Signs of a New Order

THE NEW ORDER is a place for those who share in the growing consciousness of radical Christian discipleship to exchange ideas and resources, new directions and experiments, wants and needs. Here we hope to focus on models of hope, communities, actions, and lifestyles, which witness to a New Order rooted in active faith in Jesus Christ. Signs of a new order will also include resources and information relevant to issues raised as we struggle in working out those models of hope.

For a true exchange, your involvement is vital. Let your brothers and sisters share with you in this new movement of the Spirit of our God. Send your contributions as you would like them to appear in the paper to POST- AMERICAN, The New Order, P. O. Box 132, Deerfield, Illinois, 60015.

OUR PRAYERS MUST BEGIN WITH REPENTENCE MR. PRESIDENT. Traditionally, the President, national government leaders, and religious spokesmen have convened the Annual National Prayer Breakfast in an attitude of thanksgiving, comfortable in the mutual allegiance to God and country. This year, in a con scientious break with the customary prayers pronouncing benediction upon the national cause, the speaker from the Senate Prayer Group raised the issue of moral culpability in the war on Indochina, calling for individual and national repentence. The speaker was Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon, a long-time opponent of the war on grounds of Christian conscience. There were striking parallels in the Senator?s call to repentence and exhortation to a true witness, addressed to the gathering of national leaders and religious spokesmen, including President Nixon and Billy Graham, and those examples of the Prophets crying out against national sin and the hypocrisy of false worship in the presence of Old Testament kings and priests. The text of Senator Hat field?s statement ot the 21st National Prayer Breakfast follows:

My brothers-and sisters:

Events such as this prayer breakfast contain the real danger of misplaced allegiance, if not outright idolatry, to the extent that they fail to distinguish between the god of an American civil religion and the God who reveals Himself in the Holy Scriptures and in Jesus Christ.

If we as leaders appeal to the god of an American civil religion, our faith is in a small and exclusive deity, a loyal spiritual .Advisor to American power and prestige, a Defender of the American nation, the object of-a national folk religion devoid of moral content. But if we pray to the Biblical God of justice and righteousness, we fall under God?s judgment for calling upon His name, but failing to obey His commands.

Our Lord Jesus Christ confronts false petitioners who disobey the Word of God:

"Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord' and do not the things I say?" (Luke 6:46)
God tells us that acceptable worship and obedience are expressed by specific acts of love and justice:

"Is not this what I require of you, to loose the fetters of injustice. . . to snap every yoke and set free those who have been crushed?"

"Is it not sharing your food with the hungry, taking the homeless poor into your house, clothing the naked when you meet them, and never evading a duty to your kins folk?" (Isaiah 58:6-7)

We sit here today, as the wealthy and the powerful. But let us not forget that those who follow Christ will more often find themselves not with comfortable majorities, but with miserable minorities.

Today, our prayers must begin with repentance. Individually, we must seek forgiveness for the exile of love from our hearts. And corporately, as a people, we must turn in repentance from the sin that has scarred our national soul.

"If my people shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will forgive their sins, and will heal their land." (II Chronicles 7:14)

Senator Hatfield conciuded in an exhortation to the church; to embody Christ's reconciliation and peace, to overcome by yielding to the power of his love, and to become a force of his healing and renewal.

PEACE TEAM ON THE ROAD: Six Messiah College students formed a Peace Team in the hope of bringing support to Christians struggling with their response as followers of Jesus Christ, to war and the role of the state.
We felt a great need to proclaim that Jesus is not the chaplain of the military, but that He has come to defeat evil not with a bomb but with the cross. During January the students toured eleven Christian college campuses and nine churches throughout Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, speaking in chapels, teaching classes, providing. a slide, show, and talking informally with students, -faculty and church people. Responses were varied- Opposition was often very direct from a few who perceived no conflict between Christ's teachings and those of the military more often, it appeared that many Christians hadn't considered questioning this area of discipleship and preferred not to. It seems as though Christians look to the god of America and not to the Christ of the Bible . . . It would seem Christians have forgotten that we are to be first obedient to Christ and that probably will mean we will differ from our culture. Still, the Peace Team returned to Messiah with news of new small groups, encountered at nearly each visit groups determined to work out the terms of their discipleship in resistance to their culture. For contact with the Peace Team, write Emerson Lesher at Messiah College, Grantham, PA.

A TIME TO HEAL: Prior to the intensive bombing of Christmas 1972, the name of the hospital Bach Mai signified hope and healing for the people of North Vietnam. Bach Mai has since became a symbol to the world of the shame and infamy of a bombing-for-peace policy recognized by sensitive world leaders as 'war by tantrum' and indicative of a stone-age mentality. Over two months have passed since the Bach Mai Hospital Emergency Relief Fund was announced at a Washington Press Conference. At the time the Nixon Administration and I military spokesmen were still denying the destruction of the civilian medical facility. Initial sponsors of the fund included Ramsey Clark, Julian Bond, Telford Taylor, and Medical Aid for Indochina. So far, Medical Aid for Indochina (MAT) has raised over $750,000 of the three million dollars needed to rebuild and re-equip the hospital. MAI directors are meeting in Hanoi this month with administrators of Bach Mai Hospital to discuss a time-table and purchase schedule for medical equipment and supplies with which to reconstruct Bach Mai.

The reconstruction and development of public health facilities is a critical priority for the peoples of Indochina. Bach Mai, once rebuilt will again serve as the leading civilian medical research, teaching, and clinical medicine hospital-institute for thousands of people. For the war- sore of Indochina renewal, rebuilding, healing must absorb all energies. A time to heal has come. For those whose hope is in the One in whom the creation is made whole, words are not enough. The church of Jesus Christ must find ways to witness to that hope and to enter into His work of healing.

