Politics USA: Evangelicals: Gideon Strauss to become Prez of Citizens for Public Justice, seeks "evangelical center"

As we noted a couple of months back in Flash!points a Sidebar feature on rW's frontpage, Dr Gideon Strauss who worked most recently in Canada but who grew up and was educated in South Africa, will soon take on the USA. In South Africa, he wrote his doctoral dissertation, entitled The Ethics of Public Welfare (1995). After which he served as a translator for the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, directed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, then went on to advise the country's 1996 post-apartheid deliberations, "on the language clauses in the founding provisions and bill of r+ts" for the new constitution of that year.

His extensive further exploits of Christian service in Canada and now the USA may be found by clicking our title-link. He is already writing regularly for CPJ to advance his goal of reaching "the evangelical center" in America. Dr Strauss briefly outlines his plans following after his new job's October 2k9 startup date:

Come October I will be on the road much of the time, meeting face-to-face with the constituency of the Center. One of the challenges of the non-profit road warrior is the lunch meeting: how to ensure that it is (1) pleasant, (2) healthy, (3) cheap, and (4) conducive to good conversations.

My provisional plan is to turn my lunches on the road into a quest: the quest for the perfect urban picnic. I am looking for locations where I can meet with people for free, but locations that offer both comfort and a little urban magic. Some of these can be out of doors (for meetings in three of the seasons), some will have to be indoors. And I am looking for the kind of picnic lunch that I can put together from just a handful of simple but tasty foods, bought locally. ...

My travel schedule will take me, first, to a band of communities that stretch from Sioux Center and Pella, Iowa, through the Twin Cities and Chicago, to Grand Rapids and surroundings, Michigan. Then I will do some bicoastal travel: Los Angeles and San Francisco, Boston, New York City and Washington, DC. And then we’ll see …

Strauss is a member of the Presbyterian Church in America, and has many friends and contacts in that community already.

-- Politicarp