I have to deal with jury duty this morning, so TGIABCT ...
Oh, and I've got a new "Think Again" column called "Blaming Success, Upholding Failure" here, and a short comment on the Tony Judt mishigas here, and my Nation online column on AIPAC is here.
The Altercation Book Club
God and Country: How Evangelicals Have Become America's New Mainstream by Monique El-Faizy (Bloomsbury)
(Monique is a freelance journalist who grew up as a fundamentalist Christian but abandoned it when she entered college. Her book is an investigation of the evolution and influence of evangelical Christianity in America written from the intimate perspective of a former insider.)
"What? You want to clean what?" Dee Hu is trying, rather unsuccessfully, to wrap his mind around the question two volunteers from Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati have posed him. His confusion is understandable, given the odd request. They would like to clean the bathrooms at USA Nails, the manicure salon Hu manages. "Why?" Hu demands, still trying to figure out what these people really want from him.
"We just want to show you God's love," replies Josh Harney, the rugged young man leading the bathroom-cleaning team. "It's just so sudden ..." Hu replies falteringly. Since he doesn't go as far as throwing them out, Harney and his covolunteer Dori make their way back to the restroom. It's pretty clean, just a single stall reserved for staff use. Harney leans over to tackle the toilet and Dori pushes her blond hair away from her face as she starts in on the sink and mirror. "This is an easy one," Harney tells Hu while he works. "You should see some of the gas station restrooms." Hu watches the duo in action, still bewildered and asking questions. Where are they from? Why are they doing this? Is it an organized program?
"So basically, the principle is what?" Hu's question is exactly what the team is looking for. "The principle is, we believe God loves everybody, really," Harney explains. "And that's with no strings attached, but we think people might not always understand that on a deep level. So we want to show that in a practical way." The bathroom clean, Harney says his good-byes and exits, leaving Hu with a little card that says "This is our simple way ... of saying that God loves you. Let us know if we can be of more assistance." Vineyard's address and phone number are on the back, along with service times and a map to the church.
The bathroom cleaning is part of the church's monthly ServeFest, when scores of volunteers fan out across the city. They clean toilets and pass out hand warmers and hot chocolate in the winter and ice water in the summer. The program's architect, Steve Sjogren, calls this "servant evangelism," which he defines as "the idea that Jesus is better shown than talked about ... servant evangelism is taking the idea of God and putting wheels on it." The hope is that people will become so attracted to Christianity they will be swept up in what Sjogren calls "the God Blob," a reference to the 1958 horror movie classic The Blob. "You get pulled into it and it just gets larger than life," Sjogren said.
Read the whole Altercatiion here.