His church had thread of historical connection to the Mennonites. He remembers in high school talking to a Mennonite pastor who served briefly at his church about pacifism.

Ted couldn’t understand how the guy could oppose just wars of liberation or self-defense (like, I suppose, Iraq—this would have been the early days of the war). The pastor told him, “I used to feel the same way as you. Just read the Word of God and see what it has to say.”

Ted didn’t take him up on that challenge right away. After high school, he went to (very conservative) Calvary Bible College in Kansas City. After a couple years, he then transfered to another conservative Bible college. I can’t remember the exact name but it was: Midwest Bible…or Baptist…or Christian College — and yes, all three of those possible entities actually exist.

There he read Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, a best selling memoir of a young hipster/geek/intellectual Christian writer. One of the characters in the book was a pacifist. This got Ted thinking and he finally started to do a little Bible study on the topic, just like his pastor in high school had suggested. (And it’s funny, because the group had just been joking about how Donald Miller is the “gateway drug” to a radical Christianity. And, further, that Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis is when you start lacing the gateway drug with something a little more serious.)

A little later, in a Christian bookstore in South Dakota, Ted picked up a copy of Shane Claiborne’s Irresistible Revolution. It was right there on display, and he also had heard some other students talking about the book. Reading Irresistible Revolution sent him back to the Bible for more serious study. (Shane must be the Crack Cocaine of radical Christianity.)

Just like several other young, recently-right-wing Christians I’ve met, he wrote a list of passages in the New Testament that might justify violence in certain circumstances, and another list of passages that ruled out violence. The first list was very short, the second was very long. Moreover, just reading the words of the Bible through this new lens seemed to make the non-violent message of the Gospel stand out crystal clear and very loud. Ted became a pacifist—or “peacemaker,” as he prefers to say, because “it sounds more active.”

Ted graduated from college and went to work at an elementary school that mostly serves a refugee population in Kansas City. He believed in helping people in his community on a person-to-person basis, and he started living out that philosophy in his school.

I suppose he still had some partisan Republican instincts clanging around in his head and heart, and that’s why he threw himself into the Ron Paul campaign, with its mix of “conservative” social values (anti-abortion, etc…), libertarian economic policies and hardline, anti-imperial/anti-war stance. It was the perfect combo for Ted and he couldn’t resist. He dove in head first and spent a ton of time working in the Great Ron Paul Netroots Army.

Around the time that Ron Paul pulled out of the race, Ted read Shane Claiborne’s latest book, Jesus for President. Thanks to Shane, Ted realized that the government is not the solution to humanity’s problems. He decided to withdraw completely from politics. He plans not even to vote this year.

I asked him about Obama and McCain. Right off the bat he said that he doesn’t want McCain because he doesn’t want more war.

So what about Obama? Ted says he is really moved and excited about Obama when he sees his speeches on YouTube. But then he goes to the Obama website and looks at his polices. There’s nothing there that excites him. “There’s no substance. Obama talks about Change, but what is he really going to change? How is he really going to change it? I think both the parties are just out for power,” he said. He remarked that when he went to Ron Paul’s site, there were convincing specifics about how he was going to really change America.

I bet there are at least a million Ted’s out there. They are a group to watch. They have insane leadership skills thanks to the well-organized training grounds of their churches, camps, schools, conferences, etc… They are personally and emotionally well adjusted. And they are willing to sacrifice their lives (either literally or just in hard endless work) to save the world.