Two quick thoughts...

When I went to seminary in New York City in the summer of 1979 I was interested in the call to be an agent of radical social change. I picked Union Theological Seminary not only because it was the leading interdenominational center for "liberation theology" at the time, but also because it was in the heart of the beast. No place in the United States exposed the contradictions of life in the industrialized West better than Manhattan - Babylon - a place of incredible wealth and poverty and suffering and hedonism all at the same time.

So I got to study with some of the finest liberation minds of the era: through a sweet luck of the draw my advisor was Cornell West - Phyllis Trible taught our introductory courses to the Old Testament - James Cone held court in realm of systematic theology - and the late James Washington, one of our finest African American historians re: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the man for church history. I also had the pleasure to study preaching with Jim Forbes before he went on to Riverside Church. I even had the chance to go to the Latin American Bible Seminary in San Jose, Costa Rica - a Protestant evangelical school that was becoming the center for best liberation theologians of the region - and travel to Nicaragua before the one year anniversary of their revolution.

Two thoughts are swimming through my mind this sweltering afternoon:

+ First, many young evangelicals - those influenced more by Bono than Focus on the Family - are saying a LOT of the things we used to celebrate in the early days of liberation theology. For example, this quote from Shane Claiborne sounds a whole lot like Bishop Helder Camera of Brazil or the mystical poet of Solentiname, Ernesto Cardenal: "People do not get crucified for charity. People are crucified for living out a love that disrupts the social order, that calls forth a new world. People are not crucified for helping poor people. People are crucified for joining them."

+ Second, today's radicalized evangelicals are getting a whole lot more done in the world than my class of liberation theologians ever hoped to accomplish. I think of Bono's campaigns in Africa but also the work others are doing to bring water and end malaria to broken lands. Perhaps it has something to do with humility and the ability to discover allies: back in the day we were purists who accepted NO compromise while the young believers changing the world today share love, build bridges and keep moving.

Now I will never regret my time in the academy - I learned so much - and at the same time I think the kids have chosen the better road. Not only are they more passionate but they don't let ideological distractions get in the way of compassion. They not only know how to work all the social networking connections for the sake of Christ's love, but they are bringing a measure of hope into an aching world. They are not afraid to be fools for the sake of God's grace and justice.

This is a beautiful day... and it sounds something like this.