I am going to preach this morning. Actually, in all probability I will be preaching by the time you read this. I will not be away from home in some alien pulpit, though, but at home in my own parish and among those whom I love. I won't preach, of course, because I can't. What I will do is just talk. And what I will talk about is where I was last week.

Last week, I was in Seattle at Fremont Abbey, which is the home structure or base for The Church of the Apostles, where an African-American female friend and colleague of mine, Karen Ward, is abbess and where a significant portion of the Fremont area of Seattle seems to gather to do its worship or to do its socializing or maybe just to lick its wounds, re-group, and go forth into the world renewed. None of those exercises is a bad thing for a church or parish to be engaged in, and most assuredly none is a bad thing for the folk who are the beating heart of Fremont Abbey.

Fremont Abbey is an Anglimergent church. That is to say that what you and I and all our kind are living through right now is referred to as The Great Emergence. Like The Great Reformation of the 16th century, The Great Schism of the 11th century, the time of Gregory the Great in the sixth century, or The Great Transformation that happened at the change of the eras, this one of ours also marks a seismic shift in human affairs, both religious and secular. When scholars call this one The Great Emergence, they do not exaggerate; for as was true with all its predecessors, out of it is coming a whole new definition of what it means to be human, of how society should be structured, of what constitutes the good life -- even of what human life itself is and how it may be defined.

In this "Great Emergence" there are churches, movements, and congregations that are frankly "emergent." That is, they are completely new conceptualizations of what "church" is to be. There are, in other words, many congregations and gatherings that frankly are emergent away from, or emerging up out of, the traditional flow of "church' as we normally think of it, and they are a legitimate new form of Christianity as surely as, 500 years ago, bodies protesting the dominance of Latin Catholicism were emerging and protesting and forming new bodies of the faithful and were legitimately Christian.

In all of this reshuffling and reconstituting, there are also other parishes, however, other churches and congregations that are moving to embrace emergent Christian thought while melding it with extant and/or historic expressions of the faith. They are known as the hyphenateds. They are the presbymergents and methomergents, the luthermergents, and the baptimergents, the submergents and the anglimergents, etc. They fascinate me more even than do completely emergent congregations, because they seem to me to be engaged in the more difficult task of bringing to the party the best of two worlds, the ancient and the future. They are hyphenated, in other words, because they seek to meld the DNA and passion and post-modern theology of a new form of Christianity with the extant body and operative history of an established tradition. Among them all, none is so absorbing or compelling to me as are the anglimergents, of whom there is no better example than the Church of the Apostles in Seattle.

Part of my joy in this and my sensitivity to it, undoubtedly, is that I am, for lo these many decades now, an Anglican through and through. Standing in the nave of the Church of the Apostles last Saturday night, I was reminded again of the richness and the glory of that singular and never-quite-domesticated or tamed position, especially as it is being translated into postmodern Christianity. I watched people of all classes and strata, abilities and dress styles, and all kinds of sexual or gender persuasions come together in a worship that used much of the order of service laid out in the Book of Common Prayer, but somehow remained innocent of preconceptions while revealing itself as long on mercy, compassion, and adamant belief. The worship at COTA was blatantly dedicated to the premise that the Bible is one narrative, not two narratives in one set of covers, and to the even more radical premise that Jesus, the Nazarene, actually meant what he said in everything that he said, including the fact that the promises of Holy Writ are fulfilled in him and had better be acted upon by us.

What will I preach this morning? I won't. I'll simply say to those of us gathered in our Tennessee nave that the time has come to take heart. Now, in this time of re-formation culturally and sociologically as well as religiously, our brothers and sisters in Christ all over this country and the globe are finding generous and merciful and grace-filled ways to exercise their faith and to include all peoples, and we can do no less. That is what I shall say, and I will begin the saying of it this morning by reading aloud a collection of words that I have heard many times before but never received until last week when I heard them proclaimed in the mixed beauty and aberrant, warm, but not quite familiar hospitality of anglimergence at its most powerful. The words are those of Isaiah, the prophet, who foretold Messiah's coming. They go like this:

Thus says the Lord, Keep right judgment and do justice; for my salvation is near and soon to come, and my righteousness to be revealed.

