About Us

Core team The Kingdom Now core team is: Tawd Bell (Cincinnati), House Church Pastor Ken Oster (Cincinnati), House Church Pastor Kevin Rains (Cincinnati), Overseer, Vineyard Central House Church Network Chris Smith (Indianapolis), House Church Pastor The four of us have worked together on the writing of the theses. Tawd and Chris have been discussing nationalism in the American Church for over a year, and most of the theses emerged out of that discussion. Ken and Kevin have joined in this endeavor more recently and have been helping with the editing and vision-casting. A little history The common denominator of the core team is the Vineyard Central network of Housechurches in Cincinnati, Ohio and the intentional community associated with it (Community House). If you want to know about either of these visit: http://www.vineyardcentral.com/ or http://www.citybeat.com/2001-10-18/news.shtml Chris and his wife Jeni now live in Indianapolis, but they interned with VC during the 2000-01 school year. While there, Tawd and Chris found that they both felt particularly burdened by the Church's idolatry of the United States. This common burden lead to ongoing discussions, some drafted writings and ultimately to the 95 Theses. Our discussions were flavored by a number of readings that we did together: Vernard Eller's Christian Anarchy, Jacques Ellul's Anarchy and Christianity, Lewis Perry's Radical Abolitionism, Hauerwas and Willimon's Resident Aliens, Noll/Hatch/Marsden's Search for Christian America and a number of other writings by Stanley Hauerwas and John Howard Yoder. Current Activities of Kingdom Now Our current activities center focus on the distribution and defense of the 95 Theses. We are in the process of developing a grassroots network of individuals and organizations who are willing to endorse the theses and to help in their dissemination. Click here for a list of ways that you can join us in this endeavor. Once we have a rudimentary network in place, our plan is to disseminate the theses to churches and parachurch organizations across the U.S. during the season of Lent -- a season in the Church calendar that is marked by repentance -- which begins on Ash Wednesday, 13 February 2002. Our hope is that the Church in the U.S. will be powerfully confronted with our nationalistic idolatry and that rallying around the 95 theses will serve to network followers of Jesus who feel strongly about the nationalistic adultery of the Church in the U.S. Down the Road We expect that the 95 Theses will spawn much anatagonism and discussion. This discussion can be funneled through the website at first, but ultimately we imagine that a publication will be necessary to defend the basic beliefs that the theses embody (that the Church in the U.S. is idolatrous, that America is not a "Christian Nation", etc. ). We also hope that the theses will -- as Martin Luther's did -- inspire others to creatively (and we pray, non-violently) express their resistance to the nationalism of the Church in the United States.