Following Jesus: Journeys in Radical Discipleship - Essays in Honor of Ronald J Sider 1908355271, 9781908355270

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Regnum Studies

Following Jesus Journeys in Radical Discipleship Essays in Honor of Ronald J Sider

REGNUM STUDIES IN GLOBAL CHRISTIANITY

Following Jesus Journeys in Radical Discipleship Essays in Honor ofRonald J. Sider

REGNUM STUDIES IN GLOBAL CHRISTIANITY Series Preface In the latter part of the twentieth century the world witnessed significant changes in global Christian dynamics. Take for example the significant growth of Christianity in some of the poorest countries of the world. Not only have numbers increased, but the emphasis of their engagement has expanded to include ministry to a wider socio-cultural context than had previously been the case. The Regnum Studies in Global Christianity series explores the issues with which the global church struggles, focusing in particular on ministry rooted in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Not only does the series make available studies that will help the global church learn from past and present, it provides a platform for provocative and prophetic voices to speak to the future of Christianity. The editors and the publisher pray particularly that the series will grow as a public space, where the voices of church leaders from the majority world will contribute out of wisdom drawn from experience and reflection, thus shaping a healthy future for the global church. To this end, the editors invite theological seminaries and universities from around the world to submit relevant scholarly dissertations for possible publication in the series. Through this, it is hoped that the series will provide a forum for South-to-South as well as South-to-North dialogues.

Series Editors Ruth Padilla DeBorst Hwa Yung, Bishop

Wonsuk Ma Damon So Miroslav Volf

President, Latin American Theological Fraternity, Santiago, Chile Methodist Church of Malaysia, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia Executive Director, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, Oxford, UK Research Tutor, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, Oxford, UK Director Yale Center for Faith and Culture, New Haven, MA, USA

REGNUM STUDIES IN GLOBAL CHRISTIANITY

Following Jesus Journeys in Discipleship Essays in Honor of Ronald J. Sider

Edited by

Paul Alexander and Al Tizon

Copyright © Paul Alexander and Al Tizon 2013 First published 2013 by Regnum Books International Regnum is an imprint of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies St. Philip and St. James Church, Woodstock Road Oxford, 0X2 6HR, UK www.ocms.ac.uk/regnum

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The right of Paul Alexander and Al Tizon to be identified as the editors of this Work have been asserted by then in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. \o part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in anyform or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or a license permitting restricted copying. In the UK such licenses are issued by the Copyright

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Contents

Foreword Jim Wallis Foreword Tony Campolo

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Introduction Paul Alexander and Al Tizon PART I: EVANGELICAL COMMITMENTS Jesus is Lord Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden 2. ESA and the Church Jo Anne Lyon 3. Biblical Fidelity Craig Keener 4. The Whole Gospel: Avoiding Biblical Malpractice Manfred Brauch

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PART II: HOLISTIC MINISTRY AND POPULARIZATION The Pilgrimage Toward Holistic Mission Samuel Escobar 6. Edge and Wedge: Leadership, Evangelicalism and Social Action H. Dean Trulear 7. Reconciliation and Development John Perkins 8. Simplicity and the Poor Shane Claiborne 9. Word, Work and Wonder as Holistic Ministry Douglas Petersen 10. Popularizing a Call to Sexual Justice Kristyn Komarnicki 11. People Power Revisited Melba P. Maggay

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20 29 42

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PART III: FAITH, DIALOGUE AND PUBLIC POLICY Political Methodology beyond Left and Right Glen Stassen 13. Completely Pro-Life David Gushee

55 69 77

83 95

111 124

12.

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Economics as if Jesus Mattered Bruce Wydick 15. Overcoming Global Warming Jim Ball 16. Bridging the Evangelical-Ecumenical Divide Wesley Granberg-Michaelson 17. Evangelicals and Catholics: A Century of Common Witness John Borelli 18. Civil Discourse Heidi Unruh 14.

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181 189

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Afterword: Generous Christian Giant John Dilulio

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List of Contributors

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Appendix 1: The Chicago Declaration Appendix 2: The Works of Ronald J. Sider

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Foreword

Jim Wallis

Ron Sider is a game changer. Through his thinking and writing, Ron has done more to change evangelical minds and hearts - and the evangelical world - on poverty and biblical justice than anyone else in our lifetime. Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger was one of those books that people read and their lives were changed. No single book has made such a difference in how Christians think and act in response to the fundamental issues of economic injustice in our time. All the editions of it, in all the languages, and all the responses to it (including the critiques that those who didn’t agree felt they needed to make), all prove its influence. All together Ron has written over 30 books that have taught millions of readers about the most central issues of justice and peace, revealed what the Bible says about them, and shown us how we might live more faithfully and practically both in the church and in the world. How Ron has written all those books while traveling the world to teach in thousands of places is a testimony to his gifts, his commitment and discipline, and most of all, the grace of God in the life and work of his good and faithful servant. At the same time, Ron has been one of the key components of developing a theological institution and community - now called Palmer (formerly Eastern) Theological Seminary - which has offered leadership across the globe, training thousands of talented and passionate servants of the kingdom of God. Ron has also been a consistent convener of other leaders and faith communities drawn together for the faithful witness of the church. Time and time again, Ron has sensed the need for a more collective and prophetic witness on the part of the church, or the need to bring the most thoughtful and insightful Christian leaders to focus on issues of deep concern. And when those leaders received the invitation from Ron Sider to help engage these critical issues, they have always responded often gathering together on several continents to pray, think, study their Bibles, and decide to speak and act together. All Ron’s work in pulling such gatherings, projects, and common drafts and declarations together has often gone unheralded, but hardly unnoticed by all who have been involved, and by a God who must have often smiled at the meetings of his people that Ron made happen. Ron has also been central to important ecumenical dialogues between evangelicals and leaders from many other faith communities. His leadership in regular Evangelical-Catholic conversations has been one important example. But Ron’s primary loyalty has always been to his own evangelical tradition and its institutions. There is hardly a Christian college in America where Ron hasn’t

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spoken, often numbers of times. And his decades-long influence with many key evangelical organizations like the Lausanne Movement and the National Association of Evangelicals has been evident. Ron’s role in helping the NAE in developing their most significant and historic document, For the Health of the Nation,1 is just one result of that. I will never forget Thanksgiving weekend of 1973, when many of us gathered together at the Wabash YMCA in the inner-city of Chicago. We were all young evangelical leaders, and we came together for that historic weekend with some of the most important established and more senior evangelical leaders and spokespersons in America in order to try and draft a new document, which was eventually named, “The Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern” (see Appendix 1). Ron Sider was central to bringing that group of young and older leaders together, and the relationships built in those important and formational days have lasted for many years. We wrestled together, prayed together, argued together, and finally spoke together in what was and is still one of the most important statements of evangelical social witness in the last hundred years. I remember it all well, as I was drafted to put together the final version of our document during the final night of the gathering. The next day we all waited and watched to see if we could find a cross-generational agreement to this very prophetic declaration - and we did. As has often been the case, Ron worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make that happen. It is one of the best things that Ron was ever involved with. Ron is also a dear friend and one of my closest kindred spirits and allies over many years and so many projects and campaigns we have done together. We have been to so many of the same places and often together - from the front lines of the fight against poverty and war, to meetings at the White House and Congress, to international gatherings of church leaders, to endless universities, seminaries, and conferences, to countless places on the road in the itineraries of two evangelists for the whole gospel. We have come together in each other’s homes to rest and pray and talk about the things that friends do. It has always been the commitment to “the whole gospel” that has motivated and driven Ron Sider. The power of Christ to change individual lives and the world in which we live has always been at the heart of Ron’s belief in the gospel. Many times I have seen Ron defend the whole gospel of Christ against those who would make it merely a private message or those who would turn it only into a social agenda. I’ve seen his passion for leading people to his living Savior, and for the body of Christ to follow the radical discipleship of Jesus in the world. There have been few theologians like Ron Sider, who have such an interest in and capacity for analyzing public policy, but always subjecting it to the insights of biblical faith. Ron always knows and understands “the issues,” but then delves deep into what the Scriptures have to say about them. There are few people I trust1 1 For the Health of the Nation (Washington, D.C.: National Association of Evangelicals, 2004).

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more at the intersection of faith and public policy than Ron Sider. These essays in Ron’s honor show the depth of his theology and how it influences his views on public policy. Together we helped to create “The Call to Renewal” - one of the most important and influential faith-based efforts in this country to bring faith leaders together to overcome poverty. Ron is also a long-time member of the board of Sojourners where, for more years than I can count, I have continually relied on his wisdom and perspective. And I want to say how committed and supportive of me personally - my leadership, my faith, and my family life - that Ron has always been. When Ron tells me he is praying for me, I know that he really is; and that has meant so much to me. Despite how serious the issues are that we have worked so hard to address, we have also laughed a lot together. There is always a smile behind Ron’s words of wisdom. And that is important, especially when you have given your life to what many believe are losing causes. I can remember when Ron called me one day in 1972 to invite me to join a group he had just started called “Evangelicals for McGovern.” I think he said something like, “There are three of us so far.” And it never grew much bigger than that! George McGovern died at 90 in October of 2012. He was a committed Christian in the Methodist tradition, who actually studied in seminary before deciding to be a history teacher and lay leader and ultimately to go into politics. But it was McGovern’s Christian faith that shaped his two biggest commitments - to end poverty and war. Matthew 25 was the Scripture read and reflected upon at McGovern’s funeral. The vast majority of evangelical Christians voted against McGovern in 1972 and chose Richard Nixon - not the most honest, humble, religious, or highest character person to ever be in the White House. But Ron saw McGovern’s integrity and commitment to Christian concerns, and decided to offer support. As it turns out, our little “Evangelicals for McGovern” group was later a humorous example between Ron and me about how often we have chosen winning sides in politics! But as much as Ron has always been committed to getting things done and done well, I learned a long time ago that faithfulness motivated him even more deeply than effectiveness. So much of Ron’s leadership has been highly successful, but at a deeper level Ron Sider has been faithful to his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; and that has always been what has caused him to get up every morning and go back to work. We have both learned how important it is to find and sustain hope when you are trying to change the biggest things about the world. And I want to say that my friend Ron Sider has always been for me one of my principal signs of hope. Thank you, my brother.

Foreword

Tony Campolo

There is no doubt that Ron Sider has worked long and hard to present to the Christian community-at-large a holistic gospel. Holding down a position at Palmer Theological Seminary, one of the schools that are part of Eastern University near Philadelphia, he has simultaneously extended his influence far beyond the limited sphere of academia. His propagation of a holistic gospel makes no compromises of his commitments to the traditional evangelistic mission to bring persons into a personal, transforming relationship with the resurrected Christ on the one hand and, on the other hand, a deep commitment to the transformation of the socio-economic order into what he believes Scripture intended for it to be. As the founder of Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA), Ron has been a prime leader for bringing evangelical churches into a heightened awareness of the needs of the poor and to commitments to do something to alleviate that poverty. Whereas there was a time in which any attention to eliminating poverty and working for social justice was considered part of the agenda of the theologically liberal wing of the church, Ron has brought that emphasis into the heart of evangelicalism. His book, Rich Christians in an Age ofHunger, which has been a primary means to that end, has been listed as one of the most influential pieces of writing to come out of the 20th century. Ron initiated his worldwide influence at Messiah College, an institution of higher learning created and maintained by the Brethren in Christ. This college located just south of the city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania established a satellite campus more than a hundred miles away in the vicinity of Temple University, a mega-campus located in North Philadelphia. The purpose of that satellite campus was to allow carefully selected students to be immersed in urban life, making sure that they paid particular attention to the socio-economic conditions of their immediate neighborhood. This neighborhood was infamous for its high crime rate, high rate of unemployment, disintegrating family life, poor public education and social anomie. Ron’s task was to watch over the students, conduct course work and seminars for them in which the students could explore ways of impacting the community with the values that are inherent in the gospel. His tenure at that inner-city campus was not very long because he quickly caught the attention of the faculty and administration of Eastern Baptist (now Palmer) Theological Seminary. They recognized that this sophisticated interpreter of the gospel, who had earned a PhD degree at Yale University, would be an incredible asset for their teaching faculty. Little did they understand when they brought him on board as a professor that he would give to the school an

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international reputation. Soon Christians everywhere, not just in the evangelical community, but in mainline denominations and in the Catholic Church as well, would come to recognize him as a world class theologian. Ron became one of the foremost leaders of a new evangelicalism that would have a heightened social conscience. From his base at Eastern, he traveled far and wide around the world to carry his message about a socially responsible evangelicalism. He, along with Carl Henry, the one-time editor of Christianity Today, called together in Chicago, Illinois others who were committed to the holistic implications of the gospel. Out of that gathering came what has been called “The Chicago Declaration,” which challenged evangelical Christians to address the pressing social concerns of the day with action. To understand where Ron Sider is coming from, one would have to take careful note of his roots in the Anabaptist tradition. Like the Mennonite theologian, John Howard Yoder, Ron helped make being Anabaptist a viable option for a generation of counter-cultural Christians who were convinced that the church in general had watered down the teachings of Jesus as part of compromising with the world. Taking the Sermon on the Mount, along with the rest of Jesus’ teachings very seriously and literally, Ron and his colleagues in the Anabaptist community made non-violent resistance as an alternative to war an essential element in the lifestyle of those who would be followers of Christ. Perhaps most important has been Ron Sider’s commitment to simple living. He understands that if the economic inequities that have fostered poverty for hundreds of millions of people are to be curtailed, then Christians specifically “must live simply that others might simply live.” What lends credibility to his call to simple living is that he, himself, has embraced that lifestyle. His family moved into a neighborhood that was on the verge of becoming a slum. Soon his family was joined with other Christian families that shared his vision of how true followers of the Christ should live in this day and age. While many accolades belong to Ron for his commitment to living out a radical, Christ-like lifestyle, what is sometimes overlooked is the incredible influence that his wife, Arbutus, has had on his life and ministry. Those who know the couple well and have traced the marriage of the Siders from their early days in rural Canada attest to the fact that in many respects Arbutus Sider is a driving force in the creation of Ron’s legacy. Her willingness to live in what many would call a dangerous neighborhood; her willingness to affirm a lifestyle that included old second-hand cars as a means of transportation; and her rejection of expensive household furnishings that most middle class families think are essentials, make her, along with Ron, a model of how the Christian life should be led. A couple decades ago, Ron founded an organization called “Just Life” with the expressed purpose of organizing like-minded Christians against abortion as part of a broader consistent life ethic. He saw the rescuing of the unborn as an essential part of being completely pro-life. It wasn’t enough to stand against the

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destruction of life through war and poverty. He believed that consistency required that we preserve the lives of the unborn as well as the lives of the born. Like all leaders who challenged society’s established lifestyles and values, and called for alternative ways of living, Ron Sider has been a target for critics. In many instances, Ron affirms the judgments of those who say that he is subversive. Indeed, he would claim that Christianity by its very nature should be subversive. It subverted the Roman Empire almost 2000 years ago, and those who would be followers of Jesus Christ in ways that Ron’s theology and prescribed lifestyle suggest would indeed subvert the lifestyles and the cultural values that we too readily affirm without asking whether we are living the way that Jesus told us to live. Ron also has a deep concern for what has happened to personal morals of Americans. Over recent years he has written extensively on sexual morality. He is alarmed at what has happened, not only to America in general, but specifically to the Christian community. He sees that divorce has become almost as common among Christians as it is among secularists. He is deeply concerned about young people engaging in premarital sex. His conservative views on some of the behavioral patterns of homosexuals have made him the subject of much criticism from other socially-conscious, evangelical Christians who do not think that his biblical case against gay marriage is as legitimate as his clarion call for Christians to reject Mammon. The effectiveness of Ron has been demonstrated in his ability to rally fellow Christians to the causes which he believes must be promoted if the kingdoms of this world are to become increasingly like the Kingdom of our God. He not only propagates the concerns of a committed environmentalist, but he has been the primary leader for organizing the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN). Formerly a subsidiary of ESA, EEN is an organization that works to protect the environment through education, advocacy and public policy. Ron also started the publication of Prism, a magazine that propagates ESA’s progressive beliefs and commitments. He is a doer, not just a talker. When the day comes - and I hope it’s not soon - that he passes on to his reward beyond time and space, I hope that on Ron’s tombstone would be written the words describing Barnabas in the book of Acts, and I paraphrase, “He was a good man, a just man, and a kind man, and because of him many were won into the Kingdom (11:24).”

Preface and Acknowledgements The seed of this project was our simple desire to thank Ronald J. Sider on the eve of his retirement, not only for his exemplary Christ-centered life and service, but more personally for the impact that he has had on the both of us. It turns out, as readers will see in this book, that our gratitude is but two drops in the bucket of gratitude. Contributors to this volume and many, many more around the world are deeply thankful to Ron for showing the way of faithful and radical discipleship in a wayward and broken world. So, first and foremost, this book is dedicated to our mentor, colleague, and friend, Dr. Ronald J. Sider. Right alongside him all of these years has been his wife, Arbutus Sider, whose light has shone just as brightly as her husband’s through her life as an activist, therapist, wife, and mother. Thank you, Arbutus, for your example, which has inspired this work more than you know. We also want to honor Naomi Miller, Ron’s administrative assistant for many years before her retirement in 2011. Naomi’s tireless work (and her ability to decipher Ron’s hand-writing!) enabled ESA to do what ESA has done all of these years. Thanks, Naomi! We wish to thank each contributor - all busy scholar-activists who paused, reflected, and shared thought-provoking words about their own journeys of discipleship, wrapped in appreciation for the legacy of the Siders. We give a shout­ out to our small but hard-working creative team at Evangelicals for Social Action for making this volume possible - thank you, Kristýn Komamicki, Sarah Withrow King, Rhian Tomassetti, and Josh Cradic. Several Sider scholars at Palmer Theological Seminary - notably Aaron Foltz, Karen Sellers, and Jake Goertz - also did their part in shaping this work. And to our friends at Regnum Books International, particularly Wonsuk Ma and Tony Gray, thank you for all of your ideas, suggestions, editorial advice, and partnership in the kingdom. The cover photo is the famous monument that defines Philadelphia’s Love Park. The City of Brotherly Love was home for the Siders for over four decades, and we could not think of a more appropriate cover than an image of ‘concrete love’, not only to identify the city in which the Siders’ lived, but also to convey what form radical discipleship often takes in the hard neighborhoods of the world’s innercities. Thanks to photographer Matt Harris and ESA’s creative director Rhian Tomassetti for the cover design. In addition to the aforementioned people, I (Paul) want especially to thank Deborah, Nathan, Kharese, and Abigail for teaching me so much about love and life. I love you. And I (Al) wish to thank my wife Janice for being my sounding board for all of my writing, of which this book was no exception, and for being my wisdom and comfort during a hard professional bump in the road while amidst this project. I’m still on my feet because of you! Thank you also to the networking team of the International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation (INFEMIT) - Ruth Padilla DeBorst, Comeliu Constantineanu, Ben Quarshie, Las Newman, Bambang

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Budijanto, Paul Joshua, Marcelo Vargas, Wonsuk Ma, Joshua Banda, and Rachel Beveridge - who have encouraged me more than they know these last few years to engage the world with the gospel holistically and contextually. Thanks all. Al Tizon and Paul Alexander Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University King of Prussia, Pennsylvania February 2013

Ron Sider, circa 1979

Introduction

Paul Alexander and Al Tizon

Two pictures hanging in Ron’s Sider’s office attest to a remarkable journey. One is of Ron outdoors sporting a fishing vest and hat, smiling proudly from ear to ear as he holds up a trophy catch. It looks like a salmon or a steelhead. The picture shows Ron, the fisherman, the outdoorsman; it conveys serenity and simplicity, as well as adventure. Another picture shows him with several others sitting around a conference table with then-United States President Jimmy Carter. He and the rest of those at the table were not passively staring at the president as he gave some speech; on the contrary, the picture conveys Ron as part of a select group of theologians, ethicists, and ministers engaged and interacting with the commander-in-chief, as they discussed crucial policy matters. The picture conveys Dr. Ron Sider, the brilliant scholar, churchman, political consultant, world-changer. This book seeks to honor an ordinary person, a farm boy who grew up in (and still enjoys) the simplicities of rural life, whom God has used to accomplish extraordinary things in the ecclesial, political and cultural arenas.

A Life Sketch Ronald James Sider was born September 17, 1939 in a farmhouse near Stevensville, a small farming community in southern Ontario, Canada. Raised in a Brethren in Christ family, Sider came to faith in childhood. “At about eight years of age,” he recalls, “during one of the regular revival meetings at my home congregation, I knelt at the altar and accepted Jesus Christ.”1 That faith was tested, however, during his undergraduate years at Waterloo College in Ontario (now Wilfrid Laurier University). If it were not for the arrival of Dr. John Warwick Montgomery to serve as the new head of the history department, Sider’s faith might have been snuffed out by the winds of secularism, which were blowing fiercely at the time. Instead, with Montgomery as his inspiration, Sider set out to be an historian and an apologist in a secular university setting. With a BA in history from Waterloo and his bride, Arbutus Lichti, by his side, Sider went off to Yale University to become the Renaissance-Reformation scholar that he thought God was calling him to be. But sensing the need to integrate faith with his scholarship, he took a break at the two-year mark of his doctoral studies in order to get theological grounding at Yale’s Divinity School* 'Ronald J. Sider, Good News and Good Works (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1999), 18.

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just up the road. He eventually completed a bachelor of divinity degree (the equivalent of an MDiv today), before resuming and completing his PhD in history. Amid his historical and theological studies at Yale, Sider immersed himself in the work of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, which provided the context for both the cultivation of his own spiritual growth and the working out of a more holistic understanding of the gospel. The plan after Yale was to serve as a faculty advisor for IVCF while teaching history at a secular university. “But,” as Sider himself explains, “the Lord had other plans. A strong call to be an evangelical Christian in a renewal of biblically grounded concern for social justice began to grow within me.”2*This sense of call guided his decision to accept an invitation from Messiah College to help launch an urban campus in Philadelphia in collaboration with Temple University. This decision, notes Christianity Today’s Tim Stafford, led him away from being a Christian historian-apologist in a secular university to becoming something of a crusader for evangelical social activism? “Instead of publishing scholarly history,” writes Stafford, “he began to write for popular audiences - indeed Christian audiences.... He began to apply his knowledge of theology and history to the problems of justice and poverty and to the responses that Christians should make.”45

Scholarship and Activism

He communicated this vision both through scholarship and activism. He has written over 30 books, but the one for which he is most famous (or infamous, depending on one’s point of view) is the celebrated Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, first published in 1977? Voted by Christianity Today as one of the 100 most influential books in religion in the twentieth century, Rich Christians has inspired and mobilized hundreds of thousands of Christians and churches around the world to care about the poor as part and parcel of the Christian life. His books complemented his activities, which included organizing the Thanksgiving gathering of 1973 that produced the much-lauded “Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern.” This crucial document did its part in reawakening the evangelical social conscience, particularly in North America but also around the world. With the Chicago Declaration as the founding document, Sider launched Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA), an organization committed to maturing the evangelical social conscience. Much of Sider’s work has had to do with striking a balance between social concern and evangelism, i.e., holistic ministry.

2 Sider, Good News and Good Works, 19. ’ Tim Stafford, “Ron Sider’s Unsettling Crusade,” Christianity Today (27 April 1992): 1822. 4 Stafford, “Unsettling Crusade,” 20. 5 Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age ofHunger (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1977).

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Beyond doing works of compassion and justice alongside evangelism, Sider has also championed biblically-informed politics as part of his activist work, urging Christians to embrace a non-partisan consistent life ethic that should inform political involvement. In his own words, “A biblically balanced platform would be pro-life, pro-poor, pro-family, pro-racial justice, pro-peace, and pro­ creation care since God cares about all those things.”6

I Am Not a Social Activist

Ron Sider is associated primarily with the evangelical reawakening of social responsibility and biblically-informed political involvement, and this is not inaccurate. However, Sider’s great contribution in this area is but a part of a larger vision - a vision of biblical, authentic, radical discipleship - that is, what it means to follow Jesus Christ faithfully and prophetically in the world. As Myron Augsburger said in the Foreword to I Am Not a Social Activist, “Above all, Ron Sider is a disciple of Jesus Christ and dedicated evangelical whose passion for social justice arises from a deep commitment to Christ and the kingdom.”7 His works, which span more than four decades, have guided the faithful to engage church, education, culture and politics by the guiding light of the gospel and its radical implications. This book explores aspects of biblical discipleship that Sider has championed throughout his remarkable career. It brings together a group of people, both young and old, from diverse cultural and denominational backgrounds, who have been influenced profoundly one way or another by Ron’s vision of a community of disciples, living out the gospel in the world. Indeed countless Christians have been impacted by Sider’s works. But more than numbers, the vision has been embraced across conventional lines, as women and men, young and old, evangelical and ecumenical, and black, white and brown have attested to Ron’s influence upon them and their ministry direction. Two such people, who serve as the editors of this volume, have had the privilege of working with Ron as faculty colleagues at Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University and as program directors of ESA. It seems only fitting to give readers an opportunity to get acquainted with the shapers of this book, and thus see close-up how Ron’s work impacts people. Al Tizon: Proclaiming Jesus in Word and Deed I was a promising young fundamentalist when I read Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age ofHunger in the early 1980s. Zealous to save desperate souls from the sinking ship called planet Earth, I went off to a Christian college to prepare for 6 Ronald J. Sider, I Am Not a Social Activist (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 2008), 203. 7 Myron Augsburger, “Foreword,” in Ronald J. Sider, I Am Not a Social Activist: Making Jesus the Agenda (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 2008), 11.

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the task of getting as many people into the lifeboat of Christ as I could. As far as I knew, this wholly defined the church’s mission. But then I read Rich Christians, along with a handful of other prophetic books. The multi-punch combination of these works knocked me off my feet, and my understanding of mission has never been the same. I got up from the floor a bit wobbly, but with a strange new clarity about God’s heart for the poor and a strong resolve not to order my life according to the false promises of the American Dream. If it was the power punches of these books that profoundly realigned my thinking in terms of compassion and justice, then it was an on-location graduate course in Central America that propelled me toward a life of action. Amid the inyour-face poverty endured by so many people whom I had the privilege to meet, the God of the poor and oppressed spoke to me in a most profound and life­ changing way. I returned home persuaded that if the gospel did not address human need in the here and now, then the good news was no good at all. I could have easily gone the way of the bleeding heart liberal activist who advocates for the poor and who sees the ultimate human problem as socio­ political, but my own personal experience of desperately needing a Savior, then and now, has prevented that. The evil that resides in my own heart, before and after my conversion, reminds me that the gospel is also a profoundly personal thing. It is a heart thing. It is repentance, confession and forgiveness. It is falling down and getting up again by the grace of God. Evangelism - to tell the good news in such a way that clearly invites persons to give their hearts to Christ and to join the new community - should not and must not be eclipsed by social action; just like social action should not and must not be eclipsed by evangelism. Herein lies the genius of the holistic vision that Ron Sider has championed for the past four decades. The good news of the kingdom of God touches every level of our fallen-ness, from the injustices of oppressive social structures to the sin of the human heart. If we are faithful to this gospel, then we will bear witness to it by both word and deed. Armed with such a vision, my wife Janice and I sold most of our belongings and moved to the Philippines - my ethnic homeland - for almost a decade, as we engaged in community development, healthcare, and evangelistic/pastoral ministries. As we worked alongside our Filipino sisters and brothers, we strove to live out the holistic vision. For both individual persons and the poor communities in which they lived needed the power of the gospel to transform them. This was true in the squatter communities that we served in the Philippines, and it remains true in the impoverished communities that ESA serves in North America. To help shape the church of Christ along the contours of holistic ministry is what gets me up in the morning. I credit/blame Ron Sider for doing his part in wrecking my middle-class sense of normalcy and images of success. He did this by pointing the way toward the kind of discipleship that envisions the Body of Christ - the Church - addressing

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the full gamut of human need toward the transformation of the world and the glory of God.

Paul Alexander: Peace, Justice, and Simplicity

I grew up on eighty acres in southeast Kansas in a loving family, worshiping at least three times a week in the local Assembly of God (a Pentecostal church). And unfortunately, that’s where I learned most of my racist jokes. I was socialized well in the local culture and reified racism, militarism, nationalism, sexism, free market capitalism, and homophobia. I was a Jesus-loving, guntoting, American-flag-waving, teller of racist jokes, seeking to make my millions at the expense of the poor, if necessary. My parents prayed for me every day and I went on missions trips to Guatemala and Venezuela in my teen years, as well as to youth camp each summer and revivals throughout the year. While doing my MDiv and at the start of my PhD, my favorite three hours each day were the Rush Limbaugh show, an extremely right-wing television talk show, because finally somebody was saying what I believed. Then I became an atheist, but also simultaneously found pacifism in the history of American Pentecostalism, and was introduced to the works of John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and Ron Sider. Ron’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger radically reoriented my understanding of wealth, accumulation, generosity, simplicity, poverty, and the gospel of Jesus Christ. I read it as a twenty-five-year-old who was using student loan money to buy rental properties. I had also borrowed $50,000 and put it in an E-Trade account, margined it to $100,000, and was day-trading during the Internet boom of the late 1990s. I was working to become rich and telling myself that I would share the wealth, while doing graduate work in theological ethics and no longer believing in God. Although I was skeptical of Rich Christians, and quite frankly thought it quite stupid at first, discovering Ron (along with many others like him, including many in my own faith tradition) challenged me and my ‘isms’ and phobias in new ways. Following the reading of Rich Christians, I ordered ten or so books on simplicity because it intrigued me and I wanted to learn all about it. After reading them, I realized that I should have just borrowed a book on simplicity and then shared it with someone else! Despite these books getting to me, I was still buying real estate to become a millionaire and was not yet committed to reconstructing my faith. It doesn’t all sink in at once. In fact, it’s still sinking in and I’m still trying to learn how to reify other ways of life even now. This journey of faith is life-long and we experience losses and even changes of mind, heart, and direction along the way, as the Spirit works in our lives. Ron’s life has been one of prophetic challenge and invitation to both the church and society to genuine discipleship. And although we do not agree on everything (what fun would there be in that?), I am deeply thankful for the profound impact he has had on my life and on Christianity as a whole. At a crucial time in my life his work helped me find enough courage to follow Jesus in

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Following Jesus: Journeys in Radical Discipleship

entirely new ways, and it helped embolden me to devote my life to working for peace with justice. Radical Discipleship Our personal testimonies hopefully demonstrate a deepening of our faith in Christ in which evangelism, compassion, peace, justice, and reconciliation have become non-negotiables. Our stories, along with many others who have been influenced by Ron’s life work, attest to his core commitment - namely, biblical discipleship and its radical implications. In Ron’s life and career, discipleship has taken on specific contours. This book is framed according to these contours, as it is organized into three main parts. It begins with a set of chapters on evangelical commitments. Ron has been labeled a progressive in the media, and this label is not altogether untrue. However, as progressive as he may be, certain uncompromising evangelical commitments, such as the lordship of Christ and the final authority of Scripture, have defined him just as much. In Part I, several friends, including Craig Keener and Jo Anne Lyon, discuss these commitments. Part II follows with a set of chapters related to holistic ministry and popularization. Of course, holistic ministry and popularization respectively could (and perhaps should) have their own dedicated Parts; but one cannot be fully engaged in word and deed ministries without committing to the grassroots, and vice versa: one cannot be on the grassroots and not address the holistic needs of a community. Ron and ESA have been on the forefront of defining holistic ministry for the evangelical church, as well as demonstrating scholarship for the masses, for the last 40 years. In Part II, missiological scholars such as Samuel Escobar and Melba Maggay discuss holistic ministry on the grassroots. And finally Part III offers chapters on faith, dialogue and public policy. Ron and ESA have served as the vanguard of formulating political philosophy and informing public policy in dialogue with key partners from an evangelical faith perspective. Scholars such as David Gushee, John Borelli and Heidi Unruh share insights on topics, such as consistent life ethics, Evangelical-Catholic dialogue, and civil discourse. This book brings these voices and topics together into a cohesive whole whose net result is a deepening work on authentic Christian discipleship for the 21st century in honor of one who has exemplified it in his life and ministry. We believe that the church needs to hear a word about radical discipleship in Christ today more than ever before. At least two striking reasons readily come to mind. First, despite the death knell of Christendom being trumpeted by many, the embrace between patriotism and the gospel has only gotten tighter. Indeed, the cry to return to a Christian America has been shrieking louder than ever before. Something needs to counter this cry - a word of truth concerning authentic, biblical discipleship for those who have ears to hear needs to be proclaimed civilly and humbly, but boldly.

Introduction

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And second, if Christian nationalism is a misguided form of discipleship, then “virtual church” in the Internet age is a potentially shallow form that also needs to be challenged. In the Facebook, Twitter, and texting generation (the average teenager sends 3,339 texts a month), the exchange of information and knowledge seems to be predicated on the principle of quantity over quality, and width over depth. Consequently, we know so much and yet so little. The faith experience can also suffer these same consequences. This is not so much a critique of social media - indeed we have been willing and eager participants - as it is an acknowledgement of the need for a type of discipleship that requires deep biblical wisdom, human community and hands-on mission. Radical discipleship - where evangelism, justice and reconciliation meet, where loyalty to Christ is stronger than loyalty to country, and where deep human community and wisdom reside - will be Ron Sider’s enduring legacy. The ultimate hope for this work is that the collective voices from Ron’s generation, as well as the younger scholars he has influenced, will present a clarion call to the church “to follow Jesus” authentically and prophetically in a lost and broken world.

Part I

Evangelical Commitments

1. Jesus is Lord

Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden The biblical affirmation that “Jesus is Lord” is made in many contexts. It is made in the context of creation and the new creation. “All things were created by him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together.” Paul in Colossians 1:16-17 is affirming the reconciling implications of the lordship of Christ. Against a backdrop of separation of earth from heaven, the physical from the spiritual, Andrew Lincoln’s study pointed to the role of Jesus in bringing all things together.' It is also made in the context of the idols of the surrounding culture. Roman emperors were divinized and worshipped in the Eastern Roman Empire. The title “kurios” was deliberately ascribed to Jesus in direct contrast to the claim that Caesar is Lord. It is also made in the context of the defeat of death as God exalted Jesus “to the highest place” that “every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:9-11). In light of these contexts, therefore, a biblical Christology cannot be dualist or separatist. Claims are inevitably made by the Bible that Jesus is now, and will be seen to be by all, “Lord of all.” The challenge is how to express this in our lives as persons-in-community, first among his people, the church and also in the world. A fundamental question is how and where this lordship is to be seen and established. Is our expression of Christ’s lordship to be that of a city set on a hill, demonstrating to the world the benefits and blessings of living under the lordship of Christ so that others may see and believe? The problem with this approach is that Christians live in the world and have to live out that lordship in the context of the life of the world. A second problem is that the notion of the “city on the hill” restricts Jesus’ lordship only to those places and people where it is acknowledged. The already-not yet aspect of the reality of the kingdom of God means that already Jesus has won the victory over death; already he is shown to be the image of the invisible God as creator; and already he has been exalted to God’s right hand. The New Testament drives us to the conclusion that Jesus is already Lord of all, but not acknowledged yet by all. So how are we to witness to that lordship?

1 Andrew Lincoln, Paradise Now and Not Yet — Studies in the Role of the Heavenly Dimension in Paul’s Thought with Special Reference to his Eschatology (New York, NY: Cambridge University, 1981 and 2004).

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Following Jesus: Journeys in Radical Discipleship

Christian mission flows from Christian identity and confession. The confession that Jesus is Lord is a universal claim. It is not a particular claim for a particular people, but a claim that applies to all peoples, places and cultures. This universal claim gives the basis for the universal proclamation of the gospel in Jesus’ command to, “Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). Neither can there be multiform expressions of his lordship. Universal accountability to Jesus as Lord cannot claim a contextual particularity that might escape or modify universal accountability to him. The classic Christian confession for Paul is to confess that Jesus is Lord and you shall be saved. Paul’s assertion of salvation is based not in a confession of Jesus as Savior alone, but also in a confession of Jesus as Lord. It is therefore understandable that as preachers speak and witness to Jesus as Savior they assume that people automatically understand his sovereignty. However, experience teaches us that there are some Christians who never get to experience and live out the sovereignty of Jesus in their lives. It is for this reason that Gandhi could note that there would be more Christians if more Christians lived more like Jesus. This disconnect is why many people look askance at Christian witness. Having a savior is not enough to engage in Christian mission; we also need a sovereign, who has overcome the world. In the Old Testament Jehovah was jealous about his people’s allegiance to him alone; because if they had other lords they would always misuse God’s sovereignty for their own ends. This forms the background for the New Testament struggle with the person of Jesus. Because Jews could not attribute sovereignty to any human being or institution, ascribing sovereignty to Jesus necessarily identified him as either God or a blasphemer. The general expression of sovereignty today is in the world of states where a state is sovereign if it has the power to define and enforce law in the borders within which it sets. For example, sovereign funds are funds which belong to such states and for which no further accountability has to be given. But in today’s world we see that the exercise of sovereignty is deeply compromised. Such is the case with sovereign states in Europe, which find it necessary but difficult to cooperate through ceding some sovereignty. In some cases sovereign funds, which have no accountability, are misused.

What is the Relation between the Church and the Kingdom of God? How does the church experience the sovereignty of Jesus in its life and witness? To address this we need to examine the relationship between the kingdom of God, which Jesus proclaimed, and the church where his sovereignty is to be experienced now and demonstrated in history. In summary, the New Testament describes the church as a community of God’s people, a family of God that is obedient to his word. It is a love-shaped, faith-confessing, rule-based and mission-driven community.

Jesus is Lord

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The kingdom of God is both a present reality and a future hope in the teaching of Jesus. The recovery of Jesus’ teaching of the kingdom of God in the church and particularly in the evangelical movement in the past 50 years - saw the church as provisional in contrast to the eternal nature of the kingdom. Karl Rahner wrote, “The church is living always on the proclamation of our own provisional status and her historically advancing elimination in the coming kingdom of God towards which she is expectantly traveling as a pilgrim.”234Hans Kung sees the church as finite and of the present and the kingdom as of the future and end time. For him, as well as for those who see the church as existing for the kingdom until the kingdom’s consummation, ecclesia is the work of humanity and basileia is the work of God? It is our contention that much of contemporary evangelicalism has this kingdom understanding and so suffers from an ecclesial deficit. As mission­ shaped communities, evangelicals understandably draw on the kingdom framework and see the church essentially as the agency that witnesses to the kingdom. In his excellent paper, “The Kingdom Master Plan: The Ecclesia,” Bambang Budijanto recovers the significance of the church, but so defines it by kingdom language that it appears he has suggested the church’s provisional and temporary status until its dissolution in the kingdom? We wish to contend that the New Testament teaching on the church, while showing an integral relationship between the kingdom and the church, views the church as not only existing in history but beyond history in heaven. Avery Dulles, in Models of the Church, quotes the Swedish biblical scholar Harold Riesenfeld to affirm that the term ecclesia is an eschatological term: “The idea of ‘the People of the Saints of the most high God’, upon whom, according to Daniel 7:27, power and glory are to be restored, lies at root of the thinking of Paul, the Synoptics and presumably even Jesus concerning the church.’”5 In 1 Corinthians 6:1-3, Christians share in God’s judgment, even over the angels. Jesus taught that the little flock of his disciples, the pcoto-ecclesia would share in the messianic supper in heaven and sit on thrones. Jesus prepares a place for his disciples in his Father’s house in heaven. In Paul the church is the temple completed and consecrated at the end of history (2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:22), as well as the bride perfected and presented in heaven (2 Cor. 11:2; Eph. 5:22; Rev. 19:7, 21:2, 22:17). The sovereignty of Jesus in the church is expressed in the church’s order institutionally and in its life and mission. While the kingdoms of the world will become the kingdom of our Lord and King at Christ’s return, the church that is the bride of Christ, the New Jerusalem, the holy temple, will also reign with him.

2 Aven Dulles, Models ofthe Church (New York, NY: Random House, 1978), 95. 3 Ibid.,'95. 4 Bambang Budijanto, Unpublished paper presented at Consultation of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians, Oxford, UK, March 2010. 5 Dulles, Models of the Church, 96.

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Following Jesus: Journeys in Radical Discipleship

So we cannot collapse the church into the kingdom. She has an eternal existence. And it is this church that we are part of on earth and in history. If the church has to do with God’s order being witnessed to and established on earth, what is the relationship between that order and the order of the kingdom? Does the church embody the kingdom and therefore express the realities of the new creation in the world now, or is the church just a sign, which means that the church is distinct from the kingdom - pointing and witnessing to, rather than expressing it? Is the implication of our message such that the church is only a sign but is never the new creation itself? What Then is the Relationship between Church and Kingdom? The church reflects the reality of the kingdom in history, in the lives of its members, as a community of faith in the world, and through the way it expresses the lordship of Christ in the world. The kingdom is beyond the church; its boundaries are not coterminous with the church. Yet, the church has a distinct existence within the reality of the kingdom and has a particular place and life in history and an eschatological future. The Holy Spirit, as the eschatological gift, is particularly poured out on the church and the Spirit’s gifts for the church are unique and not available beyond the church. The church orders its life as a divine institution in human society. It is the body of Christ in institutional form. Its members have certain callings and gifts that go with them. Its relationships within the church reflect equality, mutual submission and support. It has defined fimctions, orders and codes of behavior and discipline. All these aspects are part of the church’s distinct faith, life and order. In the biblical teaching on the kingdom of God, there is very little of such order laid out and authorized. Talk of kingdom ethics and values tends to displace the distinct calling of the church to follow the pattern given to it as the body of Christ and as the people of God. The above and below nature of the kingdom is evident in the Lord’s Prayer. “Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). The kingdom is not a future reality for heaven; it operates in its fullness in heaven now. Its operation in history is to draw history to its fulfillment. It is real and not an imperfect kingdom. On earth it is anticipatory and not complete. On earth it is provisional as to our understanding of it and even our expression of it, for we see in a mirror shadowed by history. But even its provisional expression strives and strains for its perfect fulfillment. The church, meanwhile, is endowed with the Holy Spirit and the deposit of the faith given to the Apostles and the Holy Scriptures as the norm by which it lives as a source of the truth that leads to salvation and transformation. The church recognizes its incompleteness and sin and groans for heaven (Rom. 8:18-25). Yet it is called to witness to truth that is not provisional, to live by the confidence of this truth, which though not revealed in its totality is certainly adequate for salvation, and to bear witness to it boldly in the world.

Jesus is Lord

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While conscious of its frailty and sinfulness, the church is still called in history to live by the confidence of the truth given to it. The pre-eschatological life of the church makes it a sign of the kingdom of God and the new creation. It lives out its life as the sign empowered by the love that the Holy Spirit pours into its life. This love will enable it to develop a mode of conduct and character that conforms to God’s moral law. God’s moral law must shape the church’s life as much as God’s love does. The pre-eschatological life of the church makes space for the expression of the life of the new creation, even while deeply conscious that it is far from its full realization. The space shaped by the love poured into the church by the Spirit is the space for the spiritual formation of its members. Though there is no order in church or family in the final kingdom, there is a need for order now in this life. The sovereignty of Jesus connects the kingdom and creation. He is the one and the same Lord of both. It is this that is both an offence and a comfort. It is an offence because people want to have many lords so that they may negotiate between their sovereignties. The sovereignty of the people is in fact a negotiated sovereignty. It is understood that there are areas where the state has sovereignty and where it does not. The claim that there is one Lord - Jesus the Christ demands that we hand over the lordship of our lives to the one God, and there is no way to negotiate this sovereignty. However, the paradox is that while we may believe that we can negotiate between different sovereignties, the state increasingly claims total sovereignty for itself in all areas of life, setting the norms for family life, sexual pairings, and so on. We are increasingly seeing the invasion by the state into the areas of marriage and parenting. Since negotiated sovereignty fails to deliver the results it promises in terms of human fulfillment, the state demands absolute sovereignty. The idea of common community conscience is another way of stating that the state is sovereign. Such sovereignty will be destructive of family, freedom, and human autonomy. Such prizes, which Christian faith has been able to secure, will be undermined by the state. It is when people accept the sovereignty of Jesus that they are truly free to be the persons they are called to be. The relationship between kingdom and church, which are both under the one Lord, helps us to negotiate the relationship between sovereignty and freedom. Contemporary questions include, “What is the freedom that religion is allowed? And who is sovereign?” Jesus is sovereign in the kingdom over creation. The church is made up of those who freely submit to his sovereignty; so we do not make claims for a theocracy. But we do make claims for the religious affirmation that there is one God who is sovereign in every area of life. If we do not do mission with this understanding our mission will never be holistic. But if we engage in mission in this way it will always be a challenge to the prevailing culture.

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Following Jesus: Journeys in Radical Discipleship

The Orders of Creation

Jesus is King of the kingdom and Lord of the body, so he is the one who connects the two. How we negotiate between these positions depends on how we understand the normative nature of scripture and our interpretative task. Kingdom and church operate in relation to the world where the old creation and new creation operate - a world which God loves. The church is in the world but not of it. It operates in the world and is the future of the world. In that context we are taking one issue and negotiating with it. The orders of creation are not what can be perceived by investigation but by how scripture affirms them. Human and material sciences cannot define these orders on their own. Grace does not add to what human intellect deduces from nature. If revelation identifies the orders of creation, is there a possibility that it will be dominated by the cultural and contextual values of the one interpreting the revealed text? The corrective is in scripture itself and the community of the faithful, the church. The creation order is fulfilled in the kingdom. Kingdom order does not displace the order of creation, new creation, church and kingdom. People are making decisions and choices, reading what the kingdom and new creation are about and suggesting, for example, that the traditional teaching on the nature of the relation between men and women does not reflect biblical pattern and teaching. The reason for expressing the creation order is that it is complete. Through human sin and disobedience, the creation order has been dismantled and needs to be restored rather than completed. Eschatology is the fulfillment of what creation was always meant to be. Church and kingdom are not historical projects or ideas that slowly develop in history. So Genesis, for example, is not a piece of pre­ history but an expression of God’s purpose for how relationships in the family are to be ordered and how ministry in the church is to be exercised. The point is, creation is not in an unfinished form which needs history for its completion. The symmetrical approach to human equality, whereby there is no distinction in gender roles, suggests that the pattern established in creation was a mistake which now needs correction. The resurrection operates in history and as an order. For creation began with an order; the Fall distorted that order, and the resurrection restores it and enables us to participate in that order. So Jesus is Lord of the kingdom and head of the Church. This helps us to understand how we are to live out and present his sovereignty - how and where it can be recognized. But his sovereignty is not limited to the church; it extends rather to all creation. Thus, Christians have engaged in nation building, for example, addressing slavery and corruption, motivated by the confession that Jesus is Lord. Those who would allow the world to go pagan in order to demonstrate the awfulness of sin and the need for the gospel fail to take into account the sovereignty of Jesus over all creation.

Jesus is Lord

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Challenges to Christian Mission - Three Examples The lordship of Jesus is an important presupposition for Christian mission. We would like to take three current situations of challenge to Christian mission - one in Africa, one in Asia, and one in Europe.

Mayanmar As we write this, Myanmar or Burma, is in the headlines as pro-democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi is, at the time of this writing, visiting European capitals. In a BBC Interview on June 19, 2012, she expressed the hope that foreign investors coming into the economically liberalizing Myanmar would respect and assist the aspirations of the Burmese people for democracy and freedom and not merely shore up the power of the military autocracy. This hope depends on at least two developments. The first is that foreign investment companies might have some aspiration and indeed skills in being able to design and implement social goals in addition to succeeding in their prime business and economic goals. The second is that the Burmese culture, which thus far has exercised suzerainty over the tribal groups on the borders of the country, needs to develop an understanding of human dignity and equality in which democracy and freedom can be nurtured and flourished. It would not be churlish to notice that Suu Kyi herself must owe her own aspirations for democracy to the twenty plus formative years she spent in Oxford. As overseas Christian groups respond to calls to assist the churches in Myanmar, they would do well to consider the above points. It would be very easy for them to respond to Christians who have survived and who ministered under a military dictatorship, by concentrating purely on evangelistic campaigns and development projects. In order to embed democracy in Myanmar, an understanding of human dignity and religious freedom needs to be developed. Indeed there is a need for the churches to be educated in Christian understandings of human dignity, religious freedom and the relationships of church and nation. Furthermore, churches need to understand the nature and limitations of the role of business in developing economies. It would be very tempting for the church itself to enter into the arena of developing business opportunities, but the lessons of recent history suggest that is not a good idea. It was not for nothing that the Levitical priests in the Old Testament were excluded from the normal activities of trade and business. Rather the church needs to become a vehicle by which investing businesses can express and channel their social contribution, through schools, hospitals, and micro-enterprise. In order to undertake this critically important role the Myanmar churches need to develop an understanding of the biblical teaching of the lordship of Christ. He is Lord of all, including the economic and political arenas. An understanding that Jesus is Lord and that his lordship is to be acknowledged freely and voluntarily underlies the Christian understanding of religious freedom; that is, religious allegiance is to be a matter of free choice. This is premised on the understanding

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Following Jesus: Journeys in Radical Discipleship

of the human person as a free agent, called to respond to the goodness of God in creation and redemption. Developing human agency is the premise underlying all aspirations to freedom, both democratic and economic. But the notion of human agency is not a given. It depends on a particular view of humanity, one rooted in the lordship of Jesus. But democracy itself poses a problem, for democracy is sovereignty of the people. Is it contrary to the sovereignty of the Lord or does the sovereignty of Jesus support the concept of the sovereignty of the people? The sovereignty of Jesus affirms the importance of human agency, choice and freedom. He retained his sovereignty, for example, even when humbled to death on a cross. In contrast, Islam insists on submission and obedience to the sovereignty of Allah. Thus Islam finds democracy alien to the sovereignty of Allah. But the sovereignty of Jesus does not necessarily conflict with democracy. At the moment in Myanmar, the sovereignty of the people is being expressed over against that of the state. This leads to conflict. In the Bible sovereignty and shalom go together. Jesus is the Lord who brings peace, and his sovereignty enables shalom. Southern Sudan A second challenge to Christian mission is the new state of Southern Sudan. For the first time in history, a Christian minority, which has lived for centuries under servitude to a Muslim majority state, has experienced an exodus. The churches make up 66% of the population that ascribe their freedom to God. They are now subject to numerous pressures. There is pressure, for example, from their former oppressors, now the state of Sudan. There is a real possibility of the South itself provoking a further war to “once and for all” teach their northern neighbors a lesson. 300,000 young Southern Sudanese have been sent to the border areas in preparation for such a conflict. There is also pressure from Western development and United Nations agencies. These entities link economic and other forms of aid to Western understandings of human rights, which individualize those rights as property rights, and which have led in the West - and are being exported to Africa - as rights to prostitution and to untrammeled homosexual activism. If you want to experience the approach of old style western colonialism, the culture of the Western development agencies in Southern Sudan is a good place to start. And finally, there is pressure from foreign investment, buying land and importing foreign workers for foreign funded projects. The church needs a fresh understanding of the criteria for a “just war,” and more generally of the issues of violence and non-violence. It needs an understanding of the nature of human rights, as well as of the biblical teaching on nation-building, marriage and family life, and its proper role in implementing social and educational development alongside and on behalf of foreign investors.

