Charles Marsh’s The Beloved Community is a gem. I was sold just on the content of the first two chapters (MLK and Clarence Jordan, two of my biggest heroes in the faith) , but I was moved by the rest of the stories in it as well. The theme of the book was the neccessary spiritual community that provided the spirit to drive the movement, a nd to keep grounded in true reconciliation that does not tire as “politics” ebb and flow.

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the “spiritual movement in Montgomery,” Clarence Jordan of the “God movement” in southeast Georgia, Fannie Lou Hamer of the “New Kingdom in Mississippi,” John Perkins of the “quiet revolution” of Christian community building, Mark Gornik of “the shalom of the city” together these Christians point us to the reality that stands behind beloved community and gives purpose to lifetimes spent in service to poor and excluded people, the reality that cuts through all these human movements as their hidden sense and motor.53These contemporary retrievals of the spiritual movement toward “redemption, reconciliation and die creation of beloved community” demonstrate the vital role of spiritual nourishment in the work of mercy and justice, not as a substitute for material sustenance but as the condition of justice.54 As Chris Rice said, “Communities like ours are hardly normative and they are never going to be normative, but their influence is disproportionate to their numbers. I just think of the hundreds and thousands of people who were touched through the work of Voice of Calvary in various ways: by coming and living with us for a while. These are places of deep conversion, places where the creation of allies is happening, places where Christians are learning not so much how to solve the race and other social problems but how to be truly church. I think there is lot of power in that. ” 55 The civil rights movemerit had extended the gesture of reconciliation, only eventually to withdraw it in the face of hateful rejection; but the new Christian radicals are finding the strength to keep the arms of mercy open, even in the face of restitution shirked and due reparations withheld.
55- Chris Rice , presenting to the Workgroup on Theology and Race, U. Va. Feb 24, 2001.

p.206 Charles Marsh, The Beloved Community

I learned while on my DC trek that Gordon Cosby has been singing the praises of this book for the past few months. (I forgot to mention to him that I was reading it! ) But the Church of the Saviour and all its seedling churches have run on this principle;; on this reality. That behind every movement of true change there is a “God movement” that blows where it will, and gathers about itself a community of character, molded by the stirrings of God moving amongst them.