An important comment from the eminent (and in many ways the original) "culturally savvy Christian," Dick Staub.

re: changing the world, power

Andy

:

Here are some of the themes I see at work in what is happening with Palin (and Obama for that matter).

1) Every human being is created in God’s image and is responsible for developing their unique capabilities in ways that glorify God.

2) True power resides in these God-imaged individuals whose power is released and becomes evident when they express their uniqueness.

3) Because humans are geographically distributed, this power can be found wherever humans are found. Bloom where you are planted!

These truths were taken by our founding fathers to be self-evident and are also evident in every page of biblical revelation.

In today’s fallen world we have forgotten these truths. We believe power resides in places and the people in those places. The media, politicians and the wealthy are the powerful, we are led to believe, and they reside in specific places: New York, LA, Chicago, Wall Street, and Hollywood, to name a few.

Today’s evangelical world has fallen into this trap and regularly develops strategies aimed at the powerful in powerful places. I remember a few years ago, George Barna identified the centers of cultural influence, concluding that the church did not rate very high. He shared a plan to work with large churches (also believed to be the center of power) in strategic cities (coinciding with the “world’s list” of strategic places) to recruit the brightest and the best next-generation evangelical leadership prospects to mentor them and help them enter the most powerful educational institutions (Harvard, Stanford, Yale) so they could enter the most powerful positions in the most powerful companies in the most powerful cities in the world.

I remember telling George that of the National Book Award winners I had interviewed, most were from small, out-of-the way places, and most hadn’t attended the best schools. They came out of nowhere, riding on the strength of their talent, internal sense of calling, and desire to express who they were in their work, starting where they were in some small farming community tucked away in some unknown village in the Midwest.

Regardless of your politics, this is surely the most important lesson from Sarah Palin’s debut as a national and global presence.