Jesus is Lord

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United Kingdom In the United Kingdom, the challenge facing the church is to claim that Jesus is Lord without conceding increasingly more sovereignty to the state over what Christians can or cannot do or say in the public sphere. Believers have become less daring to express the lordship of Jesus. The early church was severely persecuted; Christians in the UK are merely laughed at. To affirm the lordship of Jesus in this context, especially in jobs paid for by the state, may lose a person their job. For example, recently a National Health Services doctor was reprimanded over giving his allegiance to a higher sovereign who directed what advice he would give to a patient with suicidal feelings. This led the Bishop of Dover, himself no scaremonger, to write: Dr Scott, a doctor for 28 years and a general practitioner [GP] in Margate, Kent, was last week served with an official warning from the General Mecial Council [GMC] for inappropriately discussing his Christian faith during a consultation with a patient. The GP, who is a former medical missionary, has practised in Margate for nearly ten years. He has an unblemished record, and was praised by the GMC for the great esteem in which he is held for the “dedicated care” that he offers to patients....Dr Scott did not spend the entire 20-minute consultation proselytising. Instead of regarding the patient as a biological specimen, he treated the patient as a whole person who had spiritual and emotional as well as physical needs. The GP shared his heartfelt conviction that faith in Jesus could contribute to the patient’s recovery...I am anxious about the expectations in some parts of our society that Christians should seek to compartmentalise their faith. It seems that we are somehow expected to turn off our faith when we step through the door of our workplace. Will it soon be the case that society actively disqualifies Christians from the caring and educational professions?6

The following people also lost their jobs or livelihood: a black Christian registrar of marriage, who refused to preside at civil partnership registrations; the Christian owners of a bed and breakfast business who refused to give a double room in their own home to two homosexuals; and a Christian counselor who requested not to be asked to counsel two homosexuals on their relationship. These cases are now regularly cited as the laws on religious freedom, which are trumped by laws against discrimination. Freedom of speech is also under threat. For example, in April 2012 the Mayor of London banned advertisements on city buses, which spoke of the existence of ex-gay people as counter-evidence that “some people are born gay.” Today, it is Christians who are in the forefront of the struggle for freedoms of religion and speech in the UK. All these contributions depend on an understanding that Jesus is Lord of all.

6 Trevor Willmott, “The Case Against Being Silent about Religion”, Church Times, 21 June 2012.

2. ESA and the Church

Jo Anne Lyon The seminal “Chicago Declaration,” which was drafted at the 1973 Thanksgiving workshop, came into my hands in mimeographed form in January of 1974. Tears came to my eyes as I read it. I wondered, “Is there anyone involved in this from my Wesleyan-Arminian faith tradition?” Then to my astonishment, I saw on the list of signers the name of Paul S. Rees, whose father was one of the founders of a branch of my denomination. As a young teen, I had met Paul Rees and was captivated by his thinking and worldview. For years I had been wrestling with the divide between evangelism and social action as practiced in the 1960s by the larger evangelical tradition and, particularly, my Wesleyan tradition. In fact, it seemed we had turned our back on our own history and had become even more isolated. Yet, the opportunities for the holistic message of word and deed raged around us. I immediately ordered 100 copies of the Chicago Declaration for distribution within my own local church, which incidentally was a new church plant in the suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri. Many were new believers and the Chicago Declaration became a discipleship tool. Pondering each portion of the document - confession, acknowledgement, affirmation, proclamation, and declaration brought about much discussion and soul searching. It is important to recall that at that time, trends within evangelicalism were being followed, such as the popular Bill Gothard seminars that were calling men and women to a chain-of-command relationship. In addition, any discussion of the distribution of wealth was usually labeled as Marxist. Racial reconciliation was often seen as a tool of the Communists, and even Martin Luther King, Jr.’s work was considered suspect. Many seekers of truth in the pews - beginning with some leaders of the church - could not reconcile the above reactions with the scripture, tradition, reason, and experience of the greater evangelical world. So the Chicago Declaration became a light pointing to the truth for many seekers, including me. During this time, I had the opportunity to lead the women’s commission of the Christian Holiness Association, which was a collection of leaders of the various Holiness denominations. They looked with me at the Declaration, and on the strength of the involvement of one of our own (Paul Rees), they invited Ron Sider to speak at the 1974 Convention. That was my first time to meet Ron, and he immediately invited me to participate in the follow-up workshop in 1974, also during the Thanksgiving weekend. The work of this follow up was essentially to devise unified ways of implementing the Chicago Declaration in evangelical churches and missionary efforts.

ESA and the Church

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ESA and the Church

That particular meeting was large and a bit unwieldy, but several organizations or movements developed from it. Perhaps the most significant was the incubation of the organization that eventually took on the name, “Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA).” Unsure I would ever connect with these remarkable people again, I simply left the meeting with a new resolve to live more faithfully to the call of Christ in this present age and somehow to influence the church in this call. When Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger was released in 1977, I immediately absorbed it and recommended it to many in my circles. The book was explicitly biblical in its basis. It could no longer be said that poverty alleviation was a theme only for the “liberal church.” Here before our very evangelical eyes was the biblical mandate to care for the poor. Pastors, as well as leaders of various evangelical institutions, began to wrestle with this truth and its implications. These leaders, many young and unknown in the larger circles, began to contact Ron. As a result, ESA became more focused in influencing the church, particularly the evangelical church. In 1978, I was invited to join the board and got a much closer look at Ron Sider’s work and influence. My first meeting was a wake-up call to the many competing agendas, as represented by members of the board. Several had their own organizations they wanted to promote. There was also a distinct racial divide in issues to be addressed. There were those who were not quite sure of this holistic agenda and were testing the waters. In fact, the board somewhat reflected the turmoil in the evangelical world at that time. My looming thought as I left that first meeting was, “How in the world could this fledgling organization ever be a catalyst for the church to be the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven?” At the next meeting, however, I began to grasp why Ron is so unique. I realized I was watching a leader who would not be deterred by chaos or crisis; he displayed an inner peace that continues to feed and stabilize him, as well as those around him. As Ron began to lead ESA, focusing on educating the church, the seeds of the holistic vision were being planted. Churches, as well as individuals, were encouraged to become official ESA members. Local ESA chapters in communities were started, the most robust of these being bom on college campuses. And the newsletter ESA Advocate (which later became Prism Magazine) was launched to get the word out about the gospel’s holistic vision. The Church and Justice

In the mid-1980s, the call of injustice from the Global South was reaching the ears of evangelicals. However, much of the evangelical church was too paralyzed with fear to truly listen and respond. One such voice came from Gustavo Parajon of Nicaragua, a medical doctor with an M.D. from Case Western University and an M.P.H. from Harvard. He was also the President of Baptist Seminary and the founder of a group called the Council of Protestant Churches of Nicaragua

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(CEPAD). CEPAD attempted to bring peace and reconciliation to Nicaragua in the midst of the war between the revolutionary government and the contras. Dr. Parajon was a close friend of Ron’s and the late Dr. Vernon Grounds of Denver Seminary. Dr. Parajon wrote a letter to Grounds, proposing a visit of several Nicaraguan pastors to come to the U.S. in order to share the realities of church persecution during this war. Grounds then shared the letter with ESA. Bill Kallio, thenexecutive director of ESA, responded in a memo dated July 20,1984: We received your letter from Gustavo Parajon and have spent some time reviewing how ESA could be a part of communicating this important message to evangelicals. Our hearts were stirred with compassion by the accounts of human suffering among our brothers and sisters in Nicaragua. It seems obvious to us that ESA is the type of organization that should prayerfully be involved as peacemakers in this issue.

We have the structure to organize visiting meetings across the country. ESA has contacts with 100 local chapters and peace parishes throughout the U.S. I’m sure many of them would be willing to become local hosts and organize meetings in their communities. We will be praying regularly for the brothers and sisters in Nicaragua and ask God to make clear how ESA can be a peacemaker in this area of conflict.

This visit went against the prevailing attitude among evangelicals that the work of the contras to overthrow the new Sandinista government was legitimate. Nonetheless, the speaking tour of Parajon and CEPAD did take place with ESA leading the way, and as expected, it did not happen without controversy. The Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD), which represented the more mainstream evangelical sentiment, released a scathing “Briefing Paper” in January 1985 against Parajon’s organization. In this paper, CEPAD was identified critically as a pro-Sandinista organization, gaining the sympathy of the National Association of Evangelicals. Dr. Richard Lovelace, who was a member of both boards of IRD and ESA respectively, requested a joint meeting of the boards to resolve the internal conflict and even perhaps a joint team of people from ESA and IRD, led by the presidents of both organizations, to visit Nicaragua and assess the situation together. But both proposals were rejected by IRD.1 At the time it appeared that the visit of Parajon and the Nicaraguan pastors yielded only controversy and no real fruit. However, in retrospect, I believe that it served as a catalyst for the church to begin to understand and struggle with the issues of structural injustice. Rich Christians, particularly the chapter on structural change, has proven prophetic, not only for churches as they grappled with the Nicaraguan situation in the mid-1980s, but also with many other social

1 Fortunately in time, a level of reconciliation occurred between ESA and IRD.

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injustices that continue to plague our world today. Although published in 1977, these words from the book continue to ring true: An Age of Hunger demands compassionate action and simplicity in personal lifestyles. But compassion and simple living apart from structural change may be little more than a gloriously irrelevant ego-trip or proud pursuit of personal purity. If millions of Americans reduce their beef consumption, but do not act politically to change public policy, the result will not necessarily be less starvation in the Third World.2

It is crucial to note that ESA’s struggle against injustice has never been just about cold politics; it has always included the call to personal piety. During the Contra War in Nicaragua, Ron called for a prayer emphasis, mobilized several thousand people around Intercessors for Peace and Freedom in Central America. Anthony Chamberlain was a young college graduate who provided “boots on the ground” with regular reports and published a monthly newsletter with prayer requests and updates on answers.3 At the January 1985 ESA board meeting, Ron answered the question, “What is ESA?” by saying: “The fundamental focus is non-ideological public policy, structural change thinking through a fundamentally biblical position through research and prayer.” Ron traveled to South Africa to speak at a conference convened by the Inter­ Varsity Christian Fellowship. A young South African student talked with him regarding the structural issues of apartheid. This student was captivated by Ron’s thoughts on injustice but simply could not respect the idea of personal salvation. He felt that these two streams of thought were incompatible with daily life in the current struggle of South Africa. He said that before hearing Ron’s way of integrating these two dimensions, he had rejected the claims of Christ and any possibility of personal repentance and walk with Christ. With great joy, I have heard Ron tell the story of this young student repenting and becoming a Christ follower.4 This example is just one of many that show the transforming power of the integration of evangelism and social action. Soon Ron initiated Intercessors for Peace, Justice and Freedom in South Africa, which was the same model as that used for Central America. In a few short months the following grew from 600 to 2600, as reported at an ESA board meeting in late 1988. The Kabare Declaration, which denounced apartheid, was distributed and shortly had 4000 signatures. In addition, Moss Ntlha, national coordinator for Concerned Evangelicals in South Africa, was hosted by ESA in 25 colleges in the United States within what was then known as the Christian 2 Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age ofHunger: A Biblical Study (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1977), 204. 3 “ESA Peace Projects Report,” ESA Parley (April 1986), 3. 4 Ron’s account of this story can be found in Ronald J. Sider, Good News and Good Works: A Theology for the Whole Gospel (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007), 15-16.

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College Coalition (since renamed the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities). Counter to the movement that Ron and ESA represented was the emergence of the Moral Majority, an evangelical right-wing organization started by the late Jerry Falwell. Moral Majority dwarfed ESA both in number of supporters and finances. It seemed the entire evangelical world was taking a hard right turn, leaving ESA and other more moderate to left-leaning evangelical organizations in relative obscurity. Moral Majority was distributing voter guides by the tens of thousands to churches with only one item on the agenda - that of abortion neglecting issues that the poor were facing and other life issues. Now, as more and more evangelicals are embracing a broader agenda, it is obvious that ESA’s influence has been quiet, steady, and effective. The Church and Life Ethic

Committed to a broader agenda, Ron helped to bring together in the late 1980s a broad-based coalition called, “Just Life,” which was “a political action committee seeking to elect members of Congress who were consistently pro-life- i.e., opposed to abortion, but also committed to justice for the poor and to reversing the nuclear arms race.”5 The slogan on the brochure read, “When you don’t want to choose between Justice and Life... Choose Both.”6 A captivating phrase in the brochure stated: “As concerned Christians, we are pooling our resources to support the campaigns of candidates who work for: an end to the nuclear arms race, promote just policies for the poor, and protect the lives of the unborn.”7 Along with the brochure was a 32-page study guide with articles by the late Cardinal Joseph Bemardin, Billy Graham, Juli Loesch, Ron Sider, Congresspersons Paul Henry and Mary Rose Oaker, Bryan Hehir, Roberta Hestenes, and Art Simon.8 Also featured were the voting records of all 535 members of Congress on issues of economic justice, abortion, and the arms race. In addition was an accompanying Leader’s Guide to facilitate discussion and action groups. This was done in conjunction with the 1988 national elections. The influence of these study groups in churches became another catalyst to the church beginning to think holistically. I well remember delivering a speech to a broad-based group of pro-lifers in Buffalo, NY. I was invited to give the JustLife perspective alongside Randall Terry of Operation Rescue. But, at the last minute, Terry was unable to make the

5 “ESA’s History,” Evangelicals for Social Action, www.evangelicalsforsocialaction. org/about/history/ (accessed 26.11.2012). 6 “Just Life,” brochure of Evangelicals for Social Action, 1987. 7 Ibid. 8 Kathleen Hayes and Ron Sider, Eds., “JustLife/88: A 1988 Election Study Guide for Justice, Life and Peace” (Philadelphia, PA: JustLife Education Fund and Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).

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presentation because he had been arrested and was in jail during one of his protests. I had the entire evening to present a “Consistent Pro-Life Agenda.” Many of the people who came to hear Randall Terry were surprised at the inclusion of so much in a pro-life speech. Finally, one of the participants noted that I had not used the word “murder” regarding abortion and questioned my position for that alone. This was the kind of environment in which we attempted to promote a broader life agenda! Few things are as difficult as leading a movement in one direction when it seems that the prevailing winds are blowing your words back to you. Ron was and is the kind of leader who has gone against the wind and has somehow gotten through, making it easier for the next generation to carry on the holistic vision. In his work on Andreas Bodenstein Von Karlstadt, Ron wrote, “The most important work of Christ is his sanctification of the believer. The new man supernatural ly reborn in Christ is the presupposition of Christian ethics. Christian freedom should be understood primarily in terms of the regenerate man’s new ability to obey God.”9 As a holiness minister with a passion for obeying God in the public sphere and in social reform, I resonate so deeply with these words. For Ron, and for all believers, the call to a holistic life ethic is not optional. This is why his words and work were in the end heard, no matter how hard the wind blew against them. The Church and Public Policy

Ron believed that the church needed more scholars; it needed a new generation of credentialed evangelical intellectuals interested in integrating biblical faith and public policy. One of the missions of ESA was indeed to develop a credible evangelical voice in the public square. The Crossroads Monograph Series, under the editorship of Keith Pavlischek and Heidi Unruh, produced works that addressed relevant social issues from an evangelical biblical perspective.1011In addition to Crossroads, the regular column, “The Washington Update” in ESA Advocate (and later “Washington Watch” in Prism), spoke out on issues such as abortion, church and state, economic justice, family, racism and sexism. One of the main purposes of ESA in general and this column in particular was and is, “to educate readers about current public policy activity, primarily legislative, in Washington, DC with guides for helpful Christian advocacy and action.”11

9 Ronald J. Sider, Andreas Bodenstein Von Karlstadt (Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1974), 313. 10 Thirty works were published in the Crossroads Monograph Series, including The World After Chernobyl: Social Impact and Christian Response by Michael Christensen (No. 13), Economic Justice: A Biblical Paradigm by Stephen Mott and Ronald J. Sider (No. 26) and Thinking Regionally: Justice, the Environment and City Planning (No. 29). 11 Unpublished ESA document, “November 1991 Mission, Objectives and Programs.”

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Ron was instrumental in bringing the NAE on board to consider public policy issues from an evangelical perspective. At that time I was the chair of the Social Concerns Commission of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), but frankly, we were a rather fledgling commission; the fact that the NAE was in a season of transition, in terms of both its mission and personnel, had something to do with it. With regard to the Social Concerns Commission, the NAE was unsure as to the “grid” through which their public statements were processed prior to its public announcements and recommendations. So in discussion with Ron and ESA, the Commission recommended to the leadership of NAE that a group of scholars from various perspectives in the evangelical community work together to shape a strategy or grid from which to work. Ron prepared a proposal and worked with the NAE leadership. As always his ideas were expansive and inclusive of the various contingencies of NAE. To my surprise, the leadership agreed and in March 2001, the Evangelical Project for Public Engagement was approved and launched. First a steering committee was formed, with Ron and the late Diane Knippers, then-President of the Institute for Religion and Democracy, as co-chairs. They convened scholars to write chapters on issues that needed deeper reflection to embrace an evangelical framework for public engagement. From these discussions and writings, Ron facilitated the 2004 NAE publication of a 26-page booklet “For the Health of the Nation,” which is now NAE’s basis and method for Christian civic engagement.12 In this booklet, the structures of public life are defined and the principles of Christian political engagement are outlined. The small booklet continues to be distributed throughout the evangelical world and beyond. It continues to be the guide for NAE’s public engagement and other documents and actions flow from it. In 2005 a comprehensive volume consisting of 22 contributions from evangelical scholars, entitled Toward an Evangelical Public Policy: Political Strategies for the Health ofthe Nation, was launched at a dinner sponsored by the NAE at the Capitol with various speakers from the two dominant political parties. In the introduction, editors Sider and Knippers write, We must seek to develop a responsible political philosophy - informed first by Scripture, but also taking advantage of godly resources found in church tradition and sanctified reason. We also need sophisticated, socioeconomic analysis. The Bible doesn’t mention nuclear energy, the Internal Revenue Service or global warming. Careful study of the contemporary world is essential. Listening carefully to other Christians is also important. Deeply committed evangelical Christians who love and worship our Lord Jesus and submit wholeheartedly to the Bible nonetheless come to honest disagreements on specific political issues. This side of heaven, we will never overcome all disagreements. But we could resolve many differences if we regularly, openly listened to each other carefully, spelling

12 For the Health of the Nation (Washington, D.C.: National Association of Evangelicals, 2004).

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out what we consider to be the biblical principles and detailed social analyses that lead us into our (differing) conclusions. This is the first step toward more productive cooperation. This book represents an example of such listening.13

The Church and the Environment The issue of the environment began to emerge as one in which ESA needed to get involved. The result of long discussions over a period of time was the formation of the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN) in 1993. As a ministry of ESA, EEN began to develop resources to guide the church in response to environmental issues. While other faith traditions were responding to environmental abuses, the evangelical church was reticent to engage for fear of getting in politics. Its negative attitude toward politics prevented it from grasping the biblical mandate to care for the earth. EEN sought to break down those walls of suspicion, as it began discussions with the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, whose membership consisted of Catholics, Mainline Protestants, and Jews. The first initiative of EEN was to create educational materials for the church. A very attractive “kit” was created, which consisted of sermon material, as well as curriculum for adults, teens, and children. In 1999,1 convened a conference as chair of the Social Concerns Commission of the NAE with funding from EEN on “Poverty and Environmental Stewardship.” At that time, the NAE was very wary of ESA and EEN. However, the administration of NAE was willing to take the funding from EEN for this conference if we agreed not to advertise it as a joint conference; if we agreed that it only be an NAE conference. In addition, the leadership requested that the conference include opposing opinions to that of EEN from the evangelical community. We agreed with these conditions, hoping that our agreement would serve as a step toward relationship building. The conference was held at Malone College, and leaders from colleges, denominations, and development organizations were in attendance. Again, EEN generously published the papers in one booklet for further distribution.14 Shortly after the conference, leadership transition took place at NAE as well as EEN, but Ron remained a constant in all of the transition. The new leader of EEN, Jim Ball, attended the NAE conventions as an exhibitor, but not featured in any capacity. However, he began a relationship with Richard Cizik, who at that time was the VP of Government Relations for NAE. In 2002, Ball persuaded Cizik to join him in Oxford, England for a conference on climate change to hear

13 Ronald J. Sider and Diane Knippers, “Introduction,” in Toward an Evangelical Public Policy: Political Strategies for the Health of the Nation, eds. Ronald J. Sider and Diane Knippers (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005), 10. 14 “Compassion and the Care of Creation: Papers/Responses,” presented at the first National Association of Evangelicals Conference on Poverty and Environmental Stewardship, Malone College, Canton, Ohio, March 18-19, 1999.

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and meet Sir John Houghton, climate scientist and evangelical believer. Houghton was also the chair of the International Panel on Climate Change. From that experience Cizik became an advocate for creation care and shortly convened a group of denominational, para-church leaders, educators and pastors to hear Sir John Houghton. This gathering turned out to be the seedbed from which the groundbreaking Evangelical Climate Initiative of 2006 emerged. This Initiative was initially signed by 86 evangelical leaders. NAE as an organization did not sign on; but many of the significant leaders of NAE did, as they represented their own denominations and organizations. Conclusion The Thanksgiving meeting of 1973, which produced the Chicago Declaration, was an unusually influential gathering of evangelical leaders; it started something of a grassroots movement, which continues its impact in local congregations and denominations. As I look back on the development of this movement, it is clear to me that Ron Sider was one of the major voices, as he reconciled faith and public life, word and deed, piety and activism. He never wavered in this conviction, and he was unafraid to bring opposing groups together in an era that can be characterized by ideological, political and religious dissension. He has inspired me and countless others to do the same. Ron Sider’s life, writing and ministry have been a major influence in my thinking, lifestyle, and leadership. I am forever grateful that the mimeographed copy of the Chicago Declaration made it to a small church plant in Kansas City, Missouri. Because of that discovery, my life and leadership have become deeply shaped by Ron, who renewed in me a passion for my own tradition’s historical and theological alignment with the very things he taught. His influence has ignited in me a fire to become a courageous church leader with a vision for global transformation - a fire that still burns to this day.

3. Biblical Fidelity

Craig Keener It is a privilege for me to contribute to this volume in honor of Ron Sider, one of my mentors, a senior colleague for fifteen years, a person of integrity, and one of my dearest friends. Years before I knew him, I read and embraced the value of his biblical discussion on justice for the poor as some of the best biblical guidance available. One of my other mentors, Gordon Fee, insisted that Ron’s Rich Christians was a book that every North American Christian should read. I count our friendship as one of the great privileges of my life. Most to the point of this essay, Ron has for many years spoken as a prophet to Christ’s church. He has challenged traditions in various parts of the church that have blinded us to parts of Scripture - such as justice for the poor, evangelism, and sexual purity - and that keep us from learning from other parts of the church that emphasize other parts than we do.1 Over the years I have watched him faithfully and consistently stand for biblical principles whether others felt that those principles belonged to the Right or to the Left, theologically and politically speaking. He has done so despite criticism because he has a genuine commitment to honor the message of Scripture no matter the cost. I could approach the invited topic of evangelical biblical fidelity from a number of angles - for example, as an academic treatise surveying some of the abundant evidence available that invites us to take seriously the witness of Scripture.12 In this chapter, however, following Ron’s example, I want to challenge some sectors of the church to learn from where other sectors of the church have listened to Scripture more carefully on different issues. I agree fully with Ron’s biblical emphasis on caring for the poor; but trusting that other contributions to this book will speak to that emphasis, I focus elsewhere. As an evangelical who has been part of the Black Church for about two decades, I could talk about what those different parts of the church have to offer each other, and how we can learn by listening to each other; but I have addressed that issue more fully elsewhere.3 1 See Ronald J. Sider, One-Sided Christianity? Uniting the Church to Heal a Lost and Broken World (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1993); The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005). 2 See Craig S. Keener, The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007); Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011). 3 “The Gospel and Racial Reconciliation,” in The Gospel in Black & White: Theological Resources for Racial Reconciliation, ed. Dennis L. Ockholm (Downers Grove, IL: IVP,

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I focus here instead on three areas where different sectors of the church may learn from one another. First, we are often shaped by our culture. Traditionally, that has been considered true of more liberal churches, but it is also very true of evangelicals, on whom I will especially focus. Second, we are often shaped by tradition. I will focus on what I see as a growing danger of overemphasizing tradition to the extent that it becomes the necessary grid for hearing Scripture. Attributed in the past especially to fundamentalists, this practice now threatens evangelicals more widely. And third, in some circles today subjective experience has become a norm through which Scripture is not only appropriated but normatively interpreted. Each of these approaches has its rightful place; we need contextualization, church teaching, and deep spiritual experience. But unless Scripture retains the paramount place, we risk losing course. Although I have chosen these specific issues, which I believe need to be addressed, categories similar to these have been with us for a long time. For example, Wesleyan theology has emphasized the value of Scripture, tradition, reason and experience, but at its best follows Wesley’s lead in affirming that Scripture is ultimately normative. Most non-Wesleyans likewise recognize Scripture’s special place as the canon, or “measuring stick,” by which we evaluate everything else. But while most churches in principle accept Scripture as the measuring stick, in practice, many parts of the church do not put the measuring stick to much use. The Cult of Culture I have mentioned the topics of reason, tradition and experience as sources of authority. I have taken the liberty to replace the first category with culture more generally; because I see it as a more urgent issue and because what seems reasonable to us intuitively is often shaped by our culture.

A Liberal Reason Evangelicals have traditionally criticized some parts of the church for capitulating to theological liberalism, which was a capitulation to the themes valued by the culture, assumed at the time to be identical with reason. If miracles were incredible to the cultural elite, earlier liberal Christian scholars found ways to denude Christianity of its miraculous aspect. This move, of course, stripped away a core element of the gospel, namely, that God acted in history to raise Jesus Christ from the dead and that God raises and transforms believers with Christ. When some protested the centrality of Jesus’s cross as against reason, some liberal theologians accommodated this concern by creating a Christianity in which the cross is incidental to the faith. By way of contrast, Paul celebrated the

1997), 117-30, 181-90. See also Glenn J. Usry and Craig S. Keener, Black Man’s Religion: Can Christianity Be Afrocentric? (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1996), 111-39.

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cross as central to the gospel though recognizing that it challenged human reason (1 Cor. 1:17-18, 23-25; 2:1-2.) As a challenge to this kind of liberal thinking, for example, Ron and others have lamented the willingness of some thinkers and many believers to accommodate the wider culture’s sexual ethics. As personal autonomy has replaced concerns about truth content, some have tried to make the church more relevant to the values of the culture by endorsing sexual license outside the long­ term commitment of family. They have done so despite this license’s conspicuously disastrous results for many children (and betrayed spouses) growing up without family reinforcement. A gospel surgically modified to fit intellectual fashion is a gospel no more permanent than the fashions to which it was adapted. Bultmann reduced the gospel - or at least disguised it as if so reduced - to Heidegger’s existentialism. As Heidegger has seemed decreasingly relevant to contemporary culture, so has Bultmann’s gospel. As my esteemed former colleague Samuel Escobar has told me, missiologists today wrestle with the boundaries between contextualization and syncretism. While syncretism blends the gospel with incompatible elements of other religions or worldviews, contextualization makes it relevant by speaking the language of the local cultures. True contextualization and true relevance must include letting people hear the offence of the gospel as well as the values that it shares with the larger culture. Most of Paul’s speech to the Areopagus covered points in common between the biblical message and some popular Greek philosophy, but he necessarily concluded with Jesus’s resurrection, a point that challenged all Greek philosophies.

Evangelicals ’ Market Partly because old liberal paradigms lost their relevance, evangelicals have made a comeback in the culture. Surely some of this comeback involves commitment to evangelism and to raising many children who often have convictions strong enough to resist pressures from the dominant culture.4 Yet evangelicals have also regained ground partly because of their own appeal to cultural relevance. We have marketed the gospel, often reducing it to sound bites that, perhaps today more than ever, appeal to the popular culture. Some preachers’ sound bites, playing to particular current political or religious constituencies rather than honoring the gospel, have probably also helped to fuel the new atheism,5 but that is another story. There is nothing wrong with marketing. (Thank God for publishers who market good books, including Ron’s!) It does not, however, by itself guarantee the truth of what is being marketed. Marketing targets what consumers want, 4 Being defined primarily by our reaction against culture also means that culture is shaping us, even if inversely. 5 James E. Taylor, “The New Atheists,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. www.iep.utm.edu/n-atheis/ (accessed 18.11.2012).

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which can be good or bad for themselves and for society. The new atheism markets itself well on the Internet, for example, reacting against populist religion in an increasingly educated, though sometimes less thoughtful, world. Another example is political partisans on the Right and the Left who market their ideas with equal vigor, provoking their constituencies to equal outrage over the proclaimed misdeeds of their competitors. Christians have often followed the same approach in politics, talk radio and nowadays even in some denominational politics. They generally do so without much regard for the more moderate advice that the Lord’s brother James addressed to God’s people in a more drastic situation (Jms. 1:19-20).6 Predictably such behavior, especially in an age of ready media access, hardens the opposition as well as rallies the troops. Sound bites are not the stuff of productive dialogue, despite biblical exhortations to reason gently with those with whom we disagree (2 Tim. 2:23-26). Prophetic denunciation of injustice, for which the Bible offers models, should not be confused with politically-shaped nastiness or misrepresentation. North American evangelicals critiqued the old modernists for simply following the culture uncritically, but we evangelicals often do the same today. I do not refer to matters that the biblical message does not dictate, such as music styles, hair length, and many other issues that churches debated a generation ago. I had some of my most profound early Christian experiences in connection with circles connected with the Jesus Movement, and have friends who compose gospel rap. My concern is with what we are not doing today: most of the church is not rigorous in studying Scripture or developing as disciples of the kingdom. We live for our own interests rather than mobilizing all of our resources for the greater good of the kingdom, for the purposes of the King to whom we have supposedly devoted our lives. Like the rest of our North American culture, our churches are often marketdriven and cater to consumers. We give people what they want to keep them coming back. This is true of churches, publishers, Christian media, and sometimes even supposedly counter-cultural Christian academia. To some extent this is necessary; in a consumer-driven society you have to stay in business, giving people enough of what they want to retain a hearing for what they need. Whole Foods stores are growing, for example, but McDonald’s retains a wider audience. Still, why consumers want what they want is another good question, and catering to their appetites may develop them further. Moreover, you can persuade people only if you have a hearing. Whereas Paul, who knew the right language, could get at least a hearing at the Areopagus, Peter and John probably could not have. Nevertheless, in the ancient debate between philosophers and orators regarding truth, Paul agreed with the philosophers. He

6 James’ wisdom was the subject of one of my first publications: “Nonviolence in the Face of Oppression: A Perspective on the Letter of James,” ESA Advocate (April 1991): 14-15.

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used rhetorical devices and disagreed with much of what philosophers thought true, but he did value truth content over rhetorical form. Years ago, a Christian student majoring in communications told me that I was foolish for majoring in biblical studies, and that it was his discipline that would have the ears of the culture. He was right about the latter point. Yet for those of us who actually believe that the Bible is God’s Word, where can we find more truth for living than in the Bible? Of course, there is also truth about human nature and other matters that we learn in greater detail from other disciplines; nor are academic biblical studies the same as studying the Bible. Indeed, the discipline includes plenty of trends and traditional techniques that can even obscure the message of Scripture. Nevertheless, the discussion recalls the tension between the power of marketing and the question of how we evaluate what is most worth marketing. If the market is our only criterion, some messages market better than others, and that leaves out much that is central in Scripture. Laodicean Self-Sufficiency Consumerism (both material and spiritual) is only one weakness in North American evangelical culture. Beneath that weakness lies the heart issue of why we have come to depend on our financial resources, technology, pedagogical techniques, and so forth. These gifts are valuable tools that we should employ, but Christians are multiplying fastest in some parts of the world today where they often lack these tools. In some of these parts of the world our brothers and sisters suffer persecution or want, and instead of partnering with them - as most of us surely would if they were our physical brothers and sisters - we feel as if such sufferings could never come our way, as if we are somehow better than those who are sacrificing more for the kingdom. In this, too, we reflect the pride of our culture; for the moment, we are the church of the world’s only remaining superpower. (I hope that Christians in China or some other strong power a generation from now do not share our attitudes.) The problem is not that we have gifts, but that most of North American evangelicalism depends on the gifts rather than the giver. We imbibe our culture’s sense of independence, propping up belief in God by our successes without actually having to depend on him much. That is, many of us do not feel the need to exercise much faith when we pray for our daily bread. Not unlike early twentieth-century modernists, we are able to conduct most of our Christianity without depending on God to act. We do not need God to transform lives, or at least we often act as if we do not. If, hypothetically, God were to suddenly withdraw his Spirit from our North American churches, most church services would surely continue as planned. Some generations, like the generation that fought World War II, understood sacrifice, and total mobilization for what people embraced as a supreme cause. (Apologies to Ron and other pacifist readers for a war illustration, but I intend it only as an analogy!) But my own generation, indulged with privileges not available to most of the world throughout history, does not readily understand

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sacrifice. Fundamental to being a disciple of Jesus is counting the cost and taking up our cross to follow him, even to the point of death (Mk. 8:34-38; Lk. 14:2633). But unless people are biblically formed, sacrifice for God’s kingdom does not market well; it is not what individualistic consumers value.

Trading on Tradition

Like culture, tradition is also important but in a different way. Tradition serves as a bulwark against being swept away by the fashions of our culture; it brings to bear the accumulated wisdom of past generations on the often impulsive experiments of the present. I wish here to focus on the other side of tradition, however, out of concern for trends that I believe risk leading us away from Scripture. Holiness vs. Legalism Many of us are well-aware of, and often are still licking our wounds from, the kinds of church traditions we experienced in conservative churches a generation ago. When our music had too much of a beat, or we groomed or adorned ourselves like our cultural peers (say, men growing beards or women wearing earrings), we were accused of surrendering the gospel to cultural assimilation. Churches that nit-picked those kinds of elements had wrongly confused the cultural values of an earlier generation with the gospel. Likewise, churches have often perpetuated traditions based on how God acted long ago (or on the cultural setting in which God acted long ago). This was true of some revivalistic churches. One generation’s experience of revival became the next generation’s tradition, which in turn became the next generation’s legalism. By avoiding putting on makeup or going to the movies, one stayed holy. Granted, while Jesus understood his culture and spent time influencing sinners, I do wonder whether he would have spent his time imbibing most of today’s movies for entertainment purposes. But biblical holiness is not defined or produced by these sorts of rules. Biblical holiness involves consecration. One might define it as loving God so much that nothing else matters in comparison with him. Living as if God is supremely important will challenge our lives far more deeply than such rules could. At the moment I am concerned, however, about another kind of tradition, one that seems to be growing among evangelical intellectuals. This is a disciplined appeal to older eras of tradition, an appeal that has both strengths and weaknesses. Some have idealized the era of early Christianity as a superior kind of tradition that we should follow. The wisdom of the church fathers (or for some other churches, the Reformation or other eras) offers itself not merely as a model to be appropriated critically, but as a theological norm for the church in all eras and cultures. Before proceeding, I should clarify that I have the highest regard for those who are making available the interpretations of the church fathers or voices from

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other eras. It seems short-sighted to engage the voices of recent scholarship yet neglect the voices of past centuries and cultures. I also recognize that in some churches, these appeals offer a bulwark against theological fashions, and effectively call believers back to more biblical traditions. Knowing where we come from helps us to evaluate better why we think what we think. The Church’s Book or the Book’s Church? Nevertheless, I write with a concern about where an uncritical embrace of traditions could lead. Granted that these earlier traditions are valuable to engage; but are they normative in the way that Scripture is? Take for example the church fathers; they themselves accorded Scripture a special authority. Although the outer contours of the New Testament canon continued to be debated for some time, the special authority of Scripture remained fairly consistent. What else do we mean by “canon,” the measuring stick for all other revelation? Calling Scripture “canon” does not mean that it is the only thing that God has ever said or revealed, but it does mean that it is the criterion by which we evaluate other claims to revelation. Granted that God has often led the church through history; it has often faltered through history. The accumulated wisdom of people being often led by God is not the same as direct prophetic revelations or the messages of apostles who learned directly from Jesus himself. Some reply - borrowing an ancient Christian argument used against Gnostics and their kin - that the Bible is the church’s book. The church, after all, chose the Bible, shaping the canon. To this 1 would first respond, “Which church?” Granted, all of the church agrees on issues like Jesus’s deity or resurrection. Yet most issues that Christians debate today will not be settled by an appeal to “the church,” unless one thinks of an institutional connection, as in the Roman Catholic Church or, ultimately earlier, the Eastern Orthodox churches. Defending such an institutional connection might mean reading Scripture in light of later developments, but I do not believe that it takes a great deal of skill in inductive Bible study to recognize that such harmonization with the original apostolic teachings, say, in Paul’s letters, is problematic at points.8 More to the point, the church did not create the Bible per se\ the works were already circulating, and councils recognized what was functioning as Scripture in the churches. Much of the Bible originated with prophets or apostles inspired by God or directly commissioned by Christ. Far from being merely a product of the people of God in general, it often came from prophets calling God’s people to repentance. The message of Scripture stands over the church, not the church’s views over Scripture. If Scripture means whatever we as the church want it to mean, it will mean different things to churches in different cultures and eras, and it will never provide us prophetic correction. If, by contrast, Scripture means at 8 Admittedly, this is a matter of extensive debate that I cannot take space to address here. Also admittedly, I am thinking here more of sacraments or buildings than of Christological creeds.

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the least what God inspired its authors to mean, it can challenge us afresh in every generation. Of course, much of Scripture reads like case studies, like examples for us, as Paul said (1 Cor. 10:11). God’s agents generally communicated to people in concrete settings with specific linguistic (Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek) and cultural contexts. But if we hear what God said in those settings, we can usually get a fairly good idea of what God would say in our own settings.

Limits to Tradition’s Guidance Would not the early church fathers have a better idea of Scripture’s meaning than we do? Sometimes, yes. Certainly the Eastern Church fathers knew Greek better than we do. Then again, Augustine, for all his theological and homiletical brilliance, did not know Greek, and his dependence on Latin influenced the way that he framed his understanding of original sin in Romans 5:12. The church fathers lacked the blind spots we acquire from a postindustrial, postmodern setting far removed from biblical settings, but they did not share all the biblical settings either. Most of them wrote after the rise of the Second Sophistic and the dominance of Middle Platonism, addressing a different rhetorical and philosophic environment than all the biblical writers. Even more, only a few of them, such as Hegesippus or Jerome, had a very full and sympathetic understanding of the Jewish context of early Christianity. Culture influenced them no less than it influences us. The rise of sexual asceticism in late antiquity, the dominance of anti-Semitism and views on gender that few of us today would embrace, and so forth, leave their marks in various patristic writers. Apologetic uses of Scripture against Gnostics and Manicheans became traditions about what the texts must have originally meant. Following some Alexandrian Jewish predecessors, notably Philo, some church fathers treated Scripture in allegorical ways pioneered by pagan philosophers embarrassed by moral problems in Greek myths. When some African Christians treat traditional African religions as Africa’s “Old Testament” that prepared them for the gospel, we rightly regard this approach as syncretistic. But we should employ the same scrutiny when some early Christian thinkers treated Plato the same way. Syncretism is no less syncretistic when its heritage is Western. Of course, those truly immersed in the church fathers will not use them in the careless way about which I have expressed concern. The fathers held a variety of views, often in conflict with one another on details. For example, Papias, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus appear basically premillennial; by the time of Eusebius and Augustine, the church was nearly completely amillennial. After denouncing Pelagius, Augustine was far more rigorous in his approach to predestination than were earlier Greek fathers combatting determinism. Most of us today do agree on the creeds, allowing for some semantic differences, such as the Monophysite approach of Coptic Christians. We differ primarily on details, and the church fathers, as well as leading figures God has used since them, did the same.

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None of these observations, then, deny the importance of listening to the church fathers and subsequent interpreters. Indeed, I think that on issues such as miracles and exorcisms, and not just on the creeds, the modem Western church has much to learn from the ancient church. I also think that the church in all times and places should learn from the church in other times and places. I do not, however, believe that oldness per se made the church more authoritative, once living memory of the apostolic message had passed. Only fidelity to the message does that, and for that we must always re-consult the original message. I do feel the need to warn us of the dangers of making tradition in practice an effectively second canon. Scripture provides a common basis for dialogue among all the churches. You will not get very far telling an Adventist that church fathers regarded Sunday as the Sabbath (an idea not found in Scripture), telling a Baptist that later traditions allowed infant baptism, telling Anabaptists that the church eventually transferred apostolic authority to bishops, and so forth. Scripture is not exhaustive, but it is canon, and where it does not speak, tradition cannot take its place. Or perhaps I should say, partly tongue-in-cheek, that it does not do so in the traditions followed by my part of the church. Those who believe that it should must answer some basic epistemological questions about why they believe that and whether everyone else is obligated to believe the same. We may have to agree to disagree as committed brothers and sisters in Christ about those basic assumptions, but no one should circumvent the discussion by pretending that all Christians agree that church traditions are an authoritative grid for understanding Scripture. We can and should ignore traditions no more than we can and should ignore culture, but we need not always agree with them.

Expounding Our Experience Knowing Scripture does not mean much if we do not live by it, and part of living by it involves experiencing what it teaches as normal - walking by the Spirit, bearing the fruit of the Spirit, experiencing God’s empowerment in various ways depending on our individual giftings. Often evangelical churches that celebrate expounding the Bible passage by passage neglect elements that do not fit their past experience. Thus, for example, after correcting abuses about gifts of the Spirit, Paul warned that we should be zealous for prophesying and should not forbid to speak in tongues (1 Cor. 14:39); despite this, many of our churches forbid both. Ideally, Paul wanted all members of the early house churches to contribute to the church meeting spiritually (14:26); but in many evangelical and charismatic churches today, the primary operative gift is pastor-teacher. In fact, many churches are not cessationist in theory; we believe that the gifts are for today. We simply act as if they are not. Many evangelical and even Pentecostal churches are radically inconsistent, accepting a belief that we do not really practice.

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My guess is that most readers of this book come from sectors of the church that could use more emphasis on experience. The relationship with God modeled throughout the Bible is an experiential relationship - people who trusted God, who persevered through testing, and who often heard from God in various experiential ways. Divine and Human There is, however, another side of experience, one with which I, as a long-term charismatic evangelical, am all too familiar.9 In keeping with the rest of this chapter, I focus here on this other side. I am experientially charismatic, but, with most long-time observers, I am aware of some spiritually intense circles where almost anything goes. Whereas some sectors of the church neglect personal spiritual experience, others highlight experience so much that they have to continually revise or harmonize their views as new claims of experiences come their way. Experiences are not all self-interpreting. For example, an experience may be genuinely cathartic without being a genuine exorcism; a hearer may learn a valuable lesson from a sermon without the sermon genuinely reflecting the point of the biblical text on which it claims to be based. Moreover, God may genuinely bless sincere and zealous seekers without us assuming that everything that occurs in those circles is divine activity. Most revival movements in history include elements of human frailty along with the divine (note for example Jonathan Edwards’ appraisals of the First Great Awakening).10 God works through fallible people, of which there is no other kind. Striking the right balance between the subjective and the objective is easier said than done, and not all of us will draw the line in the same place. During intense outpourings of the Spirit (such as in 1 Sam. 19:20-24; Acts 10:44-46; 19:6, 11-12), God may act in unusual ways that transcend our usual limitations. Frequently, however, radical subjectivity breeds mistakes that hurt people inaccurate prophecies, too much emotional intensity for weaker spirits, misinterpretations about spiritual authority, and so forth. There is a way forward, however: our subjective relationship with God can be anchored in objective study of God’s Word.

91 have more often addressed the positive side, such as in Gift & Giver: The Holy Spirit for Today (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2001). On a more academic level, see my Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011). 10 In Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741) and Religious Affections (1746) Edwards notes “bodily effects” (including swoonings) that accompanied the revival of his day but were incidental to it.

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Bible Bites? Unfortunately, some Christians zealous for fresh experience do not find careful study exciting enough. In our culture, we want everything instant; fast-food devotions fit our active lifestyle. Instant, however, is not always God’s way. Sometimes in the Bible God did things instantly, such as many of Jesus’ miracles, but usually God worked through a process. Consider the testing that Abraham and Sarah endured before Isaac’s birth, the testing that David endured before being exalted king, and so forth. God could have formed the world or fulfilled his purposes in a moment rather than billions of years, but even young earth creationists (of whom 1 am not one) grant that he took at least several days to do it. God often works through long processes. The Bible suggests that we should labor for wisdom (Prov. 2:2-3; 4:5; 15:14; 22:17; 23:23), and shortcuts are not the way to attain it. Much popular use of the Bible today does not give us sufficient biblical insight. Sound bites out of context misrepresent people; such out-of-context quotations have destroyed reputations, damaged ministries, and ended political careers. On a popular level, however, most Christians use Bible verses like sound bites. Rather than reading Scripture deeply and imbibing the context, we use verses the way we have always heard others use them. Sometimes we employ them simply the way they strike us at the moment; which we assign to inspiration even when our application diverges widely from the point of the text. Years ago Jim Bakker preached a prosperity message on The PTL Club. He later confessed that he was so busy with ministry that he did not have much time to read the Bible for himself; so he took what his friends taught that it said, assuming that they had read it in context. During his subsequent time in prison, he had much more time to read the Bible than he had before. To his horror, he realized that he had been teaching the exact opposite of what Jesus taught about possessions.11 Taking for granted interpretations of Scripture because other “spiritual” people hold these views renders us immune from Scripture correcting us. These too are “traditions,” even if sometimes very recent ones. Granted, God could speak to us through the wording of Scripture out of context the way he could speak to us through a poem or a donkey. Once when I was supposed to be translating Caesar’s Gallic War I instead flipped open my Bible and my finger landed on the verse, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s ...” Although I returned chastened to reading Caesar, I dare not proclaim to all Christians, “God told me that you should all translate Caesar.” A legitimate insight that we may gain from a text that has nothing really to do with it is not the message of the text that God originally inspired, and we dare not proclaim our insight to everyone else as if it is canonical revelation. What is the point of having a measuring stick by which to evaluate other claims to revelation if we appeal to our revelations to make the Bible say what we think?* ’’See Jim Bakker with Ken Abraham, I Was Wrong (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1996), 531-44.

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There were many prophets in Jeremiah’s day, but among them Jeremiah stood virtually alone in announcing impending judgment. The other prophets were more popular in their day, but after Jerusalem fell their words ended up in the dustbin of history. Jeremiah’s message, tested by time, became part of Israel’s canon. The Bible is not just any claim to revelation; it is what has stood the test. Our personal hearing of God is important, but God will not speak something now that contradicts what he has already spoken over centuries through tested apostles and prophets. God gave us the Bible, and the spiritual gift of teaching it so that we could evaluate our experiences and let Scripture direct what we do with them.

Everyone’s an Expert Like charismatic experience, popular religion has its positive side, but it also has its limitations. Some parts of the church seem to take for granted that “we already know” the Bible in a cavalier way that we would never treat medical expertise or legal counsel. Most of us rightly look to credentialed psychologists and counselors for the most expert counseling, but anybody who can read gives advice on the Bible. I do not believe that one needs to be a scholar or go to seminary to understand Scripture; my complaint is simply that many parts of the church neglect serious Bible study. Speaking of experience, my own includes this: I have sometimes experienced deep anguish walking through a typical Christian bookstore, which, to stay in business, must often cater to the typical Christian consumer. Big names sell. Some of those names actually do handle Scripture well; some do have an important message, and many live with integrity. Yet some may become famous Bible teachers quoting verses out of context because they devote their career to marketing their message, not devoting an equally careful amount of time to deeply engaging Scripture. One of the early Pentecostal leaders, Smith Wigglesworth, believed that in addition to the outpouring of the Spirit that brought a restoration of the gifts, there would someday come another revival emphasizing God’s Word. “When these two moves of the Spirit combine,” he prophesied, “we shall see the greatest move the Church of Jesus Christ has ever seen.”12 Sometimes evangelicals fear charismatic excesses, and charismatics are impatient with evangelicals’ reticence to engage some genuinely biblical experiences. In our pride and fear, we fail to see how much we need each other, and that both are looking at genuine elements of the biblical message. Instead of reacting against each other, or posturing about which gifts are most important, let us embrace biblically affirmed experience in biblical ways. The Bible offers repeated models of spiritual experience; it also offers guidance and a framework within which we can keep our experience on track.

12 George Stormont, Wigglesworth: A Man Who Walked with God (Tulsa, OK: Harrison House, 1989), 114. Stormont knew Wigglesworth personally.

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Conclusion The one common ground that different parts of the church share is a stated commitment to the basic canon of Scripture. It is from Scripture that we claim that we are ready to be corrected by one another. Someone might accuse me of being biased at this point toward the Bible because I am a Bible professor. The reverse, however, is true: I am a Bible professor, having devoted my life to understanding and explaining Scripture, because of how important I believe it is. Certainly evangelicals claim to love Scripture, but too often we give little heed to the parts of it that do not already fit our tradition, culture or experience. Too often we have resisted the biblical insights of other evangelical movements. At least in earlier generations, churches that focused on the pastoral role of teaching have often despised what they considered less valuable (or even more dangerous) personal gifts such as tongues or healing. Meanwhile, those who emphasize spiritual spontaneity have sometimes despised mere “book-learning,” and not given the gift of teaching - ranked third in 1 Corinthians 12:28 - its proper due. Those familiar with Ron Sider’s earlier works are well-aware that those who defend the Bible most vociferously on historical matters have often been suspicious or neglectful of applying biblical texts regarding care for the poor, a theme pervasive in the prophets. Some other Christians have blamed the diminishing size of their churches on their prophetic stand for social justice when it sometimes has more to do with their neglect of personal evangelism. I suspect that one reason we have often failed to embrace the gifts and biblical insights of other parts of the church is pride. So long as we are too proud of our own gifts and insights to embrace the gifts and insights of the rest of the body of Christ, we will render ourselves immune to correction. If all of these insights are available in Scripture, however, and Scripture becomes the basis for our dialogue with each other, the situation can change. We can learn new ways if we will humble ourselves before the message of Scripture, which provides a corrective to both ourselves and those with whom we dialogue.

