And who are you dressed up as today?

The NYT Magazine has a great article on what looks to be a split in the evangelical base between old guard propagandists like Focus on the Family’s James Dobson and younger, moderate evangelicals like Bill Hybels, pastor of the Willow Creek megachurch movement.

With Dobson and his crew already threatening to leave the GOP if Guiliani gets the nomination—and, well, at this point, if anyone but their perfect imaginary candidate gets it—a split is approaching. This has been building up for years now, epitomized by the moderates reconquista of the Southern Baptist Convention. (Remember, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are Southern Baptists as much as Falwell was.)

Some highlights from the ten page article:

• A skit during worship comparing the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima to the crucifixion. (I’ll bet no World War II vets were involved in the planning of that one.)
• The evangelical monthly magazine Christianity Today asks if evangelicals should repent of their easy support of Iraq War, and the moderate head of the Southern Baptists says, “I believe in the Word of God. I’m just not mad about it.” Apparently, this has become something of a catch phrase now.
• Are evangelicals assimilating into moderate society, becoming the new “mainline Protestants?”
• Hybels says that pastors doing politics leads to “heartache and disappointment.” How un-Falwell is that?
• A Guiliani-Obama race would see many evangelicals crossing party lines to vote for the Dems.

It’s time we start looking to Carter-Clinton evangelicals to break this thing wide open. (And I count Obama among them.) The religious right juggernaut has been going for thirty years. It too will pass.

Attention all ordained ministers: I have a burning question for you. Thinking back to your candidacy process, is that a process you are grateful for now? (As opposed to being grateful that it’s over.) And were you grateful for it then?

I’m asking specifically about the denominational vetting process—interviews, position papers, etc.—as opposed to seminary and CPE and the like. (Feel free to talk about all of it though.)

What I’d like to know is whether or not clergy experience that process as helpful in their ministerial formation. The vast majority of clergy I’ve talked to over the years have found placed their experience somewhere on the continuum between unhelpful and traumatic. I want to know if that’s true across the board or just for the people I happen to know.

So I was at a ground blessing1 this morning with the Dalai Lama at Emory. Goofy guy, it turns out.

After a bit of going on about religion and politics and history, he pauses to say, “But of course the most important thing is that I will become an Emory professor tomorrow…a hopeless professor.” The monks all giggle.

Toward the end, he bumps into a pitcher of water—silencing the room for just a moment—spilling just a little on himself and Emory’s President. The Dalai Lama says, “I’ve been baptized!” Emory’s startled President responds, “Oh no! Oh! Yes…” Everyone laughs.

But in the middle of his address, he lifts up India as a model of religious tolerance, then starts to compare Tibet to India. He pulls his orange robe over his head, saying, “We Tibetans are just cold Indians!” And then pretends to shiver.

You heard it here folks. The boddhisatva does physical comedy.

1. Since when is there something wrong with breaking ground? But maybe then you have to fix it? [↩]

That’s what Team Jesus said to a mocking passerby as they worked the crowd at the Halloween Parade in Little Five Points today. Nothing like handing out Chick tracts. We walked away with some copies of “Bewitched?” for our trouble.

Parade photos here.

Or seminary graduate. Now on sale for only $500 a credit hour.