[Dialogue] Students seek to revive progressive movement

[David Walters]

The following article kind of jumped of the page at me. My booding this 
morning had been focused on two converging streams. One was reading the 
first two pieces by David Dunn about he future of EI/ICA/OE. The other was a 
conversation with my neighbor last night that threw my back 39 summers ago 
when worked in the July heat on the New Social vechicle. Which shoved me 
overagainst the question of the future of the civilizing process. This 
article futher grounded this by saying that there are others out there 
struggling with  the same thing. What is also so interesting is that our 
roots are also in the same Cristian Student Movement.

David Walters

Students Seek to Revive Progressive Movements

Religion News Service, July 28, 2010

by Adelle M. Banks

WASHINGTON

Progressive Christian college students hope to reorganize a movement that 
propelled young adults into pro-civil rights and anti-war activities before 
it was disbanded decades ago.

The U.S. Student Christian Movement, which officially ended more than 40 
years ago, will be revived at an Oct. 8-11 meeting at Morehouse College in 
Atlanta.

"Students will come together to discuss how they will collectively put their 
faith into action toward progressive Christian concerns," said Luciano 
Kovacs, North America regional secretary of the World Student Christian 
Federation, in a statement released by the National Council of Churches.

"SCM USA will provide the coordination of ecumenical student activities in 
the U.S., and subsequently connect U.S. students with the rest of the global 
federation."

In the 1950s and 1960s, the University Christian Movement was an ecumenical 
network that paralleled the work of the National Council of Churches.

Students who have been involved in "New Fire" meetings prior to recent 
assemblies of the council seek to reorganize the national movement, said 
Philip Jenks, a spokesman for the National Council of Churches.

Kovacs said students hope to address such issues as hunger, poverty, 
immigration, racism and worldwide ecological problems.

A regional conference of the World Student Christian Federation was held in 
San Francisco in January 2009 and prompted an initiative to begin the new 
national Student Christian Movement