4. The Whole Gospel: Avoiding Biblical Malpractice

Manfred Brauch

Introduction I have a deep concern. It is about the integrity and viability of our Christian witness in today’s world, a witness that is frequently undermined and distorted by what I call “biblical malpractice.” By using this term for interpreting and applying the Bible in questionable or irresponsible ways, I very deliberately point to the serious nature of misinterpreting the Bible. The term “malpractice” conjures up images of people’s health being impacted negatively in the medical arena because of carelessness or miscommunication or mistaken procedures or wrong prescription of medications. And this is precisely what happens when Scripture is misinterpreted and misused: its “health,” that is, its authentic message and meaning becomes distorted. It is not allowed to speak its deepest truths, and its voice is muted, throttled, or silenced. I am particularly concerned about biblical malpractice within the tradition of Christian faith that upholds the Bible as the unique Word of God and affirms its divine inspiration and authority. This tradition, which is generally identified as evangelical, and of which I consider myself a part, transcends denominational and confessional boundaries. It seeks to honor the text of Scripture, claiming it as the irreducible foundation of the faith “once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). Nevertheless, on a regular basis, in our interpretation and application of the Bible, malpractice occurs; we do violence to its message and meaning. Those who affirm the Bible as the Word of God, inspired and authoritative for Christian faith, life and presence in the world, must be true to those convictions when interpreting and applying this Word. The Apostle Paul wrote that we are “servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries” (1 Cor. 4:1) and that “it is required of stewards to be found trustworthy” (1 Cor. 4:2). For Paul, “God’s mysteries” had been fully disclosed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 2:1; Eph. 3:1-10). For us, by extension, “trustworthy stewardship” of this revealed mystery in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:5-6) certainly includes Scripture, that vehicle in and through which God’s redemptive and transforming purpose for the world has been transmitted. On the basis of commitment to trustworthiness in stewarding the whole truth of God’s mysteries, we must refuse, with Paul, “to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word” and instead give allegiance to “the open statement of the truth” (2 Cor. 4:2). This stance and commitment with regard to the interpretation and application of Scripture must characterize Christian presence and witness.

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The tragedy, however, is that many who most passionately and stridently proclaim allegiance to the Bible and love for the inspired, authoritative Word of God often interpret and apply Scripture in ways that distort its meaning and message. Consequently, instead of releasing the transforming “power from God” and the “treasure” of God’s word into the world in and through the “earthen vessels” of our presence and witness (2 Cor. 4:7), we contribute to the world’s brokenness.1 As “servants of Christ and as “trustworthy stewards” of the treasure of Scripture, we are called to be bearers - in word and deed - of the “Whole Gospel for the Whole World.” This was the original motto of Eastern Baptist (now Palmer) Theological Seminary, where Ron Sider and I were colleagues for 26 years. In 1925 the founders of the school, in deliberate reaction against both a drift to the theological left and a fundamentalist narrowness on the right, sought to establish a seminary that was committed to “the whole gospel,” thereby rejecting the one-sided emphases of both the liberals and the fundamentalists. In his writing, speaking, teaching and organizing, Ron Sider has arguably been the most passionate, consistent and effective proponent and embodiment of the vision of Eastern’s founders. We are obligated to hear and apply the comprehensive, whole Word of God to all dimensions of human life. The tragedy of not hearing and living the whole gospel - in both personal and corporate Christian faith and life - is that it presents a truncated gospel to the world. A truncated gospel is a caricature of the real thing. It is, at best, incomplete and at worst, inauthentic. Consequently, the transforming power of the whole gospel is blunted and the larger culture is deprived of the potential impact of Christian witness and presence - energized and informed by a holistic biblical message and comprehensive biblical worldview.1 2 From beginning to end of the biblical story, we are faced with two truths: 1) that human life, in both its individual/personal and corporate/social dimensions, is out of joint and distorted, that humanity lives in rebellion against God and in

1 For a comprehensive treatment of biblical malpractice, see my Abusing Scripture: The Consequences of Misreading the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009). 2 See “A Biblical World View has a Radical Effect on a Person’s Life” http://theroadtoemmaus.Org/RdLb/l IPhl/WrldV/WvwEffctBama.htm (accessed 4.4. 2007). This 2003 study by the Bama Research group shows that a comprehensive biblical world view that shapes our attitudes, beliefs, values and opinions significantly impacts the way we are present in our culture. The study also “suggests that a large share of the nation’s moral and spiritual challenges is directly attributable to the absence of a biblical word view...” The research indicates that even among devoutly religious people, very' few have such a biblical worldview. Among those who identify themselves as born-again Christians, only 9% have such a comprehensive perspective on life. It is our contention that a significant factor contributing to this lack of a holistic biblical perspective on Christian life and the world is “biblical malpractice,” which in this case leads to a distortion of the whole gospel.

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opposition to the purposes of God; and 2) that the wholeness of human life as intended by God, in both its personal and social dimensions, is possible only when persons and human communities live in life-giving, life-sustaining, and life-transforming relationship with God. The Human Condition: The Need for Personal Savlation

The early chapters of Genesis (chs. 3-11) set the stage. Human beings, represented by Adam and Eve, grasp at equality with God, seek to transcend creational boundaries, and reject dependence on their Creator (Gen. 3:1-13). That rejection of the Creator-creature relationship leads to a broken, distorted human existence, characterized by: 1) conflict between the human creation and the rest of the created order (Gen. 3:14-15; cf. Isa. 24:4-6); 2) the experience of sorrow, agony, distress in the fulfillment of the complementary vocations of giving and sustaining life (Gen. 3:16-19);3 3) distortion of the redemptive, complementary relationship of man and woman which leads to wholeness (depicted in Gen. 1:262.25) into a cursed hierarchical one (Gen. 3:16); 4) enmity and hatred within human community (Gen. 4:1-6.6); and 5) human arrogance vis-a-vis God, leading to the total fragmentation of human community, symbolized in the confusion of tongues (Gen. 11:1 -9). This biblical picture of the thorough distortion of human life is concisely summarized in Gen 6:5-11: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually....Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.” The Psalmist utters the same conviction. The Lord, he says, “looks down from heaven on humankind to see if there are any...who seek after God” and concludes: “They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one” (Ps. 14:3). While this is an assessment of the global human condition, Israel’s prophets discern the same reality among God’s covenant people. God “expected justice,” says Isaiah, “but saw bloodshed;” he looked for “righteousness, but heard a cry” (Isa. 5:7)!

3 The Hebrew word itsabon, normally translated as pain in (Gen. 3:16) and toil (in Gen. 3:17), can refer either to physical pain and stress or to emotional pain and stress (agony, sorrow, despair, emotional trauma). It is ven possible that Gen. 3:16, 17 refers to emotional pain, rather than the traditionally understood physical pain of the woman in giving birth, and the man’s physical pain in hard labor. In the ancient Near East, infant mortality was extremely high. Thus, childbearing was always attended by the possibility of the child’s death. Likewise, in agrarian life, crops were always threatened by pests, storms, hail, floods. Thus, the production of food was always attended by the possibility of its destruction. Therefore, one result of Adam and Eve’s rejection of creaturely boundaries may be that - in their complementary vocations of giving and sustaining life - they experience sorrow.

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Amos’ judgment is even harsher: “Ah, you that turn justice to wormwood and bring righteousness to the ground” (5:7)!4 The New Testament’s analysis of the human condition is in full agreement with that of the Old Testament, and even intensifies it. Human life is marked by lostness (Lk. 15), darkness (Jn. 1:5), enmity (Rom. 5:10), separation (Eph. 2:15), ungodliness (Rom. 1:18; Eph. 2:12) and alienation from the life of God (Eph. 4:17-18). The NT’s most comprehensive term for the human reality defined by these representative characteristics is hamartia (sin), which means literally “missing the mark” of God’s intention for human life. The most thorough and penetrating biblical analysis of this human situation is Paul’s discussion in Romans 1:18-3:23, in which he depicts the downward spiraling of personal and communal life, resulting from the rejection of the Creator, the giver and sustainer of authentic life (1:18-23). He concludes with the climactic statement that, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (3:23). This picture of the pervasive brokenness of human life and community sets the stage for the Incarnation: the coming of God’s Light to dispel the world’s darkness (Jn. 1:1-5; 8:12; 9:15); of God’s Savior to seek humans in their lostness (Lk. 15:11-32);5 of God’s truth to liberate from the shackles of falsehood (Jn. 14:6; 8:31-32; 18:37); of God’s atonement in Christ to cleanse us from our sinfulness (Mt. 1:21; Jn 1:29; Rom. 3:23-26; 5:8); of God’s reconciling love in Christ to overcome our enmity (Rom. 5:10; 2 Cor. 5:17-21); and of God’s resurrection power in Christ to overcome our death-dominated existence and ultimately death itself (Rom. 6:3-11; 1 Cor. 15). These affirmations, representative of many more throughout the NT, constitute the evangel, the good news, the gospel. It is the announcement that in the event of Christ, God has acted to redeem human life - in its personal-relational totality - from its bondage to sin and death and to restore persons to life-giving and life-sustaining relationship with God: “...in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself’ (2 Cor. 5:19).

4 This assessment is pervasive in the prophetic literature of the Old Testament (see, e.g. Isa. 10:4-2; 59:1-15; Eze. 34; Jer 5:1-3; 22:13-17; Am. 2:4-8; 5:10-12; Mic. 3:1-3; 911), as well as in the historical literature about the united kingdom (1 and 2 Sam.) and the kingdoms of Judah and Israel (1 and 2 Kings). The repeated refrain regarding the rulers is this: “He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, just as all his ancestors had done.” (2 Kings 13:37). In the OT, justice always has to do with right relationships, characterized by truth, fairness, goodness, compassion, equity and love. 5 The so-called “Parable of the Prodigal Son” might better be called “The Parable of the Two Lost Sons.” The setting of the parable (Lk 15:1-2) shows clearly that the younger son represents all those defined in Judaism as “lost,” as “sinners,” while the elder brother represents the Pharisees and scribes, sitting in judgment of “sinners.” It may be said that the elder brother is as lost as his younger brother, perhaps more so, since he does not recognize his lostness. His relationships with both his father and his younger brother are distorted.

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This good news - that restored relationship with God as the ground for authentic life - is already anticipated in the OT. In the midst of its checkered history of faithfulness and faithlessness, the people of Israel are repeatedly invited to “seek the Lord,” with the promise that, “if you search after him with all your heart and soul...you will find him” (Deut. 4:29).6 To seek the Lord, to live life in his presence, is to live (Am.5:4-6; Isa. 55:3). To seek the Lord is to find him, to encounter his mercy, to receive forgiveness (Isa. 55:6-7).7 This OT theme of seeking God and finding life in relationship with him is concisely summarized in the word of Jesus who, as the one who stands in a relationship of oneness with God (Mt. 11:27; Jn. 5:26), says: “Come to me, all you that are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. (Mt. 11:28). The same truth is stated incisively in John 10:10: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” This affirmation builds on the OT and at the same time goes decisively beyond it. For the Good News is precisely this: In Jesus Christ, God comes “to seek out and to save the lost” (Lk. 19:10) and to bring broken, alienated, sinful people back into relationship with God (Rom. 5:6-10; 2 Cor. 5:18). It is this gospel, central to historic Christian teaching for two millennia, which has been the passionate focus and concern of the evangelical movement within Protestantism, particularly during the past century. Its major focus - through evangelistic work, international mission outreach, and congregational worship, fellowship, discipleship and education - has been to invite persons to respond in faith to God’s grace (Eph. 2:8), to enter new life through spiritual rebirth (Jn. 3:310; 1 Pet. 1:3,23), to confess Jesus Christas Savior and Lord (Lk. 2:11; Jn. 4:42; Acts 13:23; Rom. 10:9; 2 Pet 2:20), and to follow Christ into a lifetime of being transformed toward the image of Christ in personal discipleship (2 Cor. 3:17-18; Eph. 4:22-5:11). This biblical teaching, presented above in very condensed form, is what has often been referred to as “the Personal Gospel” or “the Gospel of Personal Salvation.” The primary purpose of the proclamation of this essential dimension of biblical teaching has been the “saving of souls,” both in the here and now and for eternal life beyond death.

6 See also 1 Chr. 16:10-11; 28:9; 2 Chr. 7:14; 15.2; Ps. 14:2-3; 105:3-4; 119:12; Jer. 29:13; Hos. 2:20; 4:1; 6:3). 7 Cf. Jer. 31:34, where “knowing God” is the result of God’s redemptive forgiveness. This prophetic call to “know God” (Hos. 2:20; 4:1; 6:3) is virtually synonymous with the invitation to seek and find God and live. To “know God” is not the same as “to know about God” (in the sense of knowing truths about God). It is rather to stand in personal, experiential relationship with God. The Hebrew wordvWa (know) is also used for the intimacy of sexual union (e.g. “Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived...” (Gen. 4:1).

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The Call to Social Justice

Side by side with this dimension of the biblical revelation of God’s redemptive purpose and action is a related dimension, which has to do with God’s concern about the larger arena of human life in community, in social groupings, and in political and cultural structures. In the biblical view of human life, authentic personhood is primarily relational rather than individualistic. There is a sense of corporate solidarity and belonging vis-a-vis our modern (particularly Western) concept of personal autonomy and individualism.8 This truth comes to clear expression in Jesus’ response to the question: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest” (Mt. 22:36)? Jesus responds by combining two commandments from the OT. He cites what in Israelite tradition was known as the Shema: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might,” and then affirms that “a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Deut. 6:4-5 and Mt. 22.39, cited from Lev. 19.18).9 Two complementary relationships are here in view: relationship with God and relationship with “the other.” The “vertical” divine-human relationship has consequences for the “horizontal” human-human relationships. They are like two sides of the same coin, inseparably linked. Consequently, authentic piety (loving God, being rightly related to God) must find concrete expression in the larger areas of human community (loving neighbor, the “other,” even the enemy). This dual perspective is pervasive throughout the Bible. The prophet Micah places the divine call “to walk humbly with your God” side by side with the requirement “to do justice and to love kindness” (6:8). Likewise, Jeremiah’s word from the Lord is that “to know me” is “to do justice and righteousness” and to regard “the cause of the poor and needy” (22:15-16). Since God “in his holy habitation” is “father of orphans and protector of widows” (Ps. 68:5),10 can those created in the image of God do anything less? This is precisely what Psalm 72 affirms - spoken most likely at the coronation of one of Israel’s kings. The psalmist calls upon God to grant the king his justice and righteousness so that he would rule in righteousness, defend the cause of the poor with justice, and deliver the needy from oppression (vv. 1-4, 12). Because God’s people and their leaders - redeemed by the Lord from Egyptian political bondage and oppression - violated his will for justice and wholeness of life by not embodying that divine calling within the economic and social structures of the nation, their prophets repeatedly denounced their shallow, 8 The Old Testament scholar H. Wheeler Robinson demonstrated this in his Corporate Personality in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1973). 9 It was called the Shema because of the first word in the Hebrew of Deut. 6:4 (shema, meaning hear). 10 In ancient Near Eastern society (including Israel), widows and orphans were the weakest, vulnerable members of the social order. Thus, repeatedly, they are the objects of God’s special concern.

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empty piety. Particularly potent are the prophets Isaiah and Amos on this matter. In a lengthy critique of Judah by “the word of the Lord,” Isaiah pointed the divine finger of judgment at the tremendous gap between worship, on the one hand, and political, social and economic corruption, on the other hand (1:11-15). At the heart of this judgment was the word of the Lord: “I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquities” (1:13). Therefore, “Learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (1:17)." Rather than holding a fast day to demonstrate humility before the Lord, while at the same time oppressing their workers (58:3b, 5), God’s people are called to “fast” in a radically different way: “Is not this the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house...” (58:6-7)? Amos, in his prophetic word addressed to Israel, likewise exposes the hypocrisy of a formal piety that is corrupted by social and economic injustice: “They lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge; and in the house of their God they drink wine bought with fines they imposed” (2:8). While claiming to be the redeemed people of God, “They sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals; they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way” (2:6-7).11 12 Finally, in a powerful word of judgment the Lord denounced Israel’s worship, including festivals, solemn assemblies, offerings, sacrifices, and hymns (5:21-23), because their social and economic life and practices were characterized by injustice, especially for the poor and needy, and challenged Israel to express their calling as God’s people concretely within the social and economic spheres of their community: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever­ flowing stream (5:24).” This theme of the intimate connection in the lives of the redeemed people of God - between personal piety (right relationship with God) on the one hand, and the embodiment of God’s desire for justice and wholeness of life in community on the other hand - is also an essential hallmark of the NT. Those who had become participants in the reign of God that had broken into history in the life and ministry of Jesus and who have been set free from the bondage to sin by the redemptive work of Christ on the cross, had been “created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Eph. 2:10). These “good works” were neither limited to personal acts of kindness and generosity and compassion, nor to an upright life marked by moral integrity, nor to an advocacy of sexual purity and relational fidelity. As the NT shows in unbroken continuity with the prophetic voices of the OT, the good works for which we are created include words and deeds that incarnate the reign of God also in the social and economic areas of life. 11 See also Isa. 1:21-23; 3:13-15; 5:7, 20-23; 10:1-2; 58:8-10 and Jer. 5:27-28; 7:5-6 and especially 7:21-26; 8:10-12. 12 See also Am. 5:10-12.

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In what has come to be called his “inaugural sermon” at beginning of his messianic mission in his home town of Nazareth (Lk. 4:16-21), Jesus cited the prophet Isaiah (61:1-2) and claimed that he was anointed by the Spirit of the Lord “to bring good news to the poor...to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of God’s favor.” Thus, Jesus’ messianic mission had clear implications for the political, economic and social spheres, decisively so if the references to freedom for the oppressed and “the year of the Lord’s favor” were references to the year of Jubilee,13 which was intended to be a year of release for debtors and liberty to return to one’s family from servitude.14 Much in Jesus’ ministry echoes this inaugural mission statement. He reached out to the marginalized: the most vulnerable, such as women, children and the poor (Lk. 8:1-3, 43-48; 13:10-17; 18:15-18; Mt 18:10-14; Mk 10:13-16); the socially and religiously ostracized and segregated, such as lepers and Samaritans (Mt. 8:2-4; Lk. 17:11-19; Jn. 4; Lk. 9:51-56; 10:29-37); the unclean and sinners, such as Gentiles and tax-collectors (Lk. 5:27-32; 7:36-39; 15; 19:1-10; Mt. 8:513). In the event of the cleansing of the Temple (Mt. 21:12-13; Mk. 11:15-19; Lk. 19:45-48; Jn. 2:13-17), Jesus challenged sinful structures, such as the economic exploitation of poor pilgrims,15 and the discriminatory racial segregation of Gentiles, by driving the money changers and merchants from the outer “court of the Gentiles,”16 charging the authorities with having turned the temple - intended as “a house of prayer for all the nations” (Mk. 11:17; Isa. 56.7) - into a “den of robbers” (citing Jer. 7.11). Very much in continuity with the prophets’ critique of corruption in Israel’s social and economic dealings, Jesus took the religious leaders to task for the disconnect between their demonstration of piety (tithing, long prayers in public), on the one hand, and neglect of justice and mercy (Mt. 23.23) as well as active defrauding widows of their property (Mk. 12.40), on the other hand. This focus in Jesus’ ministry is a central feature of his teaching concerning the kingdom or reign of God. In his life and teaching, the reign of God had broken into history (Mk. 1:15; Lk. 17:21) and was doing battle with the reign of evil (Lk. 11:20-23), wherever and however that reign manifested itself. Indeed, Jesus’ exorcisms were signs that the reign of God had invaded the stronghold of Satan: 13 The year of Jubilee, described in Leviticus 25, was to be held even- 50 years. A Qumran text (1 IQ Melchizedek) links this chapter explicitly with Isa. 61:1. See Craig A. Evans, New International Biblical Commentary: Luke (Peabody, MA.: Hendrickson, 1990), 75. 14 I. H. Marshall, Commentary on Luke (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978), 184; and D. L. Tiede, Luke (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1988), 107. 15 Evans, Luke, 291-296. “Passover celebrants were almost surely being overcharged for sacrificial birds and animals, and were perhaps even being cheated when money was exchanged for the shekels needed to buy these animals” (291-292). 16 See Craig Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary, New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1993), 165-166, for the religious and historical background.

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“...If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Lk. 11:20).17 In the world of the NT - as reflected both in NT texts and in extra-biblical literature18 - evil spirit powers (Satan, the ruler of this world, demons, principalities, powers, elemental spirits, rulers, authorities, spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places, etc.) were understood to stand behind human authorities, political power, social and economic structures and practices, insofar as these were opposed to God and his redemptive purposes.19 Given this reality, Jesus’ life, teachings and actions represented a frontal assault on “the ruler of this world” (Jn. 12:31) and all the sinful social and political structures and policies that are the instruments of the evil one and oppress, marginalize and demean human life. Paul was convinced that the decisive battle against the powers was fought and won on the cross of Christ, who there “disarmed the rulers and authorities...triumphing over them in it” (Col. 2:15).20 But he was also keenly aware that the war against the reign of evil in human life and institutions was still very much in process (Eph. 6:10-14). He knew that Christ’s victory over the powers had to be appropriated in a lifetime of faithful discipleship and presence in the world (Phil. 2:12-13). Those “in Christ” were called to embody the reign of God in all areas of life and society. Therefore, the “over-under” power structures in racial (Jew/Gentile), social (free/slave) and gender (male/female) relationships needed to be challenged and transformed (Gal. 3:27-28). As Jesus spoke “truth to power” and acted in ways that challenged their religious and social authority insofar as it embodied the designs of the evil one (Jn. 8:44), so Paul challenged Christians to “not be conformed to this world”

17 “Finger of God” represents the power of God (see Exo. 8:19). Such a meaning is confirmed in the version of this saying in Matthew 12.28, where we read: “If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons....” Here as elsewhere, this refers to the power of God’s Spirit, present and working in Jesus. 18 See the discussion of this material in Clinton Arnold, Powers of Darkness. Principalities and Powers in the Letters of Paul (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1992), 1986. 19 Several excellent studies on this complex reality, representing a variety of perspectives on the nature of “the powers” and their relationship to cultural, social, political and economic structures, are recommended: Heinrich Schlier, Principalities and Powers in the New Testament (Freiburg, Germany: Herder, 1961); Hendrik Berkhof, Christ and the Powers (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1977); Richard Mouw, Politics and the Biblical Drama (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976); Clinton Arnold, Powers ofDarkness (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1992). 20 This Pauline conviction is certainly in continuity with Jesus’ affirmation that his and his disciples’ demon exorcism, and finally his “glorification” on the cross (Jn. 12:31), meant that Satan had been robbed of his enslaving power.

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(Rom. 12:2)21 and to “take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Eph. 5:11).22

Conclusion: The Whole Gospel It is very clear from the above journey through the biblical witness that God’s encounter of the world’s brokenness - in and through the people of Israel and its culmination in the redemptive life, death and resurrection of Jesus - is allinclusive. God’s salvation, the in-breaking of God’s reign, is directed toward: 1) individual persons in their concrete physical, emotional, spiritual totality and their relational, social interconnectedness; as well as 2) the cultural, social, economic, and political contexts and structures that are part of the sinful reality of human-life-in-community. There is no aspect of sinful, distorted human life which lies outside the sphere of God’s redemptive work in Christ, including the pollution of the environment and the exploitation of the earth’s resources through greed and selfish gain.23 Neither sinful persons, nor the sinful cultural, social, economic and political structures they have shaped, are exempt from the claims of God’s kingdom. The new humanity created in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:15-22) is called to be the vanguard of this redemptive and transforming work of God. As “God’s temple” in whom “God’s Spirit dwells” (1 Cor. 3:16), this new humanity is intended to be God’s option, God’s alternative to the fragmentation, the distortion, the brokenness of human life and society. As such, this new humanity in Christ is called both to bear witness to the whole gospel and to embody it in personal and

21 “When Paul spoke of ‘this world’ in a moral sense, he was thinking of the totality of people, social systems, values and traditions in terms of their opposition to God and his redemptive purposes” (Arnold, Powers ofDarkness, 203). 22 Ronald J. Sider, Christ and Violence (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1979), 57. Sider contends that Paul’s word in Ephesians 3:10 - about the church making known the manifest wisdom of God “to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” - is a challenge to Christians to confront governing authorities when their policies and programs violate God’s purposes. 3 Isaiah 24:4-8 connects human sin and the polluted earth (cf. Rom. 8.19-21). See Francis E. Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1970). Schaeffer was one of the earliest evangelical voices addressing Christian responsibility for the environment. One Amazon reviewer stated that “Schaeffer discusses the Christian approach to the environment and deals with the all-too-common misperception peddled by those Christians who are either ignorant of Biblical truth in this area, or are so insistent on distancing themselves from the pantheistic, bleeding-heart tree-hugging left that they come across as uncaring and abusive.” Sadly, a recent Barna poll showed “evangelicals as the least concerned segments among more than 50 population groups studied” when it comes to the issue of global warming. “Bom Again Christians Remain Skeptical, Divided About Global Warming,” Barna Group www.bama.org/barna-update/article/20-donorscause/95-bomagain-christians-remain-skeptical-divided-about-global-warming (accessed 20.9.2007).

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corporate presence and action. There is no room here for the either-or of Personal Gospel or Social Gospel, of the “saving of souls” or the transformation of sinful social and political structures, of personal justification or work for justice. The Personal Gospel and the Social Gospel are part of a seamless robe, two sides of the same coin. From the perspective of the whole gospel, you cannot have one without the other. Thus, the liberal vision, in its primary (and often exclusive) concern about social and structural transformation, is a denial of the whole gospel. It offers a social gospel without the Savior; a gospel of political peace without the Prince of Peace; a gospel of bread for the world without the Bread of Life; a gospel of harmony in human relationships without a life-giving and life-transforming relationship with the Holy One of God. Make no mistake, however, that evangelicalism, in its primary (and often exclusive) concern for personal salvation from the bondage to sin also offers the world a half-gospel. For an authentic, biblically grounded and informed witness and presence in the world means commitment to the Savior, who both redeems individuals from the ravages of sin and leads them into transforming social concern and action, ft means commitment to the Prince of Peace, who both calms the turmoil of the heart and leads into fruitful work for peace. It means commitment to the Bread of Life, who both feeds the hunger of the human spirit and inspires us to be there for those who have no bread. It means commitment to Jesus the Justifier, who both justifies us before a holy God and empowers us to challenge injustices and to be doers of justice. It means commitment to Jesus the Reconciler, who both restores us to relationship with God and calls us to be ambassadors and ministers of reconciliation in the midst of the continuing divisive realities of racial hatred and bigotry in our land and across the human landscape. A bifurcated gospel - the result of “biblical malpractice” in the hearing and application of biblical teaching - has severely impaired, limited and distorted Christian witness to, and within, secular culture. As such it is, at its deepest level, an offence against the Lord who seeks through his people to make all things new.

Part II

Holistic Ministry and Popularization

5. The Pilgrimage Toward Holistic Mission

Samuel Escobar

In October 2010 the third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization was held in Cape Town, South Africa. For me one of the moving moments of that big event was to take a casual pause from the fatigues of the demanding program and sit in a circle with Ron Sider from the USA, Vinay Samuel from India, Tito Paredes from Peru and Bishop Hwa Yung from Malaysia. Each one of these men has been involved for decades in missionary work and missiological reflection in their own countries and elsewhere in the world, and they have written extensively about what Christian mission should be everywhere in this twenty first century. We agreed that there were many reasons for us to be content and thankful to God for the memory of our walk together in a pilgrimage of more than three decades. We rejoiced to see that 4,200 evangelicals from 198 countries had responded to the invitation to come to Lausanne III, and we anticipated what the final text of the “Cape Town Commitment” would say as an expression of the consensus that was reached during the long process of preparation and the Congress itself. From that Commitment, I quote just a few sentences that outline the way we understand mission today: Let us rise up as the church worldwide...and renew our commitment to go to those who have not yet heard the Gospel, to engage deeply with their language and culture, to live the Gospel among them with incamational love and sacrificial service, to communicate the light and truth of the Lord Jesus Christ in word and deed, awakening them through the Holy Spirit’s power to the surprising grace of God.1

Here we find expressed the key elements of holistic mission, or integral mission as we say in Latin America. It is a mission of the church, not of isolated entrepreneurs; it is a mission with a definite evangelistic thrust, not just the work of an NGO; it is a mission that following the example of Jesus starts with a serving presence that takes seriously the culture, language and condition of the people to whom we go; it is a mission that involves a Christ-like presence and a Christ-centered proclamation; it is a mission motivated by God's love and to his glory, modeled by Jesus Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit. For me, Ron Sider has been a fellow pilgrim on the road of a practice and a reflection that1

1 “Cape Town Commitment,” in International Bulletin ofMissionary Research 35:2 (April 2011), 73.

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conceive mission along these lines, and I would like to express my profound appreciation for him as I recall some stages of that pilgrimage. A Pilgrimage with Ron Sider

I remember well the day I met Ron Sider. It was at the campus of Messiah College in Philadelphia of which he was the Dean, right across the street from the main campus of Temple University in Philadelphia. It was in 1971; Dr. Martin Schrag from Messiah College had invited me to present the Staley Lectures at their campus in central Pennsylvania after which 1 had an invitation to speak to the group in Philadelphia of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF). Ron invited me for dinner at the campus, where we talked for hours about the social responsibility of evangelicals, and 1 shared with him some deep concerns that had developed from my experience of evangelism and discipleship among university students in Latin America. I had fresh in my mind some key insights about evangelical theology and social justice that had been expounded the previous year at the 1970 Urbana Missionary Convention by Black evangelist Tom Skinner, Mennonite educator Myron Augsburger and Anglican teacher­ evangelist John Stott. I also recalled the restless spirit of the students in Urbana that year. What I came to appreciate immediately in conversation with Ron Sider was his conviction about the need to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and call persons to faith in him on the one hand, and the urgency of developing an evangelical approach to participate in the struggle for social justice on the other. In 1972 my family and I lived in Toronto, as 1 had accepted the invitation of IVCF of Canada to be their General Director for three years. While I was there I received an invitation from Ron to participate in a workshop on evangelicals and social concern that was to take place in Chicago during the 1973 U.S. Thanksgiving weekend. We met at the YMCA hotel in downtown Chicago. Among the people that crowded in the discussions in the small meeting rooms of the hotel were, I recall vividly, persons such as Carl Henry, Rufus Jones, Foy Valentine, David Moberg, Richard Pierard, Paul Henry, Stephen Mott, and Joseph Bayly. Some of them had been lonely voices calling their evangelical constituencies for a commitment to justice and sensitivity towards poverty and oppression. 1 had met other participants like Paul Rees, Bernard Ramm, and John Howard Yoder in various conferences in Latin America. This workshop became one of those unique moments of convergence that mark history. After intense times of theological debate and reflection we agreed unanimously to sign the “Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern.” On Dec 1st the Chicago Sun Times reported about the meeting with this comment: “Someday American church historians may write that the most significant church related event of 1973 took place last week at the YMCA Hotel on South Wabash.”2 2 Quoted in the back cover of Ronald J. Sider, Ed., The Chicago Declaration (Carol Stream, IL, Creation House, 1974).

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On my way back to Toronto from that meeting, I remember being impressed by Ron’s commitment to simple lifestyle, his organizing gifts, and his ability to bring together evangelicals from a wide variety of denominational and organizational backgrounds. I was also impressed by his humble unassuming style. A few months later in July 1974 the first International Congress on World Evangelization was held in Lausanne, and it became a similar time of awareness, but now on a global level, for evangelicals about the need to work on issues of justice, peace and fulfillment of people. In the years that followed, what came to be known as the “Lausanne Movement” showed that it was possible for evangelicals to keep together a passion to reach the unreached with the gospel, to preach and pray fervently towards that end, and at the same time to serve the social and material needs of peoples and to work in issues of social change and social justice - all of this as an expression of commitment to evangelical truth and submission to the authority of God’s Word. These evangelical notes are at the heart of the new concept of mission that was developing. The possibility of working closely with Ron was one of the reasons for which I accepted in 1985 the invitation from then-President Robert Seiple of Eastern Baptist (now Palmer) Theological Seminary to be the Professor of Missiology. By then Ron had become Professor of Theology and Culture and had also founded Evangelicals for Social Action, which set up its office at the seminary campus. The racial mixture in the student body at EBTS with Euro-, Hispanic-, Asian- and Latin American students and a high percentage of AfricanAmericans turned the school into a laboratory for the learning of Christian integration. As a faculty we were challenged to grow in our understanding of holistic theological education in a multi-ethnic context. We added to the motto of the seminary, which had been, “the Whole Gospel for the Whole World,” with “through Whole Persons” to reflect, among other things, the need to develop relational and multicultural competence. Among the memories I treasure from my time in Philadelphia are long evenings with Ron and the late Harvie Conn, then-Professor of Mission at Westminster Theological Seminary. Harvie was also a prophetic voice at his school, as he tried to articulate the challenge of urban America and criticized the suburban captivity of evangelical churches. At Ron’s home in Germantown, his wife Arbutus would prepare those inexpensive but delightful Mennonite meals, and as we enjoyed the food and the warm fellowship, we would also compare notes, exchange experiences, share ideas for future publications, and pray for one another. The neighborhood in which the Siders lived was a good laboratory to grasp and understand the challenges of mission in an urban world. Through the late Puerto Rican missiologist Orlando Costas, my predecessor in the Chair of Mission at EBTS, Ron had become acquainted with the International

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Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians (INFEMIT),3 an initiative of theologians from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, along with a select group from North America, who were dealing with issues surrounding holistic mission. Ron and I participated in the fourth conference of INFEMIT that met in Osijek, Yugoslavia, April 10-16, 1991. The theme was “Freedom and Justice in Church-State Relationships,” and we were hosted at the Evangelical Theological Seminary by Peter Kuzmic and Miroslav Volf, two respected evangelical theologians with whom those of us from the Two-Thirds World felt great affinity, as they also faced contexts influenced by Marxism. The agenda was definitely global, because there were only eleven North Americans among the eighty five attendants. Only a couple of months after this meeting, Yugoslavia broke apart, and a cruel and bloody ethnic and religious war shocked the Balkan Peninsula and the world. Ron has continued his contribution to the theological reflection of evangelicals at a global level and has interacted creatively with what is going on. The journal Transformation, which he co-founded and edited for years, became one of the vehicles through which the intense debates and reflections that were taking place among evangelicals around the world, as well as the many new models of holistic mission that were being implemented, could get a hearing in North America. One of the outstanding gifts that Ron possesses has been his ability to explore theological themes in depth while keeping his feet on the ground, and thus able to provide specific suggestions for implementation. Ron’s prophetic voice never loses a pastoral dimension. I believe that has been the genius of his bestselling book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. In that book, Ron proposed that a purely capitalistic system may not be the purest biblical economic program, and as a consequence, some evangelicals reacted vehemently. After a second edition in 1984, the original publisher - Inter-Varsity Press - decided to discontinue it. Word, another religious publisher, took it over and kept it in print having sold more than 350,000 copies.4 Toward Holistic or Integral Mission This brief account of stages during my missiological pilgrimage, in which I have had the joy and privilege of walking alongside Ron, touches on some key elements of what has come to be known as holistic or integral mission. The word “holistic” is understood currently by most users of the English language, but its equivalent in Spanish, holistico, would only be understood by highly sophisticated philosophy scholars. So we Latin Americans use the word integral,

3 In 2010, INFEMIT went through a significant structural and leadership change, during which the organization changed its name to the International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation. 4 Andrew T. Le Peau and Linda Doll, Heart, Soul, Mind and Strength: An Anecdotal History ofInter Varsity Press 1947-2007 (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006), 126.

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which would be an adequate translation of the English term. To begin with, the term “holistic” is related to the idea of wholeness, completeness, without missing elements, as in the aforementioned motto of EBTS: “The Whole Gospel for the Whole World through Whole Persons.” When the first two parts of the motto were coined within the theological context of liberal theology in the 1920’s, the seminary stood for a gospel that would not be reduced by a rationalistic liberal approach. This is evident in the evangelical doctrinal basis that the seminary adopted. However, in the 1980’s the whole gospel had to be rediscovered and affirmed in the context of an evangelicalism that had forgotten the social dimension of conversion to Jesus Christ and life under his lordship. More recently the context has changed. In 2005, summarizing the findings of polls from different organizations about religion and ethical practices in the USA, Ron realized with astonishment that in questions such as divorce, contribution to the church, interest in matters of social justice, or premarital sex, bom again evangelicals are no different, and in some cases are worse than the rest of the people in the United States. He concludes the first chapter of The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience with the following reflection: Evangelicals rightly rejected theological liberalism because it denied the miraculous. In response we insisted miracles were central to biblical faith at numerous points including the supernatural moral transformation of broken sinners. Now our very lifestyle as evangelicals is a ringing practical denial of the miraculous in our lives. Satan must laugh in sneerful derision. God’s people can only weep?

Global Christian Mission in a Globalized World What I have said thus far connects with another conviction about mission that was reaffirmed in 2010, as we celebrated the centennial of the famous Missionary Conference of Edinburgh 1910 (a milestone in the history of Christian mission). At that time mission was defined as a movement going from the “Christian countries” to the “non-Christian world.” During the twentieth century, two facts have changed that perspective. First, the church has become truly a global reality present almost everywhere in the world, and at the same time churches are in visible decline in Europe and to some degree also in North America. Today, the idea of “Christian countries” needs several qualifications and clarifications. So mission is not anymore “the white man’s burden” but messengers of Jesus Christ are going today from everywhere to everyone.5 6

5 Ronald J. Sider, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (Grand Rapids, MI, Baker, 2005), 29. 6 I deal extensively with this issue in “Mission from Every where to Every one: The Home Base in a New Century”, in Edinburgh 2010 Mission Then and Now, eds. David A. Kerr

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Christians and missionaries from the European and North American regions have come to realize that there is no room for either imperialism or provincialism. Within this context there is an effort to purify Christian mission from the imperialistic connotations of the previous centuries. When poor Filipino women who get jobs as maids in the Arab world, or Latin American migrants who move to Spain to find jobs caring for old people or cleaning houses, in a spontaneous and enthusiastic way share their faith in Jesus Christ, mission is taking place again following New Testament patterns. In a way it becomes “mission from below.” The challenge for mission-minded people is now to create new ways of partnership. Such partnership has taken place for instance in the development of a new evangelical missiology. This is what the late African theologian Kwame Bediako wrote in 1995: “Perhaps in no area has the theological initiative of the Two-Thirds World been more marked than in the development in the last twenty to thirty years of the missionary theology of institutional evangelicalism.”*7 In many ways we seem to be back in a situation similar to that of the first century, in which beyond Judaism, mission had to take place in a pagan world. At that time mission was carried on “from below,” that is, not from a position of cultural, political or economic power. The most recent two centuries in which Protestant missions flourished, advancing within the context, first of European imperialism, and later of American economic expansion, mission was mainly carried on “from above.” The times have changed. Churches have lost prestige and influence in Europe while in the USA it is difficult to disentangle the presence of a faithful church from the trappings of civil religion. So transcultural mission along biblical lines is being carried on from three directions. First, from faithful minorities within the large missionary enterprise who try to use existing means and follow the Jesus model with its holism and its dependence on the Holy Spirit; second, from younger churches in places such as Korea, India, Brazil, and Nigeria that are sending missionaries to places in all continents; and third, from poor and simple immigrants who are believers among the masses who move from South to North in search for survival. The time has come for new creative partnerships in which human and material resources from all these directions are put together for a faithful and hopeful presence in the world and proclamation of the gospel. Globalization makes this possible, provided that the task is done in faithfulness to Jesus Christ as Lord and not to the principalities and powers of this fallen world.

and Kenneth R. Ross (Oxford et al.: Regnum, 2009), 185-198. The 19 chapters in this book provide an excellent account of the missiological changes between 1910 and 2010. 7 Kwame Bediako, Christianity in Africa (Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh Universit}' and Man knoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), 141.

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Mission from the Ground of Theological Conviction From a theological perspective, holistic mission is both Trinitarian and Christological. In the 1960s and 1970s there was much missiological reflection that came from the ecumenical movement. What I would describe as the most evangelical segment of it emphasized the Trinitarian dimension of mission.89One of the distinguished voices in the International Missionary Council and in the World Council of Churches was Lesslie Newbigin, whose missionary career is like a parable of the way missiology developed in the twentieth century. He started doing door-to-door village evangelism as a missionary in India, sent by the Church of Scotland in 1936. He stayed in India for 38 years with some intervals, and became bishop of the Church of South India. From his days there have come writings that emphasize his Trinitarian conviction such as Trinitarian Faith and Today’s Mission? Back in England in 1974 after an outstanding career, he went to pastor a small inner-city congregation in Birmingham. There he discovered that secularized England was a more difficult mission field than India.1011His missiological reflection was then developed in books such as Honest Religion for Secular Man" and later on, Foolishness to the Greeks.'213 In his book, The Open Secret, which is an excellent introduction to the theology of mission, the Trinitarian structure of his thought is well presented in his description of mission: proclaiming the Kingdom of the Father, (mission as faith in action); sharing the life of the Son (mission as love in action); and bearing the witness of the Spirit (mission as hope in action).Ij Evangelicalism around the world has a definite Christological bent. Alister McGrath reminds us that the Christ-centered emphasis of evangelicals is related to their convictions about Scripture. He writes, “Christology and scriptural authority are inextricably linked in that it is Scripture, and Scripture alone, that brings us to the true and saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.”14 As a consequence, evangelical efforts to articulate a contemporary theology of mission have been

8 James A. Scherer offers an account of these developments in his Gospel, Church and Kingdom: Comparative Studies in World Mission Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1987). For a more recent brief account of the same see Al Tizon, “Precursors and Tensions in Holistic Mission: An Historical Overview,” in Holistic Mission God’s Plan for God’s People, eds., Brian Woolnough and Wonsuk Ma (Oxford et al.: Regnum, 2010), 61-75. 9 Lesslie Newbigin, Trinitarian Faith and Today’s Mission (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1963). 10 Lesslie Newbigin, Unfinished Agenda: An Autobiography (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985). 11 Lesslie Newbigin, Honest Religion and Secular Man (London, UK: SCM Press, 1966). 12 Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to Greeks (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986). 13 Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret, Revised Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995). 14 Alister Me Grath, Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1995), 65.

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Christological above all. I have offered an account of why and how this happened in the case of Latin America in my book Changing Tides.15 Methodist theologian Jose Miguez Bonino reminded us that the evangelical heritage of the awakenings was very influential on the theological outlook of the Protestant missionary movement, and Christology was a very important part of that heritage. Christology was informed by a soteriological emphasis. The center of the message of the missionaries was Jesus Christ as personal savior. Miguez Bonino is of the opinion that this evangelical emphasis had a reductionist effect because important aspects of Christology were left aside. “Thus,” he writes, “theology is practically swallowed up in Christology, and this in soteriology, and even more, in a salvation which is characterized as an individual and subjective experience.”16 This criticism needs careful evaluation in the theological task of the future because the centrality of Christ in the evangelical message is a decisive and defining element. From a missiological perspective one could say that it has been the most valuable contribution of Protestantism to Latin America. It has made possible true evangelization, through which millions of persons have come to meet Christ for the first time in their lives, and it has been also a challenge for the renewal of Catholicism in these lands. By the logic of the Christendom situation that characterized Latin America during the twentieth century, Catholics and Protestants alike entered in the Christological debate as soon as they tried to think their faith or figure out their identity and mission. In the introduction to a book that collected some of the Latin American Christological writings of that period, Miguez Bonino outlined the theological agenda as an effort to identify the Christologies that already exist in this nominally Christian continent. There was the normative question from the dogmatic perspective, “How is Jesus Christ correctly to be understood?” There was the descriptive and analytical question, “How is Jesus Christ de facto understood in Latin America today?” And there was the theological and confessional question, “How is the working efficacious power of Christ present in Latin America today?”17 However, in the evangelical exploration to which we refer here, there is a unique distinctive that has to be clarified and stressed. It is the evangelistic thrust of evangelical theology, which Costas so aptly expressed: Theology and evangelization are two interrelated aspects of the life and mission of the Christian faith. Theology studies the faith; evangelization is the process by which it is communicated. Theology plumbs the depth of the Christian faith; evangelization enables the church to extend it to the ends of the earth and the depth of human life. Theology reflects critically on the church’s practice of the 15 Samuel Escobar, Changing Tides: Latin America and Christian Mission Today (Manknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002). See specially chapter 10. 16 Jose Miguez Bonino, Faces of Latin American Protestantism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 112. 17 Jose Miguez Bonino, Ed. Faces ofJesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1984), 1

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faith; evangelization keeps the faith from becoming the practice of an exclusive social group. Theology enables evangelization to transmit the faith with integrity by clarifying and organizing its content, analyzing its context and critically evaluating its communication. Evangelization enables theology to be an effective servant of the faith by relating its message to the deepest spiritual needs of humankind.18

This emphasis makes evangelical theologizing different from the forms of Protestant theology that stem from churches that are not concerned with evangelization. The latter tends to focus more on the correction of abuses inside the existing churches, the search for a contextual identity, or the search for relevance in the socio-political struggles of our day.19 It is also different from the Catholic approach in which the sacramental dimension of the presence of the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America is taken as the basis for assuming that the population is already Christian. With that presupposition evangelization is understood more as a call to commitment and discipleship, without a call to conversion. What we find in authors like René Padilla, Orlando Costas and Emilio A. Núňez is a missiological thrust in which the evangelizing activity of the churches is a definite and influential presupposition and a prerequisite of theological discourse. It is the same conviction expressed by ecumenical leader Emilio Castro when he asserts, “Mission in the 1990s needs to concentrate on spreading the actual knowledge of the story of Jesus of Nazareth. ‘Tell me the old old story’ is the refrain of an old hymn we used to sing in Sunday School. Yet the telling of that story is our most urgent mission challenge today.”20

Mission Shaped by a Renewed Christology At the times of transition in the 1970s and 1980s in Latin America, the search for a Christological missiology was born from the crisis of the traditional models of mission. The agenda of the ongoing reflection had to make room for the burning questions of those who were witnessing to their faith in Jesus Christ within situations where the ferment of nationalism, social upheaval and ideological conflict were testing the theological depth of both evangelical and non­ evangelical missionaries and churches. René Padilla was the theologian that worked more consistently in the development of that agenda. He believes that

18 Orlando E. Costas, Liberating News: A Theology of Contextual Evangelization (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), 1. 19 This is for instance the general thrust of the w ritings of many of the Protestant authors from Latin America in a valuable anthological volume, Dow Kirkpatrick, Ed. Faith Born in the Struggle for Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989). 20 Emilio Castro, “The Old Old Story and Contemporary Crisis,” in Mission in the 1990s, ed. Gerald Anderson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans and New Haven, CT: OMSC, 1991), 56.

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there is a common Christological concern in the work of theologians from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the ethnic minorities of North America and Europe: The images of Jesus Christ imported from the West have on the whole been found wanting - too conditioned by Constantinian Christianity with all its ideological distortions and cultural accretions - and terribly inadequate as a basis for the life and mission of the church in situations of dire poverty and injustice. This has led to the search for a Christology which will have as its focus the historical Jesus and provide a basis for Christian action in contemporary society.21

In this vigorous statement Padilla is working in continuity with the convictions stated in the “Lausanne Covenant”, a document that was the expression of a unique missiological moment of global evangelical convergence. Precisely at the point in time in which evangelical Christianity was joyfully aware of its global dimension, it also became painfully aware of its serious shortcomings. Liberated by its missionary thrust from the bonds of sterile fundamentalism, evangelicalism was able again to rediscover the holistic dimensions of the Christian mission that are clearly presented in the Bible. The Lausanne Covenant restates convictions that are characteristic of true evangelicalism. It starts with a Trinitarian confession, a statement about the authority of the Bible and an expression of Christological conviction.22 At the same, time the Covenant expresses repentance for what was wrong or missing in the way in which evangelicals had been accomplishing their missionary task. It states, Missions have all too frequently exported with the Gospel an alien culture, and churches have sometimes been in bondage to culture rather than to Scripture. Christ’s evangelists must humbly seek to empty themselves of all but their personal authenticity in order to become the servants of others, and churches must seek to transform and enrich culture, all for the glory of God.23

The late John Stott commented about this paragraph and wrote, “Following the example of the Son of God who emptied himself of his glory in order to serve (Phil. 2:5-7) Christ’s evangelists are called humbly to seek to empty themselves of their cultural status, power, privileges and prejudices, indeed of all but their personal authenticity. Such self-humbling, self-emptying and self-giving will be in order to become the servants of others (2 Cor. 4:5).”24 In order to carry on 21 C. Rene Padilla, “Christology and Mission in the Two Thirds World,” in Sharing Jesus in the Two Thirds World, eds. Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden (Oxford: Regnum and Grand Rapids, Ml: Eerdmans, 1983), 13. 22 See Paragraphs 1-3 of the “Lausanne Covenant,” The Lausanne Movement www.lausanne.org/en/documents/lausanne-covenant.html (accessed 2.12.2012). 23 Ibid., Paragraph 10. 24 John Stott, The Lausanne Covenant - An Exposition and Commentary (Wheaton, IL: LCWE, 1975), 27.

