Brian McLaren was a church planter and pastor for 24 years. Now he is an author, speaker, and networker. You can sign up for his enewsletter and check his schedule at brianmclaren.net.
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In a previous posting, I said that the Emergent Manifesto of Hope was focused largely on American problems. For that reason, it might have been better to call it “The US Emergent (Village) Manifesto of Hope.”
On the positive side, the book reflects that we are making some small steps of progress in dealing with our US issues. For example, more and more networking is happening among Euro-Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and others. There is increasing dialogue about justice, peace, sustainability, ecology, and other important faith-based issues.
As we seek to deal with the many issues of division and injustice that exist in our own country, we will become more sensitized to parallel issues elsewhere. If we rush out to “fix” everybody else’s problems without facing our own, we’ll be repeating an old American tradition.
After all, it’s often easier to help someone across the globe than across the street or across town or across a political party line.
This kind of relationship building takes time, and the book reflected the beginnings of progress being made in this area. May that progress continue!
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