Published by JustFaith Ministries’ Engaging Spiritualities "Bearings" Project. 6 pp.

I want to begin with a story about my own call to incarnational discipleship. In 1976, I was a junior at the University of California at Berkeley. At 21, I was already disillusioned with both politics and religion. I was a new convert to the Christian faith, not having been raised in any church tradition. And I had gone through adolescence during the Vietnam War, in which my older brother served. I was, therefore, deeply alienated by the conflation of cross and flag that was awash in the culture during our country’s bicentennial year. I knew intuitively that this was somehow idolatrous.

I was looking for a way to follow the Jesus I was reading about in the New Testament, and I wasn't seeing it in the churches. I wasn’t remotely attracted to denominational culture, where most folk didn’t seem very reflective about (much less critical of) the contradictions between their walk and their talk. Meantime, my country was in a Cold War nuclear showdown with the Soviet Union—yet despite this threat to all life on earth, disco was king.