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mission in Jesus’ way a new and fresh reading of the Gospels becomes necessary, and as Padilla says we have engaged in a search for a Christology which will have as its focus the historical Jesus, thus providing a basis for Christian action in contemporary society. The way this has taken place in Africa is well represented in the work of the late Ghanaian theologian Kwame Bediako in a book in which he dialogues with other African theologians and contemporary cultural trends in that part of the world.25 In the case of Asia, Sri Lankan theologian Vinoth Ramachandra follows the same theological agenda in his book, The Recovery of Mission.26

Living and Sharing the Good News of the Kingdom If we are to recover a missionary practice modeled by the example of Jesus we must come to terms with the fact that evangelicals had forgotten the kingdom of God. In one of his most recent and forceful theological essays, Ron Sider challenges us to be consistent with the way in which Jesus himself accomplished his mission. “Evangelicals have a problem,” he writes, “Many evangelicals today do not define the Gospel the way Jesus did.”27 They simply define it as forgiveness of sins or justification by faith alone. Sider argues that, There are two problems with this understanding. First, if the Gospel is only the forgiveness of sins then it is a one way ticket to heaven and you can live like hell until you get there. (One can embrace the Good News of forgiveness and still go on living the same adulterous, racist, unjust life as before.) The second problem is that forgiveness of sins is simply not the primary way Jesus defined the Gospel.28

To find out how Jesus defined the gospel, we go back to the life, practice and teaching of Jesus as he is depicted in the Gospels. Consequently, Unless Matthew, Mark and Luke are totally wrong, all who want to preach and live like Jesus must define the Gospel as the Good News of the “Kingdom of God.” This phrase (or Matthew’s equivalent, the “kingdom of heaven”) appears 122 times in the first three Gospels - most of the time from the lips of Jesus himself.29

Our theological efforts in Latin America led us also to the conviction that it was necessary to recover the centrality of the kingdom of God for the 25 Bediako, Christianity in Africa; see specially chs. 5 and 8. 26 Vinoth Ramachandran, The Recovery of Mission: Beyond the Pluralist Paradigm (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996). See especially chapter 6, “The Scandal of Jesus.” 27 Ronald J. Sider, “What If We Defined the Gospel the Way Jesus Did?” in Holistic Mission God’s Plan for God’s People, eds. Brian Woolnough and Wonsuk Ma (Oxford et al.: Regnum, 2010), 17. 28 Ibid., 17. 29 ik;j

17

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understanding of the gospel and of mission today. The Latin American Theological Fellowship (LATF) was founded in 1970, and it became the body through which we conducted the global dialogue as INFEMIT. After the foundational meeting in 1970, in which we defined our convictions about the authority of the Bible to establish the basis of our theological work, our next continental consultation had the kingdom of God as its central theme in 1972. Padilla put together the documents he wrote for a variety of conferences and consultations within the Lausanne movement in the form of a book that has provided an itinerary of our missiological reflection. Through this publication, it is possible to trace the way our Christology developed and the important place that the truth about the kingdom of God had in it. Padilla writes, To speak of the Kingdom of God is to speak of God’s redemptive purpose for the whole creation and of the historical vocation that the church has with regard to that purpose here and now, “between the times.” It is also to speak of an eschatological realit)' that is both the starting point and the goal of the church. The mission of the church, therefore, can be understood only in light of the kingdom of God.30

Bishop Mortimer Arias from Uruguay and Bolivia offers a systematic exploration into the meaning of the kingdom of God for the task of evangelization in his book, Announcing the Reign of God, which has the provocative subtitle, “Evangelization and the Subversive Memory of Jesus.” Writing in 1984, Arias tells of how puzzled he was with his findings about the kingdom of God. First that in the Gospels the gospel that Jesus preached was “the good news of the kingdom,” and that Jesus himself was the first evangelist of the kingdom. Second, that in contemporary practice the theme of the kingdom of God was never used in evangelistic preaching and was essentially ignored by traditional evangelism. And his third finding develops the riches of the theme namely, that the kingdom that Jesus announced was multidimensional and allencompassing. Arias asserts that the kingdom of God... ...embraces all dimensions of human life physical, spiritual, personal and interpersonal, communal and societal, historical and eternal,. And it encompasses all human relationships - with the neighbor, with nature and with God. It implies a total offer and a total demand. Everything and everybody has to be in line with it: “Turn away from your sins and believe the Good News” (Mk. 1:15 TEV) of the kingdom of God.31

30 C. René Padilla, Mission Between the Times: Essays on the Kingdom, Revised Edition (Carlisle, UK: Langham Partnership International, 2010), 198. 31 Mortimer Arias, Announcing the Reign of God: Evangelization and the Subversive Memory ofJesus (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1984), xv.

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If this is the gospel that Jesus lived and preached it is also the gospel that he has sent us to live and preach. That is at the core of what holistic mission is. Because the resurrected Christ is the one that sends us, holistic mission has a future both in our human history and in eternity.

6. Edge and Wedge: Leadership, Evangelicalism and Social Action

Harold Dean Trulear

Introduction The early church lived on the edge. The biblical narratives contained in Acts, historical records by contemporary observers, and contextual implications of epistolary writings, all point to the marginality of Christians in a political world controlled by Rome, an intellectual world dominated by Greece, and a religious hegemony in Palestine in the hands of religious authorities. From Jesus’ band of followers, through the church’s birthing and Apostolic efforts until the offer of the Constantinian option, a good deal of the faith’s social energy derived from its existence as a counterforce in the realms of politics, intellectualism, worldview and religion. Succeeding generations of Christians sought to return to such roots on the periphery - a reclamation of the edge found in any variety of reformational, revivalistic, and restorationist movements. Retrieving the faith of the early church led to the formation of sects, denominations, new church movements, and congregations, each seeking to resist the tendencies toward compromise and cooptation inherent in the growth of any movement which begins on the fringe and moves toward respectability. They desired Christianity on the edge. But to live on the edge, for many, is to live in the wedge. Not content to retreat to some place of solitary isolation, reformers fought against prevailing political, intellectual, and religious tides to create space for their population, room for their followers, a platform of influence that embodied what H. Richard Niebuhr later identified as the “Christ Transformer of Culture” typology, which affirms the distinct and counter-cultural nature of Christ and the church, but which also affirms change over cloistering and cultural metamorphosis instead of a crowd minding their own business. When American evangelicalism matured into a movement that saw expected diversification in political views, social location and intellectual method, such “edge and wedge realities” came into play. Evangelical social action - the notion that Christians of such theological persuasion are called to exert influence in the public sphere - sought to hold tightly to a theology on the edge and the influence of the wedge. The decade of the 1960s saw the birth of the National Negro (now Black) Evangelical Association, and people such as William Bentley, Bill Pannell and Tom Skinner raised questions of race, racism, and social convention

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within the evangelical tradition. The birth of The Other Side, Sojourners, and Evangelicals for Social Action reflected the attempts of John Alexander, Jim Wallis, and Ron Sider respectively to live as “edge and wedge” within the evangelical mainstream.1 The notion of diversification within American evangelical politics became real with the election of a self-proclaimed evangelical named Jimmy Carter to the presidency of the United States - a Democrat, no less! Evangelicalism crept toward a certain normalcy, while leaders such as Skinner, Sider, and Wallis sought to maintain credibility at the edge. Reflecting on leadership in general, and Ron Sider’s life and work in leadership in particular, one can see the constant pull to the edge, and press as the wedge. The edge always meant theological integrity. I recall Ron’s preparation for a response to a position paper of evangelical scholars with whose politics he basically agreed, but who became soft and fuzzy with regard to doctrine. I poked my head into his office and asked him what he was going to say. The peaceloving Sider replied: “I’m going to blast them.” The edge also means standing in solidarity with those whom society has pushed to the edge, most notably (and consistent with theological integrity) the poor. This edge provided the ground upon which Sider stood when his manifesto, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, created enormous stir, discontent, and even ostracism. Sider did not stand alone on the edge: Skinner lost funding, Tony Campolo was accused of heresy and institutions such as Eastern College and (later named, Palmer) Theological Seminary, Fuller Seminary and others lost credibility in the evangelical institutional iconography. When I joined the faculty at Eastern in 1987, one of my liberal-oriented graduate school professors wanted to know why I wanted to teach at a fundamentalist school. Six months after my appointment, those further Right wanted to know why I would cast my lot with liberals. To lead from the edge then, is to lead as a wedge: fighting against two sets of prevailing headwinds, one liberal, one conservative, as if this bi-polarism referred to cultural and political norms rather than an individual psychological challenge. Walking down the middle of those winds as a wedge brings new meaning to the adage, “When you walk down the middle of the street, you get hit by both sides of traffic.” Therein lies the nature of the wedge. But this cultural bipolarism reflects a greater overarching consensus in American society and culture that fuels both sides. In that regard, both liberals and conservatives - political, intellectual, and religious (for many in the latter category the two former ones are assumed) - manifest a larger cultural challenge for leadership on and from the edge. These prevailing cultural forces threaten anyone who tries to live as a wedge against them with a case of windbum that only the salve of the Spirit can soothe. I discern four areas, each of which have presented challenges for leaders such as Ron Sider, organizations such as ESA 1 For a recent treatment of these and other progressive movements within evangelicalism, see David Swartz, Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism (Philadelphia, PA: Universit} of Pennsylvania, 2012).

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and institutions such as Palmer Theological Seminary. As a Baptist preacher, I have taken the alliterative liberty of naming them the four “Cs” generating the cultural headwinds. They are: 1) credibility: the challenge of providing leadership in an age of the decline of an ethic of authority; 2) center: the challenge of leadership in an age where self-interest precludes the common good; 3) coherence: the challenge of theological leadership in an era where experience trumps intellectual coherence; and 4) complexity: the challenge of influential leadership in an era of increased institutional specialization and fragmented institutional loyalty.

Credibility: Authority vs. Celebrity

I wish social historian Max Weber were alive today. In his scan of history, he sought to typologize a variety of social phenomena, taking the gist of what he saw in terms of social relationships and identifying them as ideal types. Briefly, Weber looked at religious and political authorities throughout history and identified three types: traditional, bureaucratic, and charismatic.2 A traditional authority found Ar/wself (and no, that is not a gendered typo!) with authority invested in him through the expectations of the community. Bureaucratic - or legal, as Weber called it - authority was granted through a system of rules and regulations, while persons in charismatic authority found themselves in positions of leadership purely by the force of personality. But these categories assume a social context within which authority (leadership) itself was a virtue. How would Weber look at today’s leaders and assess the extent to which they possessed authority in a world where the concept of authority itself no longer holds weight? Vincent Miller, an ethics professor at Georgetown University, argues persuasively in his book, Consuming Religion, that the erosion of authority as a shared value in society has reduced the popular notion of authority closer to something like celebrity.3 Authority assumes a level of accountability rare in contemporary culture. Rather, leaders live as celebrity figures, embodying personal presence, but without the mechanism to determine if followers provide accountability. In this regard, Ron Sider had to wedge against the culture’s failure to take leaders seriously, that is, culture’s failure to provide accountability. Further, getting people to take positions based on the Bible meant giving an authority to the Bible inconsistent with contemporary culture’s debunking of authority itself. And it is from this position that Sider has attempted to mobilize white evangelicals, a group not previously known for their commitment to combating social sin. 2 Max Weber, “The Three Types of Legitimate Rule,’’ in Berkeley Publications in Society and Institutions, trans. Hans Gerth, 1958 4 (1): 1-11. 3 Vincent J. Miller, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture (New York, NY: Continuum, 2005).

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If I had a nickel for every time Ron said we need to mobilize key leaders around a certain issue, I could retire. I can’t even hear the phrase in my head in any voice other than his. Sider’s efforts - through petition, essay and publication - to engage key leaders reflected a confidence that for each leader, there would be followers to reflect and manifest that leader’s ideas through direct action and advocacy. Such a reading of leadership ignores the extent to which people value leaders only as far as they mirror their own values and aspirations. Where Ron did that, he was successful. And he would tell you that where leaders came without accountability, the wedge discovered the power of the prevailing winds. To his credit, Ron never backed down from his biblical commitments to social justice, even when followers didn’t materialize. A cultural replacement of authority with celebrity allows people to admire without accountability, fawn without following, and espouse without engaging. Thus, those like Sider, who have attempted to lead organizations and the church through specific issues and initiatives that reflected a biblical mandate for social justice have encountered a lack of accountability between leaders and their communities. For that matter, even the phrase “biblical mandates” became oxymoronic as an individualistic relativism gained consensus in matters of standard. As Christian leaders came to the fore in the political and civic realm in the 1970s and 80s, they encountered a culture that resisted any real notions of authority, religious or otherwise. Religious leadership struggled with prophetic witness for social justice until the late 1980s, when community organizing began to give faith leaders tools to engage the public square in a manner that had influence. Even then, such efforts were a wedge against prevailing cultural norms and special interests.

Center: Self vs. Common Good The individualistic relativism noted above seems contradictory to the large numbers of religious volunteers mobilized in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The political horizon was aglow with one thousand points of light, and over the next decade this language expanded to include a mobilization of the armies of compassion. But more than one observer saw in these developments a certain self-referential altruism where people’s voluntary commitments to do good masked a deeper motivation to feel good about themselves as opposed to an honest concern for the poor. National elections in the 80s reflected the prevailing culture of self-interest, as political structures were buttressed by a “me” generation that placed interest over issues. Socially progressive evangelicals found themselves in a wedge not only against politically conservative Christians and agnostic liberals; they also had to contend with the explosion of televangelism that placed the focus of faith squarely on the self - self-interest, self-actualization, and self-fulfillment. Fidelity to the biblical text found expression in countless thematic pericopes which, when joined together, showed the supposed true path of happiness and destiny. It was

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as if the fundamental engagement of poverty had morphed into a fulfillment of the words of early prosperity preacher, Reverend Ike, who famously offered that “the best thing you can do for the poor is not be one of them.’’4 Individual solutions to the problem of poverty trumped any sense of social consciousness and any conceptualization of poverty as a systemic issue. Poverty was to be overcome by individual faith, not challenged by prophetic witness as a social concern. Similarly, social justice issues like racism were treated as obstacles and hurdles to be overcome through individual perseverance. In his book, Watch This: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism, Jonathan Walton notes how, despite theological differences between various streams of Black TV preachers, there is unity on this issue: social problems constitute challenges for individuals to overcome through their religious faith, not evidence of a fallen world in need of redemption.5 Could it be that if Rosa Parks had been put off the bus in the age of televangelism, some TV preacher would have told her to pray for a car, preferably a Cadillac? Ron Sider, ESA, and other like-minded evangelicals found their Bible reduced to a tool used in the service of success, rather than revelation of eternal truth for transformation. As poverty, racism and other social ills became part of the religious language of the day, they did so sans any systematic analysis consistent with the Hebrew prophets, created order and shalom, or the sense of interpersonal connectedness associated with either. The “self’ became the center of identity, with any real meaningful sense of community under tragic assault. Essentially, there was little “social” for the “action.” Coherence: Ideas vs. Narrative/Experience Theological coherence requires context. The rise of socially progressive evangelicalism also wedged against the mere notion that coherence existed. Miller argues that ideas gain power in contemporary society by virtue of their utility, rather than truth.6 As such, one can hold to seemingly conflicting ideas as long as they both work. The unifying context forming a worldview, then, is not coherence, but efficacy. Rather than tried and true, it’s true if it’s tried and found efficacious. And what holds these efficacious truths together is the personal narrative of the believer. Experience now claims center stage in an era where “it works for me” is mandate as well as mantra. Socially progressive evangelicals are still evangelical: they hold to a high view of Scripture and doctrinal fidelity. But pressing doctrinal clarity in an age that does not support or value coherence requires more of a wedge from the edge. It is not just getting people to see

4 Joe Holley, “F.J. Eikerenkoetter II Dies; ‘Rev. Ike’ Preached Gospel of Capitalism,” Washington Post (July 31,2009). 5 Jonathan Walton, Watch This: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism (New York, NY: NYU Press, 2009), 167-198. 6 Miller, Consuming Religion, 15-31.

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doctrinal truth as you see it; it is also getting them to recognize that doctrinal truth exists in the first place. Efficacious truth reflects that which has worked for the individual, and TV preachers who preach success point to the individual, his narrative or her story, as the place to test the principle, rather than in traditional manners of exegesis and hermeneutics, theology and ethics. Effective leadership in this era appeals to experience. Doctrine, ideas, and values reflect an emphasis on cognitive commitment absent from current culture. Research on community organizing and mobilizing congregations points to the need for encounters with real people whose lives embody the social issue to be addressed to catalyze congregations to move prophetically. Even the Civil Rights movement gained its footing around experience (Rosa Parks) rather than a doctrinal commitment to social justice. With evangelicalism’s emphasis on doctrine, and its social activism wing pressing to document the biblical nature of their work, the capacity for mobilization finds little support. Simply put, engaging public policy on behalf of any population - the poor, the imprisoned, people of color, etc. - requires significant engagement of those populations. Here, ESA struggled along with others who sought to push the wedge from the edge regarding a holistic ministry that engaged policy.

Complexity: Institutional Specialization and the Challenge of Mobilization More than one hundred years ago, sociologist Emile Dürkheim documented the increasing structural differentiation of Western society. Simply put, reasoned Dürkheim, society evolves from a simple community-based model to one of increased division of labor and specialization.7 Such specialization includes the division of labor, tasks, and special ministries within the world of religion. The rise of the parachurch movement amongst evangelicals in the 1940s and 1950s reflected such differentiation, and gave rise to voices in Christian leadership not immediately identifiable by institutional church or denominational connection. Evangelists such as Billy Graham, youth specialists like Jay Kessler and Bill Bright, and in the 1970s, prison ministry specialist Chuck Colson, created a stratum of leadership which focused on singular tasks in ministry. Each of their organizations proclaimed a working relationship with the local church with varying degrees of success. Evangelical social activists and their organizations - Ron and ESA, Jim Wallis and Sojourners, and John Alexander and The Other Side - found even less clear connection with the institutional church. Their organizations provided clear intellectual and theological guidance for churches and their leaders, but did not have the structure or connections necessary to provide the type of congregational mobilization around key issues and concerns as their evangelism, youth/campus 7 Durkheim developed this idea most clearly in The Division ofLabor in Society (Florence, MA and Washington, DC: Free Press, 1997).

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ministry and prison ministry counterparts. This is understandable, given the fact that the latter parachurch ministries all focused on particular tasks in ministry, whereas the social activists proffered a particular prophetic position, but without the specialized service delivery system inherent in the other organizations. Prophetic leadership struggles in a culture which values function over truth and efficacy over doctrine. The same can be said for the specialization on ministerial preparation located within theological education. Though seminaries clearly predate the parachurch movement, their rise in numbers through this period, as well as increased attraction for those preparing for non-parochial religious leadership, created space for theological specialization that frame degree programs such as Palmer Seminary’s Master’s in Theology and Public Policy degree8 and activist-think tanks such as the Sider Center for Ministry and Public Policy.9 However, the extent to which the theological engagement of public policy and witness remains within the context of specialization raises the question of whether or not it has less import than coursework and research at the core of the curriculum. Few seminaries require the study and practice of public engagement at the core of their curriculum. As Ron’s faculty counterpart at the Howard University School of Divinity, I have had to argue for the retention of my required course in public witness called “Prophetic Ministry” in both our recent Master of Divinity curriculum review, and for the newly developed joint Master of Divinity/Master of Business Administration degree (it says something about theological faculty that they would be willing to cut a course in social justice as part of a fast track toward a master’s in business). Additionally, because seminarians also reflect the consumerist culture noted above, they come to theological education shopping for ideas, and - without some form of incentive - often either ignore public engagement as a commodity for their theological shopping cart, or purchase it and bury it in their intellectual cupboard. Simply put, the teaching, research, and writing of colleagues such as Ron Sider and Jim Wallis strain their necks from the edge of theological discourse. This is not to say that they have not been influential; indeed they have been. But the proliferation of methods of training, avenues for ideas, and specialization of ministries makes for a fragmented frame of influence. This is problematic to trace and difficult to measure. Add to that the explosion of televangelism and its excessive individualism, and one sees the wedge even more stark and clear. It is not easy being prophetic when few are listening.

8 For more information on this program, go to www.palmerseminar3.edu/ program s/Masters_Programs/MTS/christianfaith_publicpolicy.html. For more information on Palmer Seminary’s Sider Center, go to www.evangelicalsforsocialaction.org/about/who-we-are/sider-center/.

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Conclusion Perhaps the real issue lies in the challenge of prophetic ministry. There is a huge difference between being a prophet and being a leader. When asked to write this chapter on leadership, I struggled with how to approach the subject in light of what it means to honor Ron Sider. I also struggled with my own checkered past as a leader - two controversy-filled pastorates reflecting my own sense of feeling institutionally confined by the tasks of pastoral leadership. I think it finally makes sense that any assessment of the life and witness of Ron Sider which focuses on leadership misses the mark, given that our culture places celebrity above authority, affirms self-interest over the common good, values personal experience more than doctrine, and promotes specialization in manners that further fragment any movement’s possibilities. In such an environment, theological leadership will be on the margin, on the edge. But that is precisely where prophets live; they are prophets because they do not conform to cultural consensus; rather, they see not only as God sees, but just as importantly, from whence God sees. The marginalization of the biblical God from cultural consensus simply affirms God’s place on the edge. Taking on the constrictions of humanity in the Incarnation, Jesus lived the prophetic life of the wedge. It is as difficult to assess Ron Sider within the framework of leadership as it is to affirm and celebrate his work and witness as a prophet. Sometimes, having a lot of followers simply means you have a popular product. Prophecy is never popular. The prophetic witness of Ron Sider, ESA, and the Sider Center at Palmer Seminary may never be popular - but they definitely represent the integrity of the wedge from the edge.

7. Reconciliation and Development

John M. Perkins The black church in America that emerged during slavery was an expression of the severity of white injustice and oppression. It was the gathering of a people who were enslaved and the outpouring of their struggle. This oppression was not only perpetuated by a few white individuals, but it was accommodated by America as a whole. Institutions were set up that contributed to holding us down, and the black church became the gathering place for us to unite around our common struggle. It was not the whole church that came together around this oppression, but just us blacks. However in the early 1970s, I began meeting evangelical Christians in the North who had a concern for justice, one of whom was Ron Sider. It was through these relationships that provided hope for reconciliation and that eventually provided the leadership for American evangelicals to realize that Christians could be concerned with social issues without being so-called socialists or communists. Together, we were able to start addressing America’s accommodation of injustice, particularly the oppression of the black community. Ron and I both published books in the mid-1970s that pushed for a wholistic1 approach to the ministry. Ron’s Rich Christians in an Age ofHunger1 and my Let Justice Roll Down1 23 made both of us sort of the pioneers of justice, bringing justice back into the forefront of Christian thinking. For me, this wholistic approach consisted of the three R’s of community development - relocation, reconciliation and redistribution - which I developed through my work in Mississippi and California.4

The Rural-Urban Problem

Prior to meeting Ron in the early 70s, 1 had committed my life to trying to figure out if there was a socioeconomic, spiritual solution to the problems of a long-time oppressed people. In 1960 my family and I had returned to Mississippi from California, and we ended up in the black quarters of rural Mendenhall. It was there that I began to see major problems in both black and white relationships,

1 Some people use “holistic,” but 1 prefer “wholistic” because it’s closer to the word, “whole.” 2 Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age ofHunger (Downers Grove, IL: 1VP, 1977). 3 John M. Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down (Ventura, CA: Regal, 1976). 4 See my With Justice For All: A Strategy for Community Development (Ventura, CA: Regal, 2011), which was recently updated for the third time.

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particularly the problem in our acceptance of a pattern of migration that took us out of our small rural towns in the South and to the bigger cities up North. I was working with students in fifteen schools and two junior colleges in Mississippi. Success for many of those young blacks was to get enough education to get out of Mississippi and not come back. 1 saw this attitude as the root of the problem, and I later saw its effects in riots and other acts of unrest in the urban communities. Later, I was looking for - and had really committed my life to - urban opportunities, as I began to see the many needs there. We needed to deal with poverty, we needed to deal with education, and we needed to deal with health problems. Lack of opportunities and segregation were also very big problems. Being from a rural town, I began to see the multifaceted complexity of it all, as I moved into an urban context and witnessed the early riots and the rise of poverty. What was needed in both rural and urban settings was a wholistic, Christian approach to community development. The urban program was the unsolved problem of the South; there was no way to separate them. And it would be difficult for any urban, predominantly white institution, even with a few black scholars, to deal with the problem without understanding deeply how it had impacted the behavior and the culture of both black and white people. Often in assessing the complexity, somebody would say that the problem was education, but in reality the culture had really buried us in not understanding the totality of education and the economic consequences. Many of those problems that constitute injustice are really economic issues, because justice itself is an economic issue, a stewardship issue. The problem wasn’t simply education or poverty; it was economic at the core. Education was important, but it might not deal with economics, and the injustice of economics. There had to be a comprehensive approach in light of the suffering and pain that so many experienced on all of these levels; these problems needed to be attacked in a wholistic way.

The Three Rs ft was first down in Mendenhall and the surrounding areas that we came up with an approach based on the deep emotional, psychological, educational, physical, and spiritual felt-needs of the people. Out of that came the idea of a wholistic approach to development and reconciliation. Looking at what we were going up against led us to the development of “the three Rs.” The first “R” is relocation. This started out as a need to confront the outward migration of blacks from their communities that I mentioned above. We needed to get young folks to stay in school, develop a love for God, a love for themselves, and a love for their community — a love that is greater than the love for material wealth that drove people to the city. This is an important point to emphasize. So much of people’s sense of self-worth comes from material things that wear out. Today, automobiles, fancy clothing, and even fancy furniture

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become just for show. But they wear out in a few years. We do need capital - in terms of assets, ownership and/or cash flow - but over-valuing and over-relying on capital lead to a wrong love of self, a wrong love of community, and a false love of God. Materialism and consumerism (love of money) run contrary to the love that is based on the beautiful love that God has for his children. So after we helped foster a proper love in our youth, we wanted some to remain in our community and others to go off to college but with the mindset of eventually coming back to Mississippi. Early on, relocation focused on relocating our own indigenous kids back into their own communities. It wasn’t necessarily about getting white people to move into the neighborhood; the idea was getting the indigenous people to stay in school, get education, and then come back to the community. What frightened our kids was that there was nothing to come back to in the community, and there were so few jobs. So this became the focus of our work. Later on though, as I worked across the country and invited whites to join with us from other churches, relocation also became about getting whites to relocate into the communities. They also made commitments to stay with us, which started a movement that eventually became the second “R”: reconciliation. The relocation of whites into our developing black communities required reconciliation in the early days of desegregation. In the 1990s we saw a huge movement of reconciliation take place through organizations like Promise Keepers as well as through the many books written by blacks and whites together. This kind of work needs to keep happening today; we cannot ever forget about the ministry of reconciliation because it’s one of the central, unmovable truths of the gospel. 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 says, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and he has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” Reconciliation takes effort from both whites and blacks. Through my decades of working with whites, I’ve learned that the ones who experience reconciliation come into communities with a particular mentality, which is characterized by listening, learning and working alongside, rather than rescuing or saving. The successful whites, with whom I have worked, came with the goal of developing indigenous Christian leadership. There’s a well-known ancient proverb from the mouth of Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu that has served us well. It says: Go to the people. Live among them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, The people will say, “We have done this ourselves.”

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Outsiders don’t come to rescue us. They should come to help us rescue ourselves, but also to rescue themselves from the unrecognizable effects of being unreconciled. The third “R” is redistribution, which incidentally was (and is) not just taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. That’s what people often thought when they heard the word redistribution. But that model for economics doesn’t work, and it won’t work. For instance, it won’t work in starting a business because in handing money to the new businessperson, he/she doesn’t develop a sense of ownership, and if there is no sense of self-investment, the business will fail. There needs to be a sense of accountability to the person who loans the money, so whoever is starting the business has to have a certain awareness of the value of that money. There’s not a problem with borrowing in itself, but there has to be a commitment to the person who let you borrow the money or who invested in the project. If you borrow money from someone you don’t know or he invests in your project, it’s impersonal and not as many people are hurt if you lose it. The third “R” really is about, “How do you create value and gratitude?” It’s about helping people, but helping them increase their value of, and gratitude for, what you gave them. It’s an issue of grace - there’s undeserved favor, and you feel a huge gratitude for it. He gave me and forgave me, and now I love him. Redistribution is about the receiving or creating of assets and capital with a sense of gratitude and value. How do 1 make my investment and labor have eternal value? How do I create worth? So, rather than a simple transfer of money, we saw redistribution as education and economic opportunity. It was much more complicated when we started implementing this approach, because a black was hardly ever going to make enough money on his own to start a business. Once we came up with a business plan, we then sought funding sources from either a family member or a friend, because banks would not loan us money. They didn’t think we could do it, and neither did they want us to do it. And so we had to ask ourselves questions such as, “How do we create those businesses?” and “What must we do to gain ownership and economic assets?” Out of asking these questions, I got involved in developing co-operatives and credit unions in the South as well as participating in organizing the Southern Co-operative Development Fund in order to activate these community-based loaning and investing institutions. All of these efforts were seeking to redistribute wealth, as well as economic capital and opportunities, and to build assets. The key was ownership, and to see ownership and capital develop through thriftiness to fully understand the value of it. Rather than buying a fancy car, someone needed to buy a used car to start with in order to invest in ownership over any economic venture. Partners in Wholistic Ministry

So all of this was taking place in my own experiences and work prior to meeting Ron. When I met Ron in the early 70s, he was a professor of urban ministry at

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Messiah College. Messiah College was a rural, Christian college that developed a partnership with Temple University in urban Philadelphia. Meeting on the Temple University campus, they developed an urban program in north Philadelphia at a time when Philadelphia was on the bottom of the barrel in terms of urban plight. It was Ron’s involvement in this new urban-focused program and also my work in urban settings that led to our meeting. We really started getting to know each other when he held the first meetings that led to the development of Evangelicals for Social Action. He invited me to a gathering he was planning in Chicago at one of the YMCAs. That meeting ended up being one of the high points of my training and development, because I came to know evangelicals in America who had a concern for justice. Then my and Ron’s books came out within a year of each other, and it became apparent that both of us were wrestling with the idea of wholistic development. Ron’s book pointed to the poor and the rich and revealed the scandal of the great gap between them, while my book brought the biblical justice part back with regard to poverty and racism. Being good friends by this time, I began to challenge Ron by saying, “Let’s not let them off the hook; we’ve got the evangelical Christians listening!” And they were listening. There was a book written in 1964 called Mississippi: The Closed Society,5 and in that book author James Silver called out different things that began to crack the society, to break it open. The book held a powerful stance against racism, and I began using it as sort of a textbook. I used it to begin formulating a philosophy to enter the cracks in society. What Ron and I were able to do was use a religious crack in society. Through knowing Christians in America who cared about the social structures, we were able to help bring Northern Christians into thinking about the deep-rooted problems of the South. Our books had brought Ron and me together, and it providentially put us at the cutting edge of evangelical leadership in America. Ron was involved in professorship and ESA, and he had his writing. In my work, coming out of Mississippi and poverty, I ended up helping to form the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA). Ron was in fact at the pre-formation meetings as CCDA took shape. Through friends at Belhaven University, we held those first meetings, which we called “Jubilees,” and those meeting began to get us into those cracks in a closed society. While Ron and I came from different backgrounds and grew up with different experiences, we were able to partner together and find fellowship around the gospel and our similar calls to wholistic ministry. While I was working with folks like the late Glen Kehrein, my late son Spencer, Ron Spann, H. Spees, Bob Lupton, Wayne Gordon, Cathy Dudley, and Mary Nelson to form CCDA, Ron Sider was building ESA. CCDA and ESA were two separate organizations, but we were really working together for justice. Even in its name, Ron’s organization affirmed that evangelicals could be concerned with social action. Together, we 5 James W. Silver, Mississippi: The Closed Society (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2012). This book was original!) published in 1964, but reprinted in 2012.

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showed that there were Christians who wanted to get rid of the old paradigm, which pitted being Christian and being socially active across racial barriers against each other. We disproved the false idea that you lose the gospel message if you get involved in social matters. It’s not at all compromising to proclaim a gospel that is wholistic; that is precisely what Jesus was about. He never saw it as a conflict with his ministry or his godly nature. His teaching and his miracles worked together in his ministry. In fact, his word and deed ministry was a sign and an affirmation of his godliness. The gospel is a dynamic statement about God’s love and justice, and it has been this gospel that has united Ron and me in the good fight of faith.

8. Simplicity and the Poor1

Shane Claiborne

Ron Sider is a legend. I remember reading Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger and feeling a fire for justice start to rage in my bones. I recall hearing Ron’s words about the cross being an alternative to the sword, words that gave birth to the Christian Peacemaker Teams, as I went with CPT to Iraq. Ron Sider has laid the theological and biblical foundation for a movement of young Christians who are now changing the world. What I love about Ron is that he has consistently held Jesus and justice together. He has insisted that there is not a social gospel and an evangelical gospel; there is only one gospel, and it is the gospel that refuses to separate love of God and love of neighbor. For Ron, like Jesus, these two are inextricably bound together like two blades of a pair of scissors that only work when they are moving in unison. I will never forget Ron’s very firm advice as we started the Simple Way 20 years ago;1 2 he said, “Always keep Jesus in the center of the justice work. Jesus must be the rock, the foundation. And that foundation must be what anchors and sustains you.” Ron has refused to succumb to the temptation of confining God to a political party. He is not interested in folks being more Democrat or more Republican, but more like Jesus. He has celebrated the best of the Left and the Right, while critiquing the worst of both. And Ron resists the notion that being non-partisan means being non-political. Ron has challenged the impotent evangelicalism that is so heavenly minded that it is no earthly good, inviting us all to the peculiar and radical political imagination of Jesus and the prophets. It is an honor to celebrate his life - a life well-lived, a life of helping Christians engage politics without losing their souls and of helping us exorcise the demons from Wall Street and the Pentagon without being mean and ugly. Thank you, Ron, for leading the way. Your life has been an arrow pointing us to Jesus and to the poor. I am so very grateful for your witness and your friendship over the years. Not long ago, a few friends and I were talking with some very wealthy executives about what it means to be the church and to follow Jesus. One businessman confided, “I too have been thinking about following Christ and what that means, so I had this made,” as he pulled up his sleeve to reveal a bracelet 1 This chapter is adapted from chapter 6 of The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006) by kind permission of the publisher. 2 For more information on the Simple Way, go to www.thesimpleway.org/.

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engraved with, “WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?).” It was custom-made of twenty-four karat gold. Maybe each of us can relate to this man - both his earnest desire to follow Jesus and, bound up in the materialism of our culture, his distorted execution of that desire.

Beyond Brokerage Layers of insulation separate the rich and the poor from truly encountering one another. There are the obvious layers like picket fences and SUVs, and there are the more subtle ones like charity. Tithes, tax-exempt donations, and short-term mission trips, while they accomplish some good, can also function as outlets that allow us to appease our consciences and still remain a safe distance from the poor. Take this poignant example you may have caught wind of: it was revealed that Kathie Lee garments, which have earned Wal-Mart over $300 million in sales annually, were being produced by teenage girls working in abysmal conditions in Honduran sweatshops. These girls, as young as thirteen, worked fifteen-hour shifts under the watch of armed guards and received thirty-one cents an hour. But the great irony is that the garments they were making for Kathie Lee were sold under a label that promised that “a portion of the proceeds from the sale of this garment will be donated to various children’s charities.” More recently, Kathie Lee has been an advocate for workers’ rights. Charity can be a dangerous insulator. It is much more comfortable to depersonalize the poor so we don’t feel responsible for the catastrophic human failure that results in someone sleeping on the street while people have spare bedrooms in their homes. We can volunteer in a social program or distribute excess food and clothing through organizations and never have to open up our homes, our beds, our dinner tables. When we get to heaven, we will be separated into those sheep and goats Jesus talks about in Matthew 25 based on how we cared for the least among us. I’m just not convinced that Jesus is going to say, “When I was hungry, you gave a check to the United Way and they fed me,” or, “When I was naked, you donated clothes to the Salvation Army and they clothed me.” Jesus is not seeking distant acts of charity. He seeks concrete acts of love: “you fed me... you visited me in prison... you welcomed me into your home... you clothed me.” With new government funds and faith-based initiatives, the social-work model can easily entangle the church in the efficiency of brokering services and resources in a web of “clients” and “providers” and struggling to retain God’s vision of rebirth, in which we are all family. Faith-based nonprofits can too easily be the mirror image of secular organizations, maintaining the same hierarchies of power and separation between rich and poor. They can too easily merely facilitate the exchange of goods and services, putting plenty of professionals in the middle to guarantee that the rich do not have to face the poor and that power does not shift. Rich and poor are kept in separate worlds, and inequality is carefully managed but not dismantled.

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When the church becomes a place of brokerage rather than an organic community, she ceases to be alive. She ceases to be something we are, the living bride of Christ. The church becomes a distribution center, a place where the poor come to get stuff and the rich come to dump stuff. Both go away satisfied (the rich feel good, the poor get clothed and fed), but no one leaves transformed. No radical new community is formed. And Jesus did not set up a program but modeled a way of living that incarnated the reign of God, a community in which people are reconciled and our debts are forgiven just as we forgive our debtors (all economic words). That reign did not spread through organizational establishments or structural systems. It spread like disease through touch, through breath, through life. It spread through people infected by love. Often wealthy folks ask me what they can do for the Simple Way. I could ask them for a few thousand dollars, but that would be too easy for both of us. Instead, I ask them to come visit. Writing a check makes us feel good and can fool us into thinking that we have loved the poor. But seeing the squat houses and tent cities and hungry children will transform our lives. Then we will be stirred to imagine the economics of rebirth and to hunger for the end of poverty. Almost every time we talk with affluent folks about God’s will to end poverty, someone says, “But didn’t Jesus say, ‘The poor will always be with you’?” Many of the people who whip out this verse have grown quite insulated and distant from the poor and feel defensive. 1 usually gently ask, “Where are the poor? Are the poor among us?” The answer is usually a clear negatory. As we study the Scriptures, we see how many texts we have misread, contextualized, and exegeted to hear what we want to. Like this one about the poor being among us, which Jesus says in the home of a leper and after a poor marginalized woman anoints his feet with perfume. The poor were all around him. Far from saying in defeat that we should not worry about the poor, since they will always be among us, Jesus is pointing the church to her true identity - she is to live close to those who suffer. The poor will always be among us, because the empire will always produce poor people, and they will find a home in the church, a citizenship in the kingdom of God, where the “hungry are filled with good things and the rich sent away empty.” I heard that Gandhi, when people asked him if he was a Christian, would often reply, “Ask the poor. They will tell you who the Christians are.”

Complexity of Simplicity The old saying goes “Live simply that others may simply live.” Simplicity is very popular nowadays. All the time, I get invited to speak at conferences on simple living, and I’m offered nice honorariums to do it! People write books on simplicity and make lots of money. It’s a weird thing. There are plenty of liberals who talk about poverty and injustice but rarely encounter the poor, living detached lives of socially responsible but comfortable consumption.

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And there are plenty of Christians who talk about how much God cares for the poor but don’t know any poor folks. There is nothing more sickening than talking about poverty over a fancy dinner. Or how about this one: I once saw an advertisement for a dialogue on global starvation, and the sign boldly read, “Refreshments will be served.” It’s too bad that living simply has to be so complicated. Responsible living is a paradox, as it often stirs up questions of privilege. It takes a lot of money or land to “tread lightly on the earth.” My neighbors don’t eat organic; most of them can’t afford to shop at the trendy natural foods stores (if there were one anywhere near us). One elderly African-American woman shared with a group of young progressives (I was one of them), “My ancestors all used to eat organic and grow their own food. It was not radical, it was just what we did before we made such a mess of things.” Among all the militant vegetarians and vegans (who eat no meat or animal products), some of us jokingly call ourselves “freegans,” because we’ll eat anything that’s free. It’s hard to figure out how to weigh lifestyle questions that can often entrench us in guilt and privilege. We have to have grace with each other and a little humor. (By the way, how much did you pay for this book?) When we talk of materialism and simplicity, we must always begin with love for God and neighbor; otherwise we’re operating out of little more than legalistic, guilt-ridden self-righteousness. Our simplicity is not an ascetic denunciation of material things to attain personal piety, for if we sell all that we have and give it to the poor, but have not love, it is meaningless (1 Cor. 13:3). And there are many progressive liberals who have taught me that we can live lives of disciplined simplicity and still be distant from the poor. We can eat organic, have a common pool of money, and still be enslaved to Mammon (the personification of the money god that Jesus named in the Gospels). Rather than being bound up by how much stuff we need to buy, we can get enslaved to how simply we must live. Simplicity is meaningful only inasmuch as it is grounded in love, authentic relationships, and interdependence. Redistribution then springs naturally out of our rebirth, from a vision of family that is larger than biology or nationalism. As we consider what it means to be “born again,” as the evangelical jargon goes, we must ask what it means to be bom again into a family in which our sisters and brothers are starving to death. Then we begin to see why rebirth and redistribution are inextricably bound up in one another, as a growing number of evangelicals have come to proclaim. It also becomes scandalous for the church to spend money on windows and buildings when some family members don’t even have water. Welcome to the dysfunctional family of Yahweh. So it’s important to understand that redistribution comes from community, not before community. Redistribution is not a prescription for community. Redistribution is a description of what happens when people fall in love with each other across class lines. When the Bible tells the story of the early church in the book of Acts, it does not say that they were of one heart and mind because

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they sold everything. Rather, they held all in common precisely because they were of one heart and mind, as rich and poor found themselves bom again into a family in which some had extra and others were desperately in need. Redistribution was not systematically regimented but flowed naturally out of a love for God and neighbor. I am not a communist, nor am I a capitalist. As Will O’Brien of the Alternative Seminary here in Philly says, “When we truly discover love, capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.” Generosity is a virtue not just for those with a special spiritual gifting or an admirable philanthropic passion. It is at the very heart of our rebirth. Popular culture has taught us to believe that charity is a virtue. But for Christians, it is only what is expected. True generosity is measured not by how much we give away but by how much we have left, especially when we look at the needs of our neighbors. We have no right not to be charitable. The early Christians taught that charity is merely returning what we have stolen. In the seventeenth century, St. Vincent de Paul said that when he gives bread to the beggars, he gets on his knees and asks forgiveness from them. The early Christians used to write that when they did not have enough food for the hungry people at their door, the entire community would fast until everyone could share a meal together. What an incredible economy of love. The early Christians said that if a child starves while a Christian has extra food, then the Christian is guilty of murder. One of the fathers of the church, Basil the Great, writing in the fourth century, put it this way: “When someone strips a man of his clothes, we call him a thief. And one who might clothe the naked and does not - should not he be given the same name? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat in your wardrobe belongs to the naked; the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot; the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute.” Or in the words of Dorothy Day, “If you have two coats, one of them belongs to the poor.” No wonder John the Baptist used to connect redistribution with repentance, as he declared, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matt. 3:2), and, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none” (Luke 3:11).3 People who experiment in sharing may begin out of burden or guilt, but they are sustained by the matchless joy it brings. What delight it is to see others receive the gifts of God, especially when they have been deprived of them for far too long. One of the beggars in Calcutta approached me one day, and I had no money on me, but I felt a piece of gum in my pocket, so I handed it to

3 John was a wild locust-eating, camel-skin wearing prophet of the desert who probably toted a few dreadlocks and would get a few funny looks from some contemporary Christians. He was a cousin of Jesus and helped prepare the way for him. Some call him John the Baptist, and I used to think that meant he was the first Baptist preacher, but now 1 choose to join with many scholars in referring to him as John the Baptizer, since he passed on this mystical sign of rebirth and baptized Jesus himself in the Jordan River. All before ol’ Herod cut his head off.

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her. I have no idea how long it had been since she had chewed gum, or if she had ever even had the chance. She looked at it and smiled with delight. Then she tore it into three pieces and handed one to me and one to my friend so we could share the excitement. When those who have gone without life’s simple pleasures are given a gift, they are so overjoyed that their instinct is often to share rather than hoard. Kids I got ice cream for in India would run and grab their friends and make everyone take a bite. I remember speaking to a large group of school children about inequality of resources, and we did a simulation that demonstrated how 80 percent of the world has 20 percent of the stuff, and 20 percent of the world is hoarding 80 percent of the stuff. (We divided up school supplies, clothing, and food into piles.) Before we had finished, just after we gave the kids the Dorothy Day quote about how if you have two coats, you’ve stolen one, one of the kids in the front row tore off his jacket and threw it onto the stage with a huge smile, yelling, “Give it to the kids with no coats!” That’s the joy of giving. There’s an old story from the desert fathers and mothers, people of deep faith who found it necessary to go into the desert to find God. They lived in little clusters of communities (much the way many of our communities now live, only our desert is the inner cities and abandoned places of the empire). Someone had brought one of the communities a bundle of grapes as a gift. That was quite a delicacy, maybe sort of like giving someone chocolate truffles today. They got so excited, and what happened next is fascinating. Rather than devour them all, they didn’t eat a single one. They passed them on to the next community to enjoy. And that community did the same thing. And eventually, those grapes made it through every community and back to the first community without being eaten. Everyone simply wanted the others to experience the joy of the gift. I’m not sure what ever ended up happening with those grapes. I think maybe they had a big party, or maybe they made some wine. But no doubt God was happy. One of the quotes on my wall reminds me of this daily: “The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them away.” Mother Teresa was one of those people who sacrificed great privilege because she encountered such great need. People often ask me what Mother Teresa was like. Sometimes it’s like they wonder if she glowed in the dark or had a halo. She was short, wrinkled, and precious, maybe even a little ornery, like a beautiful, wise old granny. But there is one thing I will never for- get - her feet. Her feet were deformed. Each morning in Mass, 1 would stare at them. I wondered if she had contracted leprosy. But 1 wasn’t going to ask, of course. “Hey Mother, what’s wrong with your feet?” One day a sister said to us, “Have you noticed her feet?” We nodded, curious. She said, “Her feet are deformed because we get just enough donated shoes for everyone, and Mother does not want anyone to get stuck with the worst pair, so she digs through and finds them. And years of doing that have deformed her feet.” Years of loving her neighbor as herself deformed her feet.

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This is the kind of fasting that creates the divine longing for justice, where our feet become deformed by a love that places our neighbors above ourselves, where our own stomachs groan with the hungry bellies of the world. Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” or justice (Matt. 5:6).4 How many of us are really starved for justice? As we saw in the text in Romans 8 about creation’s groaning, the closer we get to that groaning, the more we ourselves join it. Per- haps this is the mystery of fasting. Isaiah tells us, “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter - when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” (Isa. 58:6-7). True fasting is not just depriving ourselves of privilege but also sharing sacrificially to bring an end to the cycles of inequality, an end to creation’s groaning and the groaning of hungry bellies. One thing fasting does is sacrifice privilege. Some of us will need to fast to connect us not only to God but to our hungry neighbors. Others of us are hungry and will now be able to dine in the abundance of the Lord’s feast. Certainly the thirty-five thousand children starving to death today need not fast to connect to God. Rather we need to fast in order to connect to them and to God. No wonder the Corinthian church is scolded for disgracing the Lord’s Supper by allowing some people to come to the table hungry while others are stuffed (1 Cor. 11:21-22). They were not reconciled with one another and needed first to leave the altar to care for their neighbors.

Theology of Enough In addition to rooting simplicity in love, it also seems crucial that economic practices be theologically grounded. I am convinced that most of the terribly disturbing things that are happening in our world in the name of Christ and Christianity are primarily the result not of malicious people but of bad theology. (At least, I want to believe that.) And the answer to bad theology is not no theology but good theology. So rather than distancing ourselves from religious language and biblical study, let’s dive into the Scriptures together, correcting bad theology with good theology, correcting distorted understandings of the warrior God by internalizing our allegiance to the slaughtered Lamb, correcting the health-and-wealth gospel by following the Homeless Rabbi. I’m convinced that God did not mess up and make too many people and not enough stuff. Poverty was created not by God but by you and me, because we have not learned to love our neighbors as ourselves.

4 In the Hebrew, the same word is used for righteousness and justice.

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Gandhi put it well when he said, “There is enough for everyone’s need, but there is not enough for everyone’s greed.” One of the first commands given to our biblical ancestors (even before they had the Big 10) while they were stuck in the middle of the wilderness somewhere between Pharaoh’s empire and the Promised Land was this: each one was to gather only as much they needed (Exod. 16:16). In the story of the exodus, God rains down manna from heaven and assures the Israelites that there will be enough. When they save some for the next day, God sends maggots to destroy their stockpile. (Maybe we need some maggots today.) They are ordered to carry with them one omer of manna (about three pounds) as a symbol of their daily providence of bread. Of course, we hear the subtle echoes of this in the Lord’s Prayer as we are taught to pray for our daily bread. (To pray for “my” daily bread is a desecration; we are to pray for “our” daily bread, for all of us.) Over and over, we hear the promise that if we take only what we need, there will be enough. (The apostle Paul quotes from the Exodus passage in 2 Cor. 8:15 as he corrects the young church to stay true to God’s economy.) Deuteronomy 15 gives us another glimpse of the source of poverty. God goes from saying, “There should be no poor among you” to “If there are poor” to “There will always be poor.” Even though there is enough for everyone, greed and injustice will always create poor people in the land, so God teaches us personal responsibility to our poor neighbors. God also establishes rhythms of rest for the land and structures of providence such as gleaning, where the poor are able to gather food from the fields. And God sets in place a plan for lubilee, regular intervals when inequality is dismantled? God systematically interrupts the human systems that create poverty - releasing debt, setting slaves free, redistributing property. Folks always say the Israelites never fully lived out the Jubilee. But our friend Ched Myers says, “That’s no excuse to ignore God’s commands. That’s like saying we don’t need to worry about the Sermon on the Mount since Christians have never fully practiced it.” There is deep wisdom in the early desert monastic asceticism and the vow of poverty of centuries-old monastic movements, and yet whenever I talked to my neighbors and homeless friends about a “vow of poverty,” they either laughed or gave me a puzzled stare. “Have you ever been poor?” some asked. I began to see how myopic my vision was, and how narrow my language. It reeked of privilege. So I would suggest we need a third way, neither the prosperity gospel nor the poverty gospel but the gospel of abundance rooted in a theology of enough. As 5 The Levitical Jubilee is God’s comprehensive unilateral restructuring of the community’s assets to remind Israel that all property and land belong to God, and that they were an exodus people who must never return to a system of slavery (Lev. 25:42). It was to take place even fiftieth year, preceded by a “Sabbath’s Sab- bath,” or the forty­ ninth year (Lev. 25:8-12). The Jubilee (named after the jovel, a ram’s horn that sounded to herald the remission) aimed to dismantle structures of social-economic inequality by releasing each community member from debt (Lev. 25:35- 42), returning encumbered or forfeited land to its original owners (vv. 13, 25-28), and freeing slaves (vv. 47-55).