Blessed is the one who does this, and blessed is the one who lays hold of it, who observes the Sabbath and does not pollute it, and who keeps his or her hand from doing evil.

Neither let the son or daughter of a stranger who has joined himself to the Lord, speak, saying, "The Lord has utterly separated me from His people." Neither let the eunuch say, "Behold, I am a dry tree."

For thus says the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep My Sabbath and choose the things that please Me and take hold of My covenant;

Even unto them will I give in My house and within My walls a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.

Also the sons and daughters of the strangers that join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him and to love the name of the Lord and to be His servants, and everyone that keeps My Sabbath from polluting it, and takes hold of My covenant,

Even them will I bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer; their offerings and sacrifices shall be accepted on My altar, for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.

Isaiah 56:1-7

May it soon be so everywhere and in all places. Amen.

Phyllis Tickle (www.phyllistickle.com) is the founding editor of the religion department of Publishers Weekly and author of The Words of Jesus: A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord and the forthcoming fall release, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why.

John McCain's acceptance speech last night sought to present him as a maverick and bipartisan reformer, in contrast to the total partisanship of Sarah Palin the night before. She clearly relishes her own self-description as a pit bull with lipstick who fires up the conservative base, while McCain wants to reach out to the independents he knows he needs to win. He told his story again of how capture and torture took him from a reckless and selfish young man to a deep love for his country.

As I suggested after the first presidential primary many months ago, "change" has already won this election, given the deep unpopularity of George Bush and the many failures of his administration. Change is the theme of both Barack Obama's campaign and of John McCain's. Usually when voters want change, they change parties in the White House. But McCain has the difficult task of persuading voters that a different kind of Republican can do the job, while Obama will continue to ask him to explain why he voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time.

But now the conventions are over and the fact-checking can begin. There were a lot of very partisan things said at both conventions (that is the reason for conventions), but now all those things should be tested. I hope those who say that this will be an election about "personalities" are wrong. It must instead be about the real issues facing the country and the world. Whose tax policies will benefit whom the most? Who offers the best hopes for poor and middle-class families? And who has the smartest policies to defeat the real threats of terrorism -- not whose rhetoric against Islamic fundamentalism is tougher? So let the fact-checking begin, and given the speeches we have just heard from some politicians, we will need full-time fact-checkers.

But one other thing bothered me last night, and it did also at the Democratic Convention. It was all those signs that read "Country First" and all those chants of "USA, USA, USA!!" The high-powered and, frankly, militaristic rhetoric kept telling us that "country" should be put above everything else -- including family and friendship. But what about faith? Should country be put ahead of faith, too? I kept wanting to yell back at the people yelling at me about putting the country first and say, "No, not me, I'm a Christian." Because we as Christians simply can't put our country first, ahead of God, ahead of Jesus Christ, ahead of the body of Christ (remember the worldwide body of Christ), and even family and friendship. Especially when our country is wrong, and when most of the rest of the body of Christ around the world thinks so.

"Country First" was the theme of John McCain's speech and night, and he asked us to "fight with him." Barack Obama also said in Denver that all Americans must put country first -- to counter the Republican exclusive claim on patriotism. Well, again, not all of us. I suppose people running for president have to say that, but Christian voters shouldn't go along with that. Can anybody imagine Jesus leading cheers shouting "USA!"?

This morning I spoke to the annual Wheaton, Illinois, prayer breakfast. I was driven there by a local Christian leader who spends his days serving poor women and children along with troubled teenagers. When he told me he was Canadian, even though he had lived in the U.S. for years, I asked him if Canadian Christians would respond to the call to put country first. "No," he said, we are "world Christians." What a good thought and what a clear sense of Christian identity. It was a great way to begin the day after two weeks of political conventions. So let the fact-checking and the radical assertion of "faith first" begin in this political campaign.

[continued from part 1]

Jesus did not establish bureaucratic institutions, weekly social gatherings, or houses of religious entertainment. He started a movement that demands that rather than spending our time establishing ever more luxurious churches, we must strive to establish God's kingdom of love and justice on earth as in heaven. The gospel he lived and died for summons us to treat all people and their needs as holy. This means instituting policies that fairly, equitably, and lovingly respond to the suffering and want of all of humanity.

Yes, respond lovingly, because Jesus' entire gospel is based upon love. But note well that the love he taught is not mere sentimentality; it is actively working to secure for one's neighbor what one wants for oneself. That is the difference between the politics of Jesus and the politics of politicians: Jesus' way acknowledges God as "our" God, meaning that all are children of God, and thus the needs of all are holy. It is this standard that separates the politics of Jesus from the politics of politicians.

In the politics of Jesus, then, every policy and policy proposal must be judged by Jesus' yardstick of love and justice. We must ask: Do our social programs treat the people's needs as holy? Do our tax laws? Do our health care policies treat as holy all in need of coverage? Do our foreign policies treat all people as children of the same Creator? Or do we treat those outside our borders as children of a lesser god and, therefore, worthy of only inferior chances in life?

Treating the people and their needs as holy should be the perspective of everyone who purports to be a lover of God and humanity, but it must certainly be the perspective of every religious and political leader who claims to follow Jesus. In the politics of Jesus, there can be no "politicians" in the sense of "professional" politicians, whose dedication is to power and self-aggrandizement rather than to principles. There must only be servant leaders, just as the son of God came not to be served, but to serve.

The goal of Jesus' movement, ministry, and politics is a new creation: a political order that truly serves the good of all in equal measure. Those who strive to practice Jesus' politics must always keep that as the focus of our prayers and our compassion, the focus of our love and our most faithful social action. It is not optional; it is required of every follower of Jesus. He declared as much in terms that left no doubt: "Whoever is not with me is against me" (Matthew 12:30). That is to say, if you do not work for, or in some real way support, the establishment of God's kingdom of love and justice, then your silence and inactivity ultimately serve the forces of injustice.

It will not be easy. It seems that every aspect of today's political culture militates against the gospel's call for truth, honesty, and sincere service in the public square. But this is as Jesus foretold it: "I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; ... you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear testimony before them" (Matthew 10:16, 18 [RSV]). This means that in every political setting the true followers of Jesus will be called forth to speak truth to power and to find power in the truth. Even as many strut about proudly wearing their faith like crowns, the true followers of Jesus must hold dear his cross of self-sacrificial love.

All of this requires more than simply bearing Jesus' name. These things we must do if at the sunset of our lives we are to be counted among those who truly tried to love our neighbors as ourselves by living the politics of he who died so others might live.

Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Ph.D., is a professor of biblical interpretation at New York Theological Seminary and author of The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of the Teachings of Jesus and How They Have Been Corrupted.

Sarah Palin appeared poised and confident in her speech on Wednesday evening.

I have the utmost respect for her ability to juggle her role as a wife, mom, and public servant. She is to be commended for her example and particularly in her efforts to better her community through civic engagement. I may not agree with her on the specifics of her policy ideas and even how she came to some of her conclusions, but I can acknowledge that in her way, she is attempting to live out her faith values in the public arena.

So why did she, Rudy Giuliani, and the Republican Party make it a point to mock a significant portion of the population that seeks to live out their faith in the public arena through community organizing? It lent a snarky and condescending tone to Wednesday evening's speeches.

I served as an urban pastor for 10 years. In those years, I witnessed the whole range of urban problems and woes that politicians like to point out every four years or so. The wide range of issues requires different levels of response, sometimes simultaneously. There are times that immediate needs must be met by conducting canned food drives or serving at a local soup kitchen. There are times that the future takes priority and the focus is on discipling and mentoring at-risk children and youth. There are times we look at the big picture of our society and discuss ways that family values can be upheld. And then there are times when an alienated and marginalized citizenry act together to advocate for change in their neighborhood and community.

Community organizing provides an opportunity for neighborhoods and communities to work together to bring about change. It can be as small a change as a group of high school students organizing to ask for better safety and hygiene in their school bathrooms. It can be as large a change as an organization of churches and synagogues becoming one of the most significant voices advocating for universal health care. The community organization I was involved with in Boston, the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, advocated for the rights of Haitian nurses' aides in local nursing homes. Members of Haitian immigrant churches, Jewish synagogues, and black, white, and multiethnic churches joined to advocate for Haitian nurses to bring about change. I experienced a personal joy that fellow believers in more established churches would advocate for a recent immigrant who struggled with a language barrier. My mom worked for a number of years as a nurse's aide in a senior citizen home, and I wished that Christians had advocated for her rights 30 years ago, giving her a voice and freedom that is the promise of America.

Community organizing attempts to give voice to the voiceless in our society (not just the powerful and the elite) and attempts to build influence based on relationships, rather than positions. Community organizing provides a prophetic voice because it arises from outside the system of power from the local community. Those feel to me like very biblical values.

Rev. Dr. Soong-Chan Rah is Milton B. Engebretson Assistant Professor of Church Growth and Evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary and a member of the Sojourners board. He blogs at: http://www.xanga.com/scrah

Wednesday morning I got an e-mail from a former member of our Sojourners community. Perry Perkins is now a community organizer in Louisiana with affiliates of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). "Perk," as we used to call him, reported on the enormous consequences of 2 million people being evacuated because of Hurricane Gustav, much of the state now being without power, how hard cities like Baton Rouge were hit, the tens of thousands of people in shelters and churches, and the continuing problems caused by heavy rains and flooding. Then he talked about how their community organizers were responding to all of this -- responding to hundreds of service calls, assisting local officials in evacuation plans, aiding evacuees without transportation, coordinating shelters and opening new ones, providing food, essential services, and financial aid to those in most need. Since Katrina, Perry's Louisiana interfaith organizations have played a lead role in securing millions of dollars to help thousands of families return to New Orleans and rebuild their homes and their lives.

Then Wednesday night I heard Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin say that her experience as "a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities." The convention crowd in St. Paul thought that was very funny. But it wasn't. It was actually quite insulting to the army of community organizers who work in the most challenging places across the country and have such a tremendous impact on the everyday lives of millions of people. I guess Palin and her fellow Republican delegates don't know much about that. The "actual responsibilities" of community organizers literally provide the practical support, collective strength, and hope for a better future that low-income families need to survive,

Community organizers are now most focused in the faith community, working with tens of thousands of pastors and laypeople in thousands of congregations around the country. Faith-based organizing is the critical factor in many low-income communities in the country's poorest urban and rural areas, and church leaders are often the biggest supporters of community organizers. And many of them felt deeply offended by Palin's remarks. Here are a few of their responses:

"As a lifelong Republican, the comments I heard last night about community organizing crossed the line. It is one thing to question someone's experience, another to demean the work of millions of hardworking Americans who take time to get involved in their communities. When people come together in my church hall to improve our community, they're building the Kingdom of God in San Diego. We see the fruits of community organizing in safer streets, new parks, and new affordable housing. It's the spirit of democracy for people to have a say and we need more of it," said Bishop Roy Dixon, prelate of the Southern California 4th ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Church of God in Christ, member of the San Diego Organizing Project and former board chair of PICO National Network.  

They have also pointed out how the most important victories for social justice have come more from community organizers than elected officials.

"We can thank community organizing for the weekend, the eight-hour day, integrated swimming pools, public transportation, health care for children and safe neighborhoods.  Community organizing is behind most of the family-oriented initiatives we benefit from every day. I am proud to work for change in my country, my state, and my city as a community organizer, following the great traditions of Dr. Martin Luther King," said Laura Barrett, national policy director of Gamaliel/Transportation Equity Network (TEN).

And when you put the accomplishments of politicians alongside those of community organizers for poor families, it isn't even close. Without the pressure from community organizers and the movements they lead, there would often be nobody to hold politicians accountable.

"Politicians should thank community organizers, not insult them. As a longtime organizer, I've seen time and time again that we are the ones who make government work for the poor, the powerless and the marginalized. Politicians' policies and promises would amount to nothing without grassroots activists to hold them accountable. We are leaders of faith and stewards of democracy. In a time when the face of faith in politics is often ugly, community organizing is a valuable example of faith's positive role in public life," said Pastor Mark Diemer, senior pastor of Grace of God Lutheran Church in Columbus, Ohio, and a DART community organizer.

Palin's effort to attack the experience of Barack Obama, a former community organizer in Chicago, turned into a bad joke and an insult. Palin owes a lot of good people an apology.

[continued from part 1]

Back in 1961, Gurdon Brewster was a seminary student at Union Theological Seminary, training to be an Episcopal priest. When this Northern liberal raised his hand to volunteer as a summer intern at Ebenezer Baptist Church, he had no idea what lay in store for him. He tells this story in No Turning Back: My Summer with Daddy King.

What truth was there in your mother's friend's comment that if you went to Ebenezer, you'd never be a bishop?

She felt that working with Dr. King would risk the alienation of many white people that I would later work for, and this was true in part. As I later reflected on it, in a certain sense she was kind of prophetic because once you're involved in such a dynamic way of being the church, it's hard to fit totally into the structure of the church that is often against that kind of dynamic ministry. After having experienced a church like Ebenezer, it would be hard to enter a structure so perfectly and always within the box.

In what ways did this summer influence your plans for ministry when you returned to Union Theological Seminary?

BREWSTER:  I came into the presence of Rev. King Sr. and Dr. King and all of the people there, who are really struggling for justice and looking for a larger way of loving humanity. So, I came back to the seminary with this great powerful sense of justice that we really have to struggle for love and freedom across the board, and maybe go into the streets and march and talk and so on. It opened me up to a much larger sense of justice as well as the cost of bringing this about. This was hard work and putting your life on the line, putting your body in harm's way. This was learning how to love your enemy, when I was trained to not have any enemies. So, this really brought me into many different ways of trying to live out the gospel.

How was your prayer life changed after this summer?

BREWSTER: I came out of seminary as an Episcopalian worshipping in the Book of Common Prayer. Most of the time, I would read my prayers and sometimes I would write them and craft them out carefully. But the first Sunday I was at Ebenezer, Daddy King asked me to pray right on the spot in front of the whole congregation. It terrified me because I was used to a much more formal way of praying. Fortunately, I fell back on a formula I had learned at seminary: A-C-T-S -- adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. I pinned a lot of my prayers on those four words until I began to pray more actually and easily.

[to be continued...]

Becky Garrison is one of the many people interviewed in the documentary The Ordinary Radicals.

I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
Even on the male and female slaves,
in those days, I will pour out my spirit.
- Joel 2:28-29

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Respect for the people's word need not mean approval for whatever they say. Any criticism becomes constructive when based on a fundamental attitude of respect and listening.

- Clodovis Boff
Catholic theologian in Brazil

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The most direct self-referential command Jesus has given to those who would call themselves by his name is, "Follow me." That means that even before praising Jesus, we must follow him on his path of love. It is that path that led him to teach, to heal, to save, to sacrifice. Yet his path did not stop there. It also led him to fulfill the prophet's mandate to call to account the shepherds of his people who seemed to care more for power and wealth than for the welfare of the sheep they were vowed to serve.

What does this mean in the roiling realm of politics in America today? It means that we who purport to follow Jesus must issue our own prophetic call to the shepherds of our nation who seem to serve only themselves and the few they claim as their own.

We must call upon our officials and elected representatives to turn from the greed and imperial ambitions of Caesar to embrace Christ's call to care for those in need: the weakest, the neediest, those in the twilight of their days.

We must call upon the politicians of America to stop the crony capitalism that enriches the few and impoverishes the many.

We must call for all Americans to be provided with adequate health care, a livable minimum wage, and access to an education that can prepare them to be fruitful in the marketplace and to contribute to the common good of all.

We must call upon our political leaders to stop their cynical misuse of religion and "faith" to support exclusionary policies, exploitative policies, policies that deal in killing and death.

We must call upon all who claim to be politicians "of faith" to return integrity to America's political culture by embracing the same humility that moved the psalmist to pray, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Psalm 139:23-24).

We must call upon all who claim the name of Christ to reclaim the holistic spirituality that Jesus taught, not the one-dimensional imitation of it that frees us from the responsibility to make justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Finally, we must call upon our politicians to end their ceaseless drive for power and to begin to sincerely serve the needs of those entrusted to their leadership. For the politics of Jesus seeks not to possess worldly power, but to serve the justice of God.

[to be continued ...]

Obery M. Hendricks Jr., Ph.D., is a professor of biblical interpretation at New York Theological Seminary and author of The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of the Teachings of Jesus and How They Have Been Corrupted.

While many conservatives have known and admired Sarah Palin for some time, most Americans do not know her. So the intense media focus on the new Republican vice-presidential nominee was to be expected. But some of it has been inappropriate, especially when reporters go after the Palin family's choices. The suggestion that running for vice president with a 5-month-old special-needs child and a pregnant 17-year-old daughter should make her suspect as a mother is a blatant double standard that would not be applied to a male candidate. All four candidates should indeed focus on the needs of their families, and it's clear they all do. But a mother with children should have as much freedom to run for office as a father in the same situation.

Palin introduced herself to the country with last night's speech to the Republican National Convention. She gave the crowd what it was looking for -- the narrative of her life, an all-out defense of John McCain, and strong criticisms of Democrats, Washington, and the media. If anyone had any questions about her being a formidable political figure, those were put to rest last night. Republican leaders are taking pride this morning in Palin's high school nickname: "Sarah Barracuda." Many found her speech feisty and tough, while others found it negative and smug. But Palin has clearly united the three legs of the modern Republican Party -- social conservatives, economic conservatives, and foreign policy hawks -- and really energized that base, as was evident in the Convention Hall last night. Media commentators across the spectrum commented on the success of Palin's address. But the well-delivered speech still leaves many questions unanswered. As conservative columnist Steve Chapman wrote in the Chicago Tribune,

Palin has another, more complicated task that this speech postponed: reaching out to millions of people who are honestly wondering if she has the experience, depth and temperament to step into the Oval Office. What many of those Americans need to see are qualities like judgment, wisdom, tolerance and flexibility. Those traits were conspicuous by their absence tonight.

With two months to go, the questions will certainly be raised. The most important one that is emerging is which ticket will be most able to reach out to many people in the middle in both parties and the all-important political independents. Facts will be important. Whose tax policies will most benefit low-income and middle-class families? Who has a plan to reverse the economic downturn? Who has the smartest strategy for countering the real threats of terrorism? And who has the best and most comprehensive response to the full range of moral issues that are of deep concern to people of faith?

Now, all four of the political figures on their respective party tickets have been shown to have compelling personal stories. All four are "real people," as the slogan goes. But this election must not just be about personalities, or inspiring personal histories; it must be about the issues, the records, the leadership, and the facts. May God help us to stay focused on that. Last week belonged to the Democrats, this week to the Republicans. Now, after the showy conventions of the past two weeks, the real work of this election can begin.

Back in 1961, Gurdon Brewster was a seminary student at Union Theological Seminary, training to be an Episcopal priest. When this Northern liberal raised his hand to volunteer as a summer intern at Ebenezer Baptist Church, he had no idea what lay in store for him. He tells this story in No Turning Back: My Summer with Daddy King.

Why did you volunteer to be a seminary student at Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1961?

BREWSTER: As I was raised as a white student in the North, I really wanted to get a larger perspective and to see the world through the eyes of a black Christian and the eyes of the Kings. There was a program that was sending white students to the historic black churches, and I was fortunate enough to be chosen and got the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

What was it was like to preach from the pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church?

BREWSTER: The first experience I had in preaching was the very night I got there. We had dinner and then Rev. King Sr. asked me to come to evening prayer. So, I went to the prayer service and in the middle of the first hymn, he handed me a Bible and said, "You're going to preach after the first hymn." This terrified me because I had never preached before. But I couldn't say no to the preaching invitation. During the first hymn, I was looking for a text, which I finally found at the end of the last amen and that was the text on the beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount. I began to open my mouth and all of a sudden, somebody right in front of me said, "Preach it, Brewster!" Then [the church] was filled with "amens" and "halleluiahs," and I almost jumped out of my skin. I finally began to get used to it and really began to love their encouragement and finally began to appreciate the power of the dialogue between the pulpit and the congregation. So, it became a wonderful give and take when preaching from the pulpit.

What did you learn spending time in the kitchen with Daddy King? 

BREWSTER: It became clear to me that I was going to be the cook during the summer. So, I began to cook breakfast for Daddy King. While we were eating breakfast together, I began to ask him about his life. At first, he didn't really think I was really interested or that the answers weren't very significant. He thought everybody was more interested in the life of his son. It took him a while to realize that I thought his own life was really important. But I persisted and kept asking him about his life. I learned that he had grown up as the son of a sharecrop farmer in rural Georgia. He had struggled incredibly from being a young boy working behind a mule, going to school from time to time. But then his father would bring him onto the field again. He amazed me at how he could evolve to being the pastor of this large church. The path from there to Ebenezer just took an extraordinary amount of struggle. I became filled with admiration for what he had gone through.

Describe the reactions you got from white clergy when you wanted to invite their youth groups to meet with the Ebenezer youth group.

BREWSTER: This was in 1961. It was only five years after Rosa Parks sat in the bus in Montgomery. So it's very new in the movement. When I first tried to get the youth groups from white churches together with Ebenezer, I met with a lot of resistance. Some of the clergy thought they needed police protection to come into the Ebenezer Baptist Church. It took a huge amount of work, and a number of people -- I was surprised -- were just not interested in coming to Ebenezer. Toward the end of the summer, I got a number of churches to agree. We ended up having a wonderful meeting between maybe four to six youth groups and our Ebenezer Baptist Church youth group. Dr. King spoke.

What did your summer teach you about dealing with the hatred you encountered in Montgomery?

BREWSTER: I learned that it is one thing to resist nonviolently and to stay there and not fight back, but it is something very different to try and love your enemy. That takes very deep spiritual insight and discipline. I learned later on in the civil rights movement that for a mass of people, it's much easier to buy a gun than to try and love your enemy.

[To be continued ... ]

Becky Garrison is one of the many people interviewed in the documentary The Ordinary Radicals.

It was a warm spring afternoon when Martin Luther King addressed tens of thousands gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the largest gathering to date in the growing struggle for civil rights.

King rallied the crowd with his stirring refrain: "Give us the ballot!" He called for the government, white liberals, white Southerners, and finally the African-American community to work, struggle, and sacrifice to achieve a more just, free, and integrated nation.

But more than 50 years later, few remember this speech delivered at the "Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom" on May 17, 1957. But the nation and the world are very much aware of a speech King gave only six years later at the very same location.

Why do we remember the 45th anniversary of the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom," while largely ignoring a very similar march that occurred six years earlier?

For one, King's speech was better. "Give us the Ballot" is no "I Have a Dream." The speech helped cement the moment in our national consciousness.

Second, the media coverage was much more extensive in 1963 than it had been in 1957.  Thanks in part to media coverage, the August 1963 march became part of the national consciousness.

Also, the crowd was much larger. While exact attendance figures at such events are always disputed, the 1957 march drew around 20,000, while the 1963 event drew between 200,000 and 300,000 people.

But the biggest difference between 1957 and 1963 was not the quality of the speech, the media coverage, or the size of the crowd. No, these were mere consequences of a much bigger transformation.

In 1957, the march was an attempt to rally the nation around an issue. Building on the Brown vs. Board of Education decision and the Montgomery bus boycott, civil rights leaders tried to leverage their strength to exert pressure on the federal government. But in 1957, there was not yet a national grassroots movement for civil rights.

Although local communities were stirring and organizing, the 1957 march was at the dawn of the movement, and therefore did not galvanize the strength that would be obvious just six years later.

So what changed between 1957 and 1963?

1. The Sit-In Movement of 1960, which galvanized college students throughout the south to submit to physical abuse and arrest to ensure integrated lunch counters in southern dime stores.

2. The founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which provided a network of young civil rights activists who would be on the front lines of the movement throughout the 1960s.

3. The Freedom Rides, which forced the federal government to enforce national laws that called for integrated bus services on intrastate travel. When black and white riders were abused, beaten, had one of their buses firebombed, and eventually filled the jails of Mississippi, the nation became more aware of the courage of the African-American community and the horrific violence of segregationists and white supremacists.

4. The Birmingham Movement, where Bull Conner unleashed firehoses and police dogs on African-American children, leading many in the nation to the conclusion that integration and racial justice could be delayed no longer.

By 1963, a grassroots civil rights movement had emerged. The march represented the culmination of day-to-day organizing in small towns and cities throughout the South. Many in the crowd had been beaten, arrested, abused, lost jobs, and were reviled because of their courageous work for social change.

So we remember King's "I Have a Dream" speech and the 1963 March on Washington not because of a grand event or even a great speech, but because it was an event that galvanized grassroots power built throughout the South and throughout the nation. The 1963 march was not a tactical PR move, but a culmination of a movement that transformed our nation.

As we watch people fill arenas in Denver and the Twin Cities, many will be inspired as we listen to compelling speeches from both Democrats and Republicans. But remember, a collection of tens of thousands of people responding to a grand speech never changed anything, anymore than the millions who will gather for NFL and college football games this fall will have a great social impact on our world.

Speeches and conventions are fine, but the real social change happens on the ground, in our local communities, person-to-person, small group to small group, neighborhood by neighborhood. Jesus didn't usher in the kingdom of God at the Sermon on the Mount, but through a ragged group of disciples who changed the world.

During this election season and beyond, as Christ-followers, I pray we don't get so swept away by a few great speeches that we fail to do the hard work in our local communities that can help "God's kingdom come, God's will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

Local organizing made all the difference between 1957 and 1963. In 2008, local organizing will determine if we have a national "feel-good" moment when we elect an African-American president or a female vice president, or whether we experience a transformed nation and a transformed world.

Troy Jackson is senior pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, and earned his Ph.D. in United States history from the University of Kentucky. He is author of Becoming King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Making of a National Leader, and a participant in Sojourners' Windchangers grassroots organizing project in Ohio to work on the Vote Out Poverty Campaign.

The heated abortion debate has up to this time been focused on legal measures. A new study commissioned by Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good concludes that government social spending and economic conditions do more to reduce abortions than legal strategies such as parental consent laws.

Joseph Wright (Penn State University) and Michael Bailey's (Georgetown University) examined the dramatic drop in abortions in the 1990s. The results are significant. States that spend more generously on nutritional supplement programs, for example, could see up to 37 percent lower abortion rates. Other factors such as cutting welfare more slowly and higher male employment rates had a 20 to 29 percent reduction rate. 

The negative approaches don't seem to work. Welfare caps on children born while on welfare and laws requiring parental consent for minors have only negligible impact. The study concludes that "pro-family policies reduce abortions." 

Both Republicans and Democrats should take note. The authors estimate that increased welfare payments and less Medicaid funding for abortions could lower the current abortion rate by 37 percent.

Mary Nelson is president emeritus of Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation on the west side of Chicago. She is also a board member of Sojourners.

Consider how many are my foes,
and with what violent hatred they hate me.
O guard my life, and deliver me;
do not let me be put to shame, for I take refuge in you.
- Psalm 25:19-20

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