With the help of a few good friends who astutely critiqued it at various stages along the way -- I have finally finished writing my book, The Renewal of All Things.  It is a sequel to What About the Cross? How soon I can get it published is a moot question, so while I am scouting around for a publisher, I have posted it on the Web.  If you are interested, you can read it at www.waldronscott.net/renewal  

          A press release this morning announces the opening of a General Assembly of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) in Pattaya, Thailand.  Some 500 delegates from more than 100 nations are attending.  Back in 1980 as general secretary I presided at the 7th General Assembly of WEA.  That assembly was held in the countryside outside London, UK. The current general secretary, now called the international director, is Dr. Geoff Tunnicliffe, left, a Canadian.  I try to keep in touch with WEA's activities, for it grows steadily and seems to be heading in the more holistic direction I envisioned -- against considerable oppostion -- near 30 years ago.  The current vision of WEA is "to extend the Kingdom of God by making disciples of all nations and by Christ-centered transformation within society," and "to foster Christian unity, providing an identity, voice and platform for the 420 million evangelical Christians worldwide."

          Over the past two decades the number of black inmates in American prisons has more than quintupled.  Black prisoners today outnumber black college students – 791,000 versus 603,000.  This is a staggering reversal of the situation as recently as 1980 when there were 143,000 black men behind bars and 464,000 enrolled in colleges.  One out of three African American men in their twenties today spend some time in this new “prison industrial complex.”

This being so, it should not surprise anyone that more and more black men in America are converting to Islam, which has proved to be a strong, transforming experience in their lives.  Of the roughly six million Muslims in the U.S., two-thirds are either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants.  But one-third are African Americans who have made the move to Islam. Many of these – again, perhaps a majority – are young black men who converted while in prison.

          The current issue of Missiology has a fine article by Dr. David Feddes on the subject of Islam among African-American prisoners. He concludes that “winning African American Muslim prisoners to Christ involves praying for them, loving them, and applying the Bible to their core issues…Rather than regarding Muslims as adversaries to oppose, Christians must see them as persons loved by God and sought by Christ.”  This is especially true of young black men in prison.

          The hypocrisy of the Republican Party repulses me, even as it confuses the public at large.  I observe this in the current furor over Joe the Plumber. Joe, whose first name is actually Sam, is being heralded by Senator McCain as "an average middle-class guy" for whom the Republicans will cut taxes, whereas the Democrats, by contrast, he says, will raise Joe's taxes.  
          I have access only to 2006 figures, but it is not too difficult to extrapolate to 2008.  If you define "middle class" as excluding the bottom 20 percent and the top 20 percent, "middle class" includes incomes that range from $22,000 annually to $97,000.  So Joe in his current situation is indeed middle class, for he expects to earn about $40,000 this year. 
          If Barack Obama is elected president, therefore, Joe will see no increase in taxes at all.  BUT if Joe achieves his dream, and is able to buy the plumbing business he would like, and IF it returns a net income for him of $250,000 annually, as he hopes, Joe will no longer be the average middle class guy the Republicans proclaim, but will find himself in the top one percent of all income earners in the U.S.! 
          In this case, he will, under a McCain presidency, enjoy a tax decrease.  Under an Obama presidency, Joe will find his taxes increased by three percent -- $750 -- hardly a hardship for a man earning a quarter of a million dollars.

          I'm tired of the presidential election campaign, and there's not much I can do about the global economy, so let me take note of another distressing reality: life expectancy around the world.  According to the World Health Organization, there is a widening gap between the life expectancies of rich and poor people.  Worldwide, life expectancy for people in the ten richest countries is 81 years.  But for people in the ten poorest countries it is only 46 years.  The same pattern holds true for infant mortality rates within countries. For example, the infant mortality rate in the wealthiest area of Nairobi, Kenya is less than 15 per one thousand.  By contrast, in a poorer section of the same city the rate rises to an astounding 254 per thousand (one out of four!). The overall rate in the United States is 6.8 per thousand.  But race makes a difference.  The rate for white children in the U.S. is 5.7, whereas for African Americans it is nearly double: 13.6 per thousand.  Universal health care would likely eliminate this disparity.