MAI publishes a national newsletter, and a new slide presentation, "Medicine and War," a film, and educational literature are among available resources. If you wish to send a contribution or to request information write to: Medical Aid for Indochina, 65 A Winthrop St Cambridge, Mass. 02138. (Regional headquarters are located in Phil., Pittsburgh, N.Y. City, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Minneapolis, L.A., S.F., and Boston).

THE PEOPLES? BLOCKADE CAMPAIGN: On the morning of February 22, a small group calling themselves the Religious Resistance against U.S. Imperialism confronted a diesel freight train transporting bombs and other munitions from the Joliet National Arsenal. The Resisters prepared statement read in part: "We stand here with packages of medical supplies for the simple reason that these trains still transport fuses, bombs, grenades, mines, rockets and missile warheads to Southeast Asia and other places; we stand here to say 'No.' We offer an alternative to the railroad; Unload and refuse to ship the cargo of war and replace it- with peace time shipments of food, medical s and blankets." The nine resisters were forced to move back as the train, crushing the medical supply boxes, moved on to deliver its cargo of war munitions destined for the people of Indochina.

The Religious Resistance view their action as a beginning in a determined drive against the growing militarism in the U.S. We want to say something, and do something to demythologize the idolatry of the government. We wanted to say there is an Authority above the government allegiance to that Authority may bring one into conflict with the government. . . . we must resist the government when it seeks to usurp the position of our one and only Lord; we must say 'No' to its idolatrous claim to absolute and unquestioned authority.

The Joliet and Chicago demonstrators were not alone in their action. Since the summer of '72 there have been other similar protests against U.S. arms shipments to Indochina. The Peoples' Blockade Campaign, initiated by the American Friends Service Committee, and supported by various groups around the country, has prompted blockades of railroad- armament payloads and naval munitions shipments. In one instance a flotilla of thirty to forty canoes and sailboats delayed an aircraft carrier until the Coast Guard removed the resisters. Information about the Peoples' Blockade Campaign may be obtained from American Friends Service Committee offices. You may contact the Religious Resistance against U.S. Imperialism-at the Non-Violent Training-and Action--Center, 542 S. Dearborn, Chicago.

CONFERENCE ON- CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS, April 13-14: Believing that the time has come for evangelical Christians to give renewed consideration to, the relationship between Christian commitment and the political world, Calvin College's Department of Political Science is sponsoring a conference on Christianity and politics to explore questions of church and state and morality and politics. Office-holders, academicians, ministers, students and laymen who share a commitment to the tenets of an orthodox and evangelical Christian faith are invited. The sessions will focus on evangelicals and political participation, theological implications for social activism, the institutional church and politics, and options for political action. Several among the speakers for the various sessions will be familiar to POST- AMERICAN readers: Dr. Richard Pierard, Professor of History at Indiana State University; Dr. Vernon Grounds, President, Conservative Baptist Seminary; Dr. Harold O.J. Brown, Associate Editor of ?Christianity Today?; Dr. David Moberg, Chairman, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Marquette University; Dr. Lewis Smedes, Professor of the Philosophy of Religion, Fuller Seminary: Dr. Bernard Zylstra, Professor of Law and Ethics, Toronto Institute of Christian Studies; John Alexander, Editor of ?The Other Side? and James Wallis, Editor of the. POST - AMERICAN. For reservations or further information contact Dr. Paul B. Henry, Chair man, Conference on Christianity and Politics, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich. 49506.

FELLOWSHIP OF HOPE, AND PLOW CREEK AND REBA PLACE

FELLOWSHIPS initiated a recent gathering of Christian communities engaged in exploring ways of strengthening and supporting each other. -Most of the communities were small and of fairly recent origin. Experiences in recent years among some of the communities a growing sense of cooperation, visits back and forth, serious consultation, sharing of money, and even movement of members in some cases prompted hope of a stronger communications link and a suitable context for sharing of resources and of personnel among communities.

As members of the various communities met and discussed, and prayed together we wrestled with our own requirements, as communities, for self-development, the broader needs of the emerging movemental church, and the demands of a broken world. One large meeting opened the floor for sharing community needs and for suggesting gifts and resources available to others. Discussions focused on forms of economic sharing, finding alter- - natives in the job vs. mission problem, seeking forms and an understanding - of worship, possibilities of financial interdependence among communities, sharing personnel resources of talent and education, ingredients in building community, Biblical study, social and cultural analysis, and prophetic witness and action. Community members were eager in questioning each other about models of ministries and resistance. Often, in meeting, one community called upon another to help, as in the case of Reba Place, whose fifteen years of communal life, and practice of economic sharing provides an encouraging resource of experience. The communities desire for more consistent exchange prompted one group to suggest that the POST- AMERICAN be called upon to provide a stronger network of communications between communities. Concurring, the communities recommended that the POST- AMERICAN be opened up and expanded to include more news of community developments.

In response to this, and many other similar requests, the POST-AMERICAN encourages interested communities to act on that concern to consider sharing and communicating with other communities as part of the commitment to support one another. in the struggle break with the old order and to affirm the new. The PA is open to you and seeks your involvement in facilitating the development of constructive interaction between communities. We have had opportunities to make contact with numerous communities, house churches and mission g etc. and we support the movement towards more regular communication. We agree with the suggestions that the POST-AMERICAN can serve in meeting this need. Communities are encouraged to - share the responsibility and enter into the task of supporting the communications network and the exchanges of resource information and models. Specifically we suggest that each community interested in participating recognize one person who will be the channel for their group?s input, ie. regular and frequent correspondence. We want to let others know your current news, needs, and experience. Descriptive letters, bulletins, and other informative notices and materials are welcomed and will be carefully considered and reported. Let us know how we may better serve your needs for communication and solidarity with other communities.