Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

An Orthodox Anglican Conversation (Pt. 1) - Dart and Puhalo

Sola Scriptura: a potato parable

A Parable
by an Orthodox Christian priest who has just returned from an ecumenical
gathering of largely Evangelical clergy.

Once there was a starving man who found a field of potatoes, and finding the potatoes, he found life.  Potatoes alone were enough to keep him alive.

One day a family took a drive out into the countryside for a picnic and happened across the man saved by potatoes.  He was a gaunt and sickly man with little strength, but he was alive and thanked God for his potatoes.

"What are all of those things you are eating?" the skinny potato man asked.

"Apples and corn and potatoes and ham and cake for dessert," they replied.

"Cake for dessert? the man inquired.

"Yes, cake for dessert.  Would you like some?"

"Certainly not," said the potato man. "You don't need cake and ham and corn
and apples to stay alive.  Potatoes are enough.  Look at me.  I was dying of
starvation and potatoes saved me.  Everything I needed was in potatoes."

The Traditional-Liberal Divide - Metropolitan Hilarion

Address by Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations to the Annual Nicean Club Dinner (Lambeth Palace, 9 September 2010)

Your Grace, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests,

At the outset, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to His Grace Archbishop Rowan Williams for inviting me to address the members of the Nicean Club. Your Grace, we highly value your personal contribution to inter-Christian dialogue and your commitment to keep the Anglican Communion unified. We know your love of the Russian Orthodox Church, of its saints and great theologians, of its spiritual tradition. We assure you of our continual support and prayers.

We also highly appreciate the work of the Nicean Club which aims to strengthen relations and to stimulate beneficial co-operation between the churches of the Anglican Communion and other Christian confessions.

Signs of God's Kingdom Now by Bob Ekblad

Signs of God's Kingdom now: witnessing Jesus' work among the Mennonites in Iowa

I recently spent four days ministering at Sugar Creek Mennonite Church in Wayland, Iowa.  There I witnessed varied signs of Jesus’ Kingdom coming together here & now in ways rare & desperately-needed in North America. 

Sugar Creek is a historic peace church in the Anabaptist tradition.  They believe in Jesus’ teaching on love of neighbor and enemy alike—which works itself out in lavish potlucks, barn raisings and other community-oriented good deeds and a commitment to resisting war. 

Over 20 of Sugar Creek’s members were conscientious objectors in WWII-- an unpopular outworking of following Jesus in choosing to love and pray for (rather than kill) national enemies.  Like many peace churches, living out Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 is a high priority.  Nathan, the pastor, had invited me to share on dimensions of discipleship less known & practiced by his congregation--the gifts of the Holy Spirit & healing prayer.

The Church as an Alternative Society by Brian Zahnd

Charisma Magazine asked me to write an op-ed addressing this question: Can Christians save the mess that is today’s American political scene? Better yet, should we? I was asked to represent the position that the church is an alternative society and our role of prophetic voice is better served when we remain transcendent to political partisanship. I was given a thousand words. Of course I explained that the relationship of the church to the state is one of the most complex issues we have faced in our two thousand year history and it would take at least a thousand pages to adequately address this topic. Nevertheless, I took a shot at it. Here are my 999 words on the subject:

The Church as an Alternative Society
By Brian Zahnd

Tolstoy and the Orthodox Tradition -- Fr. Michael Gillis

One of the ways to understand Tolstoy’s relationship with the Orthodox Church is in the context of his search for certainty, certainty regarding truth.  Tolstoy’s relationship with the Orthodox Church is paradoxical, that is, very Russian, quite Orthodox.  

In 1878 at the age of 50, Tolstoy was experiencing a kind of religious awakening during which he frequently attended the village Church wanting to absorb the spirituality of the people.  However in the year before, the Russo-Turkish war began and this year the Tzar commanded all of the churches to pray for the troops (sounds like this could be the U.S. today).  However, part of the prayer, apparently, contained references to the Turks being destroyed by “sword and exploding shell.”  This was too much hypocrisy for Tolstoy.  How can the priest proclaim the Gospel of Christ and at the same time pray for the death of enemies?

Halfway House Lessons on Love and Hate -- by Joe Beach

Nearby our church, there’s a halfway house for men who are nearing the end of their incarceration. One of the core families in our church lives in between the church and the halfway house. The father in that family is an interesting character. He looks like some cowhand from an old cowboy movie: a rough, tough, fifty year old man, dirt all over and skinny as a nail. He wears an old hat with a hole in it, smiles with crooked teeth, has one eye that works, and loves to talk to anyone who walks by the place. Underneath that rough exterior is a very intelligent, thoughtful follower of Christ who loves to get in people’s faces, (lovingly, of course) and ask them questions about their life. Around the church, we call it the “GP interrogation” (although we say his full name). If you survive the GP interrogation, you can usually handle anything after that.

Well, a few weeks ago, one of the men from the halfway house was returning after work. The men are allowed to attend work and, sometimes, church, with very strict guidelines and rules. The man from our church (GP) met him on the street and began his loving interrogation. After spending some time to get to know the man and his story, GP asked him if he’d met Jesus while in prison. The man responded, “no, not really. I’d already met Jesus in Sunday School as a kid.”

The Church as a Health Club by Joe Beach

There’s a man in Denver named Gene Cisneros who runs a health club. He was recently interviewed in the Denver Post. I was very impressed by his business philosophy because it mirrored what I feel is a biblical philosophy of ministry.

One of the main frustrations in pastoral ministry is the constant pressure – both from the world and the church – to base local church ministry on programs, products, and performances. In other words, we as pastors are judged to be successes or failures based on our ability to build and lead an organization that offers excellent programs, products, and performances to an ever-increasing customer base (or market share). People don’t use those words, of course. The “customers” would, instead, use phrases such as, “my kids love it there!” or “I’m just not being fed by the teaching ministry,” or “I really love their music,” or “our church just doesn’t have much of a youth group right now,” or “I like that they offer a Saturday night service so we can use Sunday for family stuff.”

On Going to Church -- by Joseph Beach

You’re probably familiar with statements such as, “we don’t GO to church. We ARE the church.” There are similar ones that go something like this: “Church is not what we do when we gather on Sunday mornings for an hour or so. Church is not a place or a building. It’s what we are OUT THERE.” Well, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and, although there’s some truth and some wisdom in these statements (which I’ve spoken myself), I’m no longer so sure about them on the whole.

This kind of thinking has developed enough steam over the last few decades that I think you could fairly call it a “movement.” I’d suggest that its full name is the “anti-church-as-an-institution-or-building” movement. It’s also quite opposed to all forms of regular, traditional (and, especially) LOCAL churches. I attended a pastors’ convention in June in which a youth pastor preached one of the workshops. According to his senior pastor, this particular young pastor was being greatly influenced by his buddies in the International House of Prayer (IHOP) movement (which may or may not be influencing him in this area). Anyway, the main thrust of his message was that “we need to get free from the local church” and “we’ve got to get away from local church kind of thinking and get out there and be the kingdom.” Naturally, I couldn’t help but notice that he was saying this in a local church that paid him a nice salary, etc., but I digress.

God's Great Secret -- Excerpt from Canterbury

From Rowan William's Enthronement Speech (Feb. 2003)

Once we recognise God's great secret, that we are all made to be God's sons and daughters, we can't avoid the call to see one another differently. No-one can be written off; no group, no nation, no minority can just be a scapegoat to resolve our fears and uncertainties. We can't assume that any human face we see has no divine secret to disclose: those who are culturally or religiously strange to us; those who so often don't count in the world's terms (the old, the unborn, the disabled). And this is what unsettles our loyalties, conservative or liberal, right wing or left, national and international. We have to learn to be human alongside all sorts of others, the ones whose company we don't greatly like, the ones we didn't choose, because Jesus is drawing us together into his place, into his company.

So an authentic church has a difficult job. On the one hand, it must be constantly learning from the Bible and its shared life of prayer how to live with Jesus and his Father; its life makes no sense unless we believe that the secret Jesus reveals to those hungry for life is the very bedrock of truth. The Church can't believe and say whatever it likes, for the very sound reason that it is a community of people who have been changed because and only because of Jesus Christ. I am a Christian because of the change made to me by Jesus Christ, because of the gift of the Holy Spirit, which gives me the right to call God 'Abba Father; what other reason is there?

Anglicanism and Orthodoxy by Ron Dart

The centre cannot hold—mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.                       

W.B. Yeats 

so that they may be one as we are one. 

Jesus

My theological journey, as a young man in my early twenties, took me to L’Abri in Switzerland from 1973-1974. I was quite taken by Francis Schaeffer, but I was never fully convinced by his brand of an updated version of Calvin and the Calvinist tradition. In short, I was never held by the Reformed tradition. The Reformation is the womb of modernity, and much of the fragmentation we face today is the consequence of the reformation. The children are out of the womb, now adults and each doing what is right in the sight of their own eyes (and few agree on what the right is).    

I had been reading a great deal of C.S. Lewis in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and I was quite aware that Lewis and Schaeffer dwelt in different environs. Lewis was grounded in the classical way, a Medieval-Renaissance scholar, a catholic Anglican and he had serious doubts about both the Reformation tradition and puritan Calvinism. Schaeffer was a true believer in the Reformed read of the reformation, and its implications for the church and society. Lewis could argue the case for mere Christianity, but there comes a point in the trail when Schaeffer and Lewis part paths for substantive theological, ecclesial and cultural reasons.  

End of the Line by Brian Zahnd

This is an article I wrote for the May issue of Charisma Magazine at the request of the new editor, Marcus Yoars.

END OF THE LINE
By Brian Zahnd

God is shifting the church from one seasonal platform to another. Are we ready?

Western Christianity is at a critical juncture. Those who care deeply about the church are aware of this. Things are not as they once were. Things are changing. Dramatically so. Even if we don't understand what is happening, we can certainly feel it. There is an uneasy feeling throughout evangelicalism that everything is changing. Long-held certitudes are being challenged from both within and without the Christian faith. The way things were even ten years ago is no longer the way things are today. It's easy to be disconcerted by it all. 

In the midst of pronounced uncertainty it is tempting to succumb to nostalgia and pine away for some point in the past that we identify as the "glory days." But we cannot go back. The healthy practice of recognizing the contributions of the past and building upon them is not the same thing as a regressive attempt to return to a bygone era. This is the problem with revivalism. Too often it is a naive attempt to recapture a particular past. It's like a Renaissance fair-nice entertainment for a Saturday afternoon but you can't live there. An idealized memory of the past is not a vision which can carry us into the future. Nostalgic reminiscing about the past is for those who no longer have the courage to creatively engage with contemporary challenges and opportunities. All of this is related to the critical juncture we have come to in the course of Western Christianity.

The Prophetic Culture of the Kingdom (conclusion and appendixes) by Eric H. Janzen

Conclusion

As I neared the end of writing this book I had coffee with a close friend of mine.  He told me a story about a young man that he had become friends with.  This young man left the Church because his experience of it had been of a surface faith.  He saw people calling themselves Christians, but living their lives as they pleased and caring little for those around them.  Sadly, this led to not only his rejection of Church, but Jesus as well.  He continues to be a spiritual man seeking God and attempting to live a spiritual life, but due to his experience of Church he wants nothing to do with Christians and thus nothing to do with Jesus.  How many of us know people like this?  Too many have encountered Christians not living out the culture of the kingdom and have as a result not encountered Christ.  This story is why I care about the things I have written.  That my friend’s friend was at the gate and walked away because of those within breaks my heart.  It should break your heart as well. 

Beyond Cynicism: the Renewal of Prophetic Purity - by Brad Jersak and Peter Helms

Intro:

As the apostolic / prophetic movement has become increasingly bizarre, many who were told to simply bless everything are now deeply disillusioned. In these days when renewal meetings, alleged outpourings and flamboyant leaders have reached a point of crisis, it is tempting to throw up our hands, become cynical and opt to retreat to a safer, saner spirituality. And yet we know in our hearts that we can't go back to a Christian faith without the presence, power and voice of God. Neither dead orthodoxy nor practical deism can provide a harbour for us. Some are simply walking away from the faith altogether. Is that really our only option? How do we stay open to the Spirit? How do we restore prophetic purity? How can we continue to engage in authentic experiences with God without becoming wacky? What if we were to recalibrate our faith practice and renew prophetic purity?

Double or nothing! -- Anouncement by Brad Jersak

For those who haven't heard yet, we made quite an important and wonderful announcement at Fresh Wind on Sunday, Sept. 15. For those who only have a moment, if you just skim down to the bold letters below, you'll get the basic idea. Let me begin by sharing a visitation that I experienced the night before the announcement that finally gave me some perspective on it.

I came before the Lord in prayer and engaged with something he had been speaking to me through the writings of Hans Urs Von Baltasar. I sensed him say, 'Gaze on me and I will gaze on you. I will see you and see through you and into every part of you. I will open up every door and every drawer of your soul and I will evaluate you. I will judge you thoroughly, even where you would not dare judge yourself. I will see and know what you cannot even see and know. And I will render my verdict of mercy, my sentence of kindness, and my gaze will be adoration.'

Spiritual Strokes and Heavenly Physio -- by Fiona Calder

    Hebrews 12:10-12

    “… God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in His holiness.  No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.  Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained in it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees!  ‘Make level paths for your feet’, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.”

Over and over since the beginning of the year I’ve felt the call to pray for God to strengthen and help us where we are weak and immature.

He shows me the ‘great’ men and women of the faith; those we all look up to because of their special gifts and anointings, and then He says ‘now pray for them where they are weak, stunted and foolish.’

Train Silence Breakers -- by Jonathan Asher Gilbert

Recently I’ve been reading about modern Christian marketing techniques. I’ve been told they suck and aren’t good enough. A bad imitation at best, not enough effort at worst. Apparently people think the church’s communication efforts are a joke.

It made me realize how much Jesus-loving faith communities (and their critics) have missed the point. Have we invested too much worth in reaching the world with the world…? It got me wondering, were we ever supposed to ‘market’ God like the world markets gods?

Poling the Great River of Suffering: Social Justice and Pastoring by Andy MacPherson

Nothing can be farther from the truth than the facile belief that God only manifests himself in progress, in the improvement of standards of living, in the spread of medicine and the reform of abuses, in the diffusion of organized Christianity. The reaction from this type of theistic dilution, which a few years ago had almost completely supplanted the faith of Moses and Elijah and Jesus among modern Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, is now sweeping multitudes from their religious moorings. Real spiritual progress can only be achieved through catastrophe and suffering, reaching new levels after the profound catharsis which accompanies major upheavals. Every such period of mental and physical agony, while the old is being swept away and the new is still unborn, yields different social patterns and deeper spiritual insights. (W.F. Albright)

It has become glaringly obvious in my own experience that I cannot seem to attach myself to any one social cause or endeavor. As a pastor who wants to live with eyes wide open, I see things that prod my compassion into fight mode. Yet even though I often take steps onto various battlefields, I find myself once again poling my boat out into the great river of suffering looking for that one beachhead upon which I am supposed to sacrifice myself.

 

L’Abri, William Farel and Erasmus by Ron Dart

L’Abri, William Farel and Erasmus:
Different Paths Hiked, Different Destinations                

Erasmus is a chameleon and a pernicious enemy of
the gospel.                                       William Farel

He who destroys Erasmus will destroy a bug which
will stink worse dead than alive.       Martin Luther

I will put it in my Testament and I take you all as
witnesses that I consider Erasmus the greatest enemy
of Christ, greater than all those who have been born
in the last thousand years.              Martin Luther

I order you, at the command of God, to be enemies
of Erasmus and to be on guard against his books. I
will write against him, even if he should die and perish
from it.                                          Martin Luther

The name of Erasmus will never perish.
                                                         John Colet

Erasmus has published volumes more full of wisdom
than any which Europe has seen for ages.
                                                        Thomas More

Watchmen versus Watchdogs by Brad Jersak

Many of the newsletters and articles that I’ve written throughout 2007 have been a repetitive reminder to the church that these days call for an upgrade in our discernment. I’m convinced that we must vigorously test the spirits (1 John 4:1-4) to see whether their messages originate in God. We do this both to guard ourselves from swallowing that which is toxic AND to avoid dismissing that which is essential. Sifting for truth enables us to watch for and watch out: we want all that God has for us—we want only what God has for us. 

That being said, one of my intercessors alerted me to the distinction between two types of discerning watchers. In prayer, she was shown the vast difference between those whom God has appointed as “watchmen” and those who’ve appointed themselves as “watchdogs.”

Cynic or Prophet? What’s the difference? by Brad Jersak

Cynical Prophets and Prophetic Cynics

In recent years, I’ve had the joy of pastoring many fine prophets, some highly gifted, some deeply wounded, and some with a potent combination of gifts and grief. I’ve know the sorrow of watching broken prophets decline into cynicism and the joy of walking cynics forward into their true calling as prophets. In some ways, cynics and prophets are exactly opposite; in other ways, there are virtually identical. Maybe they are the flesh and spirit manifestation of the same gift.

THE ENGLISH REFORMATION: A TALE FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS by Ron S. Dart

But there are remnants left around me… very strange remnants… in this case the Anglican Church which has in it some of the ancient truth and therefore I will live within it. - George Grant

The English Reformation took more than a century from beginning to end, and when the end was reached, the Anglican Tradition had both a solid and sane Prayer Book, and a sensible and sound theological grounding. The Anglican Church of Canada and the Anglican Communion, I suspect, can learn much from the English Reformation.

The 1st phase of the English Reformation began when John Colet lectured on Romans in 1496 at Oxford University. The Oxford Reformers (Colet, Erasmus, More) saw deeper than most the need for reform, and how a wise notion of reform could and would take place. The publication of the Enchiridion (1501), by Erasmus, pointed the way, in both a theological and political sense, to the meaning of reform. The Oxford Reformers were, in many ways, the morning stars of the English Reformation.

Song of Faith (United Church 2006)

We find God made known in Jesus of Nazareth,
and so we sing of God the Christ, the Holy One embodied.

We sing of Jesus,
   a Jew,
   born to a woman in poverty
   in a time of social upheaval
   and political oppression.
He knew human joy and sorrow.
So filled with the Holy Spirit was he
that in him people experienced the presence of God among them.
We sing praise to God incarnate.

Isolation and Belonging by Heidi Greiner-Miller

A good two years ago, when God was walking me through a lot of my healing and restoring me back into his church, I always had a longing to be known and valued in a community. But I continually fought feelings of not being worthy or good enough. I had a ton of internal strife, wanting so much to be a part, an important part, but I felt so far from that and it left me thinking most of the time, why bother?

I know that my church has really stressed the "no hierarchy" thing and has been void of labels and the whole pedestal idea, inviting everyone to the table. But in truth I don't think you can avoid the fact that church leaders are seen as the ones who belong and who set the guage for belonging (especially through the eyes of a broken soul), even while they stress that all belong.

Welcome Versus Inclusion: Interview with Rowan Williams - Nederlands Dagblad

TEXT OF THE INTERVIEW WITH THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY
Source - NEDERLANDS DAGBLAD
Aug. 12, 2006 / Wim Houtman - Editor

The Church is Not Inclusive

Since February 2003, Rowan Williams has been Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest leader of the Anglican Church. He is unlikely to have expected to preside over a split in the Church. He doesn't want that, but the controversies seem to spiral out of his control. How does he see the future and what makes him tick, what does he believe in?"

Diverging or Converging: Nuancing the Emerging Church by Brad Jersak

In response and as a follow-up to Ron Dart's article on the Emerging Church, I would like to add the perspective of someone who rubs shoulders with, and is occasionally labelled as, "emerging church." First, thanks to Ron for your excellent article on the "emerging church" movement. I'd like to respond by nuancing some of their ecclesial trajectory and the challenges they face.

As a champion of the historic church, you tend naturally to assess the emerging church as it evolves relative to the stability of the great streams of Christian faith (Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Anglican). You correctly note that much of the emerging church movement continues to be a further fragmentation in the long history of schism wrought by the sixteenth century reformers. The splintering ad nauseum is absolutely a sign and symptom of rotten concrete in the foundations (termites in the hull, no doubt). And so, to an observer such as yourself who deems the great ships of faith to be more reliable in the face of history's spiritual storms, the tiny independent churches that continue to multiply must appear very fragile and hardly sea-worthy.

THE GENIUS OF ANGLICAN SPIRITUALITY by Ron Dart

I have, in the last few essays, highlighted two obstinate and pressing facts. First, there is a growing interest in spirituality, contemplation and the mystical in our broader culture, but spirituality is often seen as opposed to the repressive nature of religion. Second, authentic Christian spirituality is historic and corporate, grounded in the stone quarried wisdom of the past and communal. This means that genuine Christian spirituality questions and doubts the spirituality is good, religion is bad model and paradigm that envelops us these days.

It is one thing, though, to suggest that Christian spirituality is both historic and corporate, but we soon face another dilemma on the contemplative journey. The question is this: whose interpretation and understanding of the historic and corporate notion of the church should be trusted and why? It is in the answer to this question that the genius of the Anglican way has some insight to offer.

May They Be One: Postmodern Congregationalism and Spirituality by Ron Dart

"May They One as We Are One"
Jesus

Christian theology, at its deepest and best, is contemplative theology. Contemplative theology threads together, in an intricate and subtle way, life in Christ, life in the church and life in the world. Unity and integration are held high.

Just as Jesus Christ is one with the Father, and the Father, Son and Spirit are One (one substance, three persons), so those in Christ are meant to embody and live forth the full life of God. This is the ideal and goal. Therefore, Christian spirituality, if it is true to its inner nature and high calling, is meant to ponder the meaning of our Oneness in God, in the Church and grapple with what this means, as agents of justice and peace, in the World.

Bringing Life to the Killing Fields with Brian McConaghy - Interview by Brad Jersak

Ratanak means precious stone or gem in the Khmer language. In this case Ratanak was the name of a little girl who, in late 1989, lay in a hospital in north west Cambodia. As her mother looked on, the doctors tried to save her life. There was no medication or medical equipment available to save her. This event inspired Brian McConaghy, a decorated member of the RCMP, to create the Ratanak Foundation, : a relief and development organization dedicated to bringing spiritual hope to the Khmer people by assisting Cambodia rebuild the social and medical services which would have saved the life of the little girl named Ratanak.

Christian Anarchy: An Aberration of Sorts by Ron Dart

There are many ways to interpret and present the Christian Tradition, but, sadly so, two traditions have come to dominate the discussion. It will be the burden of this essay to point out that such simplistic readings of the Christian Tradition distorts the reality of the Christian way, and, more to the point, we need a third way that is much more nimble of thought. It is this third way that can point the way forward and offer us a more integrated and prophetic way in our modern and postmodern ethos.

A Halting Spiritual Quest, Three Minorities, and Restorative Justice by Wayne Northey

[NOTE: The sermon is available for a time as a recording at: http://www.pgimf.org/. It combines my thirty years of work in Restorative Justice with the three minorities I have sensed living in for a long time.]

Originally presented at Point Grey Fellowship, June 6, 2004

[Scripture Readings: Isaiah 42:1-7; Matthew 22:34-40; Romans 5:1-11]

Introduction: Minority Status and Jörg Salaquarda
As a Christian, I live a minority status in three worlds. I think all Christians should! But two of those worlds are "Christian"!… The burden of this meditation is to discuss these three worlds in the context of Restorative Justice, my vocational and theological passion for 30 years.

On Friday, in preparing for this sermon, I punched into my "Google Search" the word "Salaquarda". From 1972 to 1974 I had done evangelism with a short-term mission agency in what was then West Berlin. I wrote a novel based upon that experience, which I'm in the process of trying to get published. I have never forgotten the name, "Herr Salaquarda". For one day, evangelizing door-to-door, I encountered a most fascinating man by that name. He engagingly took me into his study where we discussed theology, philosophy, and life's meaning. I was an eager evangelist then. He was older (by ten years I now discover) and much wiser. He showed me on a bookshelf his 14-volume collection of Karl Barth's Kirchliche Dogmatik ("Church Dogmatics"), and told me he had been for a long time a Barth scholar. I knew little of Karl Barth, though subsequently took a semester course on him, and now proudly own the complete set of the English translation. I consciously decided not to offer Herr Salaquarda any of the evangelistic tracts I carried around then.

Herr Salaquarda told me he had lost his faith, though was still into "spirituality". He smiled knowingly at various times in our conversation at my responses, a discussion which lasted a half hour to an hour. He told me finally I was doing some good thinking, and to keep it up as he eventually showed me to the door. I never saw nor talked to him again.

Now, over 30 years later, after looking him up on the Internet Friday night, (http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/s/s1/salaquarda_j.shtml), I discover that "Herr Salaquarda" in my memory was "Dr. Jörg Salaquarda" a former Barthian scholar, longstanding resident of West Berlin, prolific author on many topics, Editor of a publication series of Friedrich Nietzsche's works, and a Nietzschean scholar. Without realizing it then, Dr. Salaquarda set me on a spiritual quest I and most of us are still pursuing: affirming Christian faith in a postmodern, violent world. I was so taken with "meeting him" again after all these years, I thought immediately to e-mail him. Then I read further: Dr. Salaquarda had died five years ago this month. I instead dedicate these ruminations to him. I recognize a significant debt to him for robust challenges to my naïve Christian faith.

I have entitled my talk: "A Halting Spiritual Quest, Three Minorities, and Restorative Justice."

The First Minority: Salvation in Jesus Christ
The first minority in which I find myself is nonetheless numerically very significant! Christians of all persuasions represent about 33% of the world's population (http://www.religioustolerance.org/worldrel.htm), with some 34,000 separate groups worldwide (consequence largely of what Ron Dart dubs the "DNA of Protestant schism" - though the Orthodox and Roman Catholics had their problems too!) About 75% of adults in the US and Canada call themselves Christian. In America, about 35% would take on the self-designation, "Evangelical". This represents about 100 million people. In Canada about 19% claim to be "Evangelical" (http://www.evangelicalfellowship.ca/pdf/CWwint04.pdf), or close to 6 million people.

I find myself, on my best days, amongst those who believe in and in some ways practise or act on:

¢            Forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ

¢          That Jesus is the Son of God/God Incarnate

¢          That God is not an old superstition

¢          That the Bible is God's Word to be taken seriously

¢          A commitment to follow or imitate Jesus

¢          Regular participation in church

I am, by these research standards, part of that significant minority dubbed "Evangelical". I am guessing so are many of you - on your best days!

Over against a surrounding culture of practical atheism, that has displaced God for all intents in our day-to-day living by pervasive technology and solipsistic lifestyle (a commitment to life that always loops back on the self), we Christians claim there to be a true transcendence in the cosmos, one to be found at two poles: God and Neighbour. The first pole, God revealed in Christ, situates me in my first minority.

Gil Bailie says it well, with reference to the Gospel reading today:

"The Jesus of Matthew's Gospel did not say that the greatest commandment was to believe in God and love humanity. He did not say that we should be nice to one another because that's the way God would like us to behave. He said the first and most essential thing is to love God with a paramount love. It is the most hackneyed notion in the world, but once or twice in a lifetime its dulling familiarity vanishes, and one feels for a moment the unfathomable significance and centrality of Jesus' suggestion for breaking the grip of sin and death: to love God (Bailie, Gil (1995). Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads New York: Crossroad.p. 272)."

At its best, belonging to this significant minority known variously as "Evangelical", "Orthodox", "Traditional", "Catholic", or simply "Christian", is constantly living towards a vision of life and the cosmos that transcends every limiting category known to humanity, that fills one with intense longing (C.S. Lewis used the German word Sehnsucht; Augustine called it a "God-shaped vacuum"), that makes us profoundly resonate with the Negro spiritual, "This world is not my home, I'm just a-passing through."

a) John Wesley

This is the minority world of John Wesley's heart "strangely warmed":

"In the evening," Wesley writes, "I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ… ("I Felt My Heart Strangely Warmed", Christian Classics Ethereal Library, no date, http://www.ccel.org/w/wesley/journal/htm/vi.ii.xvi.htm)."

b) Augustine

This is Augustine's amazing chance encounter while passing by kids at play:

"While he was wrestling intensely in his heart with his desires, he heard the voice of a child nearby singing lyrics which sounded like 'Take it, read it! Take it, read it!' … Augustine sensed in these words a personal invitation from God.

"After going into his house, Augustine picked up the Scriptures and began to read what we now know as Romans 13:13-14: '.... But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.'

"Augustine says that from that moment forward his direction was set, conversion took hold (Zilonka, C.P., Father Paul, no date, http://www.cptryon.org/compassion/spr96/read.html)."

c) Blaise Pascal

This is Blaise Pascal's vision, of whom Albert Einstein said he possessed the most brilliant mathematical mind of the previous 1000 years:

"When he was 31 years old, less than eight years before his death, Pascal had an overwhelming experience of the presence of God. He wrote of it in part:

"In the year of grace, 1654, on Monday, 23rd of November… From about half past ten in the evening until about half past twelve, FIRE!

"God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, (Ex 3:6; Mt 22:32) not of the philosophers and scholars.

"Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.

"God of Jesus Christ.

"'Thy God and my God.' (Jn 20:17)

"Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except God.

"Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy (Kiefer, James E., no date, "Blaise Pascal, Scientist, Religious Writer: 21 August, 1662", Biographical Sketches of Memorable Christians of the Past, http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/233.html)." …

My heart also warms to this response to God in Christ, thereby placing me firmly in this first minority.

The Second Minority: "Just Peacemaking"
In January, 1975, during my first year of studies at Regent College, I took a course from Clark Pinnock called "The Politics of Jesus". (Later that year I also took his course on Karl Barth - to whom I shall yet return.) Little did I know it would change forever my understanding and commitment to Christian ethics. Our main text for the course was something that felt alien to the Gospel I had earlier committed to, and in consequence of, had been on a two-year evangelistic mission in West Berlin. Its title too was The Politics of Jesus. I came out the other end of that experience committed to two entirely new understandings about the Gospel: that the Judeo-Christian story was centrally a political, not a religious, story. Further, the way of the cross, and therefore the way of doing politics, of living in this world, was quintessentially nonviolent. The Gospel's impact socially and politically was consequently subversion of all state violence, of dominant Empire ways recurrent throughout human history, not least today of the American Empire in its "Manifest Destiny" global expansionism and endless war against terror.

My dual conversion experience keeps company, not in this case with Wesley, Augustine, and Pascal, but with many others, including James McClendon and Stanley Hauerwas, both noted American theologians who trace the origins of their lifelong pacifism to reading that same book by John Howard Yoder.

Stanley Hauerwas, considered by Time magazine as "America's best theologian", writes: "I am convinced that when Christians look back on this century of theology in America The Politics Of Jesus will be seen as a new beginning…" He continues: "Yet Yoder also challenges those evangelicals who describe salvation in terms of personal fulfillment. 'The cross of Calvary was… the political, legally to be expected result of a moral clash with the powers ruling his society.'…

"[Yoder] is trying to force us to recognize that in spite of what appears to be orthodox christological affirmations, we are embedded in social practices that deny that Jesus's life, death and resurrection make any difference (Stanley Hauerwas, "When The Politics of Jesus Makes a Difference", The Christian Century, October 13, l993, pp. 982-987, italics added)."

Ever since reading Yoder (1), I became committed to nonviolence.

This is overwhelmingly a minority position in the long history of the church and world! Mahatma Gandhi rightly observed: "The only people on earth who do not see Christ and His teachings as nonviolent are Christians."

In the summer of 1976, a recent Regent College graduate, I was looking for work in the UBC Job Placement files. I read there for the first time about the Mennonite Central Committee, and a new initiative in Kitchener, Ontario, called "Victim Offender Reconciliation Program" - or "VORP" for short - and for ill! What an awful acronym! In February, 1977, I became a Mennonite Central Committee Voluntary Service worker, and second Director of that program. Thus began my journey with "Restorative Justice".

a) First Restorative Justice Case

Three years earlier, two youths who had been drinking and had been "talked to" by the police already, took out their frustrations on the small community of Elmira, Ontario, by vandalizing to twenty-two different vehicles and homes. A novel "restorative justice" response was ordered by the judge, at the urgings of two peacemaking Mennonites. "The Elmira Case" led to the establishment of the first ever "VORP". It also became the proverbial "shot that echoed around the world". Over 200 mediation programs in North America alone trace their origins to the program that came into existence as a joint venture between Ontario Correctional Services and the Mennonite Central Committee. Several hundred similar programs now exist in Europe and elsewhere. There is now an international "Restorative Justice" movement impacting the globe with a peacemaking, as opposed to a warmaking, vision of criminal justice. This weekend that first case is being celebrated in Kitchener at a national conference of the largest mediation association in Canada, "Conflict Resolution Network Canada".

The agency for which I work, M2/W2 - Restorative Christian Ministries, reflects that vision. First established in 1966, it offers friendship and reintegration resources to men and women in prison throughout B.C. Herb Reesor is a current volunteer. We also do crime prevention through a "Parent to Parent" program (so far only in Chilliwack) where volunteers work with parents of children at risk in the zero to five years. I have more information at the back with me. Though all our work except at Surrey Pre-Trial Services Centre for Women is east of Abbotsford now!

b) Retributive Justice

Almost a millennium ago, in the late 11th century, European history underwent a significant upheaval some call "The Papal Revolution". During this time, the Church moved to consolidate its power over all souls and kings of Europe; the great universities began to emerge; and the Western legal tradition started to take shape, as new law codes were formulated for study and promulgation throughout the Western world.

In a fateful interplay between Church and Society, secular states began to follow the lead of how the Church dealt with its religious heretics. These "social heretics" began to emerge under new state law codes as "criminals" whose victims were no longer the actual victims, but "Rex" or "Regina", or later "We the People" under the United States Constitution.

So the evolution of the criminal justice system in the West was away from community and victim centred justice towards state and offender centred justice.  The former had been a dominant approach in the ancient Hebrew culture, in Roman society when applied to its own citizens, and in many pre-colonial African, North American and worldwide indigenous cultures. In the Reconstruction of Japan following the Second World War, the Japanese became the first industrialized country nationally to embrace this more restoratively oriented way of justice.

A shift away from this approach for common law Western jurisdictions began with the Norman Conquest of Britain in 1066. The state began, as a criminologist said provocatively, to steal the criminal conflict from the community. It is still a shock for some victims to discover that they are not even named on the court docket, having a millennium ago been displaced by Rex or Regina. One victim of rape describes a fantasy of phoning the Queen in Buckingham Palace on each anniversary of the assault to ask her how she is doing!

The purpose of the law shifted dramatically as well. Earlier, the emphasis had been upon making the victim whole again, what in the ancient Hebrew culture was called "restoring shalom". With the rise of the king's power, the purpose became to uphold the authority of the state.

There was dominant Western religious undergirding of this approach which led to a marriage of law and religion that placed, on the one hand, primary emphasis upon the offender's violation of the law while dropping any concern for rehabilitation of the victim. On the other hand, it drew on Roman slave law and ancient Greek forms of justice as a model for meting out the worst of punishments imaginable upon the offender. This form of response to crime is known as "retributive justice", and has dominated Western jurisprudence for a millennium.

c) Restorative Justice Theological Moorings

Perhaps the most troubling question Restorative Justice poses is: "Why harm people who harm people to teach people that harming people is wrong?" The Restorative Justice vision moves away from a warmaking, "stigmatizing shaming", scapegoating response to crime, to a "reintegrative shaming", peacemaking way of nonviolence in a bid to break definitively with the endless cycles of violence and counter-violence, terror and counter-terror, in our society and world.

The best single theological resource for this new movement is Chris Marshall's Beyond Retribution, in which he presents "A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime, and Punishment" that represents rereading the Judeo-Christian founding texts to provide a basis, not for continued scapegoating violence in the Western secular state, but for a profound redirection of traditional interpretation of those texts away from violence, "beyond retribution", towards shalom, reconciliation and forgiveness. This reading reflects what one scholar dubs "the inner dynamic of the biblical texts and traditions (James Williams, "King as Servant, Sacrifice as Service: Gospel Transformations", in Willard M. Swartley, ed., Violence Renounced: René Girard, Biblical Studies, and Peacemaking, Telford: Pandora Press U.S. 2000, pp. 195)."

Over against the long history of the church, over against wide Evangelical opinion today, this biblical political understanding of the centrality of the neighbour/enemy to salvation and spirituality is in a minority position: the second I inhabit.

The Third Minority: The Way of Jesus: "With The Grain of the Universe"
Once, I received a phone call from a person writing up his personal memoirs. He was asking permission to include a letter to the editor I had written about capital punishment published in the Vancouver Sun. He was shocked in the conversation to hear I was a committed Christian; still more upset to learn I attempted to be faithful to a serious reading of Scripture. I don't think my letter ever found its way into his memoirs, notwithstanding permission granted…

The third minority sphere I inhabit is, over against fellow Christians (and others!) who embrace social justice and nonviolence, I centre that commitment in Jesus Christ as known through the books of the Old and New Testaments, the Bible.

James McClendon writes in the second volume of his Anabaptist Systematic Theology:

"We have the concept of Christian Scripture in its two volumes or Testaments. This does not mean, as the bare word "scripture" might suggest, only something written, a book or text. We have rather a text, a Book, that centers on that person in whom final authority rests, and by doing this acquires a delegated or proximate authority. This text is the chosen, written witness to Jesus Christ and to God in Christ…. [T]he Bible is for us the word of God written; it is that text in which the One who lays claim to our lives by the act of his life makes that claim afresh in acts of speech; it is for us God speaking; it is the word of God. Such a claim made by a book upon a people is radical and unsettling-an authority subversive of all sorts of competing, other, human authorities (McClendon, Jr., James Wm. (1994). Systematic Theology: Doctrine, Nashville: Abingdon Press, p. 464)." 

McClendon goes on to outline three classic ways of diluting, or neutralizing the biblical text:

"Not surprisingly, then, Christian history itself is replete with schemes that - though not consciously so intended - serve to limit or control this radically unsettling Book. Three such schemes [are]-(a) use of historical-critical exegesis in a way that keeps Scripture at a 'suitably' remote distance, (b) use of tradition so as to monopolize the interpretation of Scripture, and (c) use of inerrancy theories so as to confine the thrust of Scripture - … (McClendon, ibid, 1996, p. 464)."

Stanley Hauerwas in 2001 was invited to deliver the Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. It is a highly prestigious lecture series. The title of the talks and book was With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology. It comes from a line in Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder's writings, "… people who bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe (quoted in Hauerwas, Stanley (2001). With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology, Grand Rapids, Brazos Press, p. 17, italics added)."

Hauerwas' "hero of this book (Peter Ochs, ibid, back cover)," is Karl Barth, whom my teacher Clark Pinnock in the Karl Barth course I took constantly referred to as a "theological Mount Everest". In sheer volume of writings, he dwarfed all contemporary 20th century theologians, having produced as mentioned an unfinished monumental theology in fourteen volumes with over 9,000 pages, entitled Church Dogmatics, besides other publications. And the quality matches the quantity. Many call him the greatest theologian since Thomas Aquinas.

Hauerwas writes that "Barth shows us the way theology must be done if the subject of theology, that is, the God of Jesus Christ, is to be more than just another piece of the metaphysical furniture in the universe (ibid, 2001, pp. 145 & 146)." His rediscovery of God in the Scriptures early in his career as a pastor led to a definitive break with the Liberalism of his time which made humans "the measure of all that is", something Hauerwas dubs one "of the most cherished conceits of modernity (ibid, 2001, p. 145)." For Hauerwas, "The conceptual and moral implications of the claim that God is God and that we are not would occupy the rest of Barth's life and work (ibid, 2001, p. 152)." Hand in hand with this is "Barth's extraordinary claim that Christ is the truth by which all other truth is to be judged… (ibid, 2001, p. 163)." Barth spent a lifetime living and writing about the implications of what he described as a shattering "discovery of the 'strange new world within the Bible' (ibid, 2001, p. 150)." This is not unlike the "strangely warmed" heart of John Wesley, or Augustine's discovery of how to fill his God-shaped vacuum, or the fire of Blaise Pascal's vision.

Says Hauerwas, "Barth had a single concern: to use every resource at his disposal to show that our existence and the existence of the universe are unintelligible if the God found in Jesus Christ is not God (ibid, 2001, pp. 190 & 191)." Thus, "For Barth, to be a Christian, to anticipate here and now the future universal praise of God, is to be a member of a limited and prophetic minority (ibid, 2001, pp. 197 & 198, italics added)."

In Hauerwas' last lecture entitled, "The Necessity of Witness", two persons are presented as examples of those who lived or live out and point to a reality first and foremost to be embraced by the "politics called church (ibid, 2001, p. 239).", namely that "the cross and not the sword reveals to us the very grain of the universe (ibid, 2001, p. 230, italics added)."

This third minority position, that would live out of biblical faithfulness to doing politics according to the nonviolent way of Jesus, is as utterly overwhelming as it is captivating.

Conclusion: To Live in Three Minorities Presupposes Grace
And the conclusion of this entire matter? I believe the Christian call is to three minorities:

¢          over against those who would not see Jesus, we choose to see him as Saviour and Lord of the kosmos;

¢          over against those who would not follow Jesus in the costly discipleship of the nonviolent way of the cross, we try to live out the then of eschatological cosmic peace now, working towards "demonstration plots" of Kingdom Come like Restorative Justice practices worldwide;

¢          and over against those in a postmodern world who are suspicious of the biblical text, of all texts, with Jesus as its central hermeneutic or interpretative guide, we look to Jesus as the premier Exemplar to point us in the direction of "the grain of the universe".

On that note I end as I began with a nod to Dr. Salaquarda for setting me out on a long spiritual quest, and open it up for some discussion.

Amen.

(1) I must add a brief footnote – not in the preached sermon. Yoder, sadly, until his death, was under a cloud due to sexual abuse against various women. To his credit, he responsively submitted to the discipline of the church in line with his biblical understanding.

The Red Tent by Michelle Wiebe-Santschi

Last spring I went to a conference called “The Red Tent” at Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia. It was a really great experience in which Mennonites gathered to celebrate women, worship, theology, and the arts. It was open to both male and female participants, but all of the speakers and artists were women. What I would like to share about is why I am sad when I think about the conference.

I think it’s really good that women get together to talk about “women’s” issues, but that’s not what this conference was about. It was simply women being given a safe place do gender-neutral things. I am sad, because women needed to have a special conference like this to teach, discuss theology, preach, and so forth. I am sad that only a handful of men-mostly college students or husbands of speakers-attended. And I am sad that I was so shocked to discover so late in my life that women can be wise theologians and preachers.

Our problem is not that we need more safe places for women to be active and to be who they are created to be. The problem is our culture’s view toward women and their talents. We have submitted to cultural structures in which human beings are placed on their appropriate level on a hierarchy. The problem is that we judge each other according to gender, income, mental competency, deeming certain people more valuable than others.

My dream is similar to Jesus’ prayer in John 17, for all believers to be one as God is one. There are three persons in the Trinity, each different and equal, but one God. Another example of this oneness is in a marriage, where two people become one but remain two separate persons. We don't need to segregate because we’re different. God created each human being in His image-including men, women, children, the young, the old, the sick, and the healthy. God's plan is for all of us to live as one. I don’t want to have to go to a special place to be given a voice and treated as an equal, and neither should anybody else.

So what is the Church's responsibility? First of all, we don’t need to do the liberating. Jesus died so everybody could be set free and the walls between us could be torn down. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). But this is obviously not the way it is everywhere in the world.

So, second, we need to repent for putting up walls, for judging the worth of God’s creation, for submitting to our culture’s faulty hierarchy, and for committing structural sins. Everybody should be free now and can be, but we’ve messed up. We must admit our wrongdoings and ask God for reconstruction. We are all guilty of these things, including those who have been marginalized. And it won’t change enough if an individual or an individual church changes their thoughts and ways. This is not an individual issue or sin but a structural one.

Third, once we have asked God for forgiveness, we must be careful not to expect the previously oppressed people groups to “snap out of it” immediately and begin to live totally free. We must encourage them, teach them, and give them time to gain back their God-given confidence. Healing doesn't happen overnight.

Finally, we must not be surprised any more to see everyone being treated equally and walking in freedom. We should be excited to see women teaching intelligently or people with disabilities ministering at church or little children giving prophetic words. This is what God wants for his people. This is what unity is all about.

Christianity and the Subversion of Just About Everything! (Part 2) by Wayne Northey

PAUL’S LETTERS AS SUBVERSION

In Galatians 3:26 - 29, Paul says, “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were united with Christ in baptism have been clothed [enduo] with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus....”

What astounding results from being clothed with Christ! All the old conventions, institutions, hatreds, and everything else belonging to the old aeon are done away! Paul may have limited his examples here in keeping with the classic rabbinical prayer he likely knew, which thanked God for not having been born a Gentile, slave, or woman! But the examples doubtless extend to all orders of creation and hierarchies caught up in radical sinfulness. Paul clearly will have none of them!

Religious intolerance, slavery, and patriarchy are all enemies of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. All these are entrenchments of cultural, societal norms and mores that the Gospel writers set out vigorously to subvert and overcome. In Paul’s allusion to the “sons [and daughters] of God,” one can hear echoes of “the glorious freedom of the children of God” already discussed in Romans 8. Over against all such social conventions, traditions, structures, institutions, norms, mores, etc., Paul’s cry is, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery (Gal. 5:1).”

The immediate context of Paul’s letter to the Galatian church was judaistic legalism which he so vehemently resisted throughout his letter. Doubtless his allusion to a “yoke of slavery” and to Christians’ being ...” enslaved by the basic principles of the world (4:3b)” was in keeping with the “bondage to slavery” of all creation in Romans 8. According to Paul, What God is about, in Christ Jesus, is nothing less than the complete subversion of all these elemental, longstanding and perverse ways of destructive relationships throughout history.
Writers of New Testament scriptures taught the complete subversion of all hierarchy, chain of command, or brutal authority legitimized by the church during medieval Christianity or any other era. To Paul, Peter and Jesus, hierarchy was as surely anathema as judaistic legalism. There is only one legitimate archy, namely the Kingdom of Jesus, over against which all other archies or hierarchies are illegitimate pretenders. In Jesus’ kingdom, the way of all relationships was exemplified when Jesus took the servant role, and washed his disciples’ feet.

In Ephesians 5:21 Paul admonished both male and female to be mutually submissive. While such submission among believers was an “end” called for by New Testament writers, unilateral submission (nonretaliation) was also a means to the end of overcoming the enemy with good. Peter especially encouraged this, saying, ...” so that ... they [husbands] may be won over without talk by the behaviour of their wives... (l Peter 3:1). “

Further as example of such submission, Paul advised Onesimus, a run-away slave who had become a believer, to return voluntarily to his owner Philemon, urging Philemon to welcome Onesimus ...” no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother” (Philemon 16). On the surface this gesture appears to be have been a denial of the freedom which everyone created in God’s image should rightfully have. In the long run however, Paul told both master and slave that mutual submission was the only “Charter of Freedom” guaranteed to free them both from that contextual enemy, the institution of slavery. In God’s good time, or by the end of time, both would be free indeed. Paul counselled submission to the power of the state, knowing that one day, within or at the end of history, its power will be overcome. In chapter Ten of his book, Christian Anarchy Vernard Eller lays out delightfully the implications of this counsel. In it he ruminates “On Ways More than One of Skinning Cats or Accomplishing other Good Ends (1987, p. 237).”

Likewise Paul counselled children to submit to parents, knowing that, apart from the promise of Deut. 5:16, there was no other way to overcome abusive fathers who provoke their children to wrath. (Compare Eph. 6:4, and Col. 3:21). (6)

The entrenchments of destructive relationships among fallen humanity can be found in all cultures and societies, and show up in myriads of hierarchies of abusive and oppressive power against others. Jesus described these as “lording it over others” (Matt. 20:25). Jesus taught and demonstrated the way of hope to overcome them all; not through violence and retaliation, but love.

There is nothing in what Jesus taught that is even remotely a call to conservatism or the status quo! Jesus calls his people to love intensely the enemy, and so to become a survivor in an ultimate way. To overcome the enemy means one freely chooses to suffer the wrong rather than inflict suffering. To overcome evil with good is pursued even if the attempt is the way of suffering and death. Jesus exemplified this, responding to his immediate enemies at the crucifixion with “Father forgive them”! The same cry was heard from the lips of the first Christian martyrs (witnesses), and repeatedly down through the centuries. But it has often been muted or relegated to an inimitable counsel of perfection outside the realpolitik of life. The cry is unthinkable for the average Christian; it is at least so for the state in response to domestic or foreign enemies.

The Christian does not rise above the Master in this regard. There is no better way than Christ’s way of resolutely loving the enemy and doing so in the sure hope of the resurrection! However the Christian church over the length of the Christian era has tended to think it could do better than Christ. Hence John Yoder asserts that the church failed even when it “succeeded” through use of “power over.” The original Gospel of subversion by love became inverted into religious social power and tyranny, practised and promulgated by the church throughout most of the Western Christian era. This inversion remains, I suggest, a primary contributing factor to the great modern-day rejection of Christian faith in the West. It is similar in cultural impact to the idolatry of front-end “rationality” which has dominated Western culture since the Enlightenment (though is now being displaced by “post-modernism” at the end of the 20th century. (7) )

Throughout most of church history, the “fruits” of Christianity appear to be directly opposite to its ideal of love! One writer, in examining contemporary manifestations of the evangelical movement said there is lots of faith, much hope, but no charity (Haiven, 1984)! Is this not perhaps why there is such a pressure on Christians to relativize the absoluteness and finality of the revelation in Christ? Christian mission has often presented an image of a triumphalistic Christ bent on destroying rather than liberating humanity and culture. Missionaries have too often employed the “military secret” of Hudson Taylor who preached the Gospel in the wake of British gun boats. There appears to be profound truth in seeing the church’s violence as one reason for the great rejection of Christian faith within Western culture which the church so profoundly shaped and nurtured. Christ rejected violent scapegoating but the Western church has been a prime instigator or supporter of scapegoating throughout Western history.

The uniqueness of Christian truth rightly stands against culturally driven pressures to privatize and relativize Christ’s saving work. This applies also to the social and political application of Christ’s saving power. The tendency has been to allow Christian social ethics to become clothed in that which was contrary to the way of Christ; as contrary as any notion that there can be any other Light of the world than Jesus, or any other Way to God, than ultimately through Christ.

The entire third chapter of Paul’s letter to the Colossian church rings with the same need to be clothed with Christ to overcome the old ways of relationships. In verses nine and ten Paul wrote, ...” you have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on [enduo] the new self....” This, said Paul, resulted in “putting to death” (v. 5) all manner of personal sins: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, etc. All represented idolatry, i.e., bondage to the old orders of creation. Paul then continued with another list of old orders equally subverted by clothing oneself with Christ: “Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves [enduo] with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.... And over all these virtues put on [enduo] love, which binds them all together in perfect unity (11, 12 & 14).”

According to Paul the language of submission also applied to all relationships so that wives, children, and slaves were encouraged to submit to abusive, domineering, oppressive, ways of being treated. They were advised to submit even though they were created in God’s image. On the other hand Christian husbands were told not to be harsh with their wives and Christian fathers were not to provoke their children to wrath. We know from Philemon that Christian masters were to treat slaves as brothers. All this was urged precisely in the hope of ridding oneself of whatever belongs to the “earth.” It was thus possible to subvert all fallen relationships, and move toward the new kingdom reality of the “glorious freedom of the children of God.”

There is one further statement made by Paul to consider, Phil. 2:1 - 11. This was likely an early Christian hymn. In verse 8 Paul wrote, ...” [Jesus] humbled himself and became obedient to death even death on a cross!” This is the language of submission, this time to the “last enemy” (I Cor. 15:26). Again the model of freedom by submission emerges. Submission to death is the means for a complete reversal of death to life.

Paul here repeats his death-resurrection message as in I Cor. 15:26 & 27, “For he [Jesus] must reign until God has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he ‘has put everything under his feet’.” This “everything” includes “all dominion, authority and power” (v. 24) - the precise language of the state. So we read again in Phil. 2:9 - 11: “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (verses 9 - 11).”

The pattern is consistent. Submission in the form of nonretaliation to an enemy is God’s way to know full freedom and victory. The call is to constant subversion of all the old orders of creation, in order to effect “the glorious freedom of the children of God.” Submission to and nonretaliation towards one’s enemies are God’s means to overcome the enemy with the greatest good - making him or her a friend! For this is what God did to us while we were yet sinners, and his enemies (Rom. 5:6 - 11).

SOME APPLICATIONS

1. A call to ongoing conversion

There are some who argue that the early church was not primarily or consistently pacifist since it so easily changed to a diametrically opposite mode in the early fourth century.

This argument is obviously specious. But it is easy to understand how the church abandoned this call to faithfulness to the nonretaliatory way of the crucified God. One need only attempt trying to apply the principles of nonviolence and loving the enemy in one’s personal life for a day, or even a week! One quickly discovers how opposite the natural human bent is, and how lacking in will, creativity, and imagination we all are, to apply loving subversion to all spheres of human relationships. So when the church suddenly was offered power in the fourth century, it was an irresistible temptation in that historical context. It had scarcely emerged from ruthless state-sanctioned persecution, and the temptation was too great.

The temptation to resort to power is present whenever one is in a position of power. Refusal to resort to retaliation requires a unique resolve which the church had originally affirmed then largely let go. There is a circumstance one might call “Constantine’s Law” whereby those with power invariably resort to the full use of power (especially retaliation and scapegoating), unless an ethical principle stops them. As soon as the Americans had nuclear weapons, they used them, and have threatened their use ever since. It could not have been otherwise, and will not be in any future confrontation of super-powers - without a countervailing ethic. Living out this lifestyle of subversion consistently is a call to endless conversion. It is a highly demanding call, not immediately attractive at all.

2. We live with both good and evil

According to New Testament writers the Gospel is subversive of all fallen orders of creation. But it does not follow that the various institutions, conventions, traditions and governments, etc., under which influence we all live, are “totally depraved.” Rather, just as in our fallen humanity, the image of God, built into us at creation, is never extinguished, however marred. So within the most fallen of structures some good shines. For example women in our Western Christian culture have been considered inferior over the centuries, but chivalry at least offset the total trampling of women’s dignity and rights.

It is true that power over others can be used for good. This is the case for instance in disciplining children, but it can be so easily abused. Jacques Ellul warned somewhere that the State’s prosperity always implies the death of innocents. The early Christians were nonetheless immensely grateful for the pax Romana (the great peace of the Roman Empire secured through tight military control), although they knew all too well Rome’s evil too. Until Constantine, they had a love-hate relationship toward the Roman Empire. They recognized that, embryonic in every state, is the head of the Beast.

Capitalism, despite its basis in avarice, and the resulting oppression of many, has done much good for many people. Also communism and socialism, despite all the trampling of individual freedoms and rights, have served the poor well in some countries.

However pragmatism per se is no reason for judging any system as good. Compared to God’s kingdom in Jesus Christ, there is no “order of creation” that is good, no not one! Everything is in need of liberation ...” from bondage to decay ....” The good is invariably mixed in with the evil, the weeds with the wheat. We must hold out for the good, seek to root out the evil, but carry this out in a spirit of humble compassion for those who broker power.

In my work within the Canadian criminal justice system I have seen my role as subversive of much within it. From the overarching goals of those in power who run the system, and on down, what occurs is often contrary to the message of this paper. This is not to say that the entire system is bad, and certainly in no way do I suggest that those who work in it are evil! But I argue that the system is seriously flawed, and needs constant changing in the direction of kingdom peacemaking values.

As Jesus talked about being “in the world but not of it.,” Christians are to be active subverters of all the old, fallen ways. So I strive to be ‘in the system of criminal justice, but not of it’. I want to subvert and thus overcome everything which is at enmity with the Gospel of Christ. But I want to do so in the spirit of Peter’s admonition, ...” with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behaviour in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. It is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil (I Peter 16 & 17).”
3. Christians and the exercise of power

I am convinced that the biblical message is a glorious Emancipation Proclamation. It leads to the subversion of just about everything in human relationships which prevents humans from fully embracing freedom and shalom, and from developing to their full potential. Freedom is not something to be grasped at any more than Jesus grasped at equality with the Father according to Phil. 2:6. Nor is subversion something to be imposed upon those holding oppressive sway over others by engaging in power-plays.

The early church knew that in Christ women were liberated from male domination. It also understood the cruelty and evil of the tyranny of Rome and hence permitted among them those who bore incipient revolutionary attitudes against Rome. To them all Paul counseled loving submission to one’s enemy, and mutual submission of women to men and men to women (Eph. 5:21), in hope which would not disappoint them (Rom. 5:5). Paul wrote these words right in the context of suffering of early Christians at the hands of the enemy, Rome. Paul told the Christians that God had poured out His love into their hearts by the Holy Spirit. He reminded them again that the Christians’ use of the subversive power of Love is in direct inverse relationship to the cruelty and violence of the enemy. Only love works when one subverts an enemy. But when the church accepted the invitation to become a major power within the evil Roman state church leaders also embraced the very evil that had suppressed them. Incredibly the church took up arms.

Eventually, overcoming the evil Empire led the 4th century church leaders to embrace the very evil of the Empire. In similar manner emancipation of black slaves in America led to bitter black-white relationships ever since. Has modern-day Israel so quickly forgotten its Holocaust, that it now readily employs violence towards its domestic and foreign enemies? The Christian-led women’s liberation movement of last century has given way in many quarters to a radical feminism more counter-oppressive than much male chauvinism. Radical feminism has contributed to a worse denial of heterosexual relations than the Augustinian perversion leading to celibate monastic and priestly vows. (8)

Paul and the early church knew that in human relationships submission and love were the only safe ways for Christians to exercise power. The Christian’s uppermost motivation was to serve the neighbour or the enemy, and to refrain from ever engaging in injurious wrongdoing to anybody. “Love does no harm to its neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom. 13:10).”

4. Working for political change

Christians must ever be vigilant about employing political processes to achieve victory. Jacques Ellul in The Political Illusion (1972) speaks to this point well. The early church “overcame” the evil of the Roman Empire by finally gaining legal status, but the victory was, in Kee’s words, a “Judas kiss (1982),” or as previously described, a Pyrrhic victory. Rather than be free in Christ, the church entered a new bondage to the abuse of power and violence. This was an enslavement not readily recognized as a defeat in the very jaws of political victory. Pragmatism in the social ethics of Western Christianity has apparently provided greater motivation for Christians than faithfulness to Jesus Christ. This is seen for instance in such notions as “just war.” Over against Jesus’ alternate way of subversion, Christians may “win,” but lose in the long run. Remember Paul’s words: ...” hope that is seen is no hope at all (Romans 8:24).”

The ethics of Jesus make for a chronically unsettling way for Christians to live. Jesus’ ethic of love is alien to much exercise of power, even though deeply concerned about the life of humanity under political powers and authorities. Jesus’ ethic makes it difficult to put down roots or to build monuments for posterity. But this should not surprise us, given, for example, the language of Hebrews 11 - 13: “And they admitted that they were foreigners and strangers on earth... looking for a country of their own... a better country - a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city [polis] for them... here we do not have an enduring city [polis], but we are looking for the city that is to come (11:13b;16 & 17; 13:14).”

Despite their relative legitimacy, all earthly political institutions fail to approximate the Kingdom of God. It is an illusion, as held by postmillenialists, that one can establish fully God’s kingdom within the polis of fallen human history. To try through power brokering is to create a nightmare of varying degrees of horror. Pope Gregory’s Holy Roman Empire, Calvin’s Geneva, Cromwell’s England, Puritan colonial America, not to mention similar failed attempts in Western democracies, etc., are all examples of such terror and folly. Writers of New Testament scriptures say that the only way Christians can influence the polis for good according to dynamics of the coming kingdom, is from a position of relative powerlessness. The Christian’s influence rests in truth, spoken and acted out in love towards all one’s neighbours and enemies.

C. J. Cadoux, in an Epilogue to his study of the pre-Constantinian church, The Early Church and the World (1925 & 1955), says of the early church era: ...” we certainly have a moral reformative movement on a scale and with a potency unparallelled at any other epoch before or since... the achievements of the early Church can defy comparison with those of any other moral or religious movement known to history (p. 611) (9).” But this powerful effect upon the polis was achieved without Christians’ having had even a legal standing within the Empire! It was done from the position of weakness and political powerlessness.

Lesslie Newbigin asked, “When the ancient classical world, which had seemed so brilliant and so all-conquering, ran out of spiritual fuel and turned to the church as the one society that could hold a disintegrating world together, should the church have refused the appeal and washed its hands of responsibility for the political order? (1986, p. 101).” Of course the answer is “No.” But from the vantage point of biblical subversion, should it have taken over the state’s means of exercising power? Are they not contrary to Jesus’ way? He said, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them are given the title Benefactor. But you are not to be like that (Luke 22:25 & 26a).”

What Jesus prohibited is what the church became, and continued to be throughout its quest to be a benefactor of culture through dominant exercise of power. This has persisted right into the era of modern democracies. Jesus said starkly that one cannot be a benefactor to the polis if one exercises power in the manner of the Gentiles. How then is true power exercised? “Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves (v. 26b).” What a stark contrast! But this is what is to be expected from one who came to subvert just about everything! What an overwhelming inversion of worldly ways, of the common bureaucratic notion of ‘civil servants’.

Alistair Kee wrote, “But there is one conquest made by Constantine, the effect of which still continues to the present day, his most surprising yet least acknowledged... He conquered the Christian church. The conquest was complete, extending over doctrine, liturgy, art and architecture, comity, ethos and ethics... But this achievement, unheralded then, unrecognized now, represents Constantine’s greatest conquest, the one which has persisted largely unchallenged through the centuries in Europe and wherever European Christianity has spread...

“To be declared heretical by the norms of orthodox Constantinian Christianity may be a source of relief and encouragement to those who seek to follow Christ (1982, pp. 154 & 169).”

5. Christian spiritual formation

Finally, I am convinced that the only way of Christian spiritual formation, including theological formation, is somehow to learn to identify with the poor, the marginalized, the alien, the outsider, the outcast, the criminal, etc. This means to suffer their pain along with them in empathy or compassion until one reads the Bible from the perspective of the powerless, not the Establishment, the underdog, not the top dog, the poor, not the well-heeled. The early church had just such an under-dog vantage point and from it effected amazing changes within the polis. As Kee wrote at another point: “It is not that the perspective of the early church provides the norm for critically assessing the life of the church today. To the contrary, after Constantine, it is the church under the sway of imperial values which now provides the perspective for reading the Bible (p. 168).”

This would revolutionize Christian education in church and Bible school, home and seminary. What if a student obtaining a diploma from a Christian Bible school, a degree from a liberal arts university or a seminary, or undergoing ordination to Christian ministry, would first be required to demonstrate that real empathetic identification with the poor and with the nation’s domestic and foreign enemies had occurred? This would be doing incarnational spiritual and theological transformation. The Incarnation is unthinkable in the context of Jesus’ hobnobbing with the rich, established, and powerful of his day, of calling down destruction on his enemies, or without intense suffering, pain and even death (10).

Ominous, however, is the obvious fact that throughout the centuries since Constantine, a majority of the great thinkers, theologians and teachers have approached the Bible from the top down, rather than from the bottom up. Is it any wonder then that this doctrine of subversion by love should have been lost to the church over the centuries? Doing theology from the bottom up is like pulling the rug out from under oneself, and turning one upside down. That however is the upsetting Gospel imperative. Jesus’ truth is The Upside-Down Kingdom (Kraybill, 1978).

The non-Christian way to get things done is shot through with selfishness, like a pile of filthy rags. Diametrically opposed is the way of the Incarnation or kenosis; the way of suffering love for one’s enemies. Such patient subversion of just about everything is rooted in the sure hope of the resurrection.

I suggest therefore that the tradition of top-down theological education is itself one of the fallen powers and systems of bondage from which Christians are called to be free. Jesus spoke of glorious liberation from oppressive pharisaic theological traditions.

Church historian Douglas Frank argues that the core characteristic of dominant evangelicalism is a spirit of pharisaism; a spirit not likely easily to disappear from those who in positions of leadership set the evangelical agenda. He yearns nonetheless for, ...” a church that awakens to the Stranger, Jesus Christ, the Jesus Christ of the biblical witness; not the denatured, ideologically and morally useful Jesus Christ of evangelicalism... (11) (1986, p. 277)”

This is hardly good news for some in positions of power and influence within the church. In the 16th century, such used their power to hound, torture and execute countless thousands with whom they disagreed. Today however, the church has no recourse to direct manipulation of state power (thank God!). Persons committed to the way of subversion in the Gospel of Jesus Christ are often simply ignored, or else labelled “saints.” To the latter Dorothy Day used to demure by saying she refused to be dismissed so easily!

A professor of church history once warned me of the dangers of ideological bias in thinking that the early church was essentially pacifist. He seemed oblivious to how that warning could be turned around. Alistair Kee’s book, Constantine versus Christ in this regard is subtitled, The Triumph of Ideology (1981). During personal discussion with John Yoder, he alluded to the fact that few mainline scholars accept his pacifism, yet none generates biblical arguments opposing it. He suggested that theologian Stanley Hauerwas might better have served the cause of Christ by not declaring himself pacifist. He might have instead written his ethics as a kind of fifth columnist, never openly showing himself.

When Christianity Today did an otherwise positive article on Stanley Hauerwas, it was simply said that evangelicals would not like his pacifism! Yet pacifism pervades all his writings on Christian ethics, and therefore must be taken as fundamental to his (biblically based) thought. In his book The Peaceable Kingdom (1984), he recognized that seriously following Christ’ teachings relegates one to the backwaters of debate over ethics within academic circles.

To this, the writer to the Hebrews would say: “Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come (13:13 & 14).”

Sadly, there is a parting of the ways; a parting as serious as the denial of any central issues of faith. Yoder suggests this in “A Critique of North American Evangelical Ethics” (1985). Sufficient to say that the hoary tradition of dominant Christian teaching in the area of ethics represents a fallen power equally to be reckoned with as the fallen power of the state.

A profound reformation, in line with ecclesia semper reformanda, is needed! In the 16th century, church and state on Catholic and Reformed sides of the Reformation sought to oppress, root out, torture, and execute all who took the ethics of Jesus seriously. Jesus’ words then and now are apt, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matt. 5:11 & 12).”

The entrenched hegemony of religious establishments within the history of both Judaism and Christendom invariably have been persecuting powers. It is no less so today, even though the means of violent oppression have of necessity been curtailed in contemporary democratic states.

CONCLUSION

I am convinced that we Christians are not sufficiently converted. This is the reason the Gospel as Subversion is overlooked and missed. It is also the reason the Bible has been consistently used in support of the conservative status quo whereby the exercise of oppressive power over others is perpetuated.

So that we may begin to see the kingdom right side up we need to be fully stood upside down! This cannot be accomplished by the pharisee amongst us! Our hermeneutics of reading the Bible must change. Paul said: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Eph. 6:12).” And again: “The creation waits in eager expectation ... [to]... be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Rom. 8:19 & 21).”

What a PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION! What a hope and prospect! We may now begin to know something of the stirrings of that freedom. We venture out in faith empowered by the crucified and resurrected one, who overcame evil by doing good. This same resurrected Jesus founded a movement destined to culminate one day in the subversion of just about everything!

Bibliography

Alexander, John. 1986. Your Money or Your Life: A New Look at Jesus’ View of Wealth and Power, San Francisco: Harper and Row.

Alison, James, O.P. 1993. Knowing Jesus, Springfield: Templegate Publishers.

Alison, James, 1996. Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company.

Alison, James, 1998. The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes, New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company.

Andersen, Hans Christian. 1949. The Emperor’s New Clothes, Illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.

Bailie, Gil. 1995. Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, New York: Crossroad.

Bauer, Walter, Arndt, William F., and Gingrich, F. Wilbur, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957.

Berman, Harold J. 1983. Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Billingsley, Lloyd. 1986. The Absence of Tyranny: Recovering Freedom in Our Time, Portland: Multnomah Press.

Cadoux, Cecil John. 1925 & 1955. The Early Church and the World: A History of the Christian Attitude to Pagan Society and the State down to the Time of Constantinus, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.

Eller, Vernard. 1987. Christian Anarchy: Jesus’ Primacy over the Powers, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Ellul, Jacques. 1972. The Political Illusion, New York: Vintage Books.

Ellul, Jacques. 1980. ‘Anarchism and Christianity’ , Katallagete, Fall, pp. 14 - 24.

Ellul, Jacques. 1991. Anarchy and Christianity, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Frank, Douglas. 1986. Less Than Conquerors: How Evangelicals Entered the Twentieth Century, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Girard, René. 1986. The Scapegoat, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Girard, René. 1987. Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Haiven, Judith. 1984. Faith, hope, no charity : an inside look at the born again movement in Canada and the United States, Vancouver: New Star Books.

Hamerton-Kelly, Robert. 1992. Sacred Violence: Paul’s Hermeneutic of the Cross, Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Hamerton-Kelly, Robert. 1994. The Gospel and the Sacred: Poetics of Violence in Mark, Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Hauerwas, Stanley. 1984. The Peaceable Kingdom, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Kee, Alistair. 1982. Constantine versus Christ: The Triumph of Ideology, London: SCM Press Ltd.

Kraybill, Donald B. 1978. The Upside-Down Kingdom, Scottdale: Herald Press.

Lasserre, Jean. 1974. War and the Gospel, Scottdale: Herald Press.

Meurer, Siegfried. 1972. Das Recht im Dienst der Versöhnung und des Friedens: Studie zur Frage des Rechts nach dem Neuen Testament, Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments, herausgegeben von Prof. Dr. O. Cullman und Prof. Dr. H. J. Stoebe, Band 63, Zürich: Theologischer Verlag.

Newbigin, Lesslie. 1986. Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Nelson, Jack A. 1980. Hunger for Justice: the politics of food and faith, Maryknoll: Orbis Books.

Stassen, Glen H. 1992. Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Justice and Peace, Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press.

Williams, James G. 1991. The Bible, Violence and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of Sanctioned Violence, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco

Williams, James G. 1996. The Girard Reader, New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company.

Wink, Walter. 1986. ‘On Not Becoming What We Hate’, Sojourners, November, pp 14 - 18.

Wink, Walter. 1984. Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament, The Powers: Volume One, Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

Wink, Walter. 1986. Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence, The Powers: Volume Two, Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

Wink, Walter. 1987. Violence and Nonviolence in South Africa: Jesus’ Third Way, Philadelphia: New Society Publishers.

Wink, Walter. 1992. Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Yoder, John Howard. 1984. The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Yoder, John H. 1985. ‘A Critique of North American Evangelical Ethics’, Transformation, January/March 1985/Vol. 2/No.1, pp 28 - 31.

ENDNOTES

6(6) This of course raises troubling questions about domestic violence. The argument of this paper is: submission means refusal to retaliate in kind to be sure, but also to overcome the evil of child abuse, spousal abuse, elder abuse, etc., with good. How that is done is problematic in a culture that inflicts pain for pain inflicted so routinely that any intervention to stop abuse carries with it an inevitable sting against which this paper is arguing. Much more work needs to be done beyond the scope of this paper on how to overcome the evil of domestic violence in a nonretaliatory way.

7(7) A philosophical rule of thumb is: The reigning worldview of today becomes inevitably the myth of tomorrow. Lesslie Newbigin in Foolishness to the Greeks (1986), argues persuasively against the so-called “modernism” of the Enlightenment. René Girard, Gil Bailie, James Alison and others, mentioned in the NOTE at the essay’s end, deal with the Gospel’s revolutionary demythologizing power from a literary and anthropological perspective. A similar book to Newbigin’s needs to be written entitled, A Stumbling Block to the Powerful, that would present the case for the nonviolent way of the cross against all legitimations of resort to violence and scapegoating. Both titles arise from Paul in I Cor. 1:18ff.

8(8) Walter Wink provides many illustrations of a similar point in a disturbing article entitled: ‘On Not Becoming What We Hate’, the first of four which appeared in Sojourners, November, 1986, through February, 1987.

9(9) Such a claim could likewise be made concerning the church growth of this time. This is one reason, incidentally, why so much current witnessing seems to be, to steal a phrase from Sojourners magazine, ‘evangelism without the Gospel’. For what shall it profit one to evangelize the whole world, and never preach nor demonstrate the Gospel? In our evangelistic efforts are people really being called to a metanoia in their behaviour? If Instead only some kind of mere change of belief is in view, quite abstract and highly individualistic, is this Christian conversion at all? While there is a need for a change of belief, this is barely the beginning of the matter - certainly not in Jesus! It seems such minimalist Christianity arises from a footnote theology of John 3:16 that reads: “Except out enemies!” after “For God so loved the world,” “whoever believes,” and “shall not perish.”

10(10) It would mean as well a great hesitancy in the use of the electronic media, since they are intrinsically so opposite to incarnational ways.

11(11) John Alexander similarly dedicates his book, Your Money or Your Life: A New Look at Jesus’ View of Wealth and Power (1986), to his father this way: “He is an unusual fundamentalist; for he believes that inerrancy extends to the teachings of Jesus.”

Christianity and the Subversion of Just About Everything! (Part 1) by Wayne Northey

PREFACE

The Christian witness in the Western world has been exceptionally weak in this century. Outside of a few arenas, where the church is being persecuted, the world has had a greater impact on the church than the church has had on the world. In most instances the message of the Gospel has been lost through Christians exercising power and influence over people rather than living by the truth of the gospel. Christians have been so concerned about being relevant and effectual that they have lost their first love - the relationship to Christ that issues in a life lived “in Christ.”

Christians have not realized the extent to which the powers of darkness have conquered the church. Its members have accepted the methods of power, influence and dominance and have become persecutors rather than be sufferers for the sake of Christ. In fact, most of the more evangelical churches have assumed that the Gospel is about personal salvation only and not about economics and politics. Little attention has been paid to the social, political and economic implications of the gospel. Few have been aware of the way dysfunctional structures, institutions and methods have come to hold people captive. These “powers” have subverted the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This essay is meant to disturb the comfort and complacency of the church and to point us in a new direction - a direction the church has been loathe to take; it is meant to expose the extent to which we have given assent to the Gospel without translating it into everyday living; it is meant to underline the importance of overcoming evil with good; and it explains how the truth of God challenges and undermines the power of darkness operating in the world.

Rather than allowing the powers to subvert the truth of God, the writer claims that when Christians “put on” Christ they subvert the powers of evil. Christians who have put on Christ will manifest the character of Christ in all that they do. They will respond to evil not by doing evil themselves, but by acting out of love to all. In this way the truth will expose falsehood, justice will challenge injustice and love will overcome evil. This is the subversion the author is talking about.

This essay deserves careful reading by Christians and non-Christians alike. It sets out a new way by listening to the words of Scripture and by taking seriously the life of Jesus Christ. It calls for what John Howard Yoder called “revolutionary subordination” to the powers in order to subvert them. The reader will be richly rewarded for reading and heeding this message.

- David Schroeder, Canadian Mennonite Bible College

FOREWORD I

This paper was originally drafted in 1986 after a fresh study of Paul’s teaching about the secular state in Romans 13. It was written to get some ideas on paper, with no thought of publishing it. Since then Jacques Ellul has written an entire book (1991) in response to Vernard Eller’s book (1987) mentioned in the paper. Furthermore, based on the work of René Girard and many influenced by him, the impact of a nonsacrificial biblical hermeneutic is increasing (1). Theirs is a truly subversive way of reading the Bible with conclusions in the same direction as this paper, and much farther reaching.
In 1996 the board of the Christian Conciliation Service of British Columbia encouraged me to make the original paper available now. Time and space constraints prevented inclusion of reference to more recent writings. If writing this now, and with more room to develop the ideas, I would also have included interaction with Walter Wink’s impressive three-volume study of the Powers (1984, 1986, 1992) and the exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount and related material by Glen Stassen in his Just Peacemaking (1992).
I look forward to dialogue with readers and sincerely invite reaction to what I have written. I invite in particular reaction to my reading of enduo wherever power relationships are discussed in the New Testament alongside the so-called Haustafeln. I found this part of my research very exciting. Please write to me at our board address.
Through various discussions and exposures, I am aware that the issues of nonretaliatory submission and subversion are problematic for victims of abuse and their advocates. I count myself as one of those advocates. I have raised this concern in Footnote 5. Truth is always tested in real-world encounters of theory and action. I look forward to robust critique from victims and others active in overcoming specific and systemic abuse in our society. I am convinced the above thesis applies in this area as well, albeit with lots more work needed than was given here. I do not argue that it is right for abused wives, children, racial minorities, and other oppressed peoples to see their condition as valid or justified. On the contrary!!! At issue is rather how one overcomes such blatant evil with good.
Finally, I am thankful to Cliff and Jeanette Ratzlaff for editing and preparing this paper for publication. June, 1998

FOREWORD II

Thanks significantly to the influence of Ron Dart, I am much more predisposed to a positive role of the state. I am convinced however that there is a single biblical ethic for the individual and the state and that the Church’s role in politics is subversive: to hold the state to the biblical ethic, in particular of nonviolence.
So please wrestle with me in the above thesis.
I have not updated the text or references since first redone in 1998.

You may e-mail me at: wnorthey@peacesummit.com. April, 2005

INTRODUCTION

Sometimes in the study of Christian Scripture we see things in a new way to the point of being startled. So it was for me in developing this theme of Christianity as subversion. I am convinced that the overarching teaching of the New Testament regarding God’s relationship with human beings and the creation involves the impact of subversion so sweeping, that one day, in God’s place and time, the old order of things will pass away and God will make all things new! This will occur in one’s personal, private and inward being, and in the entire social-political matrix in which we live out our days (Rev. 21:4 & 5). Paul put it, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation [alternatively: there is a new creation]; the old has gone, the new has come! (II Cor. 5:17).”

I am especially indebted to Jacques Ellul for his paper entitled Anarchism and Christianity (1980), and to Vernard Eller for his book, Christian Anarchy (1987). Both supplied the term “anarchy” for this New Testament call to the subversion of just about everything: certainly of all principalities, powers, hierarchies, traditions, conventions, institutions, structures, governments and organizations, etc. All belong to the sick brokenness of this groaning world; all deny us freedom and keep us in slavish subservience.

ORDERS OF CREATION

The text that all human righteousness is as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6) and others influenced some Reformed thinkers to the doctrine of total human depravity. Conversely however, these same reformers maintained the belief that government, political authority, and control structures within society were somehow less depraved than individual humans. Hence the offices of government were respected by the reformers as part of what would later be identified as God’s “Orders of Creation” (a term originating in the 19th century).

Even though persons in government office were seen as depraved and fallen humans, reformers carried a disposition to obey even “depraved” political leaders. They argued that the offices of state were ordained by God. The offices of state were respected even though persons within the office were believed to be depraved and sinful.

In God’s economy the “orders of creation” doctrine implied that there were human governance systems and structures that were not (so) corrupted as were the humans running those systems. The totality of government was clearly less sinful than the sum of individual humans within it!

It is strange indeed that such theologians during the Reformation period believed the fall-out from sin somehow left the orders of creation largely uncorrupted. It was as if the “groaning of creation” Paul mentions in Romans 8 did not include these orders; as if the “old order of things” in Rev. 21:4 was not a reference to all orders of creation; as if the new orders of creation in Christ did not radically subvert the old orders: i.e. government and human systems of corporate existence.

READING THE BIBLE FROM BELOW

I consider that the perspective from which one’s theology is understood and expressed is central to reading the Bible with a “subversive” or a “nonsubversive” understanding. When Emperor Constantine declared Christianity to be a legal (ultimately state) religion in the early fourth century, cultural dominance enjoyed by Western Christians made it axiomatic that the state be seen as a legitimate “order of creation.” If one reads the Bible “from below,” i.e., from the position of the underdog, the idea of the Gospel as subversion is more readily grasped.

Lord Acton observed that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is a profound biblical insight. The closer the church is associated with levers of cultural/political structures, institutions, organizations, etc., the more likely there will be a “top-dog” theology of social ethics, and it follows there will be less commitment to conduct power according to the Sermon on the Mount. Since Constantine, “top dog” theology has tended to corrupt the biblical message. It is for this reason that Christians within historic denominational and established conventional traditions across the centuries have often missed perceiving the Gospel as subversion.

The Bible was written from the perspective of the “underside of history,” an expression used by Jack Nelson (1980). The Bible was written on behalf of the underdog and the powerless. Christians who are unable to empathize, or identify with this underside view of things are therefore at a distinct disadvantage in correctly handling the word of truth (II Tim. 2:15). I suggest that a “top-dog” theological perspective in Western Christianity has seriously hamstrung biblical understandings of social ethics throughout all the dominant Christian traditions since Constantine.

Alistair Kee argues this at times abrasively (1982). John Yoder does so more gently in “The Constantinian Sources of Western Social Ethics” (1984).

DOING GOOD AS THE SUBVERSION OF EVIL

The idea that God’s Good News in Jesus Christ is about the subversion of just about everything rose for me after another look at Paul’s teaching regarding the state. In the context of early, pre-Constantinian Christian understandings of the state as Public Enemy Number One, Paul called on believers to overcome that evil power, not with a show of revolutionary fervour, equally evil, but with good. Thus, taught Paul, the Gospel would totally subvert the evil of the Roman or any Empire/government.

This early Christian “good” response to evil, as Jean Lasserre points out (1974), was most likely a reflection of their understanding of the Ten Commandments, or Old Testament Law. Jesus sweepingly summarized this law as LOVE for God, neighbour, and enemy. Paul and other writers took up this theme, often dropping love for God because it was so obviously assumed. Paul’s teaching accurately reflected the words and example of Jesus. Biblical writers stressed love for one’s neighbor as fulfillment of the law. Love was the overarching theme of Paul’s entire understanding of ethics in Romans 12 to 15. Christians who love intend no harm to neighbour, and overcome enmity by doing good, not evil.

As recorded in Romans 8:37, Paul exulted, that ...” in all these things ...,” things such as trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger or sword, Christians are “more than conquerors.” For him the source of evils over which Christians were more than conquerors was largely the Roman state. It was the state that “bore the sword” (Romans 13:4). Paul used the same words as in Romans 8:37, “overcoming evil,” again in chapter 12.

Paul understood such conquering over evil in a manner that was a far cry from the revolutionary spirit of some early Christians. Influenced by the Jewish Zealots, they were ready to incite armed insurrection against the hated Roman state. To these Peter likewise wrote about the need for submission to the enemy-state . “If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or as a revolutionist (I Peter 4:15).”

To my awareness, the term “revolutionist” was never used in English translations of the Bible even though, I suggest, it accurately reflects the meaning Peter intended in the above text (Bauer, Arndt and Gingrich, 1957, p. 39). Certainly in the context of first century Christianity the term “revolutionist” was used to describe grievous crimes against the Roman state; something a Zealot, such as Barabbas, would be proud to commit. Paul taught that Christians are more than conquerors over angels and demons. He used the term “archai” translated “demons”; the same archai of whom Paul wrote in Titus 3:1. “Remind people to be subject to rulers [archai] and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good.” Both Peter and Paul, even as Jesus did, said NO to all revolutionary action against the state, and any other “fallen” powers under which Christians were obliged to exist.

There is consistent teaching by both New and Old Testament writers that all human powers and principalities belong to Satan’s realm and that Christians overcome evil by doing good. It is God’s will that by loving the enemy Christians overcome an oppressive state, an abusive parent, a misogynist male, an intolerant religionist, an overbearing master, etc. Jesus’ teaching was submission to one’s enemies, even when they do us evil, though as a means, not an end. Later I will show that Paul taught this most clearly in Romans 12 and 13.

BEWARE WHEN CHRISTIANS GAIN POLITICAL POWER

In our Christian West often when Christians have gained political power, they have used it not to bless their enemies. In past and contemporary times the Western church has for instance blessed state-centred, harshly punitive justice systems, which often have employed torture and execution quite freely. (See Berman, 1983.) The church has avidly supported or even incited a call to arms in response to international conflict ever since Constantine. The great Protestant leader, Martin Luther, called on the German nobility to “smite, slay and kill” all rebellious peasants in response to an early 16th century uprising, claiming God’s complete blessing, based on Romans 13. Thousands were slaughtered. Luther’s views on the Jews were consonant with this, and in this sense he contributed to the evils of the Nazi Holocaust. Christian desire to exercise “power over” has not been the exception to the rule, but precisely the rule that has not readily known exceptions. Christians have throughout the centuries in our Western history been far better persecutors than sufferers.

In light of this we need once more to hear Paul saying that he considers present sufferings [at the hands of the state or other enemies] are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us (Romans 8:18).

CHRISTIANS IN AN EVIL STATE: NONRETALIATION AND SUFFERING

Consider now the theme of suffering as a direct consequence of nonretaliation to one’s enemies. The consistent call of Jesus was to follow him into suffering. God’s communication with the newly converted Saul of Tarsus included the chilling words, “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name (Acts 9:16).” Later, Paul wrote: ...” we are heirs - heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings.... (Romans 8:17).” Similarly Paul’s litany of sufferings in II Cor. 11 abounds with references to enemy-inflicted pain and suffering.

References to suffering made by the New Testament writers is suffering caused by one’s enemies. Enemies were the source of Christ’s sufferings. But after the church emerged “top dog” in the West, in the early fourth century, Christians have “doggedly” pursued avoidance of suffering at the hands of their enemies. To the contrary, and up to the present, they have been willing to sacrifice and destroy enemies for perceived good, and they supported such actions by unbiblical notions of ‘freedom’ (2). Since then the church’s consistent stance and action toward its enemies have been retaliation and counter-persecution. Retaliation is, after all, what one can do when in a position of power, authority, and influence. Powerful people lord it over enemies, regardless of Christ’s teaching and example to the contrary.

Inflicting destruction on the enemy, so utterly contrary to the way of Christ and early church example, was first used against “pagans” in retaliation for pagan-incited state persecution of Christians. Then in ever-widening circles, the church encompassed all other enemies of the faith in its treatment of enemies. Violence against enemies eventually included Jews, Muslims, heretics, war-time enemies, criminals, Anabaptists, Huguenots, abortionists, secular humanists, communists and so on. The list is as endless as the case-studies are myriad.

Since the era of Constantine, the face-saving recourse of the church has been to reinterpret Christ’s teachings so that they appear to agree with this kind of malignant treatment of the enemy. Eventually this recourse included notions of a two-tiered system of morality. This may still prevent individual Christians from personal retaliation against an enemy, but it permits or even mandates the state to destroy the enemy through whatever violent means it deems appropriate. Alistair Kee (1982) points out that this represented an amazing reversal of all that Christ stood for. It lead to the triumph of an alien, anti-Christ ideology that became a normative response to enemies of state and church. Kee described it as a perversion of ethics, widely practised during hundreds of years of church history.

The church, in almost all its denominational manifestations, has simply “put on Emperor Constantine,” instead of “putting on the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 13:14).” It has for many centuries strutted about in clothes alien to Jesus and the early Christians, and, illustrative of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes (1949), there has been only a minority dissenting voice crying out that the church has on the wrong clothes.

SUBVERSION AS HOPE FOR CREATION

Hear Paul in Romans 8:18 - 25: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God... We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”

Notice that the grand theme of this passage, waiting and hoping, is the very antithesis of any form of acting out in retaliation to whatever evil Christians encounter. We are resolutely called to nonretaliation even though that appears as sheer passivity and folly. Paul declared nonretaliation to be “glorious freedom.” He wrote that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

These words of Paul form the key New Testament text for the doctrine that God’s gospel is the subversion of just about everything. Paul used exactly the same language of such subversion in Romans 13. In the Romans 8 text, the grand enemy of all creation is “futility”; possibly with reference to the emptiness, void or chaos out of which God originally created all things. For the effect of sin has been to plummet us headlong toward undoing all God’s good in creation.

Nonetheless observe how God subjected creation to this great, grand invidious evil or chaos and futility! Why did God subject his creation to malignant powers, principalities and powers which hold sway over God’s fallen creation, including all humanity and all orders of creation? The answer is: ...”in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” The will of God, in history and in response to the overwhelming evil threatening his entire creation, is submission, precisely with a view to subversion, or liberation! His modus operandi throughout history (following Eller’s cue (1980)) has been the resurrection.

Liberation is the corollary of subversion. One undermines to free; subverts to liberate. Submission per se is never the end of God’s will. In fact, as an end it is utterly invidious to God’s purposes. Submission is only the temporary means to the end. Brokenhearted love toward an enemy will one day overcome the enemy. It will do so either by the enemy’s freely entering into the overcomer’s circle of friends, or by the enemy’s experiencing the consequence of wrath and judgment freely chosen. For love denied is ultimate wrath and destruction.

Whenever Paul is interpreted as conservative and status quo toward the social institutions of his day, his message of subversion is misunderstood or altogether missed. Means have been mistaken for ends. Paul wants to conserve precisely nothing of creation’s “bondage to decay.” He strenuously rejects buttressing the status quo of rotten social institutions and conventions, whether they be state-citizen, Jew-Greek, master-slave or male-female relationships.

God’s grand movement and strategy in history has been and still is submission to the enemy. In the spirit of Jesus, God calls his people to turn the other cheek, give one’s cloak if the tunic is taken, go the extra mile (Matt. 5:39 - 41), in hope that one day, by the mighty power of the resurrection, there will be glorious liberation of all God’s good creation from bondage to the enemy. The Christian’s hope rests in the resurrection power of Jesus that will one day gloriously reverse this terrible process of decay.

Jesus submitted to his enemies in a double sense; first, to his arch-enemy, the evil one, and second, to the Roman state. But in the process, he triumphed over them. He turned the other cheek to the Roman state without reviling and allowed his clothes to be stripped from his back without calling twelve legions of angels. He went the extra mile, carrying the cross to Golgotha, even when it meant certain death. Thus by abject submission he broke the power of the state, though not without being executed in the process.

Alas, when the early fourth century church triumphed over the state, it was a Pyrrhic victory. The church was seduced to employ the very means of obscene power consistently denied Christians by Jesus and Paul. Progressive secularization in the West of the state within the past four hundred years has broken the abominable relationship between church and state. In this sense, secularization has been God’s gift to the world.

In the 16th century, Anabaptists (Radical Reformers) called for total separation of church and state. Mostly they defended this very revolutionary stance in a nonviolent, nonretaliatory way. They therefore effected the eventual enshrinement of that principle in theory at least, in Western civilization. Their action led to overcoming an evil which had haunted the church for centuries.

The one consistent and recurring stance of the writers of the New Testament is that the Gospel is a subversion that leads to liberation. Indeed the Christian continues to battle against personally besetting sins, such as lust, envy, anger, bitterness, etc., from which there is also the need for liberation. Paul supplies several exemplary lists. But the Christian’s standpoint to demands for subservience to the numerous power-systems under which we live is rooted in Jesus’ and Paul’s response: liberation by subversion! Theirs was and is a most unconventional way of attaining such a goal. It was and is contrary to all common sense, and most common practice, given our common fallenness.

In this teaching may lie the nub of every revolutionary’s quarrel with Jesus and Paul since the dawning of the Christian era. On first blush, both are mistakenly perceived to be profoundly a-political, status quo oriented and conservative. In no way did Jesus even hint at armed insurrection against one of the most unjust, repressive regimes of all history. On the contrary, he openly rejected the way of the Zealot. Marxists and certain liberation theologians alike are offended at that. Similarly, some feminists are disgusted with Paul’s counsel of submission to patriarchy. And his views seem no better when he comments on parent/child relationships or slavery.

GOD’S GOSPEL IS AN UPSIDE DOWN AFFAIR

Jesus’ and Paul’s counsel was that Christians not react with power plays, retaliation and threats toward the many enemies that hold them in bondage. Jesus’ counsel of submission to one’s enemy has consistently been derided and belittled as politically suicidal, disgustingly passive or as simply impractical in the real world in which everyone else lives. But that is precisely the marvel of “the upside-down kingdom,” that Donald Kraybill argued for in his book by that title (1978).

Peter wrote, “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone, and ... a stone that causes men to stumble; and a rock that makes them fall” (I Peter 2:7 & 8). This Stone is Jesus the Christ! This resurrected living Christ, not an abstract Christ of mere dogma, calls us to radical conversion, to follow him in word and deed, as supremely demonstrated in relationship to neighbour and enemy. “As you come to him, the living Stone, rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (I Peter 2:4 & 5).” The term “sacrifices” here is the same as the living “sacrifices” in Romans 12:1 - 2. Christians offer themselves to God sacrificially precisely so that they may, as Paul wrote in Romans 13:14, be clothed with the Lord Jesus Christ. Similar to what Paul wrote in Romans 12, Peter implied that Christians become “living stones.” Notice that in our words and deeds we are to become clones, as it were, of that original Stone, Jesus Christ.

It is in the very same context of clothing ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ that Peter moves on to discuss the Christian’s response to the state, and he does so in terms similar to those used by Paul. After he calls for submission to the enemy, the state, he continues, “Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God” (I Peter 2:16). Paraphrased, Peter is saying, yes be subversive toward the state, but not in anarchic insurrection (as “murderer, thief, criminal, revolutionist” - I Peter 4:15), for that would be overcoming evil with evil! Through submission the Christian is free from the power of the state, freedom is one’s right as joint-heirs with Christ. Through nonretaliatory submission Jesus subverted every authority known to humanity. God alone has the right to absolute lordship over us. Evil shall not lord it over us, least of all the evil state!

Peter also discusses how Christian slaves should respond to their (evil) masters, and how Christian wives should respond to (domineering) husbands. It is all of a piece! New Testament writers called for love for and overcoming of the enemy through submission; through refusing any show of power-play, counter-force, or retaliation. All called for understanding of what suffering is and means at the hands of the enemy. “For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God.... To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth. When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly (I Peter 2:19 - 23).”

The implication is of course, that neither state nor master (nor counter-insurrectionists!) is capable of meting out anything remotely approaching God’s way of justice. It is not for us to take into our hands, through any form of retaliation, the righting of wrongs and the enforcement of freedom! Biblical freedom is not “the absence of tyranny.” Freedom is not obtained by attacking evil by every violent means known. For the Christian freedom means not to retaliate by resorting to violence. Revengeful retaliation cannot produce the freedom humanity seeks.

Freedom for Christians means to entrust ourselves to God and the ultimate power of the resurrection and love, whether or not we attain freedom from social and political tyranny in our lifetime. Jesus did not. In the litanous description of the suffering of the “cloud of witnesses” the writer of the book of Hebrews (11:39), says, “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.” That is reminiscent of Paul’s words, “But hope that is seen is no hope at all (Rom. 8:24).”

Freedom is God’s will for Christians and the entire creation. God’s way of achieving it is nonretaliation. The great flaw of retaliation is failure to recognize that the very taking up of violent means to establish freedom proves ironically to be only greater enslavement to the fallenness and futility of creation. To react with violence is a perpetuation of bondage to decay desperately in need of the glorious freedom of the children of God. Retaliation only spreads the fire of violence; it never douses it.

Christians do not take revenge; but leave room for God’s wrath. Paul quotes the Old Testament, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay (Romans 12:19).” Jesus, Peter, and Paul all counselled submission seen as nonretaliation to the enemy as a preliminary response leading to God’s ultimate goal; the just overcoming of that enemy. It matters not if the enemy is the punitive state, the abusive spouse, the oppressive master, the intolerant religionist and so on. That is why true Christianity is the subversion of just about everything!

“ENDUO”: CLOTHED WITH JESUS CHRIST

There is a kind of code expression used by Paul on several occasions when dealing with the socially and politically entrenched evil structures of control. To accomplish the task of overcoming evil with good, Paul held that, through resurrection empowerment, it was possible to love the enemy until the death of the tyranny is realized (3)! Such love is profoundly the biblical way of subversion. Paul’s code expression is found in Romans 13:14: “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.” I take these words to mean that it is possible to be so immersed in the words and ways of Jesus in his response to the enemy, that we will respond to all our enemies in similar fashion.

I wish to examine more fully Paul’s teachings in Romans 13:14, appearing in the context of relation to the state. In this text, as well as in some others, is an expression that rises from the Greek word enduo, meaning “to put on,” “to clothe.” But first a quick aside.

In Hans Christian Anderson’s classic tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes (1949), the Emperor discovered, following an outcry from his subjects, that his new clothes ostensibly made of fancy new material were indeed no clothes at all! “The Emperor felt very silly for he knew that the people were right but he thought, ‘The procession has started and it must go on now!’ So the Lords of the Bedchamber held their heads higher than ever and took greater trouble to pretend to hold up the train which wasn’t there at all (1949, p. 44).”

Though Emperor Constantine was not the only person responsible, he best illustrates the great reversal of social ethics which occurred in his time, and has dominated ever since in Western Christianity. A whole new way for the church to exercise its mission in the world was begun. It was the way of political power and dominance. The state church that emerged became unclothed of the Lord Jesus Christ and the newly appointed “Lords of the Bedchamber” typified sycophantic or unsuspecting historians and theologians ever since. Whether Eusebius, Augustine, Calvin or Niebuhr, or countless others, all have, whatever else their otherwise grasp of biblical teaching may have been, pretended to discover in the Bible a social ethic which is not there.
John Yoder best comments on this by saying ...”if kenosis [a reference to Phil. 2:1 - 11, meaning God’s self-emptying in the Incarnation] is the shape of God’s own self-sending, then any strategy of Lordship, like that of the kings of this world, is not only a strategic mistake likely to backfire but a denial of gospel substance, a denial which has failed even when it succeeded. What the churches accepted in the Constantinian shift is what Jesus had rejected, seizing godlikeness, moving in hoc signo [in this sign] from Golgatha to the battlefield. If this diagnosis is correct, then the cure is not to update the fourth-century mistake by adding another ‘neo-’ but to repent of the whole ‘where it’s at’ style and to begin again with kenosis (1984, p. 145).”
In Romans 13:14, Paul’s call for Christians to be clothed with the Lord Jesus Christ is immediately followed by the antithesis: ...”do not think about how to gratify the desires of your sinful nature.” In the context of his letter to Christians at Rome who had felt already the rising threat of imperial power (4), Paul’s call to clothe oneself with Jesus Christ meant not to gratify the sinful nature through any kind of vengeful thoughts, or resort to revolutionary fervour, least of all to any notion of violent retaliation against Roman officials such as practised by the Zealots. Rather, as Paul put it only two verses earlier, Christians are to ...” put aside the deeds of darkness and put on [enduo] the armour of light.”

Jean Lasserre in War and the Gospel (1974) wrote that Paul’s words in Eph. 6:10 - 18 should be seen as key to understanding the Christian’s response to the state and all other power structures. To the Ephesians Paul said, “Put on [enduo] the full armour of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes (v. 11).” In both the Romans and Ephesians passages Paul asks that Christians avoid gratifying the desires of the sinful nature, including all desire for revenge against one’s enemy. Then he goes on, in verse 12 of Ephesians to say, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” The terms are identical to those in Paul’s discussion of the state in Rom. 13. This reflects a consistent biblical view that all states are in Satan’s realm, and are subject to God’s ultimate judgment. The state was indeed Public Enemy Number One to Christians in Paul’s time, but his counsel to the Ephesian Christians was to put on the full armour of God. In Romans 13 his admonition was to put on the armour of light. In both cases Christians were told thereby to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, the only valid Armament, the only true Light of the world.

Why does one put on Christ? “Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then... (Eph. 6:13 & 14a).” The identical Greek term for “stand your ground” is used by Jesus in his admonition in Matt. 5:39: “Do not resist an evil person.” So clearly Jesus’ words as interpreted by Paul in no way represent counsel of mere passivity, or worse yet, sheer yielding defenselessly to evil.
Walter Wink demonstrates persuasively in his book Violence and Nonviolence in South Africa: Jesus’ Third Way (1987), that Jesus’ counsel was the refusal of any kind of “retaliation in kind.” This is the New Testament meaning of “submission.” Paul wrote that it was impossible to overcome evil with evil. All the pages of the New Testament rustle with the call that Christians are to overcome evil with good. Even so the Ephesians passage is fully consonant with the Romans 12 and 13 account to overcome the evil of the state with good. Both are consistent with Jesus’ way and words. He called for submission to the enemy, not like a doormat, and certainly not as an end, but as a means of accomplishing the greatest good imaginable, namely, turning the enemy into a friend! To this end, we must be willing to offer limitless forgiveness to our enemies, as Jesus taught in Matt. 18 (5).

ENDNOTES

(1) See for instance: Girard, (1986, 1987). For biblical interpretation influenced by Girard, see Williams (1991); Hamerton-Kelly (1992, 1994); Alison (1993, 1996, 1998). For a highly original cultural critique of violence from a Christian anthropological perspective, indebted to Girard, see Bailie (1995). For a well-presented sampling of Girard’s thought, see Williams (1996).

(2) Lloyd Billingsley’s book, The Absence of Tyranny (1986) produced by a reputable evangelical publisher (Multnomah Press), is a glaring example of unbiblical thinking about freedom passed off as Christian.

(3) The founder of Koinonia Farms, Clarence Jordan, tells the possibly apocryphal story of a senator who addresses President Lincoln at the time of the defeat of the South with the words: “Mr. Lincoln, we ought to move in now and utterly crush those Southerners!” To which Lincoln replies: “Mr. Senator, do we not also destroy our enemies by making them our friends?” That is profoundly the biblical way of subversion, as Romans 5 so beautifully lays out.

(4) Jews not long before the time of Paul’s writing had been expelled from Rome by Emperor Claudius.

(5) An outstanding exegesis of that chapter, arguing this point well, is found in Das Recht im Dienst der Versöhnung und des Friedens (1972).

Dear Christian Right... by Adam Myers

By Adam Myers

Thank you for your advice on how I can be a more moral person. While I am looking into whether or not depriving gays and lesbians of family rights is a spiritually healthy practice or whether or not a constitutionally protected reproductive health procedure should be struck down by activist Evangelical judges, may I offer you some ideas for your own reflection as well?

War Is a Moral Issue
Many of us believe that a war based on lies is immoral. We also believe that a president who allows over 1,100 American sons and daughters to die because of lies is acting in an immoral manner. We were told outright that Saddam had weapons to use against us. We were told that he was assisting Al Qaeda in their attacks against our nation and others. Then we watched as both of these statements were exposed as lies and were endlessly edited on an almost weekly basis, from having weapons, to making weapons, to having the capacity to make weapons, to wanting to make weapons. We were not attacked by Iraq, and we did not exhaust every possible action before going to war. That is not a “just war.” It would be hard to argue that Jesus would even accept our own criteria for a “just war” in light of his admonitions to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us. War is a moral issue.

Economics is a Moral Issue
One of the greatest concerns Jesus had was to care for the poor. Are we taking care of our poor when a tax cut gives the most money back to those who already have the most money? How about when we engage in policies that seek to reduce the incomes of millions of workers by taking away their overtime pay? Or when we allow the medical coverage of millions of people to lapse because it has become unaffordable? Or when we engage in practices that reward large corporations seeking a higher bottom line at the expense of their hard working employees? Economics is a moral issue. Idolatry is a Moral Issue
In your widespread turn to our government to carry out the will of the Christian Right, you have abandoned our God. We are told to trust in God. The changes that we desire for the world cannot be brought about through laws and policies but through grace and compassion. Bush and the government cannot save us. Neither can Kerry, for that matter. The difference is that members of the Christian Right have flocked to march under Bush's banner with such an idolatrous fervor that Bush comes across as your new savior from those who do not share your cultural views. You went so far as to paint those who did not agree with you as being apostates and heretics. Even if you do not believe this to be true, where is your public outcry while the media portrays the issue this way? Your silence speaks volumes. Idolatry is a moral issue.

It seems that we have much to think about. I hope that we can find common ground in our faith. I hope you can forgive any anger or frustration that comes out in this letter. I also hope that you can come to understand why there is anger and frustration, without attributing it to some un-Christian source. I do believe morals had much to do with this election, but the Christian Right does not own the moral discourse.

Sincerely,

The Christian Left

Adam Myers is a youth minister at Ponte Vedra Methodist Church in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL, and he confesses to being angry when he wrote this letter.You can read more of his work here

The Misguided Quest for Relevance by Kevin Miller

In my more cynical moments, I’ve often wondered what it would be like to attend a seeker-sensitive Buddhist service. Not wanting their non-Buddhist guests to feel ill at ease, I can just picture the monks—who usually go about with shaved heads and orange robes—donning toupees and three-piece suits instead. And rather than chant, burn incense or bang gongs, they would set their prayers to contemporary music—complete with a five-piece rock band—replace the rank incense with inoffensive potpourri, and only bang the gong after the priest made a really good joke during his sermon, which mentioned absolutely nothing about the Noble Eightfold Path, self-denial or enlightenment but contained many pop culture references. Afterwards, we’d all be invited downstairs to partake in a Westernized version of a Chinese meal, complete with French fries, chicken nuggets, and other non-Asian alternatives.

But if I ever chanced to stop by that same Buddhist temple on a day when they weren’t doing their seeker-sensitive shtick, I think I’d be sorely disappointed. Here I had taken time out of my busy schedule to attend a Buddhist worship service with the hope of discovering what these unique people were about, only to discover it was all a sham. These guys weren’t into rock music. They didn’t have hair. And they sure as heck didn’t eat chicken nuggets! In fact, their lives seemed downright difficult with all that chanting, mediating, and heavy breathing. Where was the fun in that? Sure, they had seemed relevant, even innovative at the time. But authentic? Not anymore. Suddenly they didn’t seem so relevant either…

To my mind, evangelicals are making the same mistake as these fictional Buddhist monks. In the quest to convince outsiders that Christianity is still relevant, they have sacrificed the very thing that attracted people to Jesus in the first place: authenticity. It’s a self-perpetuating problem: The more relevant evangelicals try to appear, the less authentic they become, because each step toward relevancy usually involves compromising one or more of their core beliefs or practices to accommodate outsiders. Slowly but surely, the distinctives of the faith are lost as evangelicals become more and more like the culture they are trying to reach rather than the other way around.

In such a climate, we need to remember that being relevant is not about jazzing the gospel up or dumbing it down. It’s not about being trendy or cool. It’s not about selling Jesus like just another quick fix. It’s about truly living out the faith we profess. It’s about being in love with Jesus. Ultimately, it’s about being authentic. In an age defined by cynicism, nothing could be more relevant than that.

Sensitive to Seekers

If this is true, why do so many of evangelicals seem unable to grasp this point? First, because being relevant works—or at least it appears that way. Exhibit A: The seeker-sensitive movement. Faced with the task of evangelizing a nation of shoppers, mega-church pioneers like Robert Schuller, Rick Warren, and Bill Hybels realized that telling people they were sinners who needed to deny themselves and take up their cross was no way to grow a church. Much like their secular counterparts, seeker-sensitive advocates discovered that appealing to people’s self-interest, particularly their negative felt needs, was the shortest route to marketing success, with success defined as adding the greatest number of people to the flock in the shortest amount of time. And flock they did. These pastors now oversee some of the largest congregations in the United States.

No one would argue that winning more people to Christ is a bad thing. However, there is a fine line between accommodating a culture and capitulating to it. By selling people a watered-down version of the faith, you may increase your numbers, but are you really making disciples? Appealing to felt needs and offering Christ as the fulfillment also veers dangerously close to giving the impression that Christ isn’t the end, he’s just the means to an end—freedom from depression, financial success, weight loss, happiness, and so forth. The danger, as Gary E. Gilley, author of The Little Church Went to Market: The Church In the Age of Entertainment warns, is that “If someone is able to satisfy his or her felt needs without Christ, the message of Christianity can be discarded.”[1] In sum, there is a fine line between feeding the consumerism of a “market” and genuinely feeding real spiritual hunger in Jesus’ name. Perhaps the difference lies in whether our motivation to offer spiritual bread stems from Christ's compassion or a church-growth marketing plan.

So the question remains: Does the seeker-sensitive approach—does striving to be relevant—work? Are more people attending church today as a result? Not according to David F. Wells, author of God In the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams. In 1937, church attendance in America averaged 41 percent of the population. Just over 50 years later, it was holding steady at 42 percent. [2] And, according to a recent article in Christianity Today, in 1999 it averaged 43 percent.[3] These numbers show that church attendance in North America is pretty much what it’s always been.

The same goes for church size. Going to Wells again, in 1890 the average Protestant church had only 91.5 members, not all of whom were in attendance on any given Sunday.[4] Today, 50 percent of churches average fewer than 75 attendees per week, and only 5 percent more than 350.[5] Thus, although some of the hundreds of churches that employ the seeker-sensitive approach may be getting bigger, it seems most of them are not. In fact, evidence suggests these few mega-churches may actually be growing at the expense of smaller churches in the same way big box stores are swallowing up local mom and pop concerns. So in the end, the seeker-sensitive movement may be all about consolidation, yet another example of evangelicals being discipled by culture rather than the other way around.

A Growing Sense of Insecurity

A second reason why I believe evangelicals are tripping over themselves to appear relevant is a growing sense of insecurity about their place in society. Even while they enjoy more prominence and influence than ever, evangelicals and their cultural agenda are viewed with increasing suspicion, cynicism, and in some cases, fear. While evangelicals believe they are bringing a positive moral influence to society, many outside the fold see them as perpetrators of intolerance, war, censorship, and repression. Whether or not such accusations are justified is a matter for further discussion. My point is, while the culture tends to view evangelicals as an oppressive, monolithic “Moral Majority,” many evangelicals see themselves as a persecuted minority. In this battle of cultures, both sides regard themselves as the victim.

Realizing they have fallen out of favor, some evangelicals have employed the tactic of affirming points of convergence between Christianity and culture—particularly popular culture—as a way of showing that Christianity is still relevant. Dozens of books, articles, and web sites have been created to this end, including a Christian media conglomerate that is actually called Relevant. Central to this approach is “mining” popular culture for nuggets of truth and then using them to build bridges of dialogue between Christians and non-Christians. It’s the seeker-sensitive approach for a new generation.

While I applaud the spirit behind this approach,[6] it also raises some questions: By catering to people’s fascination with pop culture, are we merely conditioning people to associate the Church (and Christ) with things that are not even remotely central to the gospel? If our main point of connection with non-Christians is in the area of the trivial, how do we move them beyond that to the transcendent? I’m not saying that the arts aren’t important and that there aren’t legitimate ways of using this cultural stage to share the gospel. But people are looking for answers that go beyond their present experience. If all we are offering is a Christian distillation of what already exists, I fear people will quickly lose interest and resume their search for—you guessed it—authenticity.

Thus, if we want to have a truly transformational effect on the world, we must do more than simply mirror our culture. We must serve as a window to a far greater reality—which is nothing less than the Kingdom of God. This begins by using points of connection, such as film, to raise questions that lead people away from a fascination with the trivial and cause them to ponder the deeper issues of life. For example, we might ask: Why are we so preoccupied with popular culture? Could it be that our desire to for entertainment is out of balance, that we are using entertainment to meet a need for something else? If so, what might that be? How can we restore balance in this area?

The Root

I suspect a third motivation behind our quest for relevancy is a deep root of doubt, a sneaking suspicion that Christianity really is irrelevant, that Christ is irrelevant, that if we don’t do something to jazz him up or dumb him down, non-Christians simply won’t get it. Perhaps that’s because in the midst of our outreach opportunities and church programs, we’ve lost contact with the person at the center of it all. Perhaps, and it pains me to say this, we really don’t know Christ. We’ve been “in the Word but not of it.” Our fears about how our neighbors perceive our faith may be largely a projection of our own insecurities.

Aristotle said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I’d change that slightly to say, “The unexamined faith is not worth sharing.” I think it’s time to scale back the outreach strategies for a moment and reacquaint ourselves with the One we are so eager to share. Perhaps we also need to reassure ourselves that Jesus isn’t just the means to an end; he is the End. He is also the Beginning. And you can’t get more relevant than that.

When The Passion of the Christ was released last year, author and pastor Brian McLaren noted that many Christians saw Gibson’s film as the greatest outreach opportunity in 2,000 years. McLaren, however, saw things differently.

Do you want the emerging culture to sit up and take notice? Don’t show them another movie, however great it is. Show them Christians around the world (starting with those who have been given the most: us) who care and give and love and move to serve.

There are millions of poor Muslims who see the West as decadent, strident, arrogant, selfish, careless, and pugilistic, and of course, they are right. Can you see how offering them a fine movie could just make things worse? Instead, why don’t we show them some Christians (in the West but not of it) who are honest, upright, peacemakers, compassionate, humble, and generous?

Our world is torn by ethnic, class, and religious hatred. Don’t show the emerging culture a movie about Jesus: show them a movement of people living like Jesus—people who like him love the different, even the enemy, whose doors are open and tables are set with welcome.[7]

In an age ravaged by cynicism, McLaren argues, authenticity is the only valid Christian response. There is nothing wrong with using a film to share the gospel. But if we are looking to “events” like this as a way of shortcutting the evangelism process—if we’re using them as a substitute for relationship—then we really need to reconsider our actions. People resent the church for resorting to cheap marketing gimmicks to get others to sign up. That’s not the Spirit of Christ; that’s the Spirit of this Age. What people are looking for is the truth. And if we fail to give it to them, our efforts at relevancy will serve only to widen and deepen the gap between Church and culture rather than bridge it. Outsiders will realize we’re no different than they are. And, in truth, we won’t be.

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[1] The Market-Driven Church: A Look Behind the Scenes by Gary E. Gilley,p. 21(found at http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/cgrowth/mkt.htm).

[2] God In the Wasteland by David Wells, p. 78. (more data needed)

[3] Christianity Today, July 10, 2000, p. 20. (author’s name needed)

[4] Wells, p. 78.

[5] Gilley, p. 8.

[6] I actually review films for www.relevantmagazine.com and www.hollywoodjesus.com.

[7] Passionate, But Not for Mel’s Movie (http://www.christianitytoday.com/leaders/newsletter/2004/cln40309.html).

What Must the Christian Church do if it expects to be heard in the new century? by Patrick Keeney

(Talk Given to Lutheran Pastors, Kelowna, B.C. November 8, 2005.)

I hope I can be forgiven if what I have to say to this issue might not be particularly profound or radical, but I can assure you that it is an answer delivered with sincerity.

I want to avoid the temptation to make this talk autobiographical, but I should begin with something of a disclaimer. I don’t profess to have any specialized theological training or knowledge, and while I’ve always had a literary interest in the Bible, certainly all of you here have a deeper and broader understanding of the Bible than I do. My interest in theological and Church matters is strictly that of an amateur, if sympathetic critic, one who has followed these matters from an agnostic’s point of view. I have not been blessed with the gift of faith. I am, as they say, a “cradle Catholic”, and my schooling was almost exclusively with the nuns and Christian Brothers and they have doubtless left their mark. So perhaps I have come upon these interests honestly.

Like many Canadians of a certain age, I have lived through an era which has witnessed the remarkable decline of the Christian Church as a significant social force in this country. And clearly it is more than simply a Canadian phenomenon. John Kenneth Galbraith, when asked what social change he had found most remarkable over the course of his long life, answered that it was the “decline of the Catholic Church as a critical institution in American life.” And I think we could easily generalize this statement to include the decline of the Church, writ large, in other industrialized, first–world nations.

There is of course a vigorous growth of the Christian Church in third-world nations, but I shall not have anything to say about this. I want to confine my remarks today to the situation in the west, largely because this is the only part of the world I feel competent to remark on, and partly because I, like many others in the west, have witnessed this loss of faith in our contemporary society as something of a decline and loss, even as our civilization progresses in so many other ways. Perhaps this sense of loss is nothing more than a romantic nostalgia for an earlier, simpler way of life; the fabled “Golden Age” of yesteryear, where all was right with the world, God was in his heaven, and one knew with absolute certainty where one stood in the “great chain of being.” This kind of romantic sentimentalism is what George Steiner once called the “Nostalgia for the Absolute.” And one must, of course, always guard against sentimentalism and nostalgia, just as we need to avoid the claim to absolute knowledge. Pascal’s formula about knowing too little to be dogmatists, and too much to be skeptics, perfectly captures our human dilemma. It is not pride, but a simple assertion of fact that prompts one to say that we simply know too much to go back to such simple and naïve absolutist pieties.

But nevertheless, when surveying our contemporary society and culture, there is a real enough sense of decline. However we might struggle to define it, and as elusive and imprecise as it might be to categorically state it, something important has been lost. For want of a better term, we might call it a certain corrosion of the spirit – a profound and unsettling occurrence that can be witnessed throughout the western, first-world nations.

We in the first world are, I believe, living in a time of great transition, marked in part by the questioning of ancient traditions, where old certainties are brought before the tribunal of reason and science, and where the authority of institutions and hierarchies are universally contested. There is a general and widespread kind of social crisis and malaise, and the truths and ancient verities upon which we in the west have built our civilization are rapidly being eroded, if not destroyed entirely. We daily bear witness to this on-going phenomenon in our various institutions; in higher education, liberal learning is rapidly giving way to new forms of an industrialized utilitatrianism; in our courts and judiciary, we seem to mistake legal proceduralism with justice; and in our governments, crony capitalism and corruption all too often seem to be the order of the day. One could easily expand such a catalogue.

In addition, of course, we have, over the past 20 years or more, witnessed an enormous decline in the attendance of mainstream churches. Probably there is no more poignant and concrete a symbol of this phenomenon than the on-going de-consecration of churches throughout England and the U.K. and their conversion into urban dwellings and coffee bars. Even as the U.K. population surges, mainstream churches are unable to find sufficient congregants to keep their doors open.

But all these features of the contemporary social order can, I think, be best conceived as a part of a widespread re-orientation of society; an old way of life is dying, and something new is waiting to be born. It is, I think, a simple truth to note that if the Church expects to be heard in the coming century, it will somehow need to take into account these social changes and address them head-on. In other words, the church will have to change alongside society in order to maintain its relevance.

But how, and in what ways, does this Brave New World differ from the old? There are many points of entry into this debate, and one must always be cautious and humble about prognostications of this kind. But there are, I believe, certain features of our own day and age which provide us with some clues. And here I want to borrow from a superb little book by the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, called the “Malaise of Modernity.” In it, Taylor points out that in the west, modernity – by which he means the world from the 17th Century on – has achieved enormous strides in almost every area of human accomplishment: in science and technology, in politics, in social justice, in the more equitable distribution of wealth, in the abolishment of slavery, and so on. It is easy to disparage our world for its many shortcomings, but it would be foolish to deny that we have, by any yardstick, achieved great and remarkable things, accomplishments which when taken together have wonderfully improved the human lot. By almost any index of human well-being -- comfort, security, health, educational levels, and so forth -- we in the contemporary west are better off than any society that has ever existed.

And yet these achievements have come at a cost. According to Taylor, the rise of science and the subsequent “disenchantment of the world” pose a real risk to human well-being. Older systems of meaning no longer resonate with us; the ancient rituals and symbols which once carried with them enormous and powerful significance, have been stripped bare of their profound truths; and there appears little in our world which cannot be subjected to a cost-benefit analysis. For Taylor, reason has become instrumentalized, and kept contained within the service of science. Whereas thinkers of every previous age had stressed the importance of deliberating about how best we ought to live, in our own day reason is reduced to directing only the means of existence, never its ends. This is why Bertrand Russell accused the American pragmatists – who famously proclaimed that the “truth” is whatever happens to work -- of what he termed “cosmic impiety.” On how we should, ideally, live our lives, reason is silent. It has been rendered useless for directing our selves to rich, rewarding and meaningful lives. Whatever meaning we find in our existence, is therefore -- to the degree that it is no longer tied to the rational faculties -- entirely arbitrary: does one prefer chocolate or vanilla? Fundamentalist faiths or philosophy? Charles Dickens or Danielle Steele? Should one be a sinner or a saint? All such value-laden questions are laid on a Procrustean Bed, where the only answer we are able to give is that of the emotivist: it is really just a matter of individual preference and valuations. In the realm of values, reason is mute. Beyond the scientific realm, we no longer recognize objective truths. Valuation of any description, whether they be moral, political, or aesthetic, are simply to be understood as expressions of personal preference. Ultimately, even good and evil are just personal preferences.

According to Taylor, this “slide to subjectivism” results in two insidious social effects: the first is that we have made self-fulfillment the holy grail of modern life; secondly, we have created what Christopher Lasch refers to as the “culture of narcissism”. Both these developments celebrate the individual at the expense of the community and social solidarity, and both encourage what might be called “social solipsism” (if such a thing is conceivable), where there is no “thou”, but only the ever-present “I”.

Our media is constantly filled with bizarre accounts of the lengths to which some individuals go in order to “find themself,” and I’m sure each of you has had first-hand experience with this phenomenon. But what strikes me most forcibly about this particularly modern view of “finding oneself” is that it is construed primarily as a voyage of a subjective inner-movement, of “looking within”. In contrast, for the Greeks, knowing thyself was not the creed of a subjectivist, but rather a call to actively engage with others in dialogue, in community and in action, for it was only in the polis that one could come to know oneself. On the other hand, in the name of subjectivism, modernity breaks the bonds of community, so that society is said to be composed merely of a collection of social atoms, each of us, in his or her own solitary way, radically professing our need for personal identity and self-fulfillment, while, at the same time, denying our ties to others. This narcissistic self-absorption (or self-indulgence) is the dark side to individualism, and it runs the danger of creating a society where, as Tocqueville famously remarked, each is “enclosed in his own heart”; where individuals pursue their own private pleasures and satisfactions at the expense of the commonweal.

In very broad strokes then, this is how Taylor rather pessimistically characterizes our current cultural situation. It is, of course, an analysis which is not without controversy, and it is sometimes too easy to forget that the opposite of individualism is not necessarily a romanticized, communal solidarity, but very frequently the hysteria of the masses.

But on one count of his indictment, I think Taylor is absolutely correct: we in the west, having voided all older systems of their meaning, are still left with an all too human yearning for community, social solidarity and in seeking a higher meaning to our lives. That is, in common with our ancestors, we still possess the human longing to seek connection with a transcendent wider whole and a greater truth. What has changed however, is that the conceptual resources available to us in our public realm seem, somehow, to preclude precisely this sort of enquiry, this attempt to recapture something that is vital to the human good. And it is at this juncture that I think the church has a real role to play in confronting what many see as the hollowness of contemporary life. .

In so far as Taylor’s analysis is correct, then I think that the Christian Church has a vital role to play in mitigating the current culture of narcissism and the corresponding fragmentation of community. The first order of business, of course, is to come to know our own situation; to understand in a deep and meaningful way the various forces that are at play and to take these to heart. I know that this sort of sage advice comes perilously near to the usefulness of telling the batter in a baseball game to “try and hit the ball.” But it is sometimes difficult to avoid the conclusion -- when reading about some of the latest pronouncements of the Catholic Church, for example – that the contemporary Church fathers are not really connected to the same world I inhabit, at least not in any significant way. Positive change and reform can come about, but only after an understanding of our age has been established; to do it otherwise is to be perennially engaged in fighting a rearguard action, a maneuver which is guaranteed to condemn any institution to irrelevancy.

But how, in a practical way, might the Church go about this? How can it ameliorate our modern dilemma, improve the lives of individuals, and renew itself? To put the matter bluntly, I think the church needs to take a vital role in the education of its congregants, and, in general, begin to define itself much more self-consciously as an educational institution (in addition to a spiritual one). The educative mission has long been a part of the Christian ministry, and there is an ancient connection between learning and Christian theology. One needs only think of the establishment of the great Cathedral Schools of Europe – Bologna, Paris, Cambridge and so forth.

But what I have in mind is something vastly more humble than a Cathedral School, more widespread than seminaries and theological colleges, and infinitely more practical. I think that every individual Church and its pastors could, with a modest investiture of time and effort, begin, for example, a series of small salons, where congregants are encouraged to discuss matters openly and freely among themselves, without the restraint of dogma; invite guest lecturers to address various topics in a series of occasional lectures; or more ambitiously, Churches might sponsor through an accredited institution courses leading to university credits or diplomas. One can easily envision a curriculum with wide appeal, and one which could help congregants think through the dilemmas of contemporary life, not to mention going some way toward easing the tensions between the pulpit and the pew.

Education must stand at the fount of any kind of re-vitalized church. It is by far the single most important thing the church can do. And also because, to be somewhat calculating about the matter, there is, I believe, a real opportunity here for churches to renew themselves. Increasingly, as our institutions of higher education move away from liberal, humanistic education, there is a corresponding need to provide in society alternative institutions of learning. There is a gap that needs to be filled, and -- to slip into the language of marketing – an opportunity to exploit. Let me briefly elaborate.
As a society, we increasingly tend to see education merely as a means to an end, so that one is “educated” in order to get a good job. I fear that we’ve allowed our proud Canadian tradition of “education” to become a synonym for what, in a former age, was more accurately and more honestly called “job-training.” It sometimes seems to me that like the boy in the fairytale, we have traded the milk cow for handful of magic beans. We conflate the educational mission of our schools with a vocational imperative, so that our schools, at every level, are seen as institutions whose only mandate is preparing students for the job market.
Hence one of the unfortunate consequences is that our schools have become more and more concerned with credentials and diplomas, with providing students with marketable trades and skills, and less concerned with cultivating in students that same, pure, desire to know that Aristotle spoke of as the defining characteristic of the human condition. But for some time I have detected in students a desire and thirst for what might be loosely termed “spiritual” kinds of knowledge and understanding, ie. those understandings which don’t necessarily translate into “workplace skills,” but which speak immediately and directly to human aspirations and longings: to seek visions of an exemplary way of life, and to seek how we might make that life plausible. Perhaps the best summation of education is given by Leo Strauss: “Education consists of learning to read with accuracy and precision what the best minds have said about the most serious questions.” And it is difficult to conceive of a question more serious than how one ought to live.

What we as a society are in danger of forgetting is that there exists in all of us a desire for learning and knowledge, and that this desire corresponds to a very noble part of our psychic makeup. Learning is, in and of itself, an intrinsically rewarding experience, one which makes us more fully and completely human. And surely, it must be among the foremost aims of the Church to contribute to the enrichment of lives, to liberate us from the contingencies of time and place and from the categories that bind us.

Pied Piper Prophets by Brad Jersak

In Hamlin town, long long ago,
Nobody was happy, no, no, no
Their pretty little town was full of rats!
In everything they ate big holes
And drank their soup from the big soup bowls
And even made their nests in people’s hats

Along came a fellow slim and tall,
And said to the man at the city hall,
My dear, I think I have a cure.
I’ll rid your town of every rat
But you have to pay me well for that,
And the mayor jumped up and down and cried, why sure…

--Pied Piper of Hamlin

Do We Need the Prophets? by Brad Jersak

I would like to give a clarifying word about where I stand personally on the question of “the prophets.” Some folks believe that my teaching on "listening prayer" negates any need or place for prophets in the church today. Occasionally I hear that I've even said, "we don't need prophets anymore," and so I'd like to share my heart on this particular question: