, most importantly in many of its seminaries and liberal arts colleges as well as prominent youth and campus ministries (Quebedeaux 1978, 84-114). From these centers of influence, over the past four decades prophetic evangelicals have been able to mold many up-and-coming evangelical leaders into a more socially engaged expression of faith. Perhaps as a result of this influence, a new shift has occurred within the evangelical movement since shortly after the turn of the millennium. Historian Joel Carpenter, for instance, traced a thirty-year trajectory from the Chicago Declaration to the new resurgence of evangelical passion for social justice in a December 2003 Christianity Today article on “Compassionate Evangelicalism.” Increasingly, evangelical leaders of all stripes, not just those explicitly associated with prophetic evangelicalism, have developed a new passion for social concerns and especially those relating to “creation care” (an evangelical euphemism for environmentalism), global poverty, urban renewal, and racial diversity (Kirkpatrick 2007; O’Keefe 2008; Gushee 2008; Pally 2011). The National Association of Evangelicals, for instance, has made very specific statements on each of these issues in recent years (Sider and Knippers 2005, 363-75; Heltzel 2009, 127-59). Likewise, many notable mega-church pastors from across the evangelical theological spectrum and across the country—from the Neo-Reformed Tim Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City (Keller 2010), to seeker-sensitive Bill and Lynne Hybels at Willow Creek in the Chicago suburbs (Galli 2009) and purpose-driven Rick Warren at Saddleback Community Church in Orange County, California (Morgan 2005), to the emergent

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Rob Bell of Mars Hill Bible Church in West Michigan (Bell and Golden 2008)—have made social justice a key aspect of their ministries in recent years. At the same time, numerous parachurch organizations focusing on advocacy for various social causes, or on domestic and foreign missions to serve the urban poor, have sprung up in the past decade (Tizon 2008, 71-97; Chester 2003, 13-16; Hoek and Thacker 2008, 1-12). Editorial trends in Christianity Today magazine, the flagship publication of the evangelical movement, also reflect this shift. For instance, the percentage of articles on social justice and ecological concerns in CT’s editorial pages since 2004 has more than tripled compared to the previous eight years.1 It seems likely that this resurgence of social concern among evangelicals is a flowering of the seeds planted by the prophetic tradition over the past three decades. Though lying relatively dormant for some time, the theological and institutional groundwork laid by earlier generations of prophetic evangelicals has enabled them to now burst forth into new life. 2 In the midst of this general turn towards social justice, one particular subset of the evangelical movement known as the new monasticism has been especially deliberate about reconnecting itself to the Civil Rights tradition and to the stream of prophetic evangelicalism that grew out of it. The new monastic movement has its ostensible beginnings in the mid-1990s and early 2000s as groups of young, white, middle-class evangelicals chose to leave behind their lives of privilege and live in community with and among the poor, typically in places of urban decay, what they call the “abandoned places of Empire” (Rutba House 2005, 10-25). These groups, however, trace their own roots further back, having drawn their inspiration and much guidance from the Catholic Worker movement, the Christian Community Development Association, Anabaptist communities like the Bruderhof and Reba Place Fellowship in Chicago, and other experiments in “intentional community,” many with beginnings in the Jesus People

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movement of the 1960s and 70s, as well as those like Koinonia Farm in Americus Georgia which have their roots in pre-Civil Rights era efforts for racial integration and reconciliation (viii). Indeed, as Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a key spokesperson for the new monastics, puts it, “If new monasticism is a movement, it’s much more like a river that we fell into than a march that we helped to organize” (Wilson-Hartgrove 2008b, 26-31). The current incarnation of this movement towards intentional Christian communities among the poor began in 1996 when a handful of students from Eastern University, an American Baptist school near Philadelphia, were motivated to stand in solidarity with a group of predominantly African American families from the inner-city Kensington neighborhood who were in the process of being evicted from St. Edwards, an abandoned Catholic church in which they had taken up residence. This collective eventually evolved into a community called the Simple Way and has since inspired dozens of similar communities nationwide (Claiborne 2006b, 55-67; Moll 2005).3 Borrowing the term “New Monasticism” from Jonathan R. Wilson’s 1998 book, Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World, over sixty neo-monastic leaders gathered in North Carolina in June 2004 to write a voluntary rule for their various communities. These communities outlined twelve marks of the new monasticism: 1. Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire. 2. Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us. 3. Hospitality to the stranger. 4. Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation. 5. Humble submission to Christ’s body, the church. 6. Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the community along the lines of the old novitiate. 7. Nurturing common life among members of intentional community. 8. Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children. 9. Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life. 17

10. Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us along with support of our local economies. 11. Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18. 12. Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life. (Rutba House 2005, xii-xiii) Though each neo-monastic community has its own distinct character and pattern of life, these twelve marks provide a clear picture of the passions that motivate and guide the new monastic movement as a whole. While each of these twelve marks has some relevance to the neo-monastic concern for racial reconciliation and justice, mark number four, “lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation,” makes this commitment specific. This emphasis on “just reconciliation” springs from many sources, not least of which is the ongoing influence of the prophetic evangelicals of the 1970s. The similarities between Shane Claiborne, one of the founders of the Simple Way and easily the most recognizable and widely read leaders among the neo-monastics, and the early career of Jim Wallis, for instance, are remarkable. Both were raised within the white evangelical church, and both underwent an awakening to broader social issues in part through direct exposure to the realities of black urban poverty. Both went on to found an intentional community in an impoverished African American urban neighborhood and a magazine dealing with the intersection of Christianity and social justice (Claiborne’s Simple Way community publishes CONSP!RE magazine). Likewise, both Claiborne and Wallis have been motivated by their exposure to urban poverty and racial justice issues to extend their activities into other areas of social concern, most notably protesting war and American militarism. Just as Wallis engaged in anti-war activities in the late sixties following his exposure to the Civil Rights movement, so did Claiborne choose to go to Baghdad in 2003 with a Christian Peacemaker Team to show

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solidarity with the Iraqi people in opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq (Claiborne 2006a; Wilson-Hartgrove 2005). Despite these similarities, Claiborne and the neo-monastics do not trace their direct line of influence through Wallis himself, with whom they only became acquainted after their movement was already underway. Instead they point to Tony Campolo, a well-known evangelical author, speaker, social activist and sociologist, under whom Claiborne and many other neo-monastic leaders studied while at Eastern University (Shane Claiborne, personal communication). Founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education, which helps “at-risk” young people in the inner cities, and frequent collaborator with Jim Wallis and other prophetic evangelicals, Campolo has served as an important mentor for the new monastic movement. In this way he represents a direct link between the first generation of prophetic evangelicals from the 1970s and the new emerging generation in the twenty-first century. Claiborne and the new monastics share another similarity with Wallis, Campolo, and other first-generation white prophetic evangelicals. Both have been profoundly influenced by their collaboration with and mentorship by black evangelical leaders, and most especially John Perkins of the CCDA. Perkins first heard of the Simple Way in the early 2000s and soon came for a visit to see their community first hand. Claiborne himself recalls having already read and been inspired by Perkins’ 1976 memoir of his own ministry and civil rights work in Mississippi in the 1960s (Perkins 1976). Soon after their first meeting, Perkins invited Claiborne to serve on the CCDA’s board of directors, though because of Claiborne’s busy speaking schedule he is now only on the board of advisors. According to Perkins, Claiborne and his neo-monastic colleagues embody the same vision for reconciliation and community development that drives the CCDA, and offer a hope for passing along its mission to a younger generation. For his part, Claiborne