          Yesterday Daniel Ortega, president of Nicaragua, proclaimed that by way of the current financial crisis God is punishing the United States for trying to impose its economic principles on poor countries.  This is reminiscent of certain TV evangelists seven years ago as they confidently announced that 9/11 was God's way of punishing America for allowing abortion and disallowing prayer in public schools.  In both cases the would-be prophets misunderstand God's ways.
          God does indeed take sin seriously.  And God does judge.  But the Judge is our Savior.  This is the Bible's central message of good news.  As the Bible expounds it, God does not judge in order to punish, but  to save or, in the short term, to reform.  As the Gospel of John has it, "God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."
          The Hebrew word for judgment is mishpat, which carries the connotation of sifting -- as in baking a cake or panning for gold.  What we are experiencing today is a sifting.         
          During the past decade it has been not only Wall Street executives who have been greedy. We all have been so.  Many, perhaps most, American Christians have been living beyond our means.  We have pushed our credit cards to their limits.  We have bought houses we could not afford.  We have become consummer crazed.  What God requires now, as John Wesley, in his famous Sermon 52, saw clearly, is a "reformation of manners."
          The current crisis is not punishment.  It is God's way of saving us, both as families and as a nation.  God is giving us an opportunity to come to our senses, to destroy the idol of consummerism, and begin living within our means.  Only then will the American system of free market capitalism be worthy of export to poorer countries.

          "If you wander into an American religious bookstore today you will find many self-help books but very few on St. Paul's epistles, and fewer still worth reading.  But if you stroll the aisles of a secular university bookstore you will discover a surprising number of works about him...Twenty-five years ago, conversation would naturally drift to Michel Foucault's views on corporal punishment; today you are more likely to hear a debate on the Epistle to the Romans as it bears on globalization and the war on terror."  So writes Mark Lilla, professor of Humanities at Columbia University in an article in the current issue of The New York Review of Books, citing books such as Jacob Taubes' The Political Theology of Paul; Giorgio Agamben's The Time that Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans; and Alain Badiou's Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism.
         The article focuses on the way  scholars are using Paul's ideas on the universalism of the Good News to expound certain contemporary philosophies of revolution. They find this in Paul's establishment and legitimation of a new people of God in the face of established Jewish and Roman law.  Paul wrote, "We hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law."  And also, "Faith, hope and love abide, but the greatest of these is love." But, as Lilla points out, there is no love in the new postmodern Paul -- just hope for a secular transformation of the human condition and faith that can be brought about by revolution, violent if necessary.

          With only a month to go before the u.S. presidential election, our pastor began a series of sermons this morning on what the Bible says about some of the critical political issues our nation faces.  He begain with immigration -- something neither of the presidential candidates has really addressed during this election cycle, but which is a major concern to Patersonians.  During the past decade the population of Paterson has morphed from African-American to Hispanic.  This has prompted a palpable increase in tension in the city.  It has also prompted soul-searching among Christians as to how to react.  Of course, the Old Testament is very clear about how we are to respond to the strangers in our midst: we are to treat them with sensitivity and compassion.  The New Testament story of Jesus just as clearly show how sensitively and compassionately he related to resident aliens. The problem many Christians in Paterson grapple with, however, stems from the fact that many of the newly arrived immigrants have entered the country illegally or overstayed their permits.  And Romans 13 explicitly urges Christians to obey the law.  To care for these illegal immigrants frequently means disobeying or subverting the law. Christians feel they are caught between a rock and a hard place.  For me, the answer lies in re-thinking our nation's laws as they relate to immigrants.  As I mentioned earlier, neither Obama nor McCain are talking much about immigration, but when they do, both call for reform -- and that's a good sign.  Whichever political party wins, we are likely to see some reformation.