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Proverbs says, “Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’” (30:8-9). And after seeing plenty of poor folks forced into economic crimes by their poverty, and after seeing plenty of rich folks so content in their riches that they forget that they need God or any- one else, I think we are all ready for something new.

God’s Economy I have grown to love biblical study. In Philadelphia, there is something called the Alternative Seminary, which is a loose network of people studying the Scriptures together.6 Whether people have knowledge from academia or wisdom from the streets, everyone is valued as a teacher and as a learner. In one of our classes, we studied Scriptures that dealt with economics - in an abandoned house on our block. In the class, we had homeless folks, business executives, Bible scholars, young radicals, Catholics, and Protestants, and I had a glimpse of how challenging and invigorating it must have been in Jesus’ day for tax collectors, peasants, Zealots, and prostitutes to sit around the same table. In the Gospels, we see rebirth and redistribution bound up in one another. As we saw earlier, as John the Baptizer prepared the way for Jesus, he preached repentance but in the same breath told people to give away their extra shirt. Of course, Jesus’ own teaching is packed with stories of debt, workers’ wages, redistribution, and caring for the poor, and his two accounts of the afterlife have unmistakable economic dimensions (the rich man and Lazarus, and the sheep and the goats). All through the New Testament, we are told of how rebirth and redistribution are bound up in one another. We cannot say we love God and pass by our hungry neighbor. No one has seen God, but as we love one another, God lives in us. One of the signs of Pentecost was that there were no needy persons among them, for they shared everything. So while the Scriptures are laced with teaching on economics, I won’t assume that you are interested in a meaty analysis of biblical economics or that everyone gets strange kicks out of Bible study like I do. But there is one passage in particular that reveals the secrets of God’s abundance, and I’d like to continue in a healthy tangent if you will allow me. (If you won’t, skip to the next chap- ter, but don’t expect to pass the exam.) The passage is in Mark 10, particularly verses 29-31, which reads, “‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus replied, ‘no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and fields - along with persecutions - and 6 There is now a national movement of underground seminaries called Word and World, which is a nomadic popular school committed to “bridging the gulf between the seminar}', the sanctuary, and the street” For more information, go to www.wordandworld.org.

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in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.’” I think this text gives us one of the clearest glimpses of why redistribution is necessary and to be celebrated. Right before these verses, Jesus had his infamous encounter with the rich ruler (which we already looked at; I sneaked that Bible study in), a story that is not so much about whether rich folks are welcome as it is about the nature of the kingdom of God, whose economy is diametrically opposed to that of the world. Rather than accumulating stuff for oneself, followers of Jesus abandon everything, trusting in God alone for providence. The disciples start to get it, saying, “We have left everything to follow you.” And then we come to verses 2931. A couple of things strike me about the text: Mark’s Gospel assures us that as we leave our possessions and family in allegiance to God’s kingdom, we enter a new economy of abundance. But if you look closely, you’ll notice a difference between the two almost-identical lists. First, you have a “bonus” item in the second list - persecutions. Yes! Persecutions will come to us when we choose an economic order different from the pattern of the world. And there is also an omission from the second list, which scholars think Mark intentionally left out: fathers. As we are reborn, we leave our biological families. Now we have sisters and brothers and mothers all over the world. And yet the omission of fathers is consistent with Christ’s teaching in Matthew that we should call no one father but God (23:9). In an age in which fathers were seen as the lifeline of the family, the seemingly indispensable authority and providential centerpiece, this statement is God’s final triumph over patriarchy. Only God is worthy to be seen as father, the Provider and Authority (and of course, King).7 Here’s the incredible clincher in these verses: the multiplication is not just in the age to come - streets of gold, mansions in heaven, Cadillacs, and crowns. The multiplication of resources begins “in this present age.” As I have contemplated these verses with friends and scholars like Ched Myers8 and Christine Pohl,9 and as I have lived in community with folks sharing possessions with one another, I have come to see that the divine multiplication begins now, literally and pragmatically. Both the health-and-wealthers and the penitent ascetics miss the deepest reality of these verses, which teach us a radically new economic vision. As we abandon our possessions and biological families, we trust that others too 7 Just a note to say that the women in our community meet regularly to talk and study everything from theology to women’s health. A book they studied and presented to us all is Paul R. Smith’s Is It Okay to Call God “Mother"? (Hendrickson, 1993). And while we believe that God is Father, the book was helpful in expanding our minds, even for the skeptics in the house, to all of the biblical characteristics of and names for God. 8 Ched Myers has been an influential scholar and friend. His book The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics (Washington DC: Tell the Word/Church of the Saviour, 2001) was our text for the Alternative Seminar, class on God’s economy. 9 Christine Pohl is a professor at Asbury Seminar and has done great work to chaplain intentional communities, and, in her book Making Room (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), to revive a vision of Christian hospitality.

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are abandoning their possessions and families, and that there will be an abundance that begins now and lasts for eternity.

9. Word, Work and Wonder as Holistic Ministry

Douglas Peterson Virtually even’ major biblical teaching undergirds and demands social concern and helps shapes its character.1

Jesus’ teachings to the disciples in the Gospel of Mark provide the marching orders for holistic ministry, i.e., for discipling people to faith in Jesus Christ and demonstrating that faith through our actions and service among the needy. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that the transformational experience of salvation, the ethical actions of social concern, and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, as seen primarily in the Gospel of Mark, are inextricably linked together in any expression of holistic ministry. Focusing on Mark 8:22-10:52, the core of Jesus’ teaching on discipleship, I contrast the social and ethical norms of power, authority, control, knowledge, status and wealth, which were accepted in first century culture, with the polar opposite ethical standards - the reversal of the order of things - that Jesus required of his followers under the rules of the kingdom of God. Greatness in leadership, as God measures, is directly related to our actions on behalf of the marginalized and disenfranchised: the poor, sick, disabled, unclean, outcasts, outsiders, the insignificants, and especially, or perhaps specifically, the children. The Gospel of the Kingdom

Mark’s account, the first of the Gospels to be written, begins with a bang - no birth narrative, no build-up, just a single statement: “The gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (1:1). When the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus at his baptism, he was anointed to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom of God and to inaugurate God’s right to reign through his ministry. Mark followed the baptism account with Jesus’ startling announcement, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the good news” (1:14-15).1 2 The central theme of

1 The three dimensions of social action are often described as: 1) relief, or providing short term assistance to people in the midst of a mess; 2) development, or equipping people with the tools to move towards self-sufficiency; and 3) structural change, or addressing the societal structures that enable or not well-being, justice, and dignity. See Ronald J. Sider, Good News and Good Works: A Theology for the Whole Gospel (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1999), 139. 2 See Gordon Fee, “Kingdom of God and the Church’s Global Mission,” in Called & Empowered: Global Mission in Pentecostal Perspective, eds. Murray W. Dempster, Byron D. Klaus, and Douglas Petersen (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 7-21. In this brilliant

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Jesus’ mission and message was “the good news of the kingdom of God.” The Messiah, the king of this kingdom, had come!

The Miracles, People’s Response and Religious Opposition (1:16-3-6) The nature and character of Jesus’ identity as the Messiah revolved around powerful deeds of exorcisms and miracles and his teachings about the kingdom of God. After Jesus cast out demons, news about him spread everywhere (1:28). People brought to him “all who were ill” until the “whole city” had gathered at the door (1:32-34). When Jesus healed a leper his popularity grew so grand that he could no longer enter a city. He stayed out in the countryside (1:45) or went to the seashore (2:13), but the people still came to him from everywhere. One time when Jesus entered a home, the press of people was such that men cut a hole in the roof of the house in order to lower down a paralytic so that Jesus could heal him (2:4-12).3 On the surface, Mark’s telling of Jesus’ powerful deeds synced perfectly with Jewish expectations about the coming Messiah. When the “time is fulfilled,” the Messiah would usher in God’s kingdom. The mere fact that God proposed to bring in his kingdom was no secret; people expected it. And they expected that when God instituted the kingdom it would be with apocalyptic force exercising his power over all creation. Led by the Messiah, a great day of messianic salvation, as foretold by Isaiah, would bring good news to the poor, the blind would see and the deaf hear, and best of all, the oppressed would be set free (Isa. 35:5-6; 61:1-2). God would right all the wrongs caused by exploitation and injustice and the hated Roman regime would finally be thrown out. The coming of the kingdom would result in the reversal of the order of things. Indeed, Jesus cast out demons, performed mighty miracles, and amazed everyone with his teaching. The crowds loved him. The religious establishment hated him. And the disciples, whom Jesus called to be with him, were just confused. Clearly, when Jesus announced the new rule of the coming kingdom, people were beside themselves with excitement and anticipation. They came in droves to see Jesus and to bring to him the sick, disabled and demon-possessed. The crowds, captivated by his miracles, were “amazed” and “astonished,” exclaiming that they “had never seen anything like it.” It was not long before Jesus’ own disciples were asking, “Who is this man that even wind and the seas obey him” (4:41)? In contrast to the excitement of the people, the religious establishment reacted with growing hostility, because Jesus did not seem to recognize their authority. He broke the rules. They were the guardians of God’s affairs on earth, and they

essay, Fee summarizes the concept of the kingdom of God in the teachings of Jesus and its significance for the global mission of the church. 3 For the most comprehensive treatment of miracles in the Bible, see Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011).

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intended to use their positions of power and authority to enforce the rules. They determined to control both Jesus and the crowds. When the leaders discovered they could not control Jesus, they began to plan his death. Jesus, the Disciples and the Mystery of the Kingdom (3:7-8:21) At times, even his disciples were not so sure about him. They were confused. They did not understand (5:31; 6:52; 7:18; 8:17-21). Certainly, Jesus acted like the Messiah. He cast out demons, healed the sick and disabled, and even raised the dead. He calmed the storm, fed thousands, and walked on water. The disciples saw plenty of miracles. These signs of the kingdom were exactly what they expected. However, the great reversal wasn’t happening. Jesus didn’t seem to be doing anything about the powerful, the religious, the rich, and especially the Romans. Rather he was spending his time with the poor, the sick, the insignificant, the outcasts, and of all people, the children. And what Jesus said to the disciples in private about the nature of life in the kingdom of God made no sense at all. What was the problem? The kingdom - the dynamic, redemptive reign of God - had come in power. God had broken into history in the person and mission of Jesus to overcome evil and to deliver people from the grip of evil. By casting out demons and healing the blind, the deaf and the mute, Jesus was establishing his right to rule. The miracles and wonders of Jesus’ ministry were critical signs demonstrating that the kingdom of God had come. The future had broken into the present. Because the kingdom was God’s gift to overthrow sin and evil, it was good news to be believed. This good news meant that in Jesus Christ there was forgiveness for all, people would be set free from Satan’s tyranny, and everyone was invited to attend the banquet. But the kingdom was also a mystery; much of what the disciples saw and heard was not quite what they expected. The kingdom, which would appear fully at the end of the age, was for now, according to Jesus, operating in hidden form working imperceptibly, invisibly, and secretly in people’s lives. Moreover, Jesus taught that the Messiah who forgives sins and performs spectacular miracles would also have to suffer at the hands of the Romans. Everything changed and yet nothing changed! How was this good news? Quite simply, the disciples didn’t get it. The disciples were painfully slow to understand Jesus’ kingdom agenda (6:52). The miracles they understood, but the rest - not so much! Mark illustrates the conundrum with which the disciples wrestled: The kingdom of God with all its power had indeed broken into the present, but the Messiah who ushered in this kingdom and did great miracles, was also the Messiah who must suffer and die. And this “good news” required a human response - repentance, a complete turnaround of life, dependence on God’s mercy, submission to his rules, and a life of discipleship, which meant in essence “to become like Jesus” in self-denial and self-sacrifice on behalf of

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others (8:34).4 This is what Jesus’ disciples were slow to understand. If miracles in and of themselves could unlock the window to their understanding, then when Jesus walked on the water (6:48) or fed the multitudes from almost nothing (6:34-44; 8:1-9) - then they should have had the key; and yet they remained locked out. Shortly after the miracle feedings, the disciples grew hungry and began “to discuss with themselves that they had no bread” (8:16). Jesus asked them how many baskets of food were left over after the feedings, and without missing a beat, the disciples answered, “Nineteen.” Jesus, surely in frustration, asked them, “Do you not understand” (8:16-21)? The irony escapes the disciples.

Kingdom Rules: Upside-Down Discipleship

As Mark approached the middle of his telling of the gospel story, he focused like a laser on what Luke Timothy Johnson calls, “the drama of discipleship.”5 The setting for this drama took place during the journey of Jesus and his disciples toward Jerusalem (8:22-10:52). The crowds and the religious leaders, for the most part, faded into the background. The window narrowed to a slit. Jesus directed his full attention on the disciples as he laid out the elements of a “pedagogical project” designed to reshape their understanding of the Messiah’s mission, which in turn would define their own.6 The curriculum revolved around the theme that Jesus as the Messiah must suffer, die, and be resurrected. His disciples had trouble understanding, and Jesus continued to teach them, both by showing and telling, the true nature and cost of discipleship. The disciples had witnessed his miracles and correctly identified Jesus as the Messiah, but they never dreamt that the Messiah would have to die. Richard Hays states the dilemma precisely: “The secret of the kingdom of God is that Jesus must die as the crucified Messiah.”7 Nor could the disciples comprehend that if they entertained any hopes of greatness in this new kingdom, they too must take up the cross and follow Jesus through a life of suffering and service. Indeed, for the disciples, the mystery of the Kingdom would represent a reversal of the order of things in ways that they had never imagined. Life under the new rule of God required a dramatic change in the rules of leadership.8

4 Fee, Kingdom of God and the Church’s Global Mission,” 13. 5 Luke Timothy Johnson, Writings of the New Testament (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1999), 174-175 and Jesus and the Gospels (Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2004), 26-27. 6 Johnson, Jesus and the Gospels, 26-27. 7 Richard B Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 1996), 76. 8 Since Jesus’ teachings were directed specifically to the Twelve - to those in whom he placed his ultimate trust and to whom he passed the torch of kingdom mission, I will use the terms “leader/disciple” and “discipleship/leadership” interchangeably.

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From beginning to end, Mark set his narrative against the backdrop that his audience knew how the story was going to turn out.’ Mark sequenced the stories and teachings in this section to make it appear as though the confusion of the disciples goes from bad to worse, moving from merely a lack of understanding to a full-blown misunderstanding of who the Messiah really is and what is required of them as followers. Mark was not so concerned whether the disciples understood who Jesus really was. As his early readers were well aware, after the resurrection and the Day of Pentecost, the disciples turned the world upside down. Clearly, Mark’s primary concern was for readers to answer for themselves the open-ended question, “Who do you say that I am?” (8:29). In response to this question, Mark weaved together a beautiful tapestry9 1011 that demonstrated the disciples’ rather difficult journey toward understanding the nature and character of Jesus and what the ethical attitudes and behaviors of authentic leadership should look like under God’s reign.11 In this relatively short passage (8:22-10:52), Mark used a variety of literary techniques to reshape the disciples’ perspective of the Messiah and establish a pattern of what the ethical attitudes and behaviors of authentic leadership should look like under God’s reign. Moving rapidly through seventeen episodes and cutting rapidly from one scene to the next while interacting with more than a dozen characters, Mark kept the focus on the teacher and his students. As the narrator, he provided the kind of information that guided readers to align themselves with “God’s point of view,” the reversal of the order of things, rather than with the cultural and ethical norms that represented a “human’s point of view.”12

Leadership Norms Contrasted with Kingdom Discipleship As we work through the episodes that follow, we must be careful not to interpret them by our own cultural attitudes framed by accepted social and ethical standards of the twenty-first century, or we will lose the reasons why the disciples were “amazed” and “astonished” at what Jesus was asking of them, and of us. A brief review of “the order of things” in the world of leadership in the first-century may be helpful.

9 For a veritable treasure chest of online resources for the study of the New Testament and the Gospel of Mark see Rev. Felix Just, S.J., “The Gospel according to Mark,“ http://catholic-resources.org/Bible/Mark.htm (accessed 5.29.2012). 10 Jerry Camery-Hoggatt, Irony in Mark’s Gospel: Texts and Subtexts (New York, NY: Cambridge University, 1992) and Speaking of God: Reading and Preaching the Word of God (Peabody: MA: Hendrickson, 1995). On the Gospel of Mark, Camery-Hoggatt is recognised as one of the best scholars in the world. I am privileged to have Jerry as a colleague. His office is 20 feet from mine and he is never too busy to answer my questions. The content of some of our discussions are reflected in this chapter. 11 For a detailed treatment of Mark’s use of literary devices in his telling of the story, see David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey, and Donald Michie, Mark as Story, 2nd edition (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1999). 12 Rhoads, Dewey, and Michie, Mark As Story, 45.

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People who have grown up in more or less democratic societies, far removed from first-century beliefs and practices, may find it difficult to comprehend the massive power imbalance that existed between those in authority at the top of the ladder of civil, political, and religious society and the women, children, the poor, the unclean, and the outcast at the bottom. It is even more difficult to fathom that the shared social and ethical standards that sustained and reinforced these societal structures were understood by almost everyone, from top to bottom, to be the “order of things,” the way God had allegedly ordained. To get the full import of the dimension of the reversal for which Jesus was calling, we must recognize that the ethical and social norms of Jewish antiquity were the acceptable standards of an orderly society. The Jewish leaders adhered to a set of values and traditions that were justifiable and normative within Judaism. For Jewish authorities, and certainly for Romans, leadership was synonymous with power, authority, influence, and control.13 Wealth was considered a symbol of the blessing of God. Leaders held posts of honor and power and derived their identity from their status. And their position of power ensured that they were able to hold on to their power. Regardless of position, to some degree, all leaders exercised religious, economic, and political power because these spheres were so intertwined as to be indivisible. Leaders acted as agents. They spoke and acted on behalf of the group they represented or the one who sent them. Both Jewish and Roman leaders believed that God authorized their right to rule, even though they had allegiances to others. Jewish leaders were accountable to the Romans and in so many ways dependent upon the popular support of the people. Since these religious leaders feared both the Romans and the people, it was impossible to “love the Lord with all their minds” because they were dependent upon other human powers who wielded more clout than they. Leaders did not like to serve. Service, in first century culture, was neither noble nor honorable, but was viewed by all leaders to be the labor of women and slaves. However, leaders did serve themselves. They used their power to ensure that those below them served them; they “lorded their authority over others;” they used their power to secure their positions. Their role, as they understood it, was one of domination rather than service. They guarded the temple, kept the rules of the religious and social order, and at all costs, did whatever they needed to maintain power and control.

13 Many scholars have argued that by the time of the first-century Jewish culture was not culturally monolithic. The cultural norms of the Mediterranean world, most overtly’ represented and dominated by the Romans such as honor and shame, status and role, patron/client relationships and the concept of reciprocity, had penetrated Jewish culture, having a much stronger impact on Jewish society than had been previously acknowledged. In any case, while this may be true, these types of social and ethical norms, perhaps to a lesser extent, were already part and parcel of the fabric of Jewish culture.

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These social, economic, and political norms enabled the continuation of an orderly and predictable society that was already precariously located within the larger environs of a chaotic world. To replace existing attitudes and behavior in such a context with the countercultural and paradoxical demands of Jesus could never be accomplished through human efforts. It is little wonder why the disciples were “astonished” by the nature of Jesus’ demands of discipleship. Jesus’ teachings were perceived by his disciples as countercultural and by the authorities as subversive and revolutionary. To be a disciple who followed Jesus was not to act anything like the religious and political authorities. Behaviors that were highly prized, characterized by position, power, authority, influence and wealth, needed to be reversed. Jesus challenged the traditional social and cultural norms with Scripture. He accused the leaders of his day of being hard-hearted because they substituted human traditions for God’s intentions (7:9-13). Worse, they were blind and deaf to the rule of God and to the Son of God through whom this rule was inaugurated. Mark wanted all to see that the cultural norms that everyone accepted whether in Judea or in Rome - were contrary to the ethical demands of the kingdom. This upside-down way bore the mark of authentic discipleship. The manner by which they treated the people without earthly power or influence - the unimportant, unclean, outcasts, children, women, beggars, blind, foreigners and widows - would be the measurement of success. It is with Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah of God - a critical turning point in the disciples’ journey toward understanding - that Mark began to develop the heart of his Gospel, namely, Jesus teaching his disciples. Throughout this entire section (8:22-10:52), he introduced a new sub-theme that carried with it a sobering implication: What happens to Jesus will happen to his followers too. The disciples must learn that for them, as for Jesus, leadership is service, defeat is victory, and death the pathway to life. Mark accomplished this remarkable transformation by embedding the narrative with three specific predictions of the coming passion (8:31-33; 9:30-32; 10:32-34). The predictions are quite explicit, but the narrative indicates with equal clarity that the disciples failed to understand their meaning. Following each prediction there is a dialogue with the disciples that indicates that they were blind to what Jesus was saying to them. It is not insignificant, then, that the entire discipleship section is bound on either side by stories of blind men. On the front end is a story about the two-staged healing of the blind man from Bethsaida (8:22-26), and on the backend, a healing story of blind Bartimaeus from Jericho (10:46-52). In between these two healing stories, Jesus revealed the core content of authentic discipleship, by foretelling his suffering, death, and resurrection (8:31; 9:31; 10:33-34). After each of these “passion predictions,” the disciples were more confounded, as they seemed determined to shape Jesus’ announcement according to their own expectations. In response to their misunderstandings, Jesus combined teaching with riveting visual examples, a

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“show and tell” approach, to hammer home the ethical norms of authentic discipleship. First Bookend: The Blind Man at Bethsaida (8:22-26) After Jesus touched the blind man of Bethsaida the first time, he could see, but not very well. The man said, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking” (8:24). It was only after Jesus touched the man a second time that his sight was completely restored. Certainly, Jesus healed the man out of a heart of deep compassion, but by placing the story where he did, Mark established a critical pedagogical stake that will become evident after Peter’s confession of faith. The disciples could see too, but like the blind man, not very well. They needed a second touch that would not come until after the resurrection. This story, the healing of the blind man, sets up this entire section. Lose Your Life in Order to Save It (8:27-9:29) Mark used the story of the blind man of Bethsaida to redirect the focus from the disciples’ earlier question about Jesus - “Who then is this [man]?” - to the more central question Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am” (8.29)?14 Peter’s immediate response, “You are the Christ,” a recognition of Jesus as the Messiah, was the right answer. But in this first passion prediction (8:31), when Jesus announced that the Son of Man must suffer, be rejected, die and after three days rise again, Peter was flabbergasted. He had just declared Jesus to be the Christ, and he couldn’t comprehend all this suffering and death talk. Jesus’ words made no sense to him or to any of the other disciples. Of all the expectations the disciples may have had of what the kingdom of God might look like, the concepts of service, suffering, and death were not among them.15 Peter’s confession made explicit the blindness of the disciples.16 Peter rebuked Jesus, and Jesus rebuked him right back, saying that Peter was thinking from a human point of view (8:33). But from God’s point of view, Jesus had to suffer, and further, that all who wished to follow him were “summoned to a similar vocation” to lose their life in order to save it.17 Jesus taught, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel will save it" (8:34-35). Peter’s declaration that Jesus is the Messiah was “a shadow of the truth,” but he was really like the blind man who saw “trees walking” after Jesus’ first touch. Peter and the rest needed a second touch in order to see clearly.

14 Hays, Moral Vision, 75. 15 Luke Timothy Johnson, The Living Gospel (London, UK and New York, NY: Continuum, 2004), 52. 16 Camery-Hoggatt, Mark, 157. 17 Hays, Moral Vision, 79.

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Mark followed Peter’s confession with two episodes to underscore how little the disciples really understood: the transfiguration of Jesus (9:2-8) and the healing of the boy with an unclean spirit (9:14-29). In the first episode, Jesus took Peter, James, and John to a “high mountain” (understood in Scripture as a place of divine revelation), where the three disciples caught a glimpse of Jesus in his divine glory as king. Even Moses (the law) and Elijah (the prophets) affirmed that Jesus was the Messiah. But after Peter suggested that they set up three booths, one for each of these divine personages, God himself spoke: “This one is my beloved son, Listen to him! . . . And suddenly the disciples no longer saw anyone except Jesus alone with them.” The Transfiguration pointed to the future of the glory of Christ, that the suffering to which Jesus referred after Peter’s confession was but for a season. But Peter (as well as the other two) still didn’t quite get it. The glory of the transfiguration enraptured him; but that the purposes of God would also include a road of suffering and service escaped him completely. The splendor of the transfiguration quickly became a fleeting memory for Peter, James and John, because as they returned down the mountain, they were confronted with the reality of evil. A man, beside himself and desperate for help, had brought his child to the disciples. “Teacher, I brought you my son, possessed with a spirit which makes him mute; and whenever it seizes him, it slams him to the ground and he foams at the mouth, and grinds his teeth and stiffens out. I told your disciples to cast it out, and they could not do it” (9:17-18). As Jesus turned to the boy, the evil spirit immediately acted out throwing the boy to the ground in convulsions. When Jesus asked the father how long these horrific episodes had been going on, the father responded, “From childhood” (9:21). Jesus rebuked the evil spirit, saying, “You deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again.” The evil spirit, shrieked for the last time, convulsed the body of its victim, and then left the boy (9:22-27). To be sure, Jesus performed this exorcism because of love and compassion toward the boy and his father. But there was a lesson to be taught as well. The disciples, like the blind man who saw “men like trees walking” after Jesus’ first touch, were incapable of seeing the full picture of the glorious but suffering Messiah. Similarly Mark related the story of the boy who was a deaf mute to demonstrate the disciples’ incapacity to hear or speak of the mystery of the kingdom of God. It was not enough to know that “Jesus is the Christ.” The disciples must also face the terrible consequences of that reality. Mark’s narrative structure, mirroring this double understanding, required that Peter’s statement of faith be deepened into a commitment of faith. The call to discipleship was and is more than following a miracle worker; it was and is also about taking up the cross.*1R

18 David E. Garland, Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 80.

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To Be First, You Must First Be Last (9:30-10:31) With the second passion prediction, Jesus again foretold his death, announcing that, “The Son of Man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and when He has been killed, He will rise three days later” (9:31). Despite coming off a fresh mountaintop experience, the disciples started arguing among themselves as to, “Who is the greatest?” Jesus’ rebuttal to their arrogance was sharp. He overturned the social norms of leadership with his next statement, “If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all” (9:35). Leadership in God’s kingdom from now on would be characterized by a life in the service of people whom society has deemed unimportant, and what’s more, those who would be served had no power to repay the kindness. These standards of measurement were different than anything the disciples had ever heard. No wonder they were surprised when Jesus placed children on the stage as the main characters of his attention. The centrality of children in Mark’s Gospel is often treated as an aside, misinterpreted or missed altogether by both contemporary scholars and readers. It is unlikely, however, that the earliest audiences missed the point.19 Mark twice told a similar story of Jesus with the children, each set in a different context (9:36-37; 10:13-15). In between these two interactions with children, there are three other episodes, which when read in isolation seem unrelated, but when linked together shine light on the two stories that frame them. And vice versa: the two interactions with children clarify and deepen our understanding of each of the three episodes.20 The interchange between Jesus and his disciples in each of these scenes hammers home the themes of service and humility - the reversal of the order of things. In the first story of Jesus with the children, Jesus announces an essential element for this new upside-down type of leadership. He took a child in his arms and made a startling statement: "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me" (9:37). The word for “welcoming,” decomai,21 implies serving and was generally used in the context of hospitality. How the disciples welcomed a child, Jesus said, was a measure of how much they really welcomed him. And how they welcomed him was then a measure of how much they welcomed God! The treatment of children - the least of all - was the new measurement of greatness.

19 Wesley D. Avram, “The Missional Significance of Children: A Look at the Gospel of Mark.” Devotional presented at the Overseas Ministries Study Center, New Haven, CT, (April 30, 2006). See also John T. Carroll, “Children in the Bible,” Interpretation 55, no. 2 (April, 2001), 121-134. 20 The reader is also prompted, through a series of “strings” that connect them, to recall at least two other distinct but similar children’s stories that Mark had told earlier. 21 The NRSV translates “decomai" in the second children story as “receiving” (10:37).

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The irony in Jesus’ statement was obvious to the reader, for children were underneath the social scale.22 While children were not marginalized in Jewish antiquity in the same sense as were the poor, the unclean, or the outcast, children were the most vulnerable of the lot because of their utter defenselessness. They were completely dependent upon an adult, and their social standing as the “least of these” was indeed at the bottom of familial structures. In an adult world, where leaders established, reinforced, and fought to retain power, children were wholly and totally unimportant. In effect, for any factors related to leadership, they were “non-persons.” But according to the upside-down kingdom, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” In other words, from now on, Jesus established that greatness would be measured by one’s service to children in contrast to the normative measures of power, influence, control, or wealth. Therefore, children were to be first; they were to be at the top of the list of leadership priorities. Further, a leader’s actions could not just be mere expressions of tokenism or “displays of affection,” but as Judy Gundry-Volf insists, “True greatness meant not just love but service that.. . places children at the center of the community’s attention as prime objects of its love and service, and requires all who would be great in the community to serve children.”23 In dramatic fashion, Jesus redefined care for children as a mark of greatness. The scene shifts momentarily to underscore the disciples’ lack of understanding of this. Still bound by a paradigm of leadership that prized authority and control, the disciples complained to Jesus about others who were casting out demons in Christ’s name without their expressed permission (9:3841). Dripping with irony, the disciples were anxious to put a stop to these unauthorized outsiders casting out demons, even though they were successful and they, the disciples, were not (9:38-41). In trying to control outsiders in this way, the disciples were attempting to exercise authority in the very way that Jesus was trying to reverse. The story returns to the importance that Jesus placed upon welcoming children as the quintessential marker describing the nature of transformational leadership or kingdom discipleship. The verbal thread referencing “Christ’s name” links the prior episode about “controlling outsiders” to this one when Jesus declared that no act of kindness to the least of these is too small. Jesus cautioned the disciples that no matter what they might do, they must never be guilty of putting a 22 It is important to recognize that there is a fundamental difference between the “unimportance” and “insignificance” of children and the “non-person” status of the outcast. In the Old Testament, the Jews believed that children were a gift of God, and served as a symbol of the guarantee of the covenant between God and the people of Israel. Children were occasional!} instruments of God’s activity. In the sense of personhood, children had immense value. However, similar to the outcast, children had little value from a perspective of leadership. To leaders, children were at the bottom of the food chain. 23 Judith M. Gundry -Volf, “The Least and the Greatest: Children in the New Testament, ” in The Child in Christian Thought, ed. Marcia J. Bunge (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 43.

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“stumbling block before one of these little ones .... It would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea"(9:42). Children were of such inestimable value to God that the disciples were to welcome children, protect them, and never do any harm them. The disciples found it inexplicable that the path to kingdom greatness included concrete acts of service to the least in their community or that the manner in which they treated children could be equated with how much they loved Jesus. The next scene drills in on the same point from another angle. Parents were bringing their children to Jesus with the hopes that he might touch or bless them, not unlike accounts of relatives and friends bringing the sick, the possessed and even the dead scattered throughout Mark. But rather than welcoming the opportunity to demonstrate what leadership should look like under the new rules of the Kingdom, the disciples confronted and scolded the parents for bothering the Master. In similar settings earlier in his Gospel, Mark told a variety of stories where the multitudes came bringing with them their sick with hopes that Jesus might just touch them. In these stories, there was no extent to which people would not go in order to get near to Jesus. They begged, cajoled, cried, or just tried to get close enough to touch the hem of his robe. Given Mark’s penchant to include “stories of a kind,” it would not be too much of a stretch to think that Mark intended the reader to recall the healing of the demon-possessed daughter of the mother from Phoenicia who was living in Syria (7:24-30) or the healing of the 12-year old daughter of Jarius, a leader of the synagogue (5:21-24, 35-43). Jesus raised the little girl from the dead! And in the middle of that story, Jesus was interrupted by the woman with the flow of blood. All she wanted was to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe. Jesus restored her to health and fertility, making it possible for the woman to fulfill the dream of her heart to have a child (5:25-34). None of the stories, including the one we treated earlier about the boy with an unclean spirit, romanticize a joyful world of beautiful, happy, and healthy children. The stories are about sickness, desperation, and despair. The children were suffering such severe disabilities that it would be easy for anyone to feel uncomfortable in their presence. Although Mark did not explicitly say so, this scene of parents bringing the children to Jesus so he might touch them may well have been similar. While it was possible that the disciples were overcome by the immensity of the task and simply didn’t know what to do in the face of such need, they were more likely behaving in typical fashion. Just as they did in the case of the unauthorized exorcists, the disciples simply wanted to exercise their culturally-based authority. In the midst of Jesus’ massive popularity, they were after all, the guardians of the gate.24 They would decide who got access to Jesus. They did not believe that the parents or their children should be wasting Jesus’ time. Whatever the case, the disciples had already 24 Garland, Mark, 384.

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forgotten that children were to be served first. So they rebuked the parents, failing to see the place that children had in the kingdom of God. Jesus was indignant with their actions and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it. After saying this, he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them” (10:13-16). In the first episode, the way one welcomed children was the way one welcomed Christ. Slightly but significantly different in the second episode, Jesus did not tell his disciples to become like little children, but rather he said, “The way one receives/welcomes children is the way one receives the kingdom of God.”25 How they treated a child was a measure of how seriously they operated under the rule of God. To be great would mean putting children first. Mark presented a vivid contrast by way of the story of the rich young ruler between the ethical standards of the kingdom as represented by its treatment of children and the ethical standards of the day. Too committed to his own possessions and glory, the rich young ruler could not bring himself to do what Jesus asked of him - namely, to sell everything he owned and follow him. After the rich young man left, Jesus remarked to his disciples that it was, “hard ... for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God” (10:23). The disciples were both amazed and astonished! If this young man with all his money was lost, they asked, “Then who can be saved” (10:26). The disciples, like everyone else, equated riches with God’s blessings. As astonishing as it may have been for the disciples, the truth was that greatness in the kingdom could no more be generated by wealth than it could be by power and authority. The rich young ruler, unable to put Jesus first, stands in the pages of Scripture as an example of failed discipleship.

Can You Drink the Cup? (10:32-45) In 10:33-44, Jesus once again foretold of his death - the third “passion prediction” - and added in graphic detail that the Son of Man will be delivered over, condemned to death, mocked, spat upon, scourged, killed, but three days afterward will be resurrected. And for the third time, the disciples misunderstood. With Jesus’ impending death, James and John, still coveting positions of authority, asked for places of honor when Jesus is seated in glory (10:37); to which Jesus retorted, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink”? They heard the part that Jesus will rise again, but seemed conveniently deaf to the part about his suffering and death! In response, Jesus told them that worldly leaders measured greatness by their capacity to exercise authority and reminded them that they were not to imitate that (10:43). The path of the disciple passes through suffering 25 Johnson, Living Gospel, 57. The theological significance of “receive the Kingdom as a child” is an interesting debate, but not central to this essay where the focus is on the essential character of Christian leadership.

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and service. Jesus taught, "Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many" (10:42-45). Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, those who follow him (disciples) receive true life. Indeed, this true life is the gift of salvation now and forever. The power of Satan, as Gordon Fee writes, “is on its way out; its stranglehold on humanity in every form - sin, sickness, oppression, possession, injustice - has received its deathblow.”26 Recipients of this good news are forgiven because of God’s grace and mercy. And because they have received such inestimable grace and mercy, true disciples extend it to others in abundance. This messianic salvation not only sets them free, but by the power of the Spirit they are also enabled to imitate Jesus. The mystery of the kingdom is that the suffering servant, who was crucified, is the Messiah, and he is the Messiah precisely because he suffered. In this light, the true disciple must take up his cross and follow in his footsteps. Second Bookend: Blind Bartimaeus (10:46-52) The instantaneous healing of the blind beggar named Bartimaeus is the second of two bookends, the first being the “twice-touched” blind man of Bethsaida (8:2226). In viewing these two stories at the beginning and end of “the discipleship segment” of Mark’s Gospel, the irony is evident: In contrast to the disciples’ misunderstanding and hardness of heart, the blind man from Bethsaida and blind Bartimaeus - two people who could not even see - recognized that Jesus was the Christ. In the story, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting on the side of the readjust outside Jericho when Jesus, the disciples, and a large crowd was leaving Jericho on their way to Jerusalem. When Bartimaeus heard that Jesus of Nazareth was in the crowd, he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” (10:47). Several irritated people in the crowd told him to be quiet, and there was no indication that the disciples felt any differently, thus reflecting their continuing ignorance that the new rules of life in the kingdom, “involved serving precisely the weakest.”27 Ironically, while Bartimaeus was considered a public nuisance because of his blindness, most scholars hold that identifying Jesus as the Son of David in his cry

26 Fee, “Kingdom of God and the Church’s Global Mission,” 14. 27 Craig Keener, Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 489. In addition to Keener’s commentary, see also Sherman G. Johnson, The Gospel According to St. Mark (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987), 182; A. A. Anderson, 2 Samuel (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1989), 85; Moma Hooker, The Son of Man in Mark (Montreal, Canada: McGill University , 1967); Vincent Tay lor, Ed. Gospel According to St. Mark (New York, NY: St. Martin’s,’1963).

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for mercy displayed prophetic insight.28 When he asked “that [he] may see again,” he got even more: “Your faith has saved you.” Bartimaeus emerged from the story as an exemplar of faith and a real life example of how a leader should respond - to see and follow Jesus.29 This is what being a disciple means.

An Open Ending: A Charismatic Community

Whether the final chapter of Mark ends in v. 8 or v. 20, the conclusion is the same - namely, that all of these events had to take place in order for the disciples to finally get it. After the resurrection and the coming of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, the disciples, like the blind man from Bethsaida after Jesus touched him the second time, “began to see everything clearly.” The disciples would never have understood the miracles and teachings of Jesus without the cross, resurrection, and empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Within 25 years, this little rag-tag band, empowered by the Holy Spirit, crossed geographic, linguistic, cultural, sociological and demographic frontiers taking the good news of the gospel and planting churches from Jerusalem to Asia Minor and into Europe. Holy Spirit baptism and empowerment, available to all believers after the Day of Pentecost, equipped the disciples and the entire community of believers to do and teach all that Jesus did and taught.30 The ministry of Jesus as the Anointed One by the Holy Spirit inaugurated the kingdom of God in human history. The kingdom of God, the central theological concept used by Mark in his Gospel to describe Jesus’ mission and ministry, set the agenda for the ministry of the believers in the early church community. The kingdom mission and ministry of Jesus are transferred and made operational within the charismatic community by the empowerment of the Spirit at Pentecost. The Acts narrative offers an organizing principle for a holistic ministry infused by the power of the Spirit. In Acts, the Holy Spirit is presented as the one who empowers the church to overcome the entrenched gender, economic, cultural, and religious barriers of a divided world within its own community. Accordingly in the outpouring of the Spirit on the entire Christian community at Pentecost, the unfolding of "God's will for justice becomes an empowering

28 John R. Donahue and Daniel J. Harrington, Eds. The Gospel of Mark, Sacra Pagina Series (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2002), 319. 29 1 am indebted to my colleague, systematic theologian Frank Macchia and his brother, Michael Macchia, for their generous time and input working through with me the implications of the stories of the blind man from Bethsaida and the blind Bartimaeus of Jericho. 30 Murray W. Dempster, “Evangelism, Social Concern, and the Kingdom of God,” in Called & Empowered, eds. Murray W. Dempster, Byron D. Klaus and Douglas Petersen (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 49.

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dynamic."31 The charismatic community not only enjoyed the visible signs of the promised kingdom age, but by the power of the Spirit, they also exhibited the “reversal of the order of things” by breaking down the barriers between Jew and Gentile, male and female, rich and poor, and slave and free. By the time the story of Acts concludes, the Spirit-empowered community of faith had taken the gospel everywhere in word and deed. A Reflection

Mark’s account is brilliant, finely and carefully crafted. He wrote his Gospel to people who were enduring suffering. Mark arranged the stories about Jesus to remind the reader that though Jesus may have seemed like an unexpected Messiah, his suffering and death were not an accident. Jesus was the Messiah, God’s Son. By the time Mark told his story, the disciples were the paragons of the faith. And if hearers would allow it, what Christ had done in and through the disciples, he also could do for them. Mark’s Gospel is also a story of the present. As a present-day reader, two millennia later, I, too, must encounter the disciples’ confusion. I must make some sort of judgment. I must come to a position, but the rhetorical structure of the narrative rigidly limits the kinds of positions I am free to take. If I agree with the disciples, or share their misunderstandings, I will come under the judgment of the story’s implied point of view. Indeed, Mark manages my response to Jesus’ teachings, and the methods by which that management takes place are clearly visible. Mark accomplishes his ends by stating the point, then belaboring it, then driving it home into my heart over and over. I confess that I also struggle with the issues that troubled Jesus’ disciples and often for the same reasons. Sometimes I don’t understand, misunderstand, or don’t want to understand. I tend to tailor Jesus’ teachings to my own interests. I read what I want to read. The ethics of the kingdom are still a complete reversal of what we accept as normative in the twenty-first century. I freely recognize that I have no chance to imitate Jesus’ model of service in leadership without the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in my life. One Father’s Day, a few years past, my wife Myrna gave me a plaque to hang in my office, as a constant reminder of what really matters: One hundred years from now, It won’t matter what car I drove, What kind of house I lived in, How much I had in my bank account, Nor what my clothes looked like, But, the world may be a little better Because I was important in the life of a child.

31 Murray W. Dempster, “Pentecostal Social Concern and the Biblical Mandate of Social Justice,” Pneuma 9 (Fall 1987): 148.

10. Popularizing a Call to Sexual Justice

Kristýn Komarnicki

The problem with our sex-saturated culture ... is not that it overvalues the body and sex. The problem is that it has failed to see just how valuable the body and sex really are.1

Of Ron Sider’s trinity of hats - academician, policy activist, and popularizer perhaps the most powerful is this last one, because it impassions and empowers a broad swath of citizens at a grassroots level. As radio commentator and populist activist Jim Hightower has noted, “There’s enormous progressive activism and, more often than not, success at the grassroots level - everything from living wage campaigns to efforts to finance our elections are having terrific success.”12 Informed and equipped, citizens can then go on to influence the world in significant ways, whether or not they ever set foot in a college classroom or even in a voting booth. The art of popularizing - distilling complex issues such as global poverty or the social cost of pornography into clear and persuasive stories that the average person can absorb and ultimately act upon - is essential not only to building an informed citizenry but also to transforming individual hearts and minds for Christ. Ron’s most successful effort to convert a difficult subject into effective grassroots change is his book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. First published in 1977, revised and expanded in 1984 and again in 2005, Rich Christians has sold over 400,000 copies and changed the way countless Jesusfollowers think not only about their personal finances but also about their place in the global economy. Christianity Today named it one of the 50 most influential books in religion in the 20th century and the seventh most influential book in the evangelical world in the last half century.3 By helping the average American Christian not only care about but also understand global economics, Ron Sider puts power to change the world squarely in the hands of individual believers and local churches.

1 Christopher West, Theology of the Body for Beginners (West Chester, PA: Ascension Press, 2004), 4. 2 Jim Hightower, personal correspondence with author (12 December 2012). 3 “Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals,” Christianity Today (October 6, 2006) www.christianity~today.com/ct/2006/october/23.51.html7startM (accessed 7.12.2012).

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Personal Journey I have personally experienced this power of popularization to transform. By the age of 35 1 had studied, worked, built community, and found adventure on three continents. I had a wonderful husband and kids, great friends, and a supportive family, but 1 had the sense that I was not engaging the world at anywhere near the level that I was meant to. The local and world news I listened to was informative but resulted only in leaving me agitated. 1 didn’t understand the larger forces that moved behind the eternal tango of war and peace, wealth and poverty, or health and disease in this beautiful but broken world. And I certainly didn’t have the slightest idea how I could personally impact any of it beyond loving the person in front of me. Then again, even love wasn’t a simple affair! Too often my attempts to “help” the people I came into contact with - the new immigrant I met in the park, the divorcing couple down the street, and so on - led only to frustration and resentment for all involved. I longed to live a fuller life, to engage the world and my faith at a deeper level and with better tools. I began to pray for a new season, for an Idea (with a capital I) that I could throw myself into, and a way to live more abundantly. Although I “stumbled upon” Evangelicals for Social Action unexpectedly, it is clear to me now that it was in direct response to this prayer that I’d been consciously and unconsciously praying for quite some time. I grew up in an active Presbyterian church and attended Wheaton College to study literature. But I had never heard of the “Chicago Declaration” or knew of the historic debate over the role of social action in faith. When I moved back to the United States after more than a dozen years in Europe and Asia, I knew no Christians who were engaged in activism of any kind. Then I attended an adult Sunday school class offered by my childhood church. It was taught by a staff member of ESA who brought in other staff to portray holistic Christianity and what it meant to be a fully engaged Christian. I learned about faith-based political activism and what light the Bible could shed on things as diverse as the death penalty, welfare, and environmental stewardship. Here was the kind of faith I had always yearned for - not a pew-warming, once-a-week activity but an integrated, whole-life faith - where Jesus would inform my decisions whether I was in the voting booth or the grocery store, whether choosing a neighborhood or a pair ofjeans, whether talking to a leader in the church or a beggar in the street. The class introduced me to the main popularizing arm of ESA, its flagship publication, PRISM magazine. Within its pages I met real people who were living meaningful and sacrificial lives: people who befriended the homeless, provided hospice care for AIDS patients, raised orphans, and mentored prisoners’ children; people who chose to live in slums or among the severely handicapped in order to better love their neighbors and to discover their own spiritual poverty; and people who gave up all that sparkles in order to find their true treasure in Christ.

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This was popularization at its most powerful - putting a human face on both local and global issues, articulating challenging questions through memorable stories, and then offering tools with which readers could raise their voice, lend their hand, and make a difference. I was energized by what I read, filled with hope, and hooked! When I heard a position might be opening up on the editorial team I leapt at the chance to partner in such a project. Little did I know then how much ESA in general and PRISM in particular, would stretch and transform me over the next decade-plus.

God Owns the Whole Works As editor of PRISM, I’ve had the enviable opportunity over the years to shape dozens of issues, pursuing my passion for communicating truth, nurturing dialogue, prodding deeper thought, and exploring the world through the eyes of faith. At PRISM we’ve taken on evangelism, restorative justice, poverty relief, religious freedom, genocide, economic justice, immigration reform, and much more. All of these subjects have captured my interest and imagination, and all are critical issues that Christians need to face, pray over, and engage. But none has gripped me with as much urgency as the need for sexual justice. Like no other time in history, sexual content is ubiquitous, available 24/7/365. The challenge is no longer how to access sexual content but how to avoid it.4 In spite of its pervasiveness, sadly, when it comes to sex, we are as short on truth as we are long on saturation. The so-called “sex industry” is fueled in part by human trafficking, an activity that falls among the top three largest criminal industries in the world, along with illicit drugs and illegal arms trade. But regardless of the provenance of those human bodies that are bought and sold - through pornography, strip clubs, and prostitution (whether online or offline) - the overall price paid by both consumers and providers, not to mention society at large, is incalculable. While political engagement will play an important role in the fight for sexual justice, and academic study must undergird that fight with sound research, popularizing the subject so that the average person understands why it is essential to the common good is critical at this crossroads. Why? Because the secular academy tends to worship the idol of personal freedom and all too often blinds itself to the devastating cost of limit-free sexual “freedom.” The political strength to enforce the laws that are already on the books (or to create better ones) cannot be mustered if the average citizen is not willing or informed enough to demand it of his or her legislators. Sadly, many of our legislators and judges are just as blinded by complacency and sexual addiction as our academicians are. The

4 Wendy Maltz and Larry Maltz, The Porn Trap (Nashville, TN: William Morrow, 2009), 5”.

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people - informed, equipped, invigorated - will have to take the lead here. And they are beginning to!5 While a stance against sexual exploitation will be considered by many to be anti-sex and mere prudery, it simply couldn’t be further from the truth. A holistic faith that is completely pro-life and pro-sexual justice is a faith that is inherently pro-sex. It recognizes that sex is a gift from God, and it delights in seeing that gift stewarded, nurtured, and expressed in healthy and life-affirming ways. A biblical understanding of God acknowledges the incredible, erotic power of God and recognizes the life force of the Creator in all areas of existence. The Scriptures are full of cautionary tales of misused human sexuality, plainly portraying the tragedy that comes of lust, sexual violence, and exploitation.6 But the Scriptures also portray what sexuality looks like when it is channeled towards one’s beloved. What is more erotic, exciting, and beautiful than the love poetry found in the Song of Songs? This book is racy stuff - definitely not your average Sunday morning worship selection! And it is given central placement in the Bible and offered as both a model of human love and a metaphor for Christ and his church.7 Why are sex, sexuality, sensuality, our bodies, and our relationship to them so important? In his contemporary paraphrase of the Scriptures, Eugene Peterson gets to the heart of it in his rendition of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.” Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever - the kind of sex that can never “become one.” There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for “becoming one” with another. Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body (6:16-20).

Sexual justice understands that what we do with our bodies matters. It acknowledges that God is just and loves justice, and assumes that as followers of 5 A broadening base of grassroots groups are addressing the issue and fighting to get the truth out. This includes a number of groups that have no faith affiliation, such as FighttheNewDrug.org, AntiPomography.org, and Angty Girl.net, as well as faith-based groups like PornHarms.org. 6 See the story of Tamar in Genesis 38, the concubine in Judges 19, and many others. 7 Read, for example, how the woman in the Song of Songs describes her beloved in 2:3-13 and how the man describes his bride in 7:1-9. I recommend that you read these from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase in The Message to get the most out of the beautiful poetry of these passages.

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God we, too, therefore love and work for justice. It recognizes that we are sexual beings created in the image of God, and assumes that sexuality is a powerful expression of God’s self. Sexual justice is an important part of reflecting God’s image and acting justly in this world. Kinds and Costs of Sexual Injustice When justice is done, it often involves punishment, reward, or both. Hostages are freed and their captors go to prison. A fraud victim wins his suit and the perpetrator has to pay up. When justice is done we see both costs and rewards. Sexual injustice takes many forms, and I will sketch out just a handful here. It is worth noting that, as with any kind of sin, sexual injustice harms both the victim and the perpetrator. Everybody loses.

