Becky and Steve are public school teachers in Minneapolis.
Becky is a Christian, Steve is an atheist.
In their Jonah Project application, they mentioned having had occasional “GodClub” meetings, where they would talk about faith and spirituality in relation to a reading assignment. ”We rarely answer any of each other’s questions, but there’s usually a good cup of coffee and a dessert of some sort involved, so it’s still worthwhile,” they wrote.
Becky and Steve read The Unlikely Disciple together and, after finishing, decided to summarize their thoughts in the form of a two-voice poem.
And reader: it’s awesome. Below is an excerpt of the poem, which has been compressed and de-columnized to fit this blog’s format. You can read the whole thing, including Becky and Steve’s original structure and formatting, as 3 JPEGs after the jump.
steve:
i am a “no-faither.” when i think of evangelical christian i think converter, narrow minded, determined.
becky:
i am an evangelical christian. when i think of no-faither i think pessimistic, scientific, determined.
They met in architecture school several years ago. Jenkins, an author of two books about Christianity (including his latest, Buried Alive: A Discussion on Overcoming the Seven Lifeless Sins) and the founder of an organization called Relevant Spirituality NPO, is getting his PhD from the University of South Florida. Lyons is an expert on environmental architecture and lives in St. Louis.
The two friends reconnected to discuss the The Unlikely Disciple, Christian attitudes,and their contempt (shared, it turns out) for street-corner evangelism. Below, Jenkins’ recap of their phone call:
Lyons and I have a history of discussing theological issues. Although our discussions often turn into debates, we typically make an effort to see the bit of truth in one another’s opinion. As a result, an unlikely friendship has forged between two very different-minded people. I’ve also learned more from Lyons over the past few years than most of my Christian friends combined. So, when I first heard of The Jonah Project, Lyons was the first person who came to mind. More…
Carrie and Renee met 15 years ago in a Texas crisis pregnancy center.
Carrie (left) was a conservative Christian who volunteered as a “pregnancy pal” at the center.
Renee (right) was an unwed mother-to-be coming to the center for advice and support.
Carrie still describes herself as “pretty conservative on most issues and… strongly pro-life,” while Renee is an agnostic with lots of left-of-center beliefs. “Despite our political differences, we connected, but we still disagree about a lot,” they wrote.
Thanks to Facebook, Carrie and Renee recently revived their friendship, and a decade and a half after their first meeting, they gathered to discuss church camps, abortion, and bisexual swingers. Here’s their report, first from Carrie’s perspective and then from Renee’s. More…
James and Kerri are seniors at Texas A&M University. They’re both churchgoing Christians, both right-of-center politically, and they’ve been dating for more than a year. They’re so similar, in fact, that James confessed that “if I was asked about our differences, I might have to resort to our anatomy.”
However, that wasn’t the first story we heard. In their Jonah Project application, James wrote:
I’m a Christian, yet I have very different ideas than most typically conservative followers of Christ. I do however hold many Republican viewpoints. I’m very interested to read and discuss your book with my friend Kerri who is a feminist, a Democrat, and practices Buddhism.
As it turns out, James was taking a bit of creative license with his application. He confessed that he’d wanted to participate in the Jonah Project but didn’t have any close friends with drastically different beliefs. So instead of reaching out to an ideological opponent, James decided to apply with his girlfriend Kerri and exaggerate their differences. By way of justification, he offered: “I tried to reason with myself that I was doing something similar to Kevin Roose and infiltrating the Jonah Project to do some undercover work.” [Touché!]
After reading and discussing The Unlikely Disciple with Kerri, James came clean and submitted this great, non-embellished recap of their conversation. More…
When Carolyn began attending Paula’s book club a few years ago, she said, “I don’t want to join any book club that talks about Jesus, so if that’s what this is, I’m not interested.”
Paula assured her that it wasn’t, and last month, they agreed to read (or in Paula’s case, re-read) The Unlikely Disciple with the other members of their book club and discuss their reactions.
John is a self-described “Christ-follower” who grew up in a strict Baptist environment and now attends and leads a youth group at a non-denominational church.
Tim is an atheist who spent years in the Catholic church but has recently been “heavily influenced” by the teachings of Richard Dawkins and Bart Ehrman.
John and Tim have known each other for years, and after reading The Unlikely Disciple, they spent a long time (77 minutes) talking about their seemingly intractable differences of opinion. Topics they discussed included homosexuality, the evangelical obsession with sexual purity, and the strengths of a science-based worldview. They still don’t agree on much, but their mutual respect and willingness to seek common ground is admirable.
Watch a 10-minute edited clip of their conversation above, or get the highlight reel after the jump:
Since The Jonah Project launched a few weeks ago, we’ve gotten more than 350 applications from every corner of the cultural arena, with backstories representing a veritable pu-pu platter of cultural and religious belief. We’ve had evangelicals signing up with atheists. Family-values Catholics signing up with gay-rights activists. A Christian college student signing up with a “burned-out Orthodox Jew” whose only religious affiliation is “a little Eskimo shamanic training.” (Sidenote: where exactly does one go for Eskimo shamanic training? Presumably Alaska, but is there, like, a Brooklyn chapter? Because that sounds awesome.)
Until the projects start rolling in, I thought I’d post excerpts from a few of the successful applications we’ve gotten. These 7 pairs represent only a small fraction of what will eventually be posted on the site, but you can see common themes emerge – these are people who, despite their near-complete disagreement on many of the issues they care dearly about, have found ways to get along and seek common ground. More…
As of today, the first 250 copies of The Unlikely Disciple have been shipped to Jonah Project participants. Over the next few weeks, as these participants finish reading and start talking, you’ll see their stories posted here. Until then, I thought I’d bring you two examples of internet-based projects that are, in some way, nudging two sides of the culture wars closer together.
The first is The Awl’s “Ask ‘Them’” series. The Awl is a great blog with a huge audience that consists mainly of irreligious 20-something liberals. To challenge its readers a bit, the blog’s editors recently decided to take reader questions for Davis, a “32 year-old white Mormon Republican male” who voted for George W. Bush twice. In his first guest-blog, Davis introduced this “Ask A Republican” conceit by challenging Awl readers to break out of their insular safe space: More…
I asked my friends Hemant Mehta (an atheist) and Jon Acuff (a Christian) to make a video for the Jonah Project. It seemed like a perfect pairing – both are popular bloggers with successful books, both make me laugh regularly on their Twitterfeeds, and both are skilled in the art of respectful debate. Yet the two had never spoken before. More…
The Jonah Project is off to a roaring start – more than 100 signups since the launch last week – and I can’t wait to see the results of these conversations-in-progress. (For those who have signed up, your books should ship late this week. For those who haven’t, get your free books while they last.)
While the first projects start to trickle in, I thought I’d post a particularly good example of the kind of intellectual energy being directed towards putting an end to the divisive, hyper-polarized culture wars – the same issues we’re trying to address here.
Last weekend, I went back to Brown to watch my friends in the class of 2010 graduate. The commencement speaker was David Rohde, the Pulitzer-winning New York Times correspondent who was kidnapped by the Taliban in 2008 and spent more than 7 months in captivity in Pakistan before escaping over a wall. (His five-part NYT series on the subject was seriously mind-melting.)
Rohde’s speech, titled “Make Hope Your God,” was deeply moving and free of platitudes, as well as challenging for the new Brown grads, many of whom – like me – spent their college years interacting mainly with people who agreed with them. The whole thing is worth a watch, but here’s what he had to say about tolerance and cross-cultural exposure:
Becky and Steve are public school teachers in Minneapolis.
