Evan Woodson, a senior at Oklahoma State University, recently wrote an editorial for his university’s student newspaper about how his college experiences have helped him come to recognize that the common suburban understanding of Christianity isn’t as revolutionary as it should be. While his whole story is well worth the read, Woodson’s questions are ones that must be answered by each person who seeks to follow the way of Jesus:
- How did we get to a point where everyone we sit by at church looks and acts just like us?
- Where is the concern for the poor among modern American churches?
- Why do women not have the influence and leadership they had in the first century?
- Are we no longer concerned with standing up for justice and being on the side of the orphan and the widow?
So What?
Woodson is challenged by the idea that “Christianity as Jesus taught it was revolutionary to the core.” He wants to live out of that kind of a religious framework, and believes others should as well.
- Would you characterize your own religious experience as revolutionary? why or why not?
- How do you answer each of Woodson’s questions (listed above)?
For more on this topic, consider reading my review of Robin Meyers’ The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus (2012).