Objectification We objectify others when we treat them as commodities to be manipulated, dominated, consumed, and/or separated from the whole person in any way. Pornography is the ultimate objectifier, because it divorces sex from relationship, serving it up instead as a collection of body parts and actions. Pornography is a powerful tool for training us to objectify others, whether they are the people featured in pornography or the people we interact with everyday. But regardless of whether or not we view pornography, we objectify others in our daily lives whenever we view and judge them based on their sexual attractiveness and/or availability (or some other value) to us. Defenders of pornography (and/or prostitution, stripping, etc., all of which are points on the continuum of sexual exploitation) invariably play the freedom-ofspeech card. But in doing so they are defending only their own freedom and not that of others. They are not considering the untold numbers of pom “actors” who are deceived into performing scenes they didn’t agree to. They are not considering how the demand for performers fuels human trafficking or how continued exposure to pornography creates a market for more extreme (read: degrading, violent) material and younger (read: child) “performers.” Pornography made with children is one of the fastest-growing criminal businesses online.8 They are not thinking about how an increasingly “pornified”9 culture glamorizes porn and in so doing grooms young people to accept the pom industry in the same way that pedophiles have always groomed their victims - by normalizing the unthinkable. When the freedom of one person - the consumer - is protected at the cost of the freedom of another person (the “product” being consumed), justice is clearly not served. 8 “Annual Report,” Internet Watch Foundation (2008). In this report, IWF found 1,536 individual child abuse domains. 9 See Pamela Paul, Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families (New York, NY: Times Books, 2005).

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Porn is now so prevalent that we have begun talking about the effects of “second-hand pom” on innocent bystanders.1011 When people - including children - are routinely exposed to the legally “protected access to” porn - on airplanes, in libraries, on newsstands, etc. - what is to be done to protect those who desire freedom from porn?

Judgment and Discrimination Judgment and discrimination occur when we treat people as “less than,” based on their gender or sexual orientation. We judge and discriminate whenever we settle for gender stereotypes - i.e., women are needy; men are terrified of commitment. We do this whenever we dismiss others with a broad stroke. Many Christians are comfortable criticizing the “gay agenda” and lumping every gay person into one easy category. But these same people would object to being lumped in with any statement made about “all Christians” or “all Americans.” All stereotypes especially belittling ones - are unjust. Sexual injustice is writing someone off because he or she is different from us, sexually, rather than taking the time to get to know that person as an individual, hear her story, ask him and truly listen to learn, regardless of our personal feelings about gender or homosexuality: “What is life like for you? How is your sexuality a blessing to you? How is it a challenge?” Sexual Abuse Pedophilia, sexual bullying, and rape are obvious examples of sexual abuse. There is something so powerful about our sexuality, about how we were made and what sex is created to communicate, that the lies in sexual abuse - you deserve this; you existfor my pleasure; what you want doesn’t matter; you ’re not good for anything else; you brought this on yourself; you ’re worthless — are injected deep into the victim’s psyche. There is good reason to believe that the spiritual wounds inflicted through sexual abuse are deeper than those inflicted by other means.

Sex Outside of Covenant Although it is broadly accepted (whether tacitly or overtly) even among many Christians, sex outside of covenant is no less a form of sexual injustice. Because sex is designed to be a part of a lifelong commitment, sex without commitment is, in the words of author Dawn Eden, “telling lies with our bodies;”11 because we are essentially saying, “This is just recreation; it’s not serious,” with our

10 See Monica Hesse, “Technology increases chance to see porn in public,” Washington Post, 12 November 2009, available at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dxn/content/ article/2009/11/11/AR2009111127404.html (accessed 7.11.2012). 11 See Dawn Eden, The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2006).

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mouths while our bodies are engaging in actions that say, “I’m committed to you; I am one with you.” Bruce Wydick, economics professor at the University of San Francisco and contributor to this volume, writes: The biblical commands against sex outside of marriage are essentially pro-woman in that they foster social justice for women in a society where they might otherwise be the subject of the sexual whims of men and forced to raise children alone. The commands about sexual fidelity also create the basic building blocks for a society of healthy children who enjoy the protection and support of both a mother and a father.12

Wydick tells his students that sexual fidelity is a form of social justice. When his students ask him, “But what about consensual sex between responsible adults?” He tells them that consent has little to do with it and gives this example of sweatshop economics: Does the fact that an impoverished woman in Indonesia is willing to assemble Nike shoes for 25 cents an hour, 12 hours a day, imply that it is a socially just arrangement? The woman has given her consent in the exchange, but does that make it right? Of course not - consensuality is an insufficient condition for social justice. But many male college students today will sleep out on the steps of the Capitol protesting sweatshop labor and then sleep with their girlfriends, completely unaware of the inherent contradictions of their beliefs and lifestyle.13

Because sexual union can lead to the creation of a new person - an innocent third party, as it were - sex outside of covenant greatly increases the odds of other injustices occurring - abortion, fatherlessness, and poverty, for example. The cost of these forms of sexual injustices includes, but is not limited to, sexual addiction, marital infidelity, divorce, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, infertility, and sex trafficking. Every day medical practitioners, mental health professionals, lawyers, social workers, teachers and pastors, deal with the fallout of sexual injustice in the form of physical disease, mental breakdown, crime, broken hearts, and broken families.

Apathy Perhaps the most rampant form of sexual injustice - and the one that each of us is guilty of at one time or another - is the lethal cocktail of capitulation and apathy. For sexual injustice is not just what we do to others; it’s also what we tolerate, whether for others or for ourselves. Like those frogs placed in cool water that accept the slow heating until they’re boiled alive, we ignore and eventually embrace the doubletalk thrown at us by corporate pimps who take our God-given

12 Bruce Wvdick, “Sex and Social Justice,” Ptf/SAf (September/October 2008), 28. 13 Ibid., 28.'

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sexuality, deform it, and then sell it back to us at a profit. When we become willing consumers of Satan’s lies, we partake in the greatest injustice of all, because we relinquish both our desire and our ability to fight evil. The bottom line is: God loves our bodies and our hearts and wants them to be free and healthy, active, and alive. Satan hates our bodies and hearts and wants to enslave them. As Bob Dylan so poignantly reminds us, “You’re gonna have to serve .somebody.”14

The DNA of Sexual Justice

We live in a world that puts an extremely high value on personal freedom and an individual’s choices. “It’s my body.” “It’s my life. I’m not hurting anyone.” “We’re consenting adults.” Sexual justice starts with having the courage to acknowledge that our sexual choices (for good or for evil) have consequences beyond ourselves, that our “freedom” affects the freedom of others, and that our choices affect others’ choices. We’ve looked at some of the consequences of misusing our bodies. Let’s turn now to the rewards of using our bodies as they were intended, the joy of experiencing our sexuality as the gift that it truly is; because sexual justice is much more than the absence of sexual injustice. Sexual justice is a positive, life­ giving force in the world, and we don’t want to miss out on being a part of it. Sexual justice starts with “doing justice” to our own and others’ sexuality; it means giving sexuality its due. That happens when we begin to understand who we are in relation to God and each other, and when we embrace love, self­ control, and joy rather than pursue momentary pleasure or settle for the path of least resistance. The Scriptures tell us that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made;” which is a fine place to start. Embodied sexual human beings are the crowning glory of God’s creation. We have so much to be grateful for. The best thinking I know of has come out of 20th-century Catholic teaching that is just now beginning to be more broadly known. And it’s happening not a minute too soon. Known as “Theology of the Body,” John Paul IPs 135 lectures on human sexuality do a gorgeous job of articulating the purpose and plan for our sexuality.15 If every church attributed the quality and quantity of importance to the human body that these teachings do, we would have significantly less sexual injustice in the world. Focusing on the beauty and divine import of the body, “Theology of the Body” reminds us that our bodies are good and our desires are signposts intended to bring us into full union with God. Christopher West is doing a terrific job of popularizing these teachings, reminding us of the centrality of the body in the Scriptures and its inextricable 14 A line from “Gotta Serve Somebody,” from the album Slow Train Coming (Columbia Records, 1979). 15 “What is the Theology of the Body?” Theology of the Body www.theology ofthebody. net/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=l (accessed 7.12.2012).

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relationship with the spirit. Here’s a quick primer: The Word became flesh (Jn. 1:14); Christ sacrificed his physical body for our salvation (Lk. 22:19); Christ came for the redemption of our bodies (Rom. 8:23); and we are now the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:27). Catholic authors Fran Ferder and John Heagle also write powerfully about the spirituality of sexuality: As part of the centerpiece of God’s creative design, gendered humanity - male and female together - provides an image of the God who chose to dwell in flesh. Sexuality is that unique and mysterious vehicle that holds the man and woman together in shared humanity. As such, it is a guardian of God’s image. Its essence is sparked with divinity. It has holy intent and sacred meaning. God wants us to be sexual - to be lovers and life-givers. God made us to be passionate - to be capable of feeling the fire of creation within even part of our being... It is a warm and caring God who placed within us a powerful drive to forge relationships with one another. It is a trusting God, respectful of our freedom, who allows us to discover the mystery of eros as it unfolds in our bodies and our hearts. And it is a playful, pleasure-loving God who gave us smiles and laughter and orgasms, who gave us skin that hungers for touch, who made us desire beauty, and destined us to fall in love...

...The fact that this important dimension of God’s creation can be used selfishly does not diminish its intrinsic goodness, nor ought it cause us to mistrust our body’s gift of pleasures or our soul’s delight in human love.”16

Bom of the eros of God, our bodies are made for eros. Eros is a Greek word that means desire. Although we tend to reduce it to genital impulses, it has traditionally meant the yearning for all that is true, good, and beautiful. Creation is dripping with sexual energy, from pounding waterfalls and deep gorges to the lilac’s trembling stamen and stigma. Our very response to creation is sexual in nature: the heart’s pull toward beauty, our longing for connection with each other and God, and our innate yearning for intimacy. Our desire and ability to create life reflect the sexual image of God as we produce life from our own loins. The story of God and his people, as recounted in the pages of the Bible, is an undeniably erotic story. Look at the images of the psalmist and the metaphors God spoke through the prophets: “My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God” (Ps. 84:2); “as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God (Ps. 42:1); do not worship any other god, for the LORD ... is a jealous God. (Ex. 34:14); “I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in loving-kindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness and you shall know the LORD” (Hos. 2:19).

16 Fran Ferder and John Heagle, Tender Fires: The Spiritual Promise of Sexuality (New York, NY: Crossroad Publishing, 2002), 31-32.

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The love story of God and his creation has all the elements of a great romance novel - tenderness, passion, jealousy, yearning, and mutual vulnerability. How often do we stop and marvel at how God makes himself vulnerable to us? Think about it: He declares his love for us, pursues us relentlessly, is moved by our prayers, and puts his very flesh at our mercy in the incarnation. The covenantal union is written into our hearts and into the history of humanity. As West writes, “The Bible begins in Genesis with the marriage of the first man and woman, and it ends in Revelation with another ‘marriage’ - the marriage of Christ and the church. ... Through this lens we learn that God’s eternal plan is to ‘marry’ us (see Hos. 2:19) - to live with us in an eternal exchange of love and communion.”17 We are hardwired for love. The Triune God is a communion of love, and we are destined to share in that exchange. West writes, “This two-part ‘mystery’ is what the human body signifies right from the moment of our creation. How so? Precisely through the beauty and mystery of sexual difference and our call to become ‘one flesh.’”18

Why It Matters

The union of the sexes as the source of the family and life itself, wrote John Paul II, “is placed at the center of the great struggle between good and evil, between love and all that is opposed to love.”19 Therefore, if we are to win the spiritual battle, the first thing St. Paul says we must do...is “gird [our] loins with truth” (Eph. 6:14). Sexual justice takes this seriously. We must gird our loins and our hearts with the truth that will set us free to love. Telling the truth - insisting on the truth in our own lives, in our conversations with those around us, in our attempts to engage with the culture from the cinema to the newsstand to our home computers - is the first step. We must steep ourselves in the Scriptures and in prayer in order to understand that our sexuality is indeed a battleground where every victory and defeat is of great significance. For as deep and abiding as the spiritual wounds of sexual violence are, deep and abiding, too, are the blessings of sexual justice. It takes a lot of determination to cut through the false images that bombard us on a daily basis. Sexuality is typically packaged in one of two forms by the popular media, whether films or billboard advertising, music or magazines. The recreational model appeals to physical pleasure that divorces the heart from the body. In this scenario, humans are portrayed as happy animals and sex as

17 Christopher West, cited in Paule-Olivia, “Theology of the Bod) ,” http://pauleolivia. blogspot.com/2006/09/theology-of-body.html (accessed 7.1.2012). 18 Ibid. 19 Pope John Paul II, Letters to Parents, no.23, as quoted in Cormac Burke, Covenanted Happiness: Love and Commitment in Marriage, (New York, NY: Scepter, 1999), 210.

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consequence-free, good fun. The romantic model is no less deceptive and dangerous.20 In this scenario, the only thing that stands between a person and his or her deepest fulfillment is finding “the” perfect partner for life. Tellingly, in these emotionally provocative tales the credits always roll directly after consummation, while the clearly implied long-term bliss is never portrayed. But neither the recreational nor the romantic have room for the hard work required by authentic close relationships - such as relentless honesty, vulnerability, and forgiveness, for starters. Like truth, intimacy is an important tool in the battle for sexual justice. When we as believers forge relationships of deep, satisfying intimacy, we not only strengthen ourselves for the fight but we also offer to the world visible, viable, and attractive alternatives to the narratives offered by the sex industry. Whereas the latter offers immediate gratification followed by a crash of gnawing emptiness, true holistic intimacy offers long-term satisfaction and health. It’s a choice between fast food and haute cuisine, between a Band-Aid and a cure. For the craving that sends us to pornography or promiscuity or any other form of sexual injustice is the same craving that moves us toward intimate relationships - a desire to connect, to transcend oneself. As a quote attributed to G.K. Chesterton said, “Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.” Intimate relationships, write Ferder and Heagle, “demand a level of personal investment that stretches our imaginations and the boundaries of our generosity. Love is a crucible of human selfhood.”21 Imagination, generosity, sacrifice, self­ control, intimacy - all of these make up the DNA of sexual justice. Sexual justice means viewing others not as means to our pleasure but as ends in themselves. Chastity - whether inside or outside of marriage - requires us to put the real needs of others before our own. Mark Lowery, professor of theology at the University of Dallas, defines chastity as “that virtue by which we are in control of our sexual appetite rather than it being in control of us.”22 It is a positive thing the presence of control and strength - rather than a negative thing - the absence of sex. A “crucible of human selfhood” is decidedly not what the sex industry is selling! But while sexual justice may not look “sexy” by the world’s standards, it is in fact nothing short of an invitation to a life of goodness, truth, joy, connection, creativity, and love. Mutual vulnerability, trust, and commitment are the hallmarks of intimacy. But what does this look like on the ground? In Ephesians 5:21-33 Paul writes, “Out of respect for Christ, be courteously reverent to one another,” and then goes on to give instructions for wives to honor their husbands and for husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church.

20 Ferder and Heagle, Tender Fires, 94. 21 Ferder and Heagle, Tender Fires, 137. 22 Mark Lowery, “Chastity Before Marriage: A Fresh Perspective,” Catholic Education Resource Center http://catholiceducation.org/articles/sexuality/se0040.html (accessed 21.12.2012).

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No one abuses his own body, does he? No, he feeds and pampers it. That’s how Christ treats us, the church, since we are part of his body. And this is why a man leaves father and mother and cherishes his wife. No longer two, they become “one flesh.” This is a huge mystery, and I don’t pretend to understand it all. What is clearest to me is the way Christ treats the church. And this provides a good picture of how each husband is to treat his wife, loving himself in loving her, and how each wife is to honor her husband. When men sign up for marriage, they are signing up for the privilege of laying down their lives for their wives, the privilege of cherishing them, of loving their bodies as they love their own. Do men practice cherishing and seeing as whole persons the women in their lives? Are they practicing reverence for them? Are they good at hearing truth from women? And when women sign up for marriage, they are signing up for the privilege of supporting their husbands, of telling them the truth, especially when it’s difficult, of loving their bodies as they love their own. Do women practice being cherished, not settling for anything less than unselfish love in their relationships, not capitulating to be used or using others? Are they practicing the art of honoring the men in their lives by speaking the truth to them? Are those of us who hope to marry one day in training - today - for marriage, for fidelity to our future spouse and our Savior, and for intimacy in our closest relationships? Those of us who, by choice or by circumstance, do not marry, will also want to live a life of sexual justice, a life of goodness, truth, joy, connection, creativity, intimacy, and love. We will need all the same skills and gifts that married people will need, and then some. Are we in training - today - for celibacy, for fidelity to our community and our Savior, and for intimacy in our closest relationships?

How Far Can We Go?

In his book The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis reminds us that, “the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.” He makes the point that there are, “no ‘ordinary people,”’ that we “have never talked to a mere mortal.”23 Once we acknowledge that we are dealing with immortal beings as we interact with one another, the whole vista shifts. The Hollywood stage set slips and the big world behind the facade comes into view. To live in that world, in God’s beautiful reality, the church needs a new set of questions for navigating our relationships. Every youth pastor is familiar with the question, “How far can I go?” But what if, instead of this moralistic framework, we ask, as Ferder and Heagle propose,

23 C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1949), 46.

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How far are you willing to go in living the mandate of love? How far are you willing to go in rooting your daily loving in the all-encompassing communion of God? How far will you go in honest communication? How much are you willing to stretch your heart in trust? How vulnerable and self-disclosing are you with your girlfriend/boyfriend and closest friends? How far will you go in helping to create emotional and spiritual safety in your relationships?24

“The true challenge of the gospel,” they write, “is the depth and breadth of its promise and possibilities. The integral demands of Christian living - and they are truly demanding - flow much more from grace and possibility than from mere rules or restrictions.”25 When we understand that “the vision of Christian intimacy and communion...is rooted in abundance, not in scarcity and restriction,”26 we are well on our way to a theology of sexual justice. Sexual justice demands that our sexual relationships be authentic, that is, “covenantal rather than contractual, gracing rather than shaming, empowering rather than controlling, and intimate rather than distancing.”27 Sexual justice demands that all our relationships be life-giving, reverent, and loving. The bad news and the good news are one and the same: We can’t do this alone. As individuals we simply cannot live out a life of sexual justice without the support of Christ’s body, the church. What would happen if the church gave more space to beauty, to goodness, to the grace of sexuality, and to the relationship between sexuality and justice? If we based every sexual decision on love for and sacrifice to the other person, would not our habits and interactions always fall within the will of God? In an age of unfettered individual freedom, can the body of Christ offer a vision of sexual justice, community accountability and support? Can we offer a narrative that differs radically from the world’s hackneyed script of service to self first and foremost? In a world that hawks precious goods at sidewalk-sale prices, the future of the church quite literally depends upon it.

24 Ferder and Heagle, Tender Fires, 206. 25 Ibid., 207. 26 Ibid., 207. 27 Judith K. Balswick and Jack O. Balswick, Authentic Human Sexuality: An Integrated Christian Approach (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008), 78.

11. People Power Revisited1

Melba P. Maggay

Signs of the Kingdom The story I am about to tell is a reflection on a piece of our recent history in the Philippines, which is the rise of that phenomenon called “people power” and its subsequent use as a tool for exerting direct popular pressure on governance. It is the story of one participant among so many, and only one way of looking at this complex of events whose fallout is still being felt today. The Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture (ISACC), which was formed to reflect on gospel-and-culture issues, found itself occupied at first instance in generating biblically informed responses to the experience of authoritarianism under Ferdinand Marcos. This eventually led us to political advocacy and engagement along with other forces in civil society. In the course of this political engagement we found ourselves dealing with a mixed bag of co-belligerents, from organized movements inspired by Marxist ideals and theories to grassroots people’s organizations and faith-based communities of resistance. The common struggle against authoritarianism climaxed in those fateful events along a stretch of highway known as EDS A, an abbreviation for Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, a major thoroughfare in the capital city. Since 1986, this has been the scene of annual celebrations and rituals commemorating the people’s uprising against the Marcos regime. It was also the scene for another “people power” revolt in 2001 known as EDSA II, this time against the corrupt and inept government of a popular actor catapulted to power by the massive vote of the underclasses. In reaction, the forces identified with the overthrown president tried to stage their own EDSA III, in imitation of the two previous uprisings. Through the years, what happened at EDSA would be tarnished by the failure of the dreams and promises that it raised. Subsequent events would be marked by failed expectations, unseized initiatives that could have been revolutionary, the return of massive corruption and what we call trapo, or traditional politics. The democratic space created continues to be vulnerable to constant threats of

1 This chapter is adapted from “Engaging Culture: Lessons from the Underside of History,” Missiology XXXIII/1 (January 2005) by kind permission of Missiology, the journal of the American Society of Missiology.

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destabilization from military elements nurtured by years of martial law when the use of brute force substituted for democratic processes. Saddled by political dynasties and one of the longest-running elites in the Two- Thirds World, the country continues to be divided culturally and politically and reels from insurgencies mounted by assorted rebels, from coup plotters to holdover communists and Islamic fundamentalists. “People power” itself has developed a dark underside; it is now used as a tool by demagogues to foment disorder and hold the government hostage to their narrow interests and demands. With the onset of disillusionment was the tendency to reduce the significance of the EDSA events into a cipher, a mere blip in a long history of abuse and disorder. Yet in spite of what looks like a failed historical project, there is something about the events at EDSA which marks it as a watershed in our story as a people. Something had surfaced, perhaps not quite recognizable at first, mainly because there were many things about it that were strange and we lacked a ready language by which it could be named. An early tell-tale sign was the fact that it had elements that did not quite fit our usual concept of a revolution. The millions that came to EDSA to add to the body count were mostly ordinary people; there were entire families, babies, elderly women, nuns, and priests and a host of others who were not part of organized movements. There was a fiesta quality to it, with lots of singing and dancing in the streets. The people encamped and set up tents, brought quantities of food, shared and sheltered each other like old neighbors in a small village. The sense of community was palpable. Crossing class lines, society matrons stood side by side with sidewalk vendors. On our part, we were assigned to organize the religious communities that were present. It was quite a sight to see the Muslims praying five times a day on their mats on the one side; the Legion of Mary women fingering their rosary beads on the other side; and the Protestant evangelicals like us now and again singing hymns. “A Mighty Fortress is our God...” echoed down the streets as Radio Veritas, serving as handmaid to the revolution, picked up the hearty singing to inspire and boost everyone’s faith in the rightness of our being there. A people known to be fractious stood in solidarity together. What seemed to be a nation of fifty million cowards, as the martyred Benigno Aquino Jr. had once remarked, suddenly transformed into a resolute human barricade against tanks and troops. Within four days of unarmed siege, the most powerful president we had ever known was overthrown. In his place rose a frail widow in yellow, symbol of a nation’s will to be free.2 2 The frail widow is Mrs. Corazon Aquino, wife to Benigno Aquino who was shot at the airport tarmac upon coming home in 1983. Aquino was the main opposition figure during the martial-law reign of Ferdinand Marcos. His wife took the cudgels for him and found herself a hesitant leader of the resistance against the regime. It was sometimes called

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There are a few moments in history when the kingdom does seem to come down. This is one of them. The Filipino revolt of 1986 showed signs of what Mary had prophesied proleptically in the Magnificat as indication of the presence of the kingdom: there shall be the overthrowing of the mighty and the lifting up of the lowly.3 This reversal has yet to be worked out in the actual structures that govern Philip- pine society. But there has been a decisive inbreaking, and it is showing in the rapid rise of expectations and the empowerment of once inert masses in our grassroots communities.4 This is quite a leap in our political culture. Centuries of colonization and a series of uncongenial governments have made our people wary of getting on sight of the powers. There is a deep alienation from the centers of governance. Yet since two decades ago, there has been a growing ownership of the political process. About 85 to 90 percent of the voting population now goes to the polls to vote, a figure much higher than those who turn up in older democracies. Something is happening among our people. It has yet to have a name and has yet to be reflected in the formal systems by which we are ruled. But it is there, right in the teeth of our present struggles, and we are being invited to have the eyes to see it. Solidarity Lessons What does all this have to do with what is before us as people engaged in mining missiological insights from cases such as this? Let me suggest just two things that I have learned. The first is this: to truly engage our culture and make sense of our history, we have to read all that is happening to it within its own context of categories. There is much talk these days about contextualization. But it seems to me that much of it is contextualization from without, or what really is mere adaptation. We have a set of propositions that we try to communicate within the thought forms and processes of another culture. What I wish to see is contextualization from within, or that process in which our very message, the “good news,” is the “yellow revolution” because of the color yellow that she normally wore. Mrs. Aquino died in August 2009. 3 The 1986 revolution, while it had key play ers like Mrs. Aquino and Cardinal Sin, was really unorganized and leaderless. It was a spontaneous movement of the small people who initiated it. Not only did it see the rise of a housewife to the highest office in the land. It also saw the participation of ordinary people in what proved to be a history­ making process. 4 As early as 1987, it was estimated that there were about sixty thousand NGOs that had sprung up, and this did not count numerous small organizations unlisted in the Securities and Exchange Commission. The efforts of these NGOs eventually resulted in the empowerment of many urban and rural poor communities.

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shaped within the categories and meaning system of a given culture. To the pastoral context of Israel he was the good shepherd, to the Magi he was the star from the East, to primal cultures of today he is Lord of the Spirits, and so on. Part of our difficulty as a people is that we tend to read even our own history from categories borrowed from outside the culture. Because of this, we have yet to come to some consensus on how to interpret all that has happened. Our intelligentsia, whose mental furniture had been mostly sourced from the West, could not even agree on how to call the events that transpired at EDSA. For it was not, strictly speaking, a “revolution” in the American or French or Russian sense. It had no elaborate philosophical theory behind it. It was not weighted by a heavy ideological baggage. Neither was it motivated at first instance by the need to restore the apparatus of a failed democratic tradition. It was, simply, an instinctive, spontaneous response to a call from somewhere within us to somehow make a stand against a power that had ruled for so long and had gone haywire. Our sociologists have long bewailed this seeming incapacity to go beyond the personal and institutionalize in some form this rather intractable political impulse. Much of our national woes are accounted to the failure to organize and translate into workable structures such mercurial expressions of political will. My own sensing is that we are trying to domesticate within known political forms something that perhaps is best understood and captured within indigenous frames of meaning. The experience at EDSA, I would suggest, is continuous with the indigenous fusion of the political and the mystical in our historical tradition. This untidy mix of politics and religion had long been witnessed through four centuries of sporadic revolts against Spain. It had also been evident in the millenarian movements that bore the brunt of resistance against American colonialism in the early years of the last century.5 It is not an accident that the religious element was very visible at EDSA. Apart from the swathe of white cassocks in the crowds, there were prayers and inspirationals of all kinds, broadcast loud and clear on radio along with ominous news of troop movements. Soldiers hung rosary beads round their rifles. Each evening there was a procession up and down the highway, with the statue of the Virgin of the La Naval de Manila as centerpiece. This particular statue of the Virgin is said to have a long history of miracles behind it. As a wry observer remarked, “I have

5 On average, historians like Peter Gowing estimate that Filipinos revolted against Spain at least every 25 years and usually over things like proper burial rites, as with the longest revolt which was waged by a man called Dagohoy in Bohol. The FilipinoAmerican War of 1899 -1903 was mainly fought by quasi-religious folk movements like those that rose round Mount Banahaw in Laguna, the roots of which began with the movement started by the religious leader Apolinario de la Cruz or “Hermano Pule” round the 1840s.

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been a student of revolutions; but this is the first time 1 have seen a revolt led by the Virgin Mary.”6 What we were seeing, it seems to me, was a people engaging the powers, not by force of arms, but by the power of transcendent weapons deemed to be efficacious. Beneath the superficial layer of liberal democratic ideas and a landscape of Christian symbols and artifacts was the animating spirit of perhaps an older impulse. This spirit seems to derive its force from some subterranean source that is deeper than five centuries of Christianity. It seems to be triggered, not by ideology, but by a collective feeling of outrage that erupts spontaneously and grows into a political incident that sometimes gets enlarged into the historic proportions of the two people power uprisings at EDSA. Vivid examples in recent memory include the spontaneous protest sympathy for Flor Contemplation, one of what we call our OFW’s or overseas Filipino workers, a maid accused of having killed her ward and who was hanged, some say unjustly, by the Singapore government. And there was the massive overflow of crowds that accompanied the funeral of the assassinated Benigno Aquino Jr., where the slogan, “Hindi ka nag-iisa," (You are not alone) resonated widely and became a kind of battle cry of resistance against the strongman regime of Ferdinand Marcos.7 All of this has for its context an unrecognized sense of a shared identity, a solidarity deeper than mere political constructs like being a nation. It is worth noting that this phenomenon tends to surface in times when the culture’s communal sense is sufficiently roused.8 Filipinos have trouble being a nation; but we have no trouble getting together as a community. The reason for the difficulty over “nationhood” is the fact that the concept of nation was simply imposed on us artificially upon decolonization. Unlike Europe, which took centuries to evolve into nations since the notion of a citystate took hold of thirteenth-century Florence, we had no time to develop our own indigenous political structures and processes. Like many countries decolonized in the last half-century, we had to get our act together immediately, but within systems and patterns of governance that had no fit with how exactly things get done in the culture. But cultures are resilient; they adapt to alien influences and subvert even powerful systems grafted into them. This is how it is with Filipino culture; its 6 This was a remark made to me by Randy David, a journalist and a sociology professor at the University of the Philippines. 7 The sy mpathy crowds that began with the funeral of the slain Aquino swelled into a massive resistance movement that eventually led to the fall of Marcos. 8 Our sociologists say that the Filipino ego or sense of self is unindividuated. The analogy used for this is the “multiple fried eggs.” If you fry many eggs in one large pan, the egg whites are seamlessly connected; y ou do not know where one egg begins and ends. We do not think of ourselves as individuals. This is a root metaphor about the culture that has not changed through time. In contrast to this is the western ego, which is compared to a hard-boiled egg, individual and separate and with a hard shell.

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adaptive power is such that its core values, the deep structures of the culture, remain intact in spite of many surface changes and borrowings. We may have exchanged our dark, wooden anitos for statues with Caucasian features, for instance, but the saints function in about the same way as did the ancestral spirits of our pre-Hispanic past.9 The culture adapted readily to expectations of showcasing American-style democracy in Asia, and just as readily shed off its instrumental trappings once a powerful ruler emerged and dared to dismantle them. But all the while, just beneath the surface, a truly native political culture was reformulating itself, and now has appeared on the scene under the rubric of what is now known as “people power.” This curious forerunner of what recently has come to be known as “political religions,” is best exemplified in that phenomenon called “prayer rallies,” which were really protest actions staged as liturgical occasions. It is the indigenous culture re- asserting itself in a time of crisis and repression. We are back to the revolutionary ferment of the nineteenth century, and further back to the upheavals inspired by the Pasyon, an indigenized narrative of the passion of Christ which was either chanted or reenacted and which, according to a historian, provided a “grammar of dissent” for the masses.10 This kind of politics is totally strange to modern political theory, totally outside the current frames of meaning which dominate our social discourse. In the same way that our masses were made inarticulate by the alien language of the colonizer, the events of 1986 are in danger of being rendered incoherent by the lack of adequate categories by which they can be justly analyzed within today’s power languages. Secondly, the experience of standing together with all kinds of movements and faith communities has renewed our sense of the mystery of human solidarity. On the one hand there was, clearly, a solidarity in Adam. We were all somehow connecting to the common pain that brought us where we were. It was a broad movement with a cause universal enough to bring in the participation of all sectors of all possible stripes.

9 Precisely because of its adaptive power, Filipino culture seems faceless, just like a good actor. It is always wearing the mask of some influence borrowed from somewhere else. This tends to mislead missionaries into thinking that by and large the culture has been converted. For an elaboration of this, see Jose de Mesa, “Hispanic Catholicism and Lowland Filipino Culture” (Appendix F, Kultura at Pananampalataya PEW Research Report, vol. 2. Max 1996- April 1997, Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture) as well as my earlier work, The Gospel in Filipino Context (Manila, Philippines: OMF Literature, 1987), and Communicating Cross-Culturally, Towards a New Context for Missions in the Philippines (Quezon City, Philippines: New Day Publishers, 1989). 10 This is an instance where the culture was not just borrowing but appropriating for itself the meaning of Christ’s passion. For more on the Pasyon as a folk narrative transformed into a vehicle for protest, see Rafael Ileto’s Pasyon and Revolution, Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910 (Manila, Philippines: Ateneo University , 1979).

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There is much truth to a remark made by a nun to me once. “It’s the common struggle that unites us,” she said, “it’s theology that divides.”“ The statement echoes the oft-quoted conviction current among ecumenical circles that service can unite us beyond our theological differences. Human need knows no borders. On the other hand, it was not always clear whether there was, in this instance, solidarity in Christ. The evangelical community to which we belong had difficulty discerning its historical cues. The scribal establishment, particularly the leadership, kept waving Romans 13 as a flag, enjoining submission to the powers. Our small hermeneutical community felt this was too static an application of Scripture; the relevant passage, as far as we could discern, was instead Revelation 13. There are historical moments when the state assumes the proportions of a Beast and must be resisted. This, to us, was such a moment. Unfortunately, there was no unanimity in the churches as to the meaning of the times and its call on us. Those of us who were already engaged simply went ahead, pursuing a call which to us and the larger national community seemed as clear as daylight. It was ironical that the forces which were supposed to serve as a beachhead of the coming kingdom were, at a critical moment, sadly sidelined by internal readings that were out of sync with what was happening in the larger world. For a while it had been a puzzle to me that the Filipino evangelical community always seems to miss its historical cues. My own guess is that for a long time it had been landlocked within the theological environment of the American bible-belt. It had been unable to respond with any degree of sharpness to its own issues because of its captivity to theologies framed by the struggles between American fundamentalists and modernists way back in the 1930s. Many of its institutions had been shaped by missionaries reacting to the “social gospel” and to this day remain as tropical outposts of theologies exported to us during the colonial era.11 12 It is perhaps not altogether surprising that in a rare time of solidarity, both the conservative evangelicals and the hard Left were the only ones outside of the main- stream movement that led to the EDSA uprising.13 Both, at bottom, had

11 Sister Mary John Mananzan, feminist and president of the St. Scholastica College, remarked this to me while we were comparing notes on culture and activism in a conference on women’s issues. 12 The evangelical community in the late forties until the eighties was dominated by this theological tradition. Anyone engaged in the larger issues of social justice was suspected of being communist. The tide seemed to turn right after the upheavals of 1986. The Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture, which initially had been heavily criticized for its activism and had provided the leadership for the evangelical presence at the barricades under the broad banner of Konfes, or Konsiyensiya ng Febrero Siete, was later cited for such church-and-culture engagements by the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches (PCEC) in the mid-nineties. 13 The hard Left, with its ideological commitment to armed struggle, thought that the incipient civil society that was then engaged in popular but peaceful forms of resistance

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petrified into rigidity because of a hard boundary-keeping, locked into ideologies that had fossilized for want of vital contact with the strange vices and virtues of movements that to be sure will bang on your window panes and let in air. Conclusion It is a cause for rejoicing that the vast masses of our people have remained at the bottom of our cultural divide, uncolonized by alien thought forms.14 Faced with the pressure of a historical exigency, they had simply reached into themselves and found a way of responding within the terms and conditions they were at home with. By keeping their ears to the ground, our people have unconsciously surfaced an incipient political culture whose shadowy outlines resemble the now misty popular movements of a forgotten past. Admittedly, it has yet to develop its own discourse based on its internal frames of meaning. But it is on its way to having its contours configured through the twists and turns of our political history. The Philippine experience of “people power,” we are told, would later inspire other movements in the then emerging democracies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. This is an indication of its universality as a direct form of exerting popular will in a democracy. Yet there is a particularity about it which is uniquely its own. It is, I suspect, somehow connected to the ritual richness and the festive mood, of a piece with the raucous racket of comic catcalls, the periodic barrage of noise and other kinds of playful hooting. I have often wondered how this could occur alongside the clear and present danger of facing a powerful and deadly enemy. Yet after some reflection, the phenomenon does not seem to me to be far removed from the ancient custom of banging pots and pans to frighten away the dragon that had long swallowed the sun. Our experience of solidarity at EDSA taught us to respect that part of our past. It also gave us confidence in the utter goodness of simply being human. Even on this side of Eden, we found that one can trust common humanity and its

was on a children’s crusade. The leadership of PCEC issued at least three pastoral letters warning of greater disturbance and possible anarchy and appealed for sobriety. The tight orthodoxy and doctrinaire politics that characterized these two movements prevented them from pulling in their weight. Until the time Marcos left and was flown to Hawaii by the US armed forces, these two remained outside the forces that were then converging against the dictatorship. 14 As a result of the heavy acculturation of the elite towards the culture and structures brought by colonial history, a sharp demarcation occurred between the culture of the dominant classes and the culture of the masses. Called the “Great Cultural Divide,” this consists of a thin layer of elite (read: westernized) culture on top and a vast layer of folk culture at the bottom. This cultural separation always shows across a wide range of social behavior. The clash of interpretations over the significance of the events at EDSA is one example of such a divide.

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ability to hear the call of the kingdom. “My sheep hear my voice,” says Jesus. It is not without power even among those who are worldly-wise. “Everyone on the side of the truth listens to me,” he tells the cynical Pilate. He is king, and not just of the Jews. It is a kingdom that is not of this world, and for that very reason is heard by all who are looking for a new world.

Part III

Faith, Dialogue and Public Policy

12. Political Methodology Beyond Left and Right

Glen Stassen

For thirty-five years, I have required Ron Sider’s books for all my students in my Introduction to Christian Ethics classes. Since I taught at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary back when it had 3,000 students, and now at Fuller Theological Seminary, which has 4,000 students, this means I have personally seen a very large number of Christian ethics students being shaped by Sider’s solid, accurate, faithful, true Christian ethics. For the first years, I required Rich Christians in an Age ofHunger.' Then after U.S. politics became so infected with an ideology of greed - “keep the money for myself and let the poor fend for themselves” - I eventually switched to Just Generosity.123And every time I have taught my course on Faith and Politics, I have required The Scandal of Evangelical Politics2 I am convinced that Ronald Sider is simply right, and incisively so. Of course, I require a shifting set of other books in my courses, but if students graduate with Sider’s ethics, I am hugely pleased. No corrections are needed; his ethics are simply the truth, and simply faithfulness. For the topic I have been assigned in this book - politics - I will focus primarily on The Scandal of Evangelical Politics (and put page references in parentheses). His title is exactly right: evangelical politics, measured by biblical standards and by authentic discipleship, are a scandal. I imagine most readers have experienced that scandal, as I have personally. But I will have his other books in mind, especially Rich Christians and Just Generosity. All of the points that Sider makes in Scandal are essential for a faithful Christian political ethic. He has simply advanced this ball for the benefit of the church. So how can I write an interesting essay on a book that I agree with so thoroughly? I appreciate Sider’s writing and leadership so thoroughly and agree with him so extensively that my problem is, how can I say “yes, yes, yes, and yes” in an interesting way? I need to try to figure out some constructive contribution to make, some way to move the ball a little farther down the field.

1 Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, New Edition (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2005). 2 Ronald J. Sider, Just Generosity, 2nd Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007). 3 Ronald J. Sider, Scandal of Evangelical Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008). This book was recently re-published under the title, Just Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2012).

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We Need a Four-Dimensional Method

Sider asks, “How do we begin? Our basic goals are fairly clear. As Christians we want to wholeheartedly submit our politics to the lordship of Christ. We want to be uncompromisingly biblical. We also want to be grounded in ‘the facts’ - in an honest and accurate reading of history and the social sciences” (27). He argues that we need a thoughtful framework for guiding our public witness. We need something better than what Ed Dobson, Jerry Falwell’s former vice president, called the strategy of “ready, fire, aim” (quoted in Politics, 17). We need “sophisticated thinking about a biblically grounded, factually informed political philosophy” (21). He advocates a four-dimensional method: Normative biblical framework, broad study of society and the world, political philosophy, and detailed social analysis on specific issues (40-44). Interestingly, David Gushee and I have also developed a four-dimensional model in our Kingdom Ethics? We call it ‘holistic character ethics’.45

Figure 1. Holistic Character Ethics 4 Glen H. Stassen and David P. Gushee, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2003), chapter 3, and specifically page 59. 5 We stole the title, ‘holistic,’ from Sider. But then, he admits that he stole his title, ‘Just Generosity’ from my ‘Just Peacemaking,’ and his subtitle, ‘A New Vision for Overcoming Poverty in America’ from John Howard Yoder’s and my ‘A New Vision of Christ and Culture.’ Well, maybe more like ‘borrowed,’ and thereby we three expressed mutual appreciation.

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So here is what I can do that might stimulate some interesting thought and discussion. I will use Gushee’s and my four-dimensional method to dialogue with Sider’s political analysis. I will point out why some moves Sider has made are so much better than moves that some others have made, many of which get more media attention. And perhaps I can offer a few suggestions for ongoing dialogue. The Scandal

Sider begins by describing the scandal: “Tragically, Christian political activity today is a disaster.... When they join the political fray, they often succumb to dishonesty and corruption. Even when they endorse good goals, they too often promote their political agenda in foolish ways that frighten non-Christians” (11). Christian sociologist Paul Freston concludes that the rule by eight evangelical presidents in developing countries has been characterized by “widespread confusion, ineptitude, misguided policies and considerable corruption” (quoted in Politics, 16). And he quotes Ralph Reed, the strategist for Pat Robertson, testifying that his religious beliefs never changed any of his partisan politics; Reed basically used Robertson’s Christian identification to promote his right­ wing Republican politics (17). Freston then quotes Ed Dobson, Michael Cromartie, Paul Henry, Mark Noll, and Os Guinness - well-known evangelicals - as charging right-wing evangelicals of basically using Christian loyalties to support positions that come from a partisan ideology rather than from biblical teachings. Senator Jesse Helms was known as a prominent pro-life leader in the Senate, but “supported government subsidies for tobacco growers - even using tax dollars to subsidize shipping American tobacco to poor nations under our Food for Peace program” (19)! Tobacco kills people (including my friend, my brotherin-law, and the leading deacon of the church I pastored in Kentucky, and millions of people I don’t know). The ideology of Reed, Falwell, Robertson, and many others was shaped during their support for States’ rights, as well as segregation, and opposition to governmental checks and balances in support of civil rights. Evangelical pronouncements often use libertarian ideology to... ...forbid almost all government programs to help the poor. (‘Helping the poor is a task for individuals and churches, not the government.’). But when the issue changes from the poor to the family, the definition of marriage, abortion, or pornography, the same people quickly abandon libertarian arguments.... Instead they push vigorously for legislation that involves substantial government restriction of individual choices (20).

Then they become authoritarian, not libertarian. Sider says this “looks confused and superficial.” He asks if it looks like the “political agenda is shaped more by secular ideology than careful biblical, theological reflection” (21). I ask whether this seeming confusion is an invitation

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to probe more deeply - whether there is an underlying explanation for this seeming contradiction; whether it is possible to identify some of the loyalties driving both halves of this secular ideology. Were Senator Helms and Ralph Reed confused and superficial, or were they driven by economic and power motives? It is a scandal, and it is hurting churches. UnChristian, by Barna researchers Kinnaman and Lyons, says that in 1996, Christianity had a strong positive image among 85% of the population about its role in society. But they write, A decade later the image of the Christian faith has suffered a major setback.... Now 38% of young outsiders have a ‘bad impression of present-day Christianity.’ One-third of young outsiders said Christianity represents a negative image with which they would not want to be associated. Jesus receives outsiders’ most favorable feelings, but even the clarity of his image has eroded among young people.6

The Barna research says that Americans under age 30 (Millennials) are driving this disastrous departure. “One-third of Millennials report that they do not belong to any religious tradition. Millennials are significantly more likely to be unaffiliated than members of previous generations at a comparable point in their life cycle.” Three decades ago, only 12% of Americans age 18 to 29 were unaffiliated with religion. Now it has almost tripled to 33%.7 Their data say the shift is primarily due to the ideological stand many churches have taken, especially but not only the authoritarian stand against homosexuals. Similar conclusions are reported in Hijacked by Slaughter and Gutenson.8 American Grace, by Christian sociologists David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam, concludes (and I quote at length), [In 1957], more Americans than ever were attending religious services, more churches were being built to accommodate them, and more books of Scripture were being sold and read. In President Dwight Eisenhower’s America, religion had no partisan overtones. Ike was as popular among those who never darkened the door of a church (or synagogue, and so on) as among churchgoers....

As the public visibility of the religious right increased between 1991 and 2008, growing numbers of Americans expressed the conviction that religious leaders should not try to influence people’s votes.... In our 2011 survey, 80 percent of respondents said that it is not proper for religious leaders to tell people how to vote, and 70 percent said that religion should be ‘kept out of public debates over social and political issues.’

6 David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity and Why It Matters (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007), 24. 7 Kinnaman and Lyons, UnChristian, 15, 24, 27, 46-47. 8 Mike Slaughter and Charles E. Gutenson, Hijacked: Responding to the Partisan Church Divide (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2012).

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Just as the 1960s spurred a revival of traditional religion, the last few decades have led directly to an unprecedented turning away from organized religion, especially among younger Americans. [Historically] people whom sociologists call ‘nones,’ those who report no religious affiliation... made up a constant 5-7 percent of the American population.... In the early 1990s, however, just as the God gap widened in politics, the percentage of nones began to shoot up. By the mid-1990s, nones made up 12 percent of the population. By 2011, they were 19 percent. In demographic terms, this shift was huge.... 20-somethings in 2012 are much more likely to reject all religious affiliation than their parents and grandparents were when thej’ were young - 33 percent today, compared with 12 percent in the 1970s.

Similarly, over the same five-year period, the fraction of Americans who reported never attending religious services rose by a negligible two percentage points among Americans over the age of 60 but by three times as much among those 1829. And younger millennials are even more secular than their slightly older siblings; our 2011 survey showed that a third of Americans in their early 20s were without religion, compared with a quarter of those who were that age when we surveyed them in 2006.

The best evidence indicates that this dramatic generational shift is primarily in reaction to the religious right. Politically moderate and progressive Americans have a general allergy to the mingling of religion and party politics. And millennials are even more sensitive to it, partly because...they have only known a world in which religion and the right are intertwined. To them, ‘religion’ means ‘Republican,’ ‘intolerant,’ and ‘homophobic.’ Since those traits do not represent their views, they do not see themselves - or wish to be seen by their peers - as religious. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s prophetic call for racial justice was persuasive in part because his words and deeds drew on powerful religious symbolism that could not be reduced to base partisanship. Indeed, religion has historically inspired change across the U.S. political spectrum. American public discourse - and the country at large - will be impoverished if religion is reduced to a mere force for partisan mobilization.

Numerous evangelical leaders are now expressing sellers’ remorse for having sold churches to a partisan political ideology, and are backing away from such partisan political involvement. But the media, as well as pollsters, still carry the message to people. Churches that simply say nothing let the media keep stereotyping us. We are in more than a scandal; we are seriously damaging our witness to the gospel.

9 David E. Campbell and Robert Putnam, American Grace (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2012). I am drawing from their summary of the book in “God & Caesar in America.” Foreign Affairs (March/April, 2011).

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On the other side, many progressive churches do not seem to be delivering a strongly grounded theological-ethical message that connects life’s challenges with a deep gospel message. Theological vacuousness on the left in a social and media context of domination by partisan stereotypes on the right is not serving the gospel well either. Many churches on the Left and the Right are in crisis either of unfaithfulness to the way of Jesus, or of losing members, or both. The findings of Kinnaman, Gutenson, Putnam, and Campbell are putting the scandal, the threat, more strongly than Sider does. Sider is gentler. But we deeply need Sider’s message about a more faithful public ethic. As my title suggests, Sider’s strategy throughout his prolific writings is consistently to seek to bring evangelicals of the Right, Center, and Left together in some normative affirmations on which they should all be able to agree.1011Sider’s strategy of seeking agreement across the spectrum brings him very clearly in line with Richard Mouw’s call for Uncommon Decency in civil discourse, and most all of us recognize that this is deeply needed.11 On the other hand, scholars across disciplines, including neurologist Drew Weston and psychologist Jonathan Haidt, are now demonstrating that we are strongly influenced by our passions and loyalties to form intuitive judgments, and then we develop reasons that mostly confirm what we had already decided on.12 When Sider writes that we need “a thoughtful framework ... sophisticated thinking,” is that enough? The holistic character ethics model that Gushee and I use has a dimension called ‘passions and loyalties.’1314 Don’t we need more than a rational framework? Don’t we also need emotional appeal in order to impact people? Sider’s Rich Christians begins with a strong emotional appeal: Can overfed, comfortably clothed, and luxuriously housed persons understand poverty? Can we truly feel what it is like to be a nine-year-old boy playing outside a village school which he cannot attend because his father is unable to afford the necessary books? The books would cost less than my wife and I spent 14 on some entertainment one evening.

And the first chapter gets us to feel the situation, the need, indeed the desperation of persons like Carolina Maria De Jesus and a billion hungry neighbors. Rich Christians has sold something like a half a million copies, and

10 See David Gushee, The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center (Waco, TX: Baylor University, 2008). 11 Richard J. Mouw, Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2010). 12 Drew Weston, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2008); Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York, NY: Pantheon: 2012). 13 Stassen and Gushee, Kingdom Ethics, 59. 14 Sider, Rich Christians,}.

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outsells all of Sider’s other books. It makes an emotional appeal as well as a rational appeal. Rich Christians also calls on the rich minority (us) to repent, and to act on that repentance. In that call to repentance, it is faithful to Jesus, who begins his ministry with, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mk. 1:15). Jesus calls on people to repent for greed and oppressing the poor in many different ways, and dies on the cross for entering into Jerusalem and confronting the powers and authorities for their greed. I am genuinely asking, how much should we try not to offend the Left or the Right; and how much should we confront ideologies and people who claim to be Christian and seduce Christians to vote for them, while their ideologies are actually justifications of greed for keeping their own money and their own political power while the poor suffer debilitating lack of resources for a genuine life? Isn’t such underlying ideology what the political advocacy that “looks confused and superficial” actually points to? Rich Christians connects with us emotionally, and it calls on us to repent for entanglement in an ideology of greed. I would like to call attention to Jennifer McBride’s The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness.'5 McBride offers the brilliant proposal that Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theme of repentance should characterize political witness by churches in our pluralistic and democratic context. We need a non-triumphal Christian witness, and basing our witness on repentance for church entanglement in ideologies that support injustice, as well as for those ideologies generally, is the most fitting way to speak clearly. My own A Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age15 1617makes the call to repentance one of its three themes. I contend that Sider’s Rich Christians is the right model for the witness of public repentance. Now, after the Great Recession of 2008, and the rapidly increasing destruction of the earth around us, surely we see that we need stronger repentance.

Sider’s Biblical Story (Chapter 3) and Our 'Basic Convictions’ Dimension1 Sider is wonderfully faithful to the biblical witness. He does not “arbitrarily select one text or one theme” (41). The lordship of Christ is central for him, and he bases his ethics on extensive biblical study of both Old and New Testaments. His focus on “creation’s goodness and splendor” (51-52), and on “God the

15 Jennifer McBride, The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness (New York et al.: Oxford University, 2012). 16 Glen Harold Stassen, A Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 2012). 17 Refer to Figure 1: Holistic Character Ethics, which is based on chapter 3 of my and Gushee’s Kingdom Ethics.

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Creator” is Gushee’s and my ‘God variable.’ With this emphasis, he overcomes the error that Dietrich Bonhoeffer identifies: “The concept of the natural has fallen into disrepute in Protestant ethics.... This meant, however, a heavy substantive loss for Protestant thought, because one was left to confront questions of natural life more or less without any orientation.”18 Sider corrects the Platonic dualism between body and soul, between social and individual, and between political and spiritual, which has so pulled Western Christianity away from its roots in Hebraic realism (56-57). Our Jewish roots believe in one God who is sovereign and active in history; therefore all of life is under God. By contrast, Platonic idealism has an idealistic ‘good’ that is eternal, unchanging, and above the history or outside the cave where we have our lives, and Greek culture had several gods. Hence, Platonic idealism divided life into separate realms and saw ethics as focusing on human efforts toward ideals rather than on God acting in our midst and our actions as responses to God’s good gifts. Sider’s correction of this in Scandal includes sections on history and work within this created world, holistic citizenship responsibility and political responsibility (62-71), driving home the point that what we do has major effects on overcoming racism and war and on promoting justice for people. He bases this pro-creation and anti-Gnostic understanding even more strongly on his ‘incarnational understanding of Jesus Christ,’ which is Gushee’s and my ‘Christlikeness variable.’ He emphasizes participating in Jesus’s lordship in present history, not only in an eternal future. He emphasizes that the kingdom of God is “the core of Jesus’s proclamation” and “is political language.... not about a private existentialist or Gnostic experience, but about public events” (64). He rightly roots Jesus’ message in the prophet Isaiah: “Here is my servant ... and he will bring justice to the nations” (Isa. 42 - Jesus’s baptismal passage). Jesus fundamentally redefined the popular understanding of what the Messiah would do as “the peaceful Messiah, riding on a donkey rather than a warhorse” (Zech. 9:9-10). Hence, Sider offers a wonderful chapter on pacifism and just war and just peacemaking that is not merely withdrawal from war-making but active initiatives that have practical effect in reducing killing by the millions (191-207). He emphasizes Jesus’ conquering the powers and authorities (socioeconomic and political structures, and spiritual beings behind them), a propheticapocalyptic understanding of God’s action and our responsibility within history, not Gnostic escapism or Platonic dualism. He interprets the cross with a Christus victor understanding and emphasizes the resurrection as “not Gnostic escapism but Jewish-style no-king-but-God theology with Jesus in the middle of it” (6469). A central theme for Sider is that ethics is holistic: it applies to all of life. Hence he argues articulately and decisively against an inner-churchism, against withdrawing from the political realm; that argument for a holistic ethics is under 18 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, ed. Clifford Green, trans. Reinhard Krauss, Charles West, and Douglas Stott, DBWE 6 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2005), 171-2.

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Christ’s lordship and is a major dimension of doing God’s will for people, doing justice, creating the framework where people can thrive with justice and peace (21-22). He is decisive in arguing for a prophetic, historical, two-stage, mustard­ seed eschatology rather than a Platonic otherworldly eschatology (70-72). He advocates hope for change (71-75). He is realistic about human nature with its sin, but not pessimistic. He asserts that we cannot create a utopia, but we can “produce dramatic improvement in history - end slavery, promote freedom and democracy, create wealth, and reduce poverty and injustice” (70). His focus on “the nature of persons and on sin” is my and Gushee’s ‘human nature variable.’ Humans are responsible for the creation, and are communal by nature, not merely individualistic. God’s will is for justice to the needy, and this is our nature - to do justice, to pursue the common good. It is not enough to say merely that human nature has a communal dimension, because we can define community in terms of our own closed circle. Rather, God’s will and our created nature are for the common good, which includes more than our own narrow community. ‘The common good’ is emphasized about twenty times in Scandal; which makes healthy connection with the strong tradition of Catholic social ethics - from which evangelicals have much to learn. I was honored to co-lead with Ron in developing Catholics and Evangelicals for the Common Good.'9 Because of the extent of our sin, Sider writes, “we now require God’s special revelation to properly understand morality” (60-61). Politicians are a mixture of good and bad, so we need checks and balances against concentrated power - a theme that runs through the book. We need to change social structures, but also to reject utopian schemes (60-61). His focus on justice (chapter 5) is our focus on the ‘Christlikeness and justice variable.’ Initially he defines the two Hebrew words mishpat as justice, and tsedaqah, as justice that is straight. The usual translation in our Bibles of tsedeqah as ‘righteousness’ is woefully inadequate, since in our culture righteousness conveys an individual possession, a self-righteousness, which the gospel says we cannot possess. But to define it as ‘straight,’ as the short definition in some Bible dictionaries do, merely relies on its original etymology. That is as poor as defining virtue as ‘manly,’ since it derives from the Latin, vir, for man, as in ‘virile.’ Words do not get their meaning simply from their etymological origin in the long-forgotten past; they get their meaning from how they are used in the language, and this develops over time. We need to observe carefully how tsedaqah is used in the Old Testament. It regularly functions as delivering justice, community-restoring justice, restorative justice, the kind of justice that delivers people from oppression and deprivation into meaningful participation in community. This is exactly the understanding of justice that Sider articulates (106, 109). Justice “demands both fair courts and fair* 19 For more information on this effort, go to Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/projects/catholicevangelical-dialogue (accessed 10.12.2012).

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economic structures. It includes both freedom rights and benefit rights” (117). Indeed, “Hundreds of biblical verses show that God is especially attentive to the poor and needy.... Partiality to the weak is the most striking characteristic of biblical justice” (100, 114). Sider’s analysis of biblical justice is compelling: In the Bible justice is not a mere mitigation of suffering in oppression; it is a deliverance. Justice demands that we correct the gross social inequities of the disadvantaged. The terms for justice are frequently associated with yasha, yeshua, the most important Hebrew word for deliverance and salvation: ‘God arose to establish justice [mishpat] to save [hoshia] all the oppressed of the earth’ (Ps. 76:9; cf. Isa. 63:1). Justice describes the deliverance of the people from political and economic oppressors... from slaven ... and from captivity.... Providing for the needy means ending their oppression, setting them back on their feet, giving them a home, and leading them to prosperity and restoration (109).

He also rightly says the norm for justice is God’s character. Here his emphasis on God as creator is helpful, because of course justice points to actual practice within creation, not merely to an otherworldly ideal. But I suggest we emphasize God as Deliverer or Redeemer, not only Creator. In Genesis 3 and 6, when God reveals God’s name as Yahweh, the LORD, God explains the meaning as God who hears the cries and sees the needs of the oppressed, and is present to deliver. In Genesis 20, at the heading of the Ten Commandments, God said, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Isaiah often speaks of God as “the Holy One of Israel, our Redeemer.” And Christ’s ministry emphasizes and embodies God’s action as Deliverer and Redeemer. To speak of God as Creator and Deliverer coheres well with what Sider writes in Rich Christians, Just Generosity, and his other books. This then coheres with defining justice, with God as the norm, as delivering justice. And then we also need to define God as Judge or Governor.20 Surely the Bible does this in both Testaments. Wanting not to offend people, churches too seldom warn of judgment when we act in ways contrary to God’s will. We are destroying the earth and its resources. We are consuming the natural resources as if they belonged only to our generation, and future generations would live on air alone, without heat, without oil to fly the airplanes, without coal or natural gas to heat the homes. This requires political action to change consumption of nonrenewable resources drastically. We are creating a climate crisis that is destroying the glaciers, raising the oceans, stimulating unprecedented storms, creating droughts like we have never seen, devastating the life of the needy in much of the world. We are destroying life for our grandchildren, let alone for the next seven generations. The greed this involves takes your breath away, but it almost never gets mentioned. And we are supporting politics that shift the wealth to the few while the majority sinks into deeper desperation. Any honest Christian 20 H. Richard Niebuhr based his Christian ethics lectures theocentrically on God as Creator, Judge or Governor, and Redeemer. This gave his ethics theological profundity.

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proclamation would proclaim that judgment is coming and would call us to repent. Sider’s chapter on ‘Creation Care’ may be where judgment language comes closest (209-218). Our proclamation ofjudgment and repentance needs to be strong. Sider writes, “In the tenth to the eighth centuries BC, major centralization of landholding occurred. Poorer farmers lost their land, becoming landless laborers or slaves. The prophets regularly denounced the bribery, political assassination, and economic oppression that destroyed the earlier decentralized economy” (120). But Sider does not name which ideologies are most perpetrating the economic oppression in our context, and deserve passionate judgment. I am not criticizing Sider here; I am genuinely puzzling over how sharply all of us should be proclaiming judgment and repentance. How do we explain the ideology of Jesse Helms who claimed to be pro-life but directed U.S. policy to subsidize the tobacco industry and to ship tobacco to needy nations as food aid? How do we explain those evangelical voices that use libertarian ideology to forbid almost all government programs to help the poor.... But when the issue changes from the poor to the family, the definition of marriage, abortion, or pornography, the same people... push vigorously for legislation that involves substantial government restriction of individual choices? Does this not come from an underlying ideology of greed that manipulates people into opposing a government strong enough to check and balance concentrated economic power, such as oil companies and banks, and manipulates us into redirecting our moral concerns against the less powerful and less wealthy? Just as slave owners and segregationists manipulated poor whites away from demanding economic justice and instead directed their moral outrage against blacks - is this not more than just being ‘confused,’ but a specific ideology of greed designed to manipulate us? Sider argues rightly that in order to persuade our society toward justice and ethical faithfulness, we need to use not only specifically Christian language, but “in our highly pluralistic society... We need to have a language that will enable us to persuade a majority of citizens that our proposals are wise” (27; cf. 39 et passim). The tradition that gives us that language - in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, in Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, and in the American Creed as identified by Gunnar Myrdal’s perceptive sociological study, An American Dilemma2' - is the tradition of human rights. This is the tradition that has given our society the strength and moral clarity to support liberty for religious minorities and voting rights for racial minorities. And it has helped us remove slavery and segregation laws and many practices of racial discrimination. It is crucial now for combating torture of defenseless prisoners and religious discrimination against Muslims. It is the source of justice that many of our ancestors have celebrated in their own experiences as immigrants. The tradition of human rights regularly struggles 1 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, 1995).

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against other traditions or ideologies in our society, such as racism, militarism, self-righteous nationalistic unilateralism, and the ideologies of individualistic greed. Yet powerful financial funders are now supporting ads and ideologically laden think-tanks working to persuade us that what has made this country great is its freedom from checks and balances by the government (the absence of which gave us the Great Recession). If our nation comes to believe this propaganda, it will obliterate the actual tradition of human rights that has made it actually quite great. Sider gives us an excellent introduction to our tradition of human rights - its recent history, grounding, as well as its difference from Lockean individualism (127-310). He is exactly right! He makes a special contribution by supporting each specific right biblically. He counters libertarianism, which advocates rights to liberty but denigrates the basic rights to life, food, productive resources, and economic justice that are crucial to having a life (137 and 139). I add what any of us knows after a moment’s thought - that the basic rights to life, food, productive resources, and economic justice are more strongly supported by specific biblical teachings than are the rights to liberty - although those are important too. And Sider adds convincing historical argument, citing Amartya Sen, that no democracies with human rights experience widespread famine; but many dictatorships enforce economic deprivation on large numbers of their people. There is a clear historical correlation between respecting civil rights and socialeconomic rights (138). Sider cites David Hollenbach’s three clear principles for adjudicating between competing claims: 1) The needs of the poor take priority over the wants of the rich; 2) The freedom of the dominated takes priority over the liberty of the powerful; and 3) The participation of marginalized groups takes priority over the preservation of an order that excludes them (139). What Sider says about Lockean ideology of individualism tags the ideological loyalties that support injustice in the United States, though he is fairly mild, and he does not name the possessive greed that underlies the ideology, or the more popular laissez-faire ideologies that make use of this ideology of possessive individualism (129-30). Sider identifies clear problems in market economies, and advocates human rights to correct them (143-44), while still retaining market economies with the appropriate checks and balances that restrain greed. Sider’s discussion of the norm of justice in biblical teaching on the Jubilee Year and the Sabbatical Year well illustrates Gushee’s and my dimension of the ‘Way of Reasoning,’ with its attention to the relation between rules and principles, practices and virtues, and their grounding in basic theological convictions. “Appropriate application of [the biblical Jubilee and Sabbatical Years] requires that we ask how their specific mechanisms functioned in Israelite culture, and then determine what specific measures would fulfill a similar function in our very different society” (122). Here is his ‘principlism’ rather than legalism: we don’t repeat the practices legalistically, but we do take them as normative in the way that makes analogous sense in our context. This is ‘analogous contextual ization,’ similar to William Spohn’s imaginative

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contextualization,22 so it does end up advocating specific practices in our context. In Rich Christians, Sider interprets gleaning and similar practices in the same way. Sider does not write as extensively on our variable of ‘the mission of the church’ in Scandal as he does in Churches that Make a Difference, Living Like Jesus, and Good News and Good Works23 and in the terrific examples of ‘churches that make a difference’ in Just Generosity2425 But his chapter in Scandal on ‘Religious Freedom, Church, and State’ has excellent wisdom on the development of religious liberty, as it, among other things, analyzes John Overton’s comprehensive doctrine of human rights (171-190). Sider rejects total separation of church and state, when that is wrongly taken to mean that churches should be disallowed from speaking against government policies. Thomas Jefferson privatized religion and sought to remove it from public discourse. By contrast, the freeing of churches from establishment and for religious liberty in the free-church movement in seventeenth-century Anglican England actually freed churches from state domination so they could speak against injustices and for state action for the common good. Hence I call this ‘independence of churches from the state.’ Churches must speak for justice and peace, since “For Christians, Jesus is Lord of all” (179-80). Our variable of ‘forgiveness and discipleship’ detects cheap grace that emphasizes forgiveness one-sidedly and thus slights Jesus’ call to faithful discipleship, or alternatively perfectionism, that so emphasizes discipleship and that it can fall into self-righteousness. Sider emphasizes discipleship significantly more than forgiveness, which correlates with his Christus Victor interpretation of the atonement, but I have never detected self-righteousness in him. I have worked to develop an incarnational theory of the atonement in my A Thicker Jesus, and we advocate participative grace in Kingdom Ethics.23 Could a stronger emphasis on forgiveness open the way to a stronger theme ofjudgment and repentance?

Sider Also Pays Attention to Our ‘Way of Seeing' Dimension In relation to our dimension of the ‘Way of Seeing’26 Sider analyzes the variable of ‘the threat’ as the causes of poverty in his Just Generosity and Rich Christians, epitomizing his inclusion of truth from both the Left and the Right. He says almost anyone who works to overcome poverty knows that unjust structures and 22 William Spohn, Go and Do Likewise: Jesus and Ethics (New York, NY: Continuum, 2000). 23 Ronald J. Sider, Philip N. Olson, and Heidi Unruh, Churches That Make a Difference (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2002); Ronald J. Sider, Living Like Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998); Ronald J. Sider, Good News and Good Works (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1999). 24 Sider, Just Generosity, 241-249. 25 Stassen and Gushee, Kingdom Ethics, 35-36 etpassim. 26 Refer again to Figure 1: Holistic Character Ethics in this chapter.

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unjust systems of tax shelters for the wealthy and exploding concentration of the nation’s wealth in the unimaginably lavish incomes of the CEOs, credit-default traders, and the very wealthy are a major cause of poverty, along with, yes, single-parent families, divorce, drugs, and bad individual choices, as well as disabilities of various kinds. He gives a new vision for our variable of ‘social change,’ that is, how to overcome poverty. His writings are characterized by accurate respect for the ‘truthfulness and openness variable’ to respectful consideration of contending viewpoints. What Sider says of ‘the state’ (chapter 4) is our variable of ‘powers and authorities.’ He says the government is responsible for restraining sin, and there is plenty of sin to restrain. “Throughout the Scripture we see the state (the kings, the courts, etc.) called to restrain evil and punish evildoers” (83). This is also American wisdom: the founding fathers had experienced the injustice of power concentrated in a king, so they wrote the separation of powers into the Constitution. This is the principle of checks and balances. Each branch checks and balances the other, and all are under the law, not above the law. They wrote into the Constitution that Congress should check and balance the concentrated economic power of interstate commerce. In our time, we experience enormous concentration of power in big banks, big mortgage lenders, Wall Street firms that make billions of dollars from derivatives, and big oil companies that flood us with ads, lobbyists, campaign contributions, and think tanks all telling us they are thoroughly benign. They have enormous power and incentives for greed. When checks and balances were removed from them in recent years, a huge injustice occurred that caused the Great Recession, beginning in 2008, but from which people will suffer for years. The biblical wisdom about greed and the American wisdom about the need for checks and balances to restrain greed are greatly needed in our time of economic globalization and huge multinational corporations. Sider also emphasizes the principle that government is responsible to be the servant of God for the common good. In a book that Sider co-edited, Nicholas Wolterstorff explains that, “Christians will honor and respect government; they will not talk and act as if government has no right to exist. And they will support government by paying taxes. They will not talk and act as if government, in assessing taxes, is forcefully taking from its subjects ‘their money.’ Financial support is owed government.”27 He is quoting Paul in Romans 13:7, who is quoting Jesus in Mark 12:17. Both use the same Greek word for ‘render’ or ‘give’ or ‘pay’ taxes to the government. “For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants.... Pay taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom

27 Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Theological Foundations for an Evangelical Political Philosophy,” in Toward an Evangelical Public Policy, eds. Ronald J. Sider and Diane Knippers (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005), 161.

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honor is due” (Rom. 13:4, 7). Contrary to Tea Party ideology, this authority to tax is written into the U.S. Constitution. Wolterstorff concludes that it is our calling, ... to encourage the state to live up to its task of promoting justice and serving the general welfare. When all around are saying that the state is nothing more than an arena for negotiating power relationships, the Christian will never weary of insisting that the task of the state in God’s creational and providential order is to promote justice and serve the common good. [Biblical justice] is ven different from... that to be found in libertarian writers.... Whereas the impoverished and the alien are prominent in the biblical contour of justice, they are invisible in... the contemporary libertarian contour.28

This is exactly what Sider is saying. This teaching was endorsed unanimously by the board of the National Association of Evangelicals in, ‘For the Health of the Nation* - the summary of the book that Sider co-led in producing.29 It says, “God has... set in place forms of government to maintain public order, to restrain human evil, and to promote the common good.... God has blessed America with bounty and with strength, but unless these blessings are used for the good of all, they will turn to our destruction.”30 John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas also said the purpose of the government includes promoting the common good. The common good means the good that is shared among all of us, not the good of a few very powerful elites. Sider cites many biblical teachings that affirm this theme. “We are made for mutual interdependence, not individualistic isolation.... We reach our God-given destiny only when we interact with others in cooperative tasks and living fellowship.”31 ITimothy 1:2-3 and 1 Peter 2:13 urge us to accept the authority of government and to pray for rulers in high authority. Psalm 72 prays that the ruler will “defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor,” which is the work ofjustice. Sider asserts, “The general obligation of the Israelite king to guarantee that the weak enjoy fair courts and the daily necessities of life is a duty of all rulers.... God’s concern... is that states promote the common good by restraining evil and promoting good” (86). As Sider wisely says, the powers and authorities are often in rebellion against Christ, but their power has been broken, and they are capable of significant good. They were not innately evil, but were created for good, are being redeemed, and will be restored to wholeness in the New Jerusalem. “Therefore it seems appropriate to suppose that the state rightly restrains evil and promotes good which is exactly what the New Testament texts say (Rom. 13:4; 1 Pet. 2:14). In fact, Paul uses the same word (exousiai) to describe the fallen rebellious powers 28 Wolterstorff, “Theological Foundations,” 161. 29 “For the Health of the Nation,” National Association of Evangelicals www.nae.net/ govemment-relations/for-the-health-of-the-nation (accessed 10.12.2012). 30 Ibid., [italics mine]. 31 Sider, Toward an Evangelical Public Policy, 187.

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(Col 2:15) and the state that is now ‘God’s servant to do you good’ (Rom 13:17)” (87). And then Sider articulates ‘the principle of cooperation’: Many large and small businesses want to do what is right. They want to pay fair wages, to support retirement costs and medical insurance for their employees, to take pains not to pollute. But if they freely do that while their cut-throat competition does not, they will be at a comparative disadvantage. They can all be more just, if a law requires them all to play fair (216). The central task of the state is to provide a legal and administrative framework in which persons and institutions relate to each other with justice. It is like a competitive sport, like football or basketball: we need a referee who enforces rules against fouls if we are to have free and fair competition. The rules don’t take away the freedom; they establish the game where we can have competition that is free from destructive violations. They allow us to cooperate in making it a real game. My father (who was a Republican governor of Minnesota) taught me when I was a boy that businesses need laws that allow them to cooperate in being fair, and I have remembered it ever since. This is what Sider is saying as well (216). ‘The principle of subsidiarity’ says many things are best done at the family level, or local business level, or the city or state level, and other things are best done at the national government level. There is no mathematical formula; it is a matter of ongoing discussion within constitutional limits. “Very seldom should public laws infringe on the freedom of parents to raise their children in the way they deem best, although carefully written laws rightly protect children and spouses from sexual and physical abuse” (92). Laws must respect freedom of religion, and individual freedom, as long as that freedom does not seriously harm others. And finally, there is ‘the principle of consent of the governed.’ Sider writes, “It is unwise to legislate what is essentially unenforceable.... Laws must be grounded in fairly widespread cultural agreement or they cannot be enforced” (94). Despite the destructive consequences of alcoholism, prohibition of the production or sale of alcohol was a disaster, and was rightly repealed. I especially appreciate Sider’s affirming my much respected teacher, Karl Deutsch, for correcting the Weberian definition of a state as having a monopoly of violence. Rather, “The voluntary or habitual compliance of the mass of the population is the invisible but very real basis of the power of every government” (98). Evangelical ethics - or for that matter, Christian ethics in general - is not antigovernment ethics. It is the ethics of the lordship of Christ over all of life. And that includes a proper role for the government to support compassion, justice, checks and balances, and the common good.

13. Completely Pro-Life

David P. Gushee

Meeting Ron Sider

There are only a handful of people in a person’s life of whom it can be said that they clearly changed the trajectory of one’s entire journey. Ron Sider is one of those people in my life. That is where my essay must begin. I began looking for work in the summer of 1990 to help my family meet its expenses as my doctoral studies continued and the number of children in our household kept on increasing. We were living in Raleigh, North Carolina at the time that Ron called me up to Philadelphia for an interview about an opening at Evangelicals for Social Action. I accepted the offer to work as an assistant editor of the ESA Advocate.' My life has never been the same. It was during those three years in Philadelphia that Ron and those around him taught me how to be an “evangelical” Christian. Prior to that time, my religious experience had leapfrogged around American Christianity without ever really intersecting with the evangelical world. I grew up Roman Catholic, and abandoned that tradition at 14 without ever really understanding it. When I wandered into a Southern Baptist church building as a very lost 16-year-old, with a conversion experience following three days later, I became a “born-again” Christian. But, despite doctrinal and experiential similarities, Southern Baptists were not really “evangelicals,” a term which was then foreign to their culture. Following ministerial training at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, I leapt across the spectrum to the left to take my Ph.D. in Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Union was not just a “mainline Protestant” flagship, but by the late 1980s had become a liberal/radical bastion, actually to the left of much of the mainline. Despite my resistance to some of the loopier ideas that I encountered there, this move to the left had a disorienting theological impact on my immature self. By 1990, I was also in the midst of a doctoral dissertation on the Holocaust, and this searing experience was affecting my theology as well. I was indeed in something of a theological crisis. It was Ron Sider who patiently initiated me into a thoughtful understanding of the meaningful theological differences that exist in the Christian community. He helped me understand both where I had been theologically and where I had planted my flag by joining ESA. Through Ron, I came to understand that at a 1 The ESA Advocate eventually graduated to what is now ESA’s award-winning PRISM Magazine.

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substantive level an “evangelical” is a Protestant Christian who loves Christ, reads the scripture as inspired and authoritative, is committed to evangelism, and seeks to live out faithfulness to Christ in every dimension of personal, ecclesial, and social life. I learned this, not just through Ron’s writings, but through his person; for he embodied and did not just talk about these commitments. And I realized that this was who I was, or at least who I wanted to be. This is how I came to identify as an evangelical. I also learned that evangelicalism is not just a set of commitments but also a particular community in North American (and global) Christianity. I now understood that there was this branch of the Christian community that could be described as “evangelicals,” and that they had a pedigree in North America that could be traced back narrowly to the postwar neo-fundamentalism of Carl F.H. Henry, and broadly to the pious and orthodox Protestantism of everyone from Luther to Calvin to Wesley to Finney. Evangelicals were people who attended colleges like Gordon and Wheaton, participated in college ministries like Campus Crusade and Intervarsity, went to seminaries like Denver and Fuller, supported charities like World Vision, read authors like Francis Schaeffer, and published books with firms like Baker. This whole world was new to me. I came to understand that “evangelicalism” gained a clearly distinct North American subcultural identity only after the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the 1920s, after which it was juxtaposed against liberal or mainline Protestantism. This helped me make sense of why Southern Baptists did not normally adopt the evangelical label, because they had avoided the fundamentalist-modernist controversy until long after the terms of the evangelical vs. mainline battle had been set. So Ron Sider was a Canadian Mennonite, who had become a “card-carrying” American evangelical, and by the time I met him he had been fully immersed in helping to shape the future of the North American evangelical Christian community for at least twenty years. Situating Completely Pro-Life I recall that the first book in the Sider corpus that I was given to read upon arrival in Philadelphia was his 1987 work, Completely Pro-Life? Given my assignment in this essay, this is the primary book I want to engage here. I want to reflect on what Ron meant when he said that he was “completely pro-life,” and what such language might still mean today. Rereading the book for this essay, I was struck by the significance of its timing and context. It was published in 1987, though clues in the book indicate that it was being written around 1985. Ronald Reagan (remember the Gipper?) was in his second term. There was a country called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and they were “our” enemy. We were in the Cold War, and anti2 Ronald J. Sider, Completely Pro-Life (Downers Grove, IL: 1VP, 1987).

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Communism was an important ideological strand in American culture and religion. The U.S. and the Soviet Union had a ridiculous number of nuclear weapons pointed at each other and at most of the major cities of the world. There was an ominous worry in the air that our nuclear nightmare might just be actualized on one very, very bad day. The late Jerry Falwell got a lot of attention in Completely Pro-Life. He had become a media superstar, and the Moral Majority was on the march. The book was written roughly ten years into what has become a forty-year culture war stand-off between the political/religious/secular Left and the political/ religious/secular Right, and Falwell was the bogeyman on the Right. For the first time in its American run, “evangelicalism” was beginning to be tightly identified with conservative Republican politics. A new religious factor had entered public discussion — the Catholic “seamless garment” ethic of the late Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, which was a popularization of the moral thought of the dynamic Pope John Paul II. It is fair to say that globally, no Christian figure had more influence than John Paul II at the moment in which Ron was writing Completely Pro-Life, and Ron was among those powerfully affected by what he heard as contemporary Catholicism’s emerging “consistent pro-life ethic.”3 Paying attention to Catholic thought was a new thing in American evangelicalism, and encountering it along with Ron became my way back to an appreciation of my Catholic roots and the grandeur of the Catholic moral tradition. Both/And

Completely Pro-Life is a popular rather than scholarly work with the purpose, according to the subtitle, of “building a consistent stance on abortion, the family, nuclear weapons, [and] the poor.” The subtitle (and the content of the book) reflects a move so characteristic of Ron Sider that one might in retrospect have to call it Siderian. That move was to try to replace our standard human/evangelical/American either/or thinking with both/and thinking. Often employing the language of “balance” or “biblical balance,” Ron sought both/and thinking on at least five fronts: • both “liberal” justice concerns and “conservative” freedom and life concerns • both evangelism and social action/responsibility/transformation (ergo the always-unchanged name of his organization, Evangelicals for Social Action) • both prayer and action

3 See Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Consistent Ethic of Life (Franklin, Wl: Sheed & Ward, 1988) and The Seamless Garment: Writings on the Consistent Ethic of Life, ed. Thomas Naim (Manknoll, NY: Orbis, 2008).

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both the church as Jesus’ new community and efforts toward social transformation • both truth and love in debate.4 For Ron Sider, a healthy evangelical community will combine concern for issues such as nuclear weapons and the environment with concerns such as family and abortion. Evangelicals will understand that we are called both to share our personal faith in Christ with prospects and seek to change society through better laws. We will fall down hard on our knees in prayer but never at the expense of direct service to the poor or seeking better legislation. We will develop churches that understand themselves both as places where people can see the kingdom breaking in, and as participants along with others in seeking social change. And in heated public debates, evangelicals will both tell the truth and do so in love rather than hatred or demagoguery. It is hard to overstate the significance of this both/and thinking for me at the time and for many thousands who have been attracted to this Siderian vision. It does indeed combine what should be combined but all too often is sundered in Christian life. Ron Sider and ESA became a home base for those who wanted to hear about, and see evidence of, such both/and rather than either/or evangelical thinking. Ron was clearly concerned to avoid evangelical drift toward a mainline Christianity which, as he saw it, had lost its theological clarity and had embraced only the liberal justice, social action, and social transformation side of these polarities. Ron never ceased to be concerned about evangelicalism protecting its doctrinal and pietistic core against liberal heterodoxy and spiritual malaise. Ron’s lifelong engagement with mainliners has always been constrained by this concern. But on the evangelical side there were also problems to confront. An older battle, still reflected in Ron’s language even today, was against any kind of quietistic evangelical pietism, in which what “we” do in a broken world is simply to pray and try to embody a social alternative in the church. The newer battle was with a hard-right Christianity that had entered the political arena with a vengeance, but was only embracing the conservative parts of the biblical message (or embracing an unbiblical conservatism) and was doing so with terrible stridency and vitriol. Completely Pro-Life was an effort primarily on the latter front. In this book Ron sought to articulate a both/and alternative to either liberal-left politics or fundamentalist-right politics. The rubric under which he labeled this both/and politics was “completely pro-life.” He was going to try to offer a consistent sanctity-of-life ethic.

•

4 Sider, Completely Pro-Life, 197-198.

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The Argument of Completely Pro-Life

After pointing out some gross ethical inconsistencies of both Left and Right, Sider sketches the biblical foundations of his “completely pro-life” ethic. These foundations begin with a theology of creation, in which the transcendent, sovereign God is the source of all created life. Human beings can be described as having a special sanctity because our species alone is declared to be made in God’s image and as having dominion over the rest of the creatures. Though we are admittedly “interrelated with and dependent on all things,” our status is different in God’s sight. This exalted status should be seen as conferring greater responsibilities to serve as “gracious gardener of the good earth,” rather than privileged exploitation.5 The scriptures describe the great “fullness of life”6 God intends for humanity. That fullness of life is characterized by right relationships. Human beings flourish only when rightly related to God, our neighbors, and creation. God provides ample direction on how such right relationships are to be fostered through the pages of the biblical text. Beginning with love and obedience to our Creator, extending to relationships of justice in human society, God’s Word clearly teaches the path to the true shalom for which we were designed. Israel had access to such direction, but instead of choosing life, chose death. God therefore sent his Messiah Jesus “to restore life and shalom,” and this Jesus did in his ministry and above all in his death on the cross.7 Christ is the One who restores right relationship with God, who provides abundant eternal life, and who makes available a transformative path to wholeness in human life and culture. Sider summarizes his presentation by saying that, “True life is eternal life in the presence of the risen Lord in a kingdom of shalom from which all the devastation of sin has been cast forth.”8 While the coming of this kingdom in all of its fullness must wait for Christ’s return, “whenever we can reshape society, however modestly, according to the norms of the coming kingdom, to that extent we erect small, imperfect signs of the shalom which God will finally bring.”9 Turning to the political process, Sider says that though it is not simple it is possible to sketch a path from this grand biblical vision to concrete policy advocacy. Following a model that he often employed, and developed most extensively in The Scandal of Evangelical Politics, Sider suggests a four-step process: 1. Accept the political implications of the Christian confession that Jesus Christ is Lord. 2. Undertake careful biblical study. 3. Undertake a sophisticated study of society. 5 6 7 8 9

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

14. 15. 16-17. 18. 19.

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4. Propose and test very specific proposals for public policy.1011 In the end, what should result for Christians is a “biblically balanced, pro-life agenda,” with proper limits in terms of any effort to impose religious (e.g., doctrinal) beliefs on others or to impose biblical norms in matters not involving real harm to others.11 What should result is the development of trans-ideological coalitions in which both/and politics prevails: both “justice and freedom, the sanctity of unborn life and the lives of the poor, the family and the environment,” etc.12 Turning to specific moral/policy issues, Sider treats abortion as the leading wedge of a growing assault on the sacredness of human life that includes euthanasia, infanticide, population control, and inappropriate fetal experimentation. Sider staked out a quite conservative position here that to my knowledge he never changed: abortion is immoral except for when the physical life of the mother is threatened.13 He supports a wide range of then-current approaches to overturn Roe vs. Wade, with a nod at the end in the direction of providing alternatives to abortion. Sider’s two chapters on economic justice attempt to apply his both/and vision: “both economic redistribution and the creation of wealth, both communal sharing and individual responsibility, both freedom and justice, both decentralized private ownership and social limitations on individual greed.”14 This yields policy prescriptions that include a national minimum level of assistance for the poor, welfare-to-work schemes, moves to strengthen two-parent families, and tenant ownership of public housing. Sider argues for tax reform that strengthens the tax code’s fairness, progressivity, impartiality, and family-friendliness. He also argues for deeper and fairer estate taxes. In his discussion of marriage, gender, and sexuality, Sider strongly affirms a vision of marriage that is joyful, permanent, monogamous, and heterosexual. He can find no reason to affirm homosexual practice or covenanted relationships, though he does argue against any kind of homophobia.15 He attacks pornography, the divorce epidemic, and absentee parents. He affirms “biblical feminism” while rejecting radical secular feminism. His policy prescriptions emphasize family responsibility for raising children, a very limited government role in intervening in family life, equal rights for women (though not understood to include abortion rights), and government efforts to discourage divorce and reduce its deleterious effects.

10 Ronald J. Sider, The Scandal of Evangelical Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008), 21-24. 11 Sider, Completely Pro-Life, 24-28. 12 Ibid., 29. 13 Ibid., 51. 14 Ibid., 81. 15 Ibid., 114.

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The final issue discussed at length in the book is nuclear weapons in chapters 8 and 9. Certainly Soviet “Marxist atheism” is terrible, but still, Sider says, the Bible calls us toward the vision of shalom and towards peacemaking with our enemies.16 In a characteristic move, Sider mutes his own pacifism in recognition that the majority of the Christian community has embraced just-war tradition since Augustine.17 He then moves to apply just-war criteria to nuclear warfare, embracing the now-obvious conclusion that a nuclear war could never meet stringent criteria of the just war tradition. He resists the idea that we can keep nukes as a deterrent even if we never plan to use them. And he explores various steps that can be taken by governments to reverse the nuclear arms race, supporting the nuclear freeze, negotiated reductions, and independent initiatives for peacemaking. An epilogue-type chapter also mentions smoking, alcoholism, racism, and environmental destruction as issues that are rightly characterized as pro-life concerns. “As the biblical vision of life and shalom shapes our values, we will lovingly call every area of life back to the wholeness God desires.”18 In principle, no threat to human well-being falls outside of a “completely pro-life” vision. 25 Years Later: Assessing Completely Pro-Life

The theological impulse driving Ron Sider’s Completely Pro-Life vision is unimpeachable and worthy of imitation. Sider is convinced that God, the author of life, desires not just human survival but human flourishing. Every arena of human life in which human survival and human flourishing are threatened must be addressed and, if possible, changed for the better. Thus as Christians we must seek a world in which babies are not aborted, the poor are lifted up, marriages and families thrive, nuclear weapons are reduced, substances destroy fewer lives, racism is overcome, environmental destruction is reversed, and so on. If this comprehensive “balanced biblical vision” were to be genuinely embraced it would change Christian preaching, teaching, and activism, and this in turn would change the shape of partisan politics in our land. The triumph of this vision would mean an end to a narrow Christian Right or Left, and would pull American politics toward a both/and rather than an either/or policy vision. It ought to create political space for “completely pro-life” politicians who care about both abortion and war, both the environment and the family, both health care and.. .you get the drift. As of the writing of this essay, 25 years after Completely Pro-Life, signs of hope are rather scarce for the triumph of any such vision in American Christianity or politics. 16 Ibid., 156-157. 17 Ibid., 158. 18 Ibid., 196.

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The political scene is especially bleak. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican candidate for president, presented himself as hawkish on foreign policy, laissezfaire on economic policy, uninterested in environmental concerns, traditionalist on family issues, and opposed to abortion. Meanwhile, President Obama the Democratic victor of the 2012 elections, is or has become hawkish on foreign policy, regulationist on economic policy, modestly active on environmental concerns, anti-traditionalist on family issues, and uncritically supportive of abortion rights. Both campaigns showed a decided lack of creativity in bridging ideological gaps or finding surprising consensus-building solutions to culture­ wars divisions. Christian activist organizations grind forward with their by-now-traditional ideologically-captive agendas of Left and mainly Right. Market forces favor Left and Right, not Center. Ideologically moderate organizations and politicians are losing ground. In retrospect, it appears that Ron Sider did not foresee the entrenchment of Left and Right in media, activist, ecclesial and partisan circles. Nor could he have foreseen the role of money, especially corporate and foundation money, in funding permanent polarization. In that light it does not really seem to matter that many individual Christians have a more thoughtful and balanced moral vision than what is visible among well-funded lobbyists, activists, and politicians. Sider’s writing seems to envision a well-functioning political process, in which government actually responds to the will of its people, and not just its lobbyists and donors. But that is not the country we are now living in. On a theological-ethical level, Completely Pro-Life has its strengths and weaknesses. It is perhaps the ultimate tribute to a mentor when one is sufficiently attracted to a person’s vision as to want to build on it and deepen it. After more than two decades of being bewitched by this evangelical-Catholic consistent prolife vision, I have attempted to dig deeper into the theme in my book, The Sacredness of Human Lifef There I offer my own extensive reflections on life’s sanctity, the depth and breadth and complexity of the biblical witness on this matter, the ebb and flow of Christian (in)fidelity to this vision, the secularization and rejection of the concept in modem thought, and certain applications to the contemporary scene. In light of my own work I can now see that Ron’s Completely Pro-Life was relatively thin on theological grounding while being relatively over-detailed on policy prescription. I can also see the dubiousness of certain moral and policy conclusions, such as on same-sex relationships, as simply following from or fitting with a “completely pro-life” agenda. Language about life’s sacredness must be carefully guarded from overuse or misapplication. But this is quibbling. The reader should walk away from this brief engagement with a 25-year-old book with this main takeaway: Ron Sider has staked out a principled posture for a nonpartisan, trans-ideological, both/and, Christian ethical 19 David P. Gushee, The Sacredness ofHuman Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013).

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vision and has held that ground for forty years despite ferocious pressures from both the Left and the Right. He has not been seduced either by Washington or by Mammon. He has sought always to be faithful to biblical truth. He has sought always to follow Jesus. In so doing he has led many of us to want to join him on the journey of evangelical piety and social engagement.

14. Economics as if Jesus Mattered

Bruce Wydick

Introduction One of my fondest memories from my time as a graduate student under Ron Sider was a “costumed debate” that a group of us performed on the last day of class that spring semester of 1988. We were seated at an elevated table from left to right, both literally and economically speaking. I was dressed in military fatigues and played the role of the caterpillar-mustached Latin American leftist revolutionary, “Frederico No-es-rico,” while my good friend Jim Porter, dressed in a khaki business suit three seats to the right, portrayed an eccentric caricature of the conservative economist, “Milton B. Free-Man.” Businessman Liam Collins and Curtis “the Revered Jackson” Brown sat between us advocating only slightly more nuanced economic policies than those being articulated from the extremes. Walt Ogilvie, wearing Groucho Marx glasses below his grey-powdered mop, wielded a toy microphone with a yellow nerf ball jammed on it as he parodied moderator Phil Donahue. Milton B. Free-Man argued points from his book, Whining Christians in an Age of Prosperity, while Frederico shouted rebuttals in Spanish from the other side of the podium citing his equally popular work, Bloodsucking Capitalists in an Age of Global Exploitation. Why was Dr. Sider crying? We could only hope that these were tears of laughter and not tears of shame. The purpose of his class was to help us look at economic life through the lens of Scripture. As the semester wore on, I remember being disconcerted at the myriad economic positions one could apparently justify from a Christian perspective. While some authors in our syllabus made a compelling case from a Christian standpoint for a free-market economy, the liberation theologians crafted a seemingly equally compelling Scriptural case for state-sponsored socialism. There seemed to be no easy answers here. Or perhaps the answers were too easy, but they were often contradictory and unsatisfactory. And now twenty-four years later, after years of doing hard time in doctoral studies in economics and now as a professor and researcher, my curiosity has only deepened over this issue. What kind of real-world economic system is most consistent with a Christian worldview? What economic choices does Jesus ask his followers to make? And how do the answers to these two questions differ? These are issues I have pondered repeatedly since my stay at what was then called Eastern College.

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The Bible and Economics

Contrary to what many of the pundits seem to assert, the Bible does not spell out a particular type of economic system. Instead it describes a set of principles through which human beings ought to relate toward our resources and to one another. We are to act mercifully, yet justly (Jms. 3:17; Mic. 6:8); in freedom, yet doing right by others (2Cor. 3:17; Am. 5:24); shrewdly, yet honestly (Lk. 16:1; Prov. 12:17); living in the present, yet wisely planning for the future (Mt. 6:25; Prov. 29:18). Nevertheless, by emphasizing some of these principles at the expense of others, it becomes possible to make a “scriptural” case for nearly every kind of economic system that has ever existed, including some of the really horrible ones. Moreover, as fallen human beings, we have a tendency to use Scripture to advocate for economic policies that suit our own needs, help us meet our own goals, perhaps justify our lifestyle (if we are rich), or provide a convenient excuse for it (if we are poor). Indeed, how many of the rich advocate for wealth redistribution? How many of the poor lobby for lower tax rates on the rich? Understanding the bias toward my own interests, I scarcely trust my own prescriptions for a “fair” economic system more than those of others. Like beauty, the word “fair” is in the eye of the beholder. It should be a word used cautiously. In general, economists dislike extremes. We prefer to think in terms of reaching the best outcome possible given a set of values and constraints. In the real world, optimal outcomes nearly always involve trade-offs over important, but sometimes conflicting values. For example, higher average income and greater income equality might be two key values, but it is unlikely that any economic system can simultaneously satisfy both of these ideals in their extreme. Yet both are ingredients to any good economy. Neither a perfectly equal world that is impoverished nor a world of extraordinarily high income possessed by a solitary person would satisfy. To be concrete, suppose A and B are both foundational values we aim to actualize in real-world policy. But given scarce resources, the constraints of social life, and the imperfect nature of ourselves, I argue that the resulting set of rules should at a minimum satisfy two axioms: The economic system must: 1) result in some significant manifestation of both A and B; and 2) not leave us at an inferior outcome, where given our constraints, we could have had more of both A and B. Returning to the income and equality example, a system must generate some significant level of income and some degree of equality or it is not a good system. Likewise, a system is not a good system if it yields an outcome from which there could have been both more income and more equality.

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Three Biblical Tensions In this spirit, I would like to present three biblical “tensions” that must necessarily exist in any good economic system. At the human level these tensions recognize the inherent goodness of biblical values, but acknowledge that the best real-world economic system this side of heaven involves trade-offs between biblical values. The specific system that is adopted, and the specific outcome that is realized from the system is likely to be dependent on the relative importance a given society places on these biblical values. The criteria I mention are necessary for any good economic system, but probably not sufficient. In other words, there are surely other values than what I present here that are also important; but if these values are ignored, the economic system is probably not a “good economy” from a biblical values perspective. The Tension between Justice and Mercy Justice demands that people get what they deserve. Mercy asks that people get something better than they deserve. Both can be active responses of love, and as Christians we are to love both justice and mercy. They represent two attributes of God’s own character, attributes whose seemingly impossible contradiction was reconciled by Christ’s supreme act on the cross. Economics is about real-world choices made in the face of scarce resources. Many of the hard choices society is forced to make involve the tension between justice and mercy. An unfettered libertarian approach to economics emphasizes that what people receive in the form of claims on society’s material goods (for the sake of argument, ignoring existing wealth) should be congruent with what they earn. In a market economy, the income of a worker, which gives her an equivalent claim on society’s goods, is roughly equal to the “value of the marginal product” of that worker. Put simply, in a labor market a worker receives an income roughly equivalent to the market value of what she produces. (Although one might argue from a subjective point of view that the stuff produced by some workers is worthless - e.g. the television show, Desperate Housewives.) Unfortunately some of the stuff that may be subjectively valued as worthless by many is valuable to others and creates a market that supports the income of those producing it. But in examining this tension between justice and mercy, suppose a Mr. Smith creates $5000 of market value for society. A libertarian approach would dictate that Mr. Smith’s claim on society’s goods should be $5000. One could argue (and many do) that people are “justly” entitled to receive the market value of what they create. Indeed, even Marx argued that a significant manifestation of

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capitalist injustice occurs as a laborer is alienated from the “exchange value” he creates, to which justice should naturally entitle him.1 But consider Mrs. Jones, who has a disability and is only able to earn $1000. Is the best outcome, in a biblical sense, one in which the claim on society’s goods by Mr. Smith and Mrs. Jones should be based strictly on what each has earned? Furthermore, suppose Mrs. Jones requires $1500 in order to eat and pay her modest rent. While the libertarian $5000/$ 1000 division might fulfill a narrow sense of “justice,” it fails to balance justice with mercy. A 10% tax on Mr. Smith with a 50% income subsidy to Mrs. Jones would seem to fulfill a minimum requirement to balance justice with mercy in this example. A society that mandates higher transfers from Mr. Smith to Mrs. Jones tips the balance toward mercy at the expense of justice; lower transfers favor justice at the expense of mercy. A system, however, that results in Mr. Smith having a $3000 claim on society’s resources, and Mrs. Jones a $1500 claim violates our second axiom since both a more merciful and more just outcome is possible, for example, $3250 and $1750. A good economic system must have elements of justice because there is a strong level of accountability built into such an arrangement. And given our human nature, accountability is a good thing; it is a biblical value. It keeps us from being lazy and diverting our attention to unproductive tasks. Even Paul writes, “If a man will not work, he shall not eat” (2Thess. 3:10). And were everyone equally endowed with talents and abilities, differences in outcomes would reflect heterogeneous preferences for work; most would argue that those who have chosen to work harder should be more greatly rewarded. A market economy keeps people accountable for producing things that other people want. It rewards those who do this well, and it punishes those who do this poorly. It rewards those who think creatively and who bring useful ideas to the market that benefit others. Thus at some level, it stimulates us to be on our best behavior in terms of doing things the rest of society wants us to do. An economic system that insists on yielding equal outcomes fails to provide the necessary feedback (through the price system) that guides individuals to make economic choices that line up with the needs (or at least wants) of others. On the other hand, an economic system that is devoid of compassion is a bad economic system for a number of reasons. First, as we might say, “s— happens,” what economists more formally refer to as, “negative unanticipated shocks.” In the face of negative unanticipated shocks, even someone hard at work with creative ideas can fail through no fault of her own, and in such a world that person must be lifted back on her feet. Second, like Mrs. Jones, people are not born with equal capacities. Given the fact that who we were when we were born was 100% out of our control, a good society does not reward happenstance, but rather the degree to which we employ the abilities which we have been given 1 Marx, Karl. Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Capital: Critique of Political Economy, 1867).

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(Lk. 12:48). Third, we have heterogeneous needs. A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with brain cancer. Is she not entitled to a greater claim on societies resources, all else equal, than someone who has not suffered such a horrible misfortune? A world without justice is a world without accountability for actions, and is unbiblical. A world without mercy is a world without compassion, and is unbiblical. A good economic system searches for the best point of tension between these two values. The Tension between Freedom and Ethics

Christians generally have a finely tuned sense of right and wrong. Our tendency, however, is that when we become convicted in our hearts about an issue, we push to make a law about it. This occurs in social policy regarding issues such as prayer in schools, gay marriage, and abortion. It occurs in economic policy around issues such as differential tax rates between the poor and the rich, business and environmental regulation, and labor law. The question we face is that if we view an economic behavior as morally positive or negative, should we try to legislate the behavior? This is a great dilemma, a great tension, or at least it should be. Part of our desire to legislate Christian ethics comes from insecurity about the quality of our evangelism. When the church does an inadequate job of winning hearts and minds for God so that people might make good choices freely, we turn to the civil legal system to force the issue. For example, suppose our evangelism was so effective that everyone viewed unborn life as sacred. Then few would wish to have an abortion, and there would be little need for turning to the political process to restrict people’s freedom to have an abortion. On the economic side, if everyone supported a church community that enthusiastically provided a safety net for the needy in its midst, there would be little need to legislate high tax rates to support a government-financed welfare infrastructure. Given that we live in a fallen world and that we have done an incomplete job of evangelization (both externally and internally), it is necessary to have economic systems that restrict specific freedoms for the benefit of the common good. But a tension must exist between Christians advocating for too much economic freedom and imposing too many restrictions on economic freedom. Our spiritual goal should not be to create a kind of theonomy, in which Christian ethics dictate economic behavior for believer and unbeliever alike. Suppose, for example, in our theonomy we mandate 90% of household’s income to be contributed into an Acts of the Apostles-like kitty (common purse), to be distributed to the general population according to individual need. The problem with such a well-intentioned mandate is that, given the human condition, this reduces people’s incentive to work. If nearly all of our reward for work is taken away, we obviously would prefer that other people fill up the kitty. Since 90% of the reward for producing goods and services for others is confiscated, it redirects our energy to lobbying for a greater share of the kitty for ourselves and

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away from market activity, and creating things that are useful to others. It also creates an incentive to circumvent the system through some kind of corruption. Unless there exists an extremely high degree of altruism in society, institutionalizing such an arrangement would lead to a drastic fall in production (and therefore income) since people primarily concerned about the welfare of themselves and their families generally don’t make things for free. This is the kind of economic system that, while possibly well intentioned, results in corruption and impoverishment. Human nature being what it is, when people are unable to reap the fruit of their labor, they don’t labor as much. In the course of history there have been many examples of economic systems characterized by neither freedom nor a clear sense of pervading goodness. The late Cold-War economies were certainly not free in any relative sense compared with the West; neither did they bear the fruit of goodness.2 As such they were “bad” economic systems by the second axiom; both more freedom and more good could have been possible with another system. Moreover, it would seem that some freedom is necessary for ethical choices and virtue to take root. Our Creator did not make us puppets of moral rectitude, but rather gave us the freedom to choose virtue over vice. A good economic system rewards creativity and hard work by providing the freedom to engage in economic activities and reap the corresponding rewards from them. It even gives people the freedom to fail, because economic reward cannot exist without the possibility of failure. A good economic system is constantly enabling and empowering its citizens to participate in markets. It helps prepare individuals with the skills they need to participate in markets. Recognizing that fully shielding individuals from the consequences of economic failure would induce excessive and unhealthy risk-taking, it still provides a means for individuals who have suffered economic misfortune to get back on their feet. A good economic system balances the need for economic freedom with a system of rules that constrain some categories of economic behavior. Economists have several specific categories where economic freedoms must be curtailed for the benefit of the common good. When “externalities” from economic activity cause spillover effects to society at large, then those inflicting negative externalities (such as pollution) must pay an added fee back to society to compensate society for the damage inflicted to it; this is called “internalizing” the externality. Positive externalities, such as education, should be subsidized. If externalities are not dealt with properly, decades of economic research have demonstrated that the free market no longer yields the best possible welfare outcomes for the economy.

2 For excellent reading on this point see Acemoglu, Daron and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York, NY: Crown Business, 2012).

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Additional constraints on the free market are required when a “public good” must be provided from which all will benefit, such as parks, streets, national defense, or fire protection. The free market also fails to function properly when economic power becomes too concentrated such that a few are able to manipulate markets to the detriment of the many (as with a monopoly), or when insufficient information is present in the market that causes the market to fail (such as can happen with financial markets). It is important to state that these are not “opinions” of economists on the Left or the Right, but rather are realities accepted universally by economic scholars that are presented in every introductory economics textbook. The problem is that some who continually advocate for business interests over environmental interests, the liberation of financial markets, and the concentration of economic power - all in the name of economic freedom - appear to have sold their textbooks after the semester was over. Maintaining a set of rules that allow the economic system to function for the common good requires some portion of the surplus that is created by it, i.e. taxes. It is important that those who benefit from the economic system pay to maintain the system. This is important for the maintenance and enforcement of the rules, but for also providing resources for empowering those outside the economic system to participate in it to the best of their ability, whether they be our children, the disabled in our communities, the marginalized, or the impoverished. Christians need to be more pragmatic when it comes to economic policy and be more wary of simple-minded sloganeering by the Left or the Right, seeking a system that balances Christian principles and ethics that check our worst impulses with the economic freedom that is necessary to create prosperity. Moreover, we should become comfortable with differentiating between what is required by law and the calling of those who choose to follow Jesus. We need to pray for wisdom and choose our battles carefully in the tension between legislating goodness and preserving the freedom to do good (and bad). It is a tension that won’t go away.

The Tension between Concern for the Present and the Future Jesus taught his disciples “Don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Mt. 6:34). Yet we are also admonished to consider the future implications of our present-day decisions (Lk. 14:28-32) and to create a vision for the future (Prov. 29:18). We are to focus on today with an eye on tomorrow, but with our hearts rooted in eternity. A prevalent theme in Scripture is short-term sacrifice for long-term gain. In a casual reading of the Bible, we see nearly every central figure in both the Old and New Testaments commended for present sacrifices that brought God’s people to a better place in the future. The value of frugality in the present with an eye to future gain was noted by Max Weber as characteristic of early Protestants in

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Europe and the United States, the now famous “Protestant Ethic.”3 Moreover, the willingness to sacrifice present-day pleasures for the future prospects of one’s household did not appear to eclipse trust for God’s provision for the future and his authority over it. Jesus himself believed that there was a time to party (Jn. 2:8), a time to focus on the future (Jn. 17:20), and a time to reflect on eternity (Jn. 14:2). While past generations of Christians were much better at holding this tension in place, present-day Christians have fared much worse, both in terms of their own economic choices and in terms of the value-added brought to the policy discussion table. The most glaring manifestation of this generation’s failure in this area lies in the enormous budget deficits racked up by the people we elect to lead us, as well as in the accompanying explosion in our national debt. Because future generations are unable to vote, passing them the tab for wars and social programs that we have been unable to afford today amounts to taxation without representation at best - generational theft at worst.4 One of the most challenging aspects of the tension between the present and the future in macroeconomic policy is that a vast majority of economists agree that an increase in government spending (“fiscal stimulus”) is an appropriate tool to help pull economies out of recessions, especially in situations where a simple reduction in the interest rate hasn’t worked due to plummeting confidence in the economy. In the long run, an appropriately implemented fiscal stimulus probably saves resources, so that it is likely that it satisfies the second axiom in that wisely implemented fiscal stimulus allows us both more in the present and more in the future. But the problem is that we have lacked the necessary self-restraint to run the necessary surpluses during good times so that we can wisely implement modest fiscal stimulus during the bad times. In recent years, for example, we have financed tax cuts and two medium-sized wars through deficit spending rather than through increases in taxes or reductions in other government spending, an irresponsible political act that sends the bill for these expenditures to our children and those yet unborn. It would be fitting for our historical tradition that Christians should be at the forefront of insisting on balanced budgets over the economic cycle through an appropriate combination of both spending cuts and tax increases. And it is ironic that Christians, who have taken up the task of defending the rights of the unborn, are not quicker to defend their right to be free from the economic burden of paying for a previous generation’s misdeeds. Moreover, it would help if Christians could eschew ideological bickering, and instead act as responsible

3 Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London, UK and Boston, MA: Unwin Hymen, 1905). 4 See Ron Sider’s recent Fixing the Moral Deficit: A Balanced Way to Balance the Budget (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2012), which argues for a way to deal with the deficit crisis precisely to address the issue of intergenerational injustice, i.e., forcing the next generations to pay for our choices.

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economic peacemakers by bringing sides together to foster pragmatic solutions to our economic problems. For example, when would good stewardship dictate that tax increases be favored over cuts in spending? When the harm to society from cutting the least valuable item in the budget is greater than the harm to society from an equivalent marginal increase in taxes. It isn’t that simple, but yet it is. We also fare worse than our ancestors in the management of our own expenses. The borrowing binge fueling the housing bubble that led to the Great Recession of 2008 affected secular and Christian households alike. Unlike those before us, we have grown up with a sense of entitlement to material possessions that makes it difficult to deny anything to ourselves when credit is available to finance it. Christians need to hold each other accountable for living modestly within our means in the present, while trusting God for both our present and our future. In the tension between the present and the future, Christians also must engage the tension between temporal and eternal concerns. A careful reading shows this tension exists throughout Scripture. It might make sense to believe that because eternity is infinitely longer than the present, that eternal considerations should be given infinitely more weight than those of the present. Although there is a certain logic to this way of thinking, it is unbiblical. Throughout Scripture, choices that affected (then) present-day outcomes - acts of mercy, healings, concern for the poor, social justice - are given immense weight. The Bible depicts the little choices that we make to care for others in the present to be critically important, perhaps eternally important. In some mysterious way that is beyond our comprehension, the present and eternity are bound together. Conclusion: A Word about Institutions The tension between biblical values that will exist in a good economy must be reflected in the institutions that shape our economic life as a society. Institutions comprise the rules of the game in which economic activity takes place. Economists today believe that differences in the quality of institutions across countries are largely responsible for the vast gaps we see between wealth and poverty in the world today. Good institutions encourage human beings to do good things, and discourage us from malfeasance. Bad institutions foment our corruption. Good institutions manifest justice and mercy in appropriate contexts. They allow for freedom, but help align self-interests with community interests. In the context of freedom, they incentivize good economic behavior, eliciting and manifesting the diversity of gifts possessed by human beings. Good institutions take into account the fallen nature of humanity, yet draw out our best qualities. As such they harness our human tendency for self-interest for the common good. Good institutions value the present, but discourage us from present economic choices that would mortgage our future. They help protect our resources and our world as we seek to be good stewards for the Creator of these precious gifts.

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Christians need to be good institution builders. We need to work within our communities both locally and at the national policy levels to create economic institutions that foster broad-based prosperity and the common good. We are at an advantage in this regard, because the Scriptures give us an insight into the human condition that is lacking in secular circles. We understand the need to build institutions that check the human tendency toward self-interest. We are convicted about serving the interests of the poor, but understand that economic prosperity alone will not bring happiness. We understand the importance of rest and family, but that work is good for us and not something to be avoided for it gives us a place in the community, a place to exercise our gifts to serve others. Rather than allying ourselves with an angry political movement, we must live incamationally as salt and light in our community and our economy, active participants in the process of creating a more just and merciful world.

15. Overcoming Global Warming

Jim Ball

Personal Preface

This is an essay to honor my mentor and friend, Dr. Ron Sider, longtime President of Evangelicals for Social Action and Professor at Palmer Theological Seminary. In 1994, Ron helped found the organization I currently work for, the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN). I became the Executive Director of EEN in 2000, and for nearly 10 years Ron oversaw my work in various capacities. During that time I relied upon his wisdom, counsel, and leadership. Ron’s influence began much earlier, however. As a seminary student in the mid-1980s 1 read Ron’s seminal book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. My Christian vocation has focused broadly on the intersection of faith and public life through the years, and having read Ron’s book helped to give me permission to do so. Ron’s work helped to provide a solid grounding for my concern for the poor by demonstrating the strong biblical call to serve the poor and how this could be combined with facts on the ground. It was this concern for the poor that motivated me to begin doing serious research on climate change in 1992, and it is this same concern that has continued to define my life’s work. Thus, Ron’s influence and guidance has stretched for nearly 30 years and has been foundational for the contributions the Lord has seen fit to have me make. I’m extremely grateful for how the Lord has used Ron to help me become a better servant of Elis will.

Introduction

Beginning around 2010 and stretching to the run-up to the 2012 U.S. presidential election, climate change nearly disappeared from the national conversation, except when Republican presidential candidates were denying it or backtracking from it. But climate change itself has not disappeared. It still remains the great moral challenge of our time, impacting billions this century and a mortal threat to millions of the world’s poor. And if we don’t act decisively in the next few years dangerous tipping points could be crossed with consequences yet to be fully imagined. Overcoming climate change is still possible, but that window will soon close. Instead of talking about climate change, President Obama has talked about “clean energy.” But he even shifted away from the language of “clean energy” and has begun to use an “all of the above approach to American energy,” a

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favorite phrase of Speaker John Boehner and House Republicans.1 Now there are lots of good things associated with clean energy, with striving for “energy security” and “energy independence.” And it is vital to have an emphasis on producing more clean energy here in the United States. Who isn’t for clean energy made in America? But to be a real leader of our country requires the President to talk about overcoming global warming, not just energy. For the good of the country and the world the President must not sit back and wait for climate change to be recognized as the great moral cause of our time or continue only to talk about energy. He must explain to the country why significant climate action is needed, and then lead the country in concrete implementation. In turn, as I argue more fully in my book, Global Warming and the Risen LORD? Christians must follow the Risen LORD as He leads the way in overcoming global warming; we must become his agents of transformation in this great cause, the greatest moral challenge of our time. As we follow the Risen LORD, as we work to create the change needed at the rate and change required, we must work with others of good will to create a moral movement equivalent to the civil rights movement. And in so doing we will help create the support the President needs to lead our country in overcoming global warming. Here are seven reasons why both strong presidential leadership and a moral movement are needed. I will discuss each in turn. 1. Global Emissions Must Peak During the 2013-2016 Presidential Term 2. We Need a Revolution, Not a Transition 3. Natural Gas May Be “Fool’s Gold” 4. It’s Not Just About Energy: Deforestation, Agriculture 5. Ocean Acidification 6. The Need to Adapt 7. Essential to Create Public Support to Pass Climate Change Legislation 1. Global Emissions Must Peak During the 2013-2016 Presidential Term The President in 2013-2016 will be the most important president ever, before or since, with regard to overcoming global warming. No one person in the history of the world will have more opportunity to take the lead on the issue of climate change. He can’t do it alone, but without strong leadership from the President, we will not accomplish what is needed - simple as that.1 2

1 See the New York Times article by Jackie Calms, “Obama Tours Four States to Defend Energy Policy,” New York Times (March 21, 2012). www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/ us/politics/ obama-to-promote-energy-policy-on-4-state-trip.html?hp. All online resources were accessed 5.12.2012 unless otherwise noted. 2 Jim Ball, Global Warming and the Risen LORD: Christian Discipleship and Climate Change (Washington, D.C.: EEN, 2010).

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Just talking about clean energy doesn’t convey either the urgency or the scale of the changes needed. When it comes to overcoming global warming, the International Energy Agency (IEA), which advises the G20 on energy matters, concluded the following in its publication World Energy Outlook 2011: • 80 percent of the world’s emissions budget is already “locked in” due to existing energy-related infrastructure (e.g. power plants, buildings, vehicles) and we are on track to lock in the remaining 20 percent by 2017. • If significant action is delayed until 2015, “around 45 percent of the global fossil-fuel capacity installed by then would have to be retired early or refurbished by 2035.” • If action is delayed until 2017, all new energy-consuming capital stock will have to produce no global warming pollution if we are to have a chance at overcoming global warming. In other words, all new buildings, vehicles, power plants, etc., must be zero carbon/GHGs in order not to exceed a 2 degrees Celsius rise from preindustrial levels or 450ppm.3

2. We Need a Revolution, Not a Transition

We’re going to need a clean energy revolution whose rate of change must be incredibly fast. A gradual transition won’t cut it. This revolution will require strong and sustained presidential leadership. According to the respected business consulting firm McKinsey & Co., to overcome global warming will require a 10-fold increase in carbon productivity (or amount of output produced per unit of carbon).4 Has something like this ever been achieved? Yes. The Industrial Revolution achieved a 10-fold increase in labor productivity. However, our “carbon revolution” will have to occur in one third of the time. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)5 projects that U.S. carbon dioxide pollution will be 7% below the 2005 level in 2020, and it will continue to stay below 2005 levels through 2035 even with a 25% rise in population. This results from increased fuel economy standards, appliance standards, federal clean air regulations, state policies requiring more renewable energy, and a rise in natural gas use, but doesn’t yet include two other major policies that will reduce emissions further: the mercury regulation of power plants and the next round of fuel economy standards. While we’re moving in the right direction, this current EIA projection is less than half of the commitment we made at the 2009 international climate talks in

3 To obtain this publication go to www.worldenergAoutlook.org/publications/weo-2011/. 4 Eric Beinhocker et al., “The Carbon Productivity Challenge: Curbing Climate Change and Sustaining Economic Growth,” McKinsey Global Institute www. worldenergyoutlook.org/publications/weo-2011/ . 5 The EIA is an independent analytical agency of the federal government that tracks energy use and trends, including greenhouse gas emissions.

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Copenhagen (or 17% below 2005 levels). And the commitments made at Copenhagen are themselves not enough to overcome global warming. So we’re on the right path, but without economy-wide price on carbon we won’t get there. Both President Obama’s proposed Clean Energy Standard and regulation of new and existing power plants via the Clean Air Act focus on making electricity much cleaner and climate-friendly; as such, they both are important but insufficient. A more comprehensive price on carbon is still needed to drive innovation throughout the economy. Such a price on carbon could be provided by market-based policies like a cap-and-trade system or a revenue­ neutral carbon tax where those who do the right thing effectively get a tax cut. This resulting innovation will benefit not simply the U.S.; the world needs us to make such investments and drive such innovation. As McKinsey & Co has shown, emissions from electricity generation and from industry represent less than half of the potential opportunities to overcome global warming worldwide. Other sectors like forestry and agriculture must also contribute (discussed further in #4). If emissions didn’t need to peak during the 2013-2016 presidential term, if the rate of change needed to overcome global warming was much slower, then we could get away with talking just about clean energy and proposing policies like a Clean Energy Standard. We could avoid talking about putting an economy-wide price on carbon or building a moral movement to get one passed by Congress. And the President could avoid talking about making overcoming global warming a top priority and working to do so. But ignoring the rate and scale of change needed or wishing it away won’t make it disappear. It’s a reality we must face. It requires strong presidential leadership and the building of a moral movement sufficient to help pass comprehensive climate change legislation. 3. Natural Gas May Be “Fool’s Gold”

For years now natural gas has been touted as the “clean” fossil fuel, given that it lacks air pollutants like soot and mercury. And when burned at a power plant to make electricity, it produces about half the global warming emissions as coal. As such, natural gas has been pushed by some supporters of climate action as a “bridge” that will help take us from the fossil era into the clean energy era.6 In his 2012 State of the Union address, President Obama proclaimed his Administration’s strong commitment to natural gas development. He reiterated this in a speech in New Hampshire on March 1, 2012: “We’re taking every possible action to develop a near 100-year supply of natural gas, which releases

6 See, for example, the comments of former Sen. Timothy Wirth on the matter in the Denver Post, www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_l 7702668 and Center for American Progress, www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2009/08/10/6513/natural-gas-abridge-fuel-for-the-21 st-century/ and the Energy Future Coalition www.energyfuturecoalition.org/editorsblog/Leadership-Natural-Gas-and-Cleaner-Fuels.

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fewer carbons.”7 Unfortunately, serious reservations have been raised about natural gas serving as a “bridge” to a climate-friendly future. Indeed, natural gas could be “all hat and no cattle” when it comes to overcoming global warming. First, two prominent scientists, Myhrvold and Calderia published the results from “a quantitative model of energy system transitions that includes life-cycle emissions and the central physics of greenhouse warming.”8 Essentially they gamed out scenarios for replacing coal-generated electricity with electricity generated from sources that are less carbon intensive to determine what temperature reductions they would bring and when. They concluded that natural gas “cannot yield substantial temperature reductions this century.”9 On its own this study raises important questions about natural gas as part of overcoming global warming. Certainly more study is needed along such lines. But other disturbing news has come to light about natural gas. Studies have indicated that current and future natural gas production in this country could produce more global warming pollution than coal - even more when looking at a 20-year time-frame. The main reason? Natural gas fields are leaking much more gas than previously thought.1011 Again, more study is needed to understand “fugitive emissions,” as they are called. But enough has been done to raise very serious questions. These fugitive emissions could be addressed by a regulation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).11 By how much is not yet clear. Taken together, these studies suggest that natural gas can no longer be relied upon as part of a strategy of climate change mitigation. It could be “fool’s gold” when it comes to overcoming global warming, i.e., foolish investments that take money away from real solutions. This requires the Administration to put the brakes on natural gas until these serious climate concerns are thoroughly assessed. To justify such a major change in policy would require the President to talk about a key reason for the switch: climate change. 4. It’s Not Just About Energy: Deforestation, Agriculture As mentioned earlier, more than half of the actions to reduce global warming pollution worldwide should come from outside the electricity and industrial sectors. While electricity’s potential is the largest at 26%, you might be surprised 7 President Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on American Energy,” The White House www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/01 /remarks-president-americanenergy. 8 N.P. Myhrvold and K. Caldiera, “Greenhouse gases, climate change and the transition from coal to low-carbon electricity,” IOP Publishing http://iopscience.iop.org/17489326/7/l/014019/pdf/1748-9326j7_l_014019.pdf. 9 Ibid. 10 Jeff Tollefson, “Air sampling reveals high emissions from gas field,” Nature www.nature.com/news/air-sampling-reveals-high-emissions-from-gas-field-l.9982. 11 Oil and Natural Gas Air Pollution Standards,” EPA www.epa.gov/airquality/oilandgas/.

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to learn that according to McKinsey & Co the forestry sector is the next largest at 21%.12 And actions in the forestry sector keep overall costs of overcoming global warming worldwide down significantly; it would cost approximately 50% more without them. Here in the U.S., forestry accounts for around 11% of potential reductions, the same as transportation, while forestry and agriculture combined equal 17%, the same as what can be achieved via the industrial sector. Focusing only on clean energy, therefore, will not get us where we need to be climate-wise in the U.S. in the forestry and agriculture sectors. And our innovations in these areas are needed to help prime the pump worldwide. But for the U.S. to play our part the President must lead and Christians must advocate for and help implement these solutions.

5. Ocean Acidification

God’s oceans are a tremendous benefit to humanity. For example, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), “more than a billion people rely on food from the ocean as their primary source of protein.”13 Unfortunately, humanity’s poor stewardship - including overharvesting, water pollution, bad development and fishing practices - is stealing God’s blessing from the creatures of the sea (Gen. 1:20-22). Another significant consequence of poor stewardship is called ocean acidification, which is being caused mostly by the same carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) that is also the major cause of global warming. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, anthropogenic or human-caused CO2 has made the ocean 30% more acidic.14 A study in Science concluded the following concerning the current rate of acidification: 1) it is happening faster than any time in the last 300 million years, and; 2) it is ten times faster than the last time the oceans were this acidic some 56 million years ago, and that episode was accompanied by a massive extinction.15 In other words, what we are doing to God’s oceans through ocean acidification is unprecedented in the history of the earth. Anything with a shell or skeleton made from calcium carbonate - from oysters, clams and shrimp, to coral reefs, to tiny creatures like Pteropods that help 12 “Impact of the Financial Crisis Carbon Economics,” McKinsey & Co www.mckinsey.com/Client_Service/Sustainability/Latest_thinking/~/media/McKinsey/dot com/client_service/Sustainability/cost%20curve%20PDFs/ImpactFinancialCrisisCarbonE conomicsGHGcostcurveV21 .ashx. 13 “What is Ocean Acidification?” PMEL Carbon Program www.pmel.noaa.gov/ co2/stoiy7What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F. 14 “Ocean Acidification,” A Summaryfor Policymakers from the Second Symposium on the Ocean in a High-CO2 World www.ocean-acidification.net/ OAdocsZSPM-lorezv2.pdf. 15 Barbel Honisch et al., “The Geological Record of Ocean Acidification,” Science www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6072/1058.

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create the foundation of oceanic food webs - is in serious danger from ocean acidification. As NOAA states, “When shelled organisms are at risk, the entire food web may also be at risk.”16 Let me briefly highlight two more examples. First, coral reefs have been called the rainforests of the oceans for their ability to support so much life - approximately 25% of the living creatures of the oceans.17 They also generate billions of dollars in benefits to humanity.18 Coral reefs are a focal point of God’s blessing of the seas: “God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas ...’” (Gen. 1:22). Ocean acidification on its own puts coral reefs at risk. In our lifetime - on our watch as God’s stewards - we could literally destroy the capacity of many coral reefs to sustain life through ocean acidification and other harmful activities. Second, oysters are a major industry, with the West Coast bringing in over $270 million a year. As NOAA reports, “In recent years, there have been near total failures of developing oysters in both aquaculture facilities and natural ecosystems on the West Coast.”19 The report considers ocean acidification a “potential factor” in this collapse. A study of a commercial oyster hatching facility in Oregon goes further, concluding that ocean acidification was responsible for a decline to a level that was not economically sustainable.20 Just as with climate change, it is ocean acidification’s unprecedented rate of change that requires us not simply to have a gradual transition towards clean energy. The President must help the country understand that we need a revolution, not just a transition. We need a great transformation to overcome these twin challenges of climate change and ocean acidification. But time is running short to bring about this great transformation. The country cannot accomplish this without both strong leadership from the President and a moral movement providing the support for the necessary changes.

6. The Need to Adapt

The world is already experiencing the effects of climate change. Even if the world puts into place a strong program to reduce global warming pollution we will still experience major impacts. And most of these consequences will fall on the poor. We are all going to have to adapt, and the rich are going to have to help 16 “What is Ocean Acidification?” PMEL Carbon Program www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/ stoiy/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F. 17 Jeff Price et al., “Ecosystems, Their Properties, Goods and Services,” IPCC www.ipccwg2.gov/AR4/website/04.pdf. 18 “Ocean Acidification Due to Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide,” The Royal Society http://royalsocietv.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Societv_Content/policy/publications/ 2005Z9634.pdf.' 19 “What is Ocean Acidification?” PMEL Carbon Program wvvw.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/storv7What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F . 20 “Ocean Acidification Linked With Larval Oyster Failure in Hatcheries,” National Science Foundation www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp7cntn_idM23822.

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the poor adapt. Climate adaptation is basically planning for hard times to come, like the Patriarch Joseph did in Egypt when he led the country to store up grain for the coming famine (Gen. 41). But just like Egypt needed the leadership of Joseph, so too our country needs the President to explain that we must invest in preparations for climate impacts here in the U.S., and that it is in our nation’s interest to help the poor in poor countries to do the same. And we need a moral movement backing him up and advocating for such expenditures. 7. Essential to Create Public Support to Pass Climate Change Legislation

To begin to make my final point, let me summarize what I’ve said thus far: 1) global emissions must peak during the next presidential term to overcome global warming and ocean acidification; 2) the rate of change to achieve this is daunting but doable; 3) forestry and agriculture must be part of the solution; and 4) we must make major preparations to adapt as well as help the poor to adapt. All of this requires comprehensive climate policy with the following characteristics: • puts a price on carbon in a way that avoids economic harm to the poor and doesn’t disproportionately impact any region or major sector of the economy; • provides significant long-term funding for climate-friendly research and development; • has specially designed programs to incentivize climate-friendly activities in forestry and agriculture; • creates and funds comprehensive adaptation programs for both the U.S. and poor countries. Clearly the President cannot do this alone. He needs support. And those of us who have accepted the climate challenge must play our part and help create a movement for climate action. But the President also needs to help build support for action. The nature of the threat requires it, given that we only have a few years to launch a revolutionary, society-wide transformation. So too does the creation of public concern and support. The work of social scientist Robert Brulle and his colleagues shows that public concern for climate change goes up when senior political leaders talk about the need for action. It goes down when they don’t, or when they speak against action.21 As one of Brulle’s colleagues, Craig Jenkins, puts it: “It is the political leaders in Washington who are really driving public opinion about the threat of climate

21 Robert Brulle, “Shifting public opinion on climate change: an empirical assessment of factors influencing concern over climate change in the U.S., 2002-2010,” Springer Link http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs 10584-012-0403-y.

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change.... The politics overwhelms the science.”22 In addition, their studies found that the level of public concern also tracked with the amount of media coverage there was; which itself was driven to a large extent by what political leaders were saying. In an interview Brülle got right to the point when discussing President Obama. He said, “The fact that Obama isn’t talking about the issue or even using the word matters very much.”23 What’s normally the case for politicians is that they respond to what the public considers to be an urgent concern. This mentality was captured in an interview on climate change with John Huntsman, former Republican candidate for President and former Governor of Utah. According to Gov. Huntsman, who continues to believe in global warming, the climate challenge “hasn’t translated into any kind of action within the political community because you don’t have people on a broad basis who are pushing us because they ... just don’t see the urgency. The political policy agenda does not move unless it has people who are moving it.”24 He went on to observe that the lack of leadership is bipartisan: “I don’t hear Democrats talking about it either. I don’t see it on the agenda anywhere.” Sad, but true. Concluding Word Here’s the bottom line: The nature of this challenge, both the threat itself and the public support for action, demands presidential leadership. He can’t be the Facilitator-in-Chief on this one; he has to be the Leader-in-Chief. He can’t lay back and wait for support to materialize; he must help create it. In his interview, Gov. Huntsman reminded us that, “Politics is the art of the possible.”25 But in the case of overcoming global warming we need the President to help make it possible. Right now, unfortunately, our country has a de facto strategy of appeasement when it comes to this terrible threat. But given that the Risen LORD is leading the way in overcoming global warming, we have all the God-given courage and love we need for our country to play our role in overcoming global warming, and thereby creating a better future for ourselves, future generations, and those most vulnerable - the world’s poor. It is our time to

22 Craig Jenkins, “Political Leaders Play Key Role in How Worried Americans are by Climate Change: Study,” Phys.Org http://phys.org/news/2012-02-opinionclimate.htmlPagel/3PoliticalleadersplaykeyroleinhowworriedAmericansarebyclimatech ange:studyMorethanextremeweathereventsandtheworkofscientists/. 23Robert Brulle in Joe Romm, “Exclusive: ‘Exciting’ Public Opinion Study Debunks Claim Al Gore Polarized the Climate Debate and Mam Other Myths,” Think Progress http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/02/06/419371/study-debunks-al-gore-polarizedthe-debate-myths-of-public-opinion-climate-change/?mobile=nc. 24 John Huntsman in Amanda Little, “Huntsman on climate change, natural gas, and competing with China,” Grist http://grist.org/politics/huntsman-on-climate-changenatural-gas-and-competing-with-china/.

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shine, to reflect the LORD’S glory as we follow Him in overcoming global warming. With the Risen LORD, we shall overcome.

16. Bridging the Evangelical-Ecumenical Divide

Wesley Granberg-Michaelson

Evangelicals and Ecumenicals

Within the world of Protestant Christianity, no divide looms larger than the split between “evangelical” and “ecumenical” Christians. The history of this division, propelled largely by groups within the United States and then exported to the wider world, has been well documented. In the post-World War II period, this division became structurally institutionalized. The founding of the National Council of Churches of Christ (USA) shortly after WWII was followed by the establishment of the National Association of Evangelicals. In many ways, the NAE’s identity was shaped by their opposition to the NCC. Even its by-laws included a provision prohibiting any denomination that belonged to the National Council of Churches from being a member of NAE. This division was reinforced through magazines, publishing houses, colleges, seminaries, evangelistic youth organizations, television and radio broadcasts, missionary boards and relief and development agencies. Christianity Today was the alternative to Christian Century. Evangelical publishing houses sprung up as the alternatives to well established book publishers affiliated with historic Protestant denominations, like Westminster John Knox, Augsburg, Fortress, and Abingdon. Fuller Seminary, Trinity Evangelical, and Gordon Conwell grew as academic counter-points to Union Seminary, Princeton Seminary, and Yale Divinity School. World Vision became an alternative to Church World Service. Religious journalists and magazines found themselves segmented into the Religion Newswriters Association and the Evangelical Press Association. Even the Bible itself has been subjected to this unbiblical division, with the NCC controlling the copyright of the Revised Standard Version (and now the New Revised Standard Version), and other alternatives like the New International Version, widely used in evangelical congregations, published by Zondervan. The theological differences between evangelical Christians and ecumenical Christians - and by “ecumenical” I mean, for this purpose, those often identified as “mainline” or sometimes “liberal” Protestants - have been frequently examined. But we often lose sight of the fact that this is a deeply institutionalized divide in the Christian world. Evangelical and ecumenical Christians live largely in separate organizational worlds that are reinforced by massive infrastructures developed over the past 60 years.

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These infrastructures extend globally. One of the successes of the ecumenical movement in the last 60 years, which often goes unrecognized, has been the establishment of local and national councils of churches throughout the world. These are a part of a whole infrastructure of ecumenical organizations, structures, councils, and agencies which have emerged during this time. Over a hundred national councils of churches are active, and many sponsor affiliated agencies. Often, these are a part of networks addressing needs for relief and development, as well as advocacy around issues of justice, peace, care for creation, human rights, HIV/AIDS, and similar concerns. Regional ecumenical organizations function in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, the Pacific, the Caribbean, and Europe. And at the global level, a number of Christian world communions attempt to draw together globally those from specific Christian traditions, such as the Lutheran World Federation, the World Communion of Reformed Churches, the World Methodist Council, the Baptist World Alliance, and many more. All of this constitutes a maze of often overlapping ecumenical organizations circling the globe, and relying heavily for funding from a relatively small group of agencies and churches in the global North. However, in nearly a parallel religious universe, a worldwide infrastructure of more evangelically oriented global institutions, mission organizations, relief and development agencies, and advocacy groups working on a similar agenda of issues (justice, peace, care of creation, human rights, HIV/AIDS, etc.), along with many national associations, function energetically. The Micah Network, for instance, links together about 550 evangelically based organizations, NGOs, local community development groups and others around the world in a strong advocacy campaign to hold governments accountable to the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals. The World Evangelical Alliance provides a network attempting to link together the diverse parts of this global evangelical infrastructure. The divide between the evangelical and ecumenical constituencies of Christianity will be sharply and globally visible in Korea in 2013 and 2014. In October 2013, the World Council of Churches will hold its 10th Assembly in Busan, Korea. Occurring about every seven years, this highest governing body of the WCC gathers delegates and visitors, totaling 2,000 to 3,000 people, from around the world as a major meeting of the conciliar ecumenical movement. Serious tensions have arisen within the churches of Korea over the hosting of the WCC Assembly, which reflect the same evangelical-ecumenical divide within that country. Ironically, and perhaps with intention, the World Evangelical Alliance will hold its General Assembly a year later in Seoul, Korea in 2014. This will gather thousands of evangelical leaders from around the world. Any overlap of those attending these two major global gatherings of Christians will be minimal. These two events a year apart, on the soil of a land where Christianity has experienced

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remarkable growth over the past century, magnify the depth of this modem divide and the barriers to the unity of Christ’s body. When I served on the staff of the World Council of Churches two decades ago as Director of Church and Society, one of the other roles given to me by General Secretary Emilio Castro was to chair the WCC’s “Task Force on Relationships with Evangelicals.” Attempting to carry out this assignment, I proposed arranging a dialogue with key WCC staff and the leadership of World Vision International. My initial obstacle was to convince my WCC colleagues that this would be a good and constructive thing to do. Some regarded World Vision as its main competitor, and even clung to old and discredited charges that it cooperated with the CIA. Bringing World Vision to the table required a trip from Geneva to Monrovia, California. It felt like a diplomatic challenge just to convene this conversation. But it did happen, with the initial dialogue in Geneva including representatives from the churches in the global South. Bridges began to be built. One comment from a church leader from Africa, who had dealt both with World Vision and agencies from the ecumenical world, lamented the effect of this division in the Christian world originating historically in the North and being exported to the global South. He cited an African proverb to summarize his view: “When two elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.” The past decade, however, has witnessed many new attempts to bridge this evangelical-ecumenical divide. Some evangelical and Pentecostal leaders have taken courageous steps to build fellowship and seek cooperation with those from the ecumenical world. Further, new initiatives and organizations have emerged allowing those from historic Protestant churches to pursue an ecumenical vision that is more intentionally inclusive of evangelicals and Pentecostals.

Christian Churches Together

Within the U.S., the most notable initiative toward bridging this divide has been Christian Churches Together (CCT). While some previous attempts existed to hold off-the-record, private discussions between diverse groups of U.S. church leaders, CCT emerged as a visible, organized fellowship including official representatives from the historic Protestant (“ecumenical”) churches, Orthodox churches, the Roman Catholic Church, historic Black Churches, and evangelical/Pentecostal churches and organizations. CCT began with a retreat of church leaders at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland in September 2001, hosted by Cardinal William Keeler. Evangelical leaders such as John Busby of the Salvation Army, Jim Wallis of Sojourners and Ron Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action were in attendance along with major representation from the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, the leadership of the NCC, and others. The vision of an expanded table of ecumenical fellowship, which never previously had existed in the U.S., was bom from that gathering.

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It took five years of careful cultivation, exploratory meetings, organizational planning, and quiet consultation before the leaders of 34 denominations and Christian organizations gathered at the Simpsonwood Conference and Retreat Center outside of Atlanta, Georgia in 2006 to officially constitute Christian Churches Together in the USA. By that time evangelical and Pentecostal participation had grown significantly, including the Evangelical Covenant Church, the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, Open Bible Churches, the Christian Reformed Church, Elim Fellowship, Association of Vineyard Churches, World Vision, and others. A year earlier, when those working to form CCT gathered at a Jesuit retreat center in Los Altos, California, voices began to raise questions over what this fellowship would and could actually do together. The experiences of gathering to overcome stereotypes, forming bonds of trust, worshiping and praying with one another, and discovering what we held in common, were enthusiastically embraced, often with surprise. But as Rich Stearns, then-President of World Vision, said at that meeting, “I feel like I’m on a cruise ship with people I really enjoy being with and getting to know; but I’m wondering - where are we going?” During these years of formation, CCT gatherings would include times of meeting in the “families” that formed the basis of how we organized ourselves historic Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, racial/ethnic (which became historic Black churches), and evangelical/Pentecostal. At the 2005 gathering, it was the evangelical/Pentecostal family that proposed for CCT to address the issue of poverty as its first outward action taken together. They believed that all the CCT participating churches and organizations could find common ground on a biblical response to the challenge of poverty, and also agree to a shared plan of action. Bringing this diverse body together on this issue was a bold vision, and it’s remarkable that the evangelical and Pentecostal leaders were the ones who first proposed it. It was a powerful sign of a growing willingness among a group of influential evangelicals to build new ecumenical relationships for the sake of common witness. Prominent among those leaders from the start was Ron Sider, in whose honor the essays in this book are being written. Sider was a key member and drafter in the working group assigned by the CCT Steering Committee to draft what became, first of all, a consensus Statement on Poverty.1 Working with staff persons from Sojourners, Bread for the World, the U.S. Catholic Conference, World Vision, and other CCT participants, the drafting team’s statement was adopted by CCT at its 2007 Annual Meeting, a year after this fellowship had become officially organized. Never had so wide and diverse a group of Christian churches and organizations made such a unified and clear declaration on the injustice of poverty and the imperative for action.

1 “Statement on Poverty.” Christian Churches Together. http://christianchurchestogether . org/statement-on-poverty/ (accessed 28.11.2012).

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More steps followed, again with Ron Sider and other evangelicals working closely with those from mainline Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and historic Black churches. (Only two historic Black churches had joined CCT, but these played an important role in the process, including Dr. William Shaw, thenPresident of the National Baptist Convention in the USA and a friend of Sider’s.) Focus was placed on how to implement the commitments made by CCT, particularly during the election year of 2008. This posed dilemmas for some church bodies in CCT who were committed to combating poverty but were sensitive to being perceived as too “political” in a presidential campaign year. However, at the CCT Annual Meeting in January 2009, which was held near Washington, D.C. shortly before the Inauguration of President Obama, all participants underscored this commitment. The report of that meeting stated, In the midst of the severe economic crisis that especially devastates the poorest both here and around the world, participants of Christian Churches Together (CCT) spent two days, January 14-15, 2009, strengthening and deepening our commitment to the goal of cutting poverty in the U.S. by 50% in the next ten years. We reaffirmed our unanimous conviction that our service to the poor and our work for justice are at the center of Christian life and witness.2

Leaders of CCT then met with high-ranking officials of the incoming Obama Administration to share CCT’s commitment and press for the new President to make a commitment to reduce domestic poverty by 50% in the coming decade. I well remember Rev. James Leggett, head of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, and other evangelicals joining with Dr. William Shaw, Catholic Bishops, and mainline Protestant leaders in a press conference emphasizing their joint commitment and actions to combat poverty. Just five years earlier this would have been hard to imagine. It’s fair to say that these cooperative steps may never have happened without the initiative taken by evangelicals early in the process of CCT’s formation.

Global Efforts On the global level there have been parallel developments. The 1998 WCC Assembly in Harare, Zimbabwe took steps seeking to establish a wider ecumenical space for bringing together divided parts of world Christianity. The WCC recognized that its composition, primarily from historic Protestant churches and communions from the Orthodox tradition, meant that the growing evangelical and Pentecostal communities throughout the world were remaining outside of its life. Decades of unfortunate suspicion and judgment between evangelical/Pentecostal communities and the WCC meant that this was unlikely

2 Christian Churches Together, Unpublished report of annual meeting (January 2009).

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to change any time in the near future. Further, the Catholic Church participated only as an observer with the WCC, not as a full member. Therefore a new space, independent from WCC’s governance, needed to be created to explore how to build relationships, trust, and fellowship between all the main families of world Christianity - Orthodox, Catholic, historic Protestant, and evangelical/Pentecostal. This is what gave rise to the Global Christian Forum. As this new body has emerged over the past 10 years, evangelical and Pentecostal leaders have played instrumental roles, constituting 50% of the participants at all of its major gatherings. Three such leaders from the U.S. and Canada should be noted - Cecil “Mel” Robeck, James Leggett, and Geoff Tunnicliffe. Robeck, who teaches church history at Fuller Theological Seminary, has long been a Pentecostal pioneer in building ecumenical bridges. Robeck has been like a modern John the Baptist in the Pentecostal world, trying to be the herald of new possibilities where the Spirit is opening relationships between Pentecostals and the wider church. Robeck’s participation in countless dialogue meetings has opened the way for some Pentecostal church leaders to take steps toward new ecumenical relationships. Mel was present at the initial discussions when the idea of the Global Christian Forum began to take shape. Since then he has continued as a strong supporter, interpreting Pentecostal history, theology, and practice to ecumenical partners. James Leggett has been one of the influential Pentecostal leaders in recent years who has played a strong role in establishing bonds of fellowship and trust with those in the traditional ecumenical world. Leggett became one of the presidents of CCT, representing the evangelical/Pentecostal family in that organization. He then attended the first global gathering of the Global Christian Forum in Limuru, Kenya in 2007. By Leggett’s own testimony, this proved to be an inspiring time, opening him to the gift of deep fellowship with Christians from a variety of other traditions. As President of the Pentecostal World Fellowship, Leggett’s support of the Global Christian Forum opened new avenues of relationship and cooperation. When the Pentecostal World Conference was held in Stockholm in 2010, Leggett took the unprecedented step of inviting the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, Olav Fykse Tviet, to come and give official greetings. This served as a significant gesture in continuing to address barriers and attitudes of mistrust, and build meaningful bonds of relationship across this divide. Geoff Tunnicliffe’s leadership of the World Evangelical Alliance has also been critical in bringing evangelical and ecumenical Christians together on a global level. Tunnicliffe and the WEA have been steadfast supporters of the Global Christian Forum. He and several members of the WEA’s leadership team played important roles both at the first world gathering of the GCF in Kenya in 2007. As an impressive gesture, the entire executive meeting of the WEA met at Limuru prior to the GCF meeting, enabling the wide participation of the WEA’s leadership in that event. Tunnicliffe and the WEA continued its supportive

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presence and then more recently at the GCF’s world gathering in Madano, Indonesia in October 2011. Today, 75% of all evangelicals live in the global South. A century ago, 75% were in the global North.3 This dramatic shift, reflecting the overall southward movement of global Christianity, means that global organizations like the WEA are far more attentive to the issues of economic and social injustice, as well as the suffering and persecution of parts of the church. This forms the context for the life and ministry of many evangelical churches in the southern hemisphere. Under Tunnicliffe’s leadership, WEA has become more responsive to these concerns and more cooperative with a diversity of Christian groups. Perhaps most dramatic was the release of the historic document on the ethics of Christian mission in the world entitled, “Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World: Recommendations for Conduct.”4 This was the fruit of five years of work between the WEA, the WCC, and the Vatican, and the resulting agreement was released at a press conference at the WCC’s headquarters in Geneva. More Work Needs to Be Done

Despite all these significant steps forward, however, serious barriers and obstacles continue to reinforce the evangelical-ecumenical divide. The largest Pentecostal bodies, such as the Assemblies of God, the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), and the Church of God in Christ, have not joined the fellowship of CCT. Major evangelical denominations, such as the Evangelical Free Church and many Baptist denominations also have remained on the ecumenical sidelines. And the National Association of Evangelicals has not exercised leadership in commending CCT and the Global Christian Forum as opportunities for its members to work for the unity of Christ’s body. Knowledge of fresh initiatives like CCT and the Global Christian Forum remains sparse within the evangelical and Pentecostal worlds. Important magazines like Christianity Today have shown little interest. While one can at least understand historically why Christianity Today has been critical and cautious toward the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches, it’s hard to comprehend why this magazine and other evangelical media are not endorsing CCT and the Global Christian Forum as places where evangelical and Pentecostal voices can find a respected and trusted home.

3 This shift has been well-documented by several scholars, including Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (New York et al.: Oxford University, 2011) and Todd M. Johnson and Kenneth L. Ross, Atlas of Global Christianity (Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University, 2010). 4 “Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World,” World Council of Churches, www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-programmes/interreligious-dialogueand-cooperation/christian-identity-in-pluralistic-societies/christian-witness-in-a-multireligious-world.html (accessed 28.11.2012).

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The dynamic I’ve observed is that Pentecostal and evangelical leaders from the global South often seem open and ready to build bridges of fellowship and cooperation with other Christian groups around specific issues of justice and human need. The growing presence and participation of such leaders in the Global Christian Forum has been a remarkable point of encouragement. But it has been far more difficult to secure the active engagement of some leading evangelical and Pentecostal leaders from the U.S. Many still seem more comfortable in the exclusive worlds where they function. Yet, there is no doubt that new bridges are being created to span the evangelical-ecumenical divide. Promising places of fellowship and trust are being created. This is beginning to result in common commitments and action on matters essential to Christian witness in today’s world. The leadership of evangelicals like Ron Sider and many others is beginning to erode the walls that have kept evangelical and ecumenical Christians harmfully divided from one another. Future years will see more initiatives and opportunities to bring the diverse parts of the Body of Christ into cooperation rather than competition. Evangelical and Pentecostal theology at the global level will continue to deepen the meaning of the transforming power of the gospel, not only for individuals but for the whole world, addressing the range of issues which must be confronted. Present ecumenical structures will become more open to expanding their fellowship to the diverse expressions of Christ’s body. Such steps are the only way forward if, in fact, we all mean what we pray: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Evangelicals and Catholics: A Century of Common Witness \1.

John Borelli

A Century to Think About In 1927, Protestant theologian and church leader Otto Dibelius published Das Jahrhundert der Kirche, “the century of the church.”1 Dibelius was happily drawing attention to the freedom of the church from the state that German Protestants were enjoying in the post-World War I era. For too long, German Protestant churches had been excessively entangled with the German state to develop their own authentic role in society. Of course, over too was the era of kulturkampf, the legacy of Bismarck’s culture war against the Catholic Church. Dibelius was overly optimistic with his thesis in the short-term in 1926 but decidedly prophetic in the long term. Dibelius lived to see the kirchenkampf, the struggle among Protestant churches for integrity during the Third Reich (1933-45), and became active in the Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche). It was no easy struggle to maintain freedom from the Nazi state. He later signed the “Stuttgart Declaration,” a confession of guilt in 1945 and was active in the ecumenical movement, serving as the first German president of the World Council of Churches (WCC). When the Confessing Church came into being in 1934, during those foreboding days of Nazi ascendancy, it declared itself to represent the only legitimate German Evangelical Church, and proclaimed a theological declaration whose starkly worded six “evangelical truths” rejected the false doctrine that the church should or could claim for itself the task of the state as an organ of the state.1 2 This claim comes from the theological declaration known as the “Barmen Declaration,” and in actuality its six evangelical truths were stated first positively and then as rejections. Space does not allow even a listing of all six points, each

1 Berlin: Furche-Verlag, 1927; see Aven Dulles, “A Half Century of Ecclesiology,” Theological Studies 50 (1989): 419; Joseph A. Komonchak, Foundations in Ecclesiology, Supplementary Issue of the Lonergan Workshop Journal, Vol. 11, Boston College, 1995, 3. 2 Klauspeter Blaser, “Confessing Church,” in Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, edited by Nicholas Lossky, Jose Miguez Bonino, John Pobee, Thomas F. Stransky, Geoffrey Wainwright and Pauline Webb (Geneva, Switzerland: WCC, 2002), 238.

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preceded by scriptural passages and then followed by a statement and a rejection. One can find the six evangelical truths in many places in print or on the Internet.3 Importantly for its power and strength as a statement of churchmen, the Barmen Declaration was forged during a period of serious conflict with the state and took considerable courage on the part of church leaders. In spite of the situation they faced, they could state positively in their third truth: “[the Church] has to testify in the midst of the sinful world, as the Church of pardoned sinners, that it belongs to him [Jesus Christ] alone and lives and may live by his comfort and under his direction alone, in expectation of his appearing.” In so stating, they rejected “the false doctrine that the Church could have permission to hand over the form of its message and of its order to whatever it itself might wish or to the vicissitudes of the prevailing ideological and political convictions of the day.” In defiance of the Nazi slogan that the present Reich would endure one thousand years, they concluded their declaration with the Latin statement, “ Verbum Dei manet in aetemum” - the Word of God will last forever. Richard Mouw, then-President of Fuller Theological Seminary, speaking to the annual gathering of the National Workshop on Christian Unity in 2006, offered these points in a listing to describe evangelicals to his audience of Catholic and Protestant ecumenists. Mouw used the terms, “conversionists,” biblicists,” “crucicists,” and “activists,” to denote respectively the personal experience of a relationship with Jesus Christ, holding the Bible as the supreme authority, emphasizing the atoning blood of Christ in a cross-centered spirituality, and stressing the necessity of doing something for God.4 Similarly, the evangelical participants, in a series of dialogues between a delegation appointed by the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity of the Vatican (SPCU) and representatives of evangelical churches and organizations, provided a longer listing of theological convictions for their self-definition that included, “the inspiration and authority of the Bible... and its supremacy over the traditions of the Church... the inward work of the Holy Spirit to bring about the new birth and to transform the regenerate into the likeness of Christ.”5 The Catholic participants did not give a parallel self-definition, but instead they spoke of how the recent Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), twenty-first

3The Barmen Declaration is available in published form and on the Internet. It seems appropriate to draw attention to the Beeson Divinity School website: www.beesondivinitv .com/thetheologicaldeclarationofbarmen (accessed 12.7.2012). 4 Mouw’s address was on May 9, 2006 in San Jose, CA, and I am using my notes and also the notes of Thomas Ryan, C.S.P., