Over at the Patheos Evangelical Portal, I write about “How Christians Ought to ‘Occupy’ Wall Street (and All Streets).” My argument is that the occupiers that ought to be foremost in the minds of religious leaders are those who “occupy” their pews on Sunday mornings and jobs in the world throughout the week. Indeed, “Christians therefore must occupy the world in their occupations.” That’s where the renewing and reforming presence of the church in its organic expression finds its greatest work.

As I note, the “Occupy” movement has created some distress for religious leaders. The perennial question reverberates: What would Jesus do? For some, it’s clear: there must be an institutional embrace of the Occupy movement by seminaries and churches.

But the implications of my call to recognize that Christians already occupy “all streets” is that Christians must learn to, as Jonathan Chaplin puts it, embrace institutions, and not just those that are “sacred,” like churches and seminaries. As Chaplin writes, “Christians need to reckon with the fact that all institutions are in some sense faith-based, and that Christians should be unapologetic both about working to shape existing institutions from within according to their own vision of hope or, where necessary, founding their own institutions.”

So, with respect to Wall Street in particular, for instance, a recent letter published in the Times of London notes that Christians already “occupy” Wall Street in their occupations: “Many Christians today work within mainstream business, attempting to be ‘salt and light’. Others run organisations…that mitted to using business and finance to bring social benefits, raise living standards and create jobs.”

Contrast all this with