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describes Perkins as a mentor whose leadership Claiborne was eager to submit to and follow (Claiborne and Perkins 2009, 13-15). Both Claiborne and other neo-monastic leaders like Wilson-Hartgrove have emphasized that Perkins’ vision for the beloved community, and especially his 3-R’s method (Relocation, Redistribution, and Reconciliation) for realizing this vision, has significantly informed their own approach to intentional community (Shane Claiborne, pers. comm.; Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, pers. comm.; Wilson-Hartgrove 2008b, 3031). Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove points to other black leaders who have similarly influenced him and the neo-monastic movement. Like Claiborne, Wilson-Hartgrove is another young white evangelical who attended Eastern and participated in the Simple Way before returning to his native North Carolina to attend Duke Divinity School. There he helped found the Rutba House, a new monastic community in a multi-ethnic neighborhood of Durham, North Carolina, and eventually became an associate minister at the predominantly African American St. Johns Baptist Church. In naming black leaders who have been particularly inspirational to him pursuing this path of new monasticism, Wilson-Hartgrove specifically mentions what he has dubbed “the Mt. Level School of Theology,” consisting of three black theologians from Duke Divinity School, Willie Jennings, William Turner, Jr., and J. Kameron Carter, who each attend Mt. Level Baptist Church where Turner himself serves as pastor. Beyond these scholars, WilsonHartgrove also recognizes the mentorship of William Barber, pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and current president of the North Carolina NAACP, whom he credits with first opening his eyes to the realities of race in the South as a teenager. He also names local Civil Rights leader Ann Atwater, who began as a community organizer in Durham in the 1960s through the influence of Martin Luther King, Jr., as both a personal friend

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and his “mother in the faith and in the movement” (Wilson-Hartgrove 2008a, 18; 2009, 26-29; Davidson 2007). Their influence, along with Perkins’ 3-R’s, are what inspired Wilson-Hartgrove and his wife Leah to follow the path of relocation to an African American neighborhood, to join a black church, and to submit to local black leadership in their pursuit of racial reconciliation and social justice. The influence of both black and white prophetic evangelicals can also be seen in the ideology and values these neo-monastics take from the Civil Rights leaders, and especially Martin Luther King, Jr. Accounts of King’s experiences and pointed statements by him appear frequently in the writings and sermons of the neo-monastics. Above all they point to his radical love ethic as the guiding principle of their own efforts at a “just reconciliation.” Love for enemies and the practitioners of injustice informs much of the neo-monastic practice—from the decision of Claiborne and Wilson-Hartgrove to go to Iraq as witnesses for peace, to the direct action they take against unjust laws in their communities, to how they handle violence within their own urban neighborhoods (Claiborne 2006b, 202-08; Claiborne and Haw 2008, 296-97). While acknowledging that the black separatists and black power advocates of the Civil Rights era have challenged and helped to nuance their own thought about the dynamics of racial justice, the approach of those in the neo-monastic movement still primarily mirrors King’s ideals of integration, reconciliation, and the restoration of broken relationships between the races (Claiborne, pers. comm.; Wilson-Hartgrove, pers. comm.; Claiborne and Perkins 2009, 162-65). They are not naïve, however, about the dynamics of power often present in attempts by white reconcilers to identify and integrate with the African American community. WilsonHartgrove, for instance, speaks about the tendency of downwardly mobile whites to romanticize poverty in their attempts to escape their lives of middle-class privilege, even as lower-class

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African Americans are still struggling to climb out of powerlessness and destitution. Instead, he concludes, our goal should be to become part of a new family “where rich and poor share together so that the rich are no longer rich and the poor are no longer poor” (Wilson-Hartgrove 2008a, 64-65). They admit these are difficult and complicated dynamics to navigate, however. Chris Rice, another neo-monastic leader with roots in the CCDA, suggests that the “tricky terrain of . . . learning to stick together in the intersection of ones moving from power and others moving from the margins” calls for a practice of lamenting those failures along the way that remind us that we are not God. In such lament, Rice says, neo-monastic communities are “signs of hope” that keep alive the memory of Dr. King as an “Amos-like prophet of the church naming sins of militarism, racism, and materialism” (Rutba House 2005, 60, 66-67). This three-fold emphasis on “militarism, racism, and materialism” is yet another way the new monastics have adopted the legacy of King, who in his later years spoke out not just for black freedom, but against both the war in Vietnam and against the exploitation of the poor by America’s capitalist system. This appropriation of King’s legacy can be seen especially in the practices of the neo-monastics as they imitate the non-violent direct action pioneered by Dr. King and others in the Civil Rights movement. Already we have noted the new monastic witness against this most recent war in Iraq. Closer to home, Claiborne and his community have engaged in numerous acts of civil disobedience (or what they like to call “holy mischief”) in protest of unjust laws targeted at the poor and minorities. Some years ago, for instance, the city of Philadelphia passed ordinances making it illegal to panhandle, lie down on sidewalks, sleep in parks, or distribute food in public, all of which were aimed at restricting the visibility of the homeless population of the city. In protest, Claiborne and his community organized public pizzaparty communion services for the homeless, and began sleeping out with them in the parks.

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Eventually, as a result of their eventual arrest and acquittal, the ordinances were declared unconstitutional. On another occasion Claiborne and his friends were arrested for holding a prayer service at the Lockheed Martin headquarters in protest of that company’s global arms dealing. More recently they were arrested for staging a sit-in at a notorious gun shop in Philadelphia. And in 2006 Claiborne was again arrested on the steps of the U.S. Capitol building, this time together with John Perkins, Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, and other evangelical leaders, to protest George W. Bush’s proposal to raise defense spending while cutting funds for the poor. In defense of their decision to break the law on these occasions, Claiborne frequently cites Dr. King’s statement that “There is nothing wrong with a traffic law which says you have to stop for a red light. But when a fire is raging, the fire truck goes through that red light. . . . There is a fire raging . . . for the poor of this society. . . . They need brigades of drivers who will have to ignore the red lights of the present system until the emergency is solved” (Claiborne 2006b, 232-37; Claiborne and Haw 2008, 294-96; Claiborne and Perkins 2009, 136-40; Heltzel 2009, 174). In these forms of creative, non-violent direct action, Claiborne and the new monastics demonstrate what they have learned from the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, and how they are carrying this tradition forward into the twenty-first century, not just as activists, but as prophetic evangelicals motivated by faith to help realize their vision of the coming kingdom of God. Conclusion The effects of the mid-twentieth century struggle for African American Civil Rights continue to ripple within American evangelicalism. As we have seen, this tradition of racial reconciliation and non-violent direct action in the cause of social justice has been successfully passed to two subsequent generations of prophetic evangelical leaders and lay persons. From leaders like Wallis and Perkins with roots in the original Civil Rights movement, the torch has

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now been handed to a younger generation of emerging leaders and most especially to the new monastics. These new monastics have deliberately claimed this heritage and yet at the same time are recombining it with a renewed emphasis on creating intentional and ordered spiritual communities among and with the poor. While still concerned about the structural injustices that contribute to problems of poverty and racism, they also see the need for communities of faith, justice, and reconciliation that begin to practice on the small scale the kind of transformations they would like to also see in the broader society. In this regard they remain within the broad tradition of Carl F. H. Henry and Billy Graham, with their insistence on the need for transforming individual relationships, and yet are also wise to the larger picture of social sin and structural injustices emphasized by their prophetic evangelical forebears. At the same time, they demonstrate the continuing evolution of this evangelical identity as they move beyond both the individualistic ethics of the first generation, and the social ministries established by the second generation, to demonstrate a localized, communal embodiment of racial justice and reconciliation within these neo-monastic communities. And though both prophetic evangelicalism and the new monasticism still remain minority streams within the broader evangelical movement, their influence has been growing steadily over the past decade. Through them, black prophetic Christianity continues to influence white American evangelical identity and to play an integral role in the shaping of American evangelicalism as a whole.

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Bibliography Bell, Rob, and Don Golden. 2008. Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. Benson, Bruce, Malinda Elizabeth Berry, and Peter Goodwin Heltzel, eds. 2012. Prophetic Evangelicals: Envisioning a Just and Peaceable Kingdom. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans. “Billy Graham Makes Plea for an End to Intolerance.” 1956. Life, October, 138-51. “Billy Graham Urges Restraint in Sit-Ins.” 1963. New York Times, April 18. Bivins, Jason C. 2003. The Fracture of the Good Order: Christian Antiliberalism and the Challenge of American Politics. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Chester, Tim, ed. 2003. Justice, Mercy and Humility: Integral Mission and the Poor. Colorado Springs, CO: Paternoster. Claiborne, Shane. 2006a. Iraq Journal 2003. Indianapolis: Doulos Christou Press. ———. 2006b. The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. Claiborne, Shane, and Chris Haw. 2008. Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. Claiborne, Shane, and John Perkins. 2009. Follow Me to Freedom: Leading and Following as an Ordinary Radical. Ventura, CA: Regal. Davidson, Osha Gray. 2007. The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Dayton, Donald W. 1976. Discovering an Evangelical Heritage. New York: Harper & Row. Ellis, E. Earl. 1957. “Segregation and the Kingdom of God.” Christianity Today, March 18, 6-9. ———. 1959. “Review of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Stride Toward Freedom.” Christianity Today, January 12, 34-36. Emerson, Michael O., and Christian Smith. 2000. Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Evans, Curtis J. 2009. “White Evangelical Protestant Responses to the Civil Rights Movement.” Harvard Theological Review 102 (2): 245-73.

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Fairbanks, J. David. 1989. “The Politics of Christianity Today: 1956-1986.” In Contemporary Evangelical Political Involvement, edited by Corwin E. Smidt, 25-43. Lanham, MA: University Press of America. Galli, Mark. 2009. “Making the Local Church a Hero.” Christianity Today, March, 32-39. Graham, Billy. 1953. “Evangelism As I See It.” Princeton Seminary Bulletin, April, 13-20. ———. 1960a. “What Ten Years Have Taught Me.” Christian Century, February 17, 186-89. ———. 1960b. “No Solution to Race Problem ‘at the Point of Bayonets.’” U.S. News and World Report, April 25, 94. ———. 1965. World Aflame. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. ———. 1997. Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham. New York: HarperCollins. Grenz, Stanley, and Roger Olson. 1992. 20th-Century Theology: God & the World in a Transitional Age. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Gushee, David. 2008. The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. Hall, Charles F. 1997. “The Christian Left: Who Are They and How Are They Different from the Christian Right?” Review of Religious Research 39 (1): 27-45. Heltzel, Peter Goodwin. 2008. “Prophetic Evangelicals: Toward a Politics of Hope.” In The Sleeping Giant Has Awoken: The New Politics of Religion in the United States, edited by Jeffrey W. Robbins and Neal Magee, 25-40. New York: Continuum. ———.2009. Jesus & Justice: Evangelicals, Race & American Politics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Henry, Carl F. H. 1947. The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans. ———. 1957. “Can We Salvage the Republic.” Christianity Today, May 27, 11-14. ———. 1964. Aspects of Christian Social Ethics. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans. ———. 1965. “Evangelicals and the Social Struggle.” Christianity Today, October 8, 3-7. ———. 1966. “What Social Structures?” Reformed Journal (May-June): 6-10. ———. 1986. Confessions of a Theologian: An Autobiography. Waco, TX: Word Books.

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Hoek, Marijke, and Justin Thacker, eds. 2008. Micah’s Challenge: The Church’s Responsibility to the Global Poor. Colorado Springs, CO: Paternoster. Hunter, James Davison. “The New Class and the Young Evangelicals.” Review of Religious Research 22 (2): 155-169. Keller, Tim. 2010. Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just. New York: Dutton. Kirkpatrick, David. 2007. “The Evangelical Crackup.” New York Times Magazine, October 28. Long, Michael G. 2006. Billy Graham and the Beloved Community. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Marsh, Charles. 2004. The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice from the Civil Rights Movement to Today. New York: Basic Books. Marsh, Charles, and John Perkins. 2009. Welcoming Justice: God’s Movement Toward Beloved Community. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Moll, Rob. 2005. “The New Monasticism.” Christianity Today, September, 38-46. Morgan, Timothy C. 2005. “Purpose Driven in Rwanda.” Christianity Today, October, 32-36, 90-91. O’Keefe, Mark. 2008. “Assessing a More Prominent ‘Religious Left’.” Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, June 5. http://www.pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Assessing-a-MoreProminent-Religious-Left.aspx. Pally, Marcia. 2011. The New Evangelicals: Expanding the Vision of the Common Good. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans. Perkins, John. 1976. Let Justice Roll Down. Glendale, CA: G/L Books. Quebedeaux, Richard. 1974. The Young Evangelicals. New York: Harper & Row. ———. 1978. The Worldly Evangelicals. San Francisco: Harper & Row. The Rutba House, ed. 2005. School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock. Schäfer, Axel R. 2011. Countercultural Conservatives: American Evangelicalism from the Postwar Revival to the New Christian Right. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Sider, Ronald J., ed. 1974. The Chicago Declaration. Carol Stream, IL: Creation House.

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Sider, Ronald J., and Diane Knippers, eds. 2005. Toward an Evangelical Public Policy: Political Strategies for the Health of the Nation. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books. Smedes, Lewis B. 1966. “The Evangelicals and the Social Question.” Reformed Journal (February): 8-10. Swartz, David R. 2008. “Left Behind: The Evangelical Left and the Limits of Evangelical Politics, 1965-1988.” PhD dissertation, University of Notre Dame. ———. 2011. “Identity Politics and the Fragmenting of the 1970s Evangelical Left.” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 21 (1): 81-120. Tapia, Andrés T. 1997. “After the Hugs, What?” Christianity Today, February 3, 55. Tizon, Al. 2008. Transformation After Lausanne: Radical Evangelical Mission in Global-Local Perspective. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock. Toulouse, Mark G. 1993. “Christianity Today and American Public Life: A Case Study.” Journal of Church and State 35 (2): 241-84. ———. 2006. God in Public: Four Ways American Christianity and Public Life Relate. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox. Wallis, Jim. 1983. Revive Us Again: A Sojourner’s Story. Nashville: Abingdon Press. Wilson, Jonathan R. 1998. Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World: Lessons for the Church from MacIntyre’s After Virtue. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press Intl. Wilson-Hartgrove, Jonathan. 2005. To Baghdad and Beyond: How I Got Born Again in Babylon. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock. ———. 2008a. Free to Be Bound: Church Beyond the Color Line. Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress. ———. 2008b. New Monasticism: What it has to Say to Today’s Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press. ———. 2009. God’s Economy: Redefining the Health & Wealth Gospel. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. 1

These percentages are based on an as yet unpublished study, conducted by the author, of political editorials in Christianity Today over the past 25 years. 2 While further work is needed to establish direct connections, as noted in the preceding paragraph, such seeds can be found in the justice, race, and poverty focused programs established at many evangelical colleges and seminaries over the past forty years—the Human Needs, Global Resources (HNGR) degree program at Wheaton College, for instance, in the missions and parachurch ministries noted by Tizon and others, and among evangelical campus ministries like InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, which have long had a focus on social concerns (Swartz 2008). 3 For a map of current neo-monastic communities, visit http://www.communityofcommunities.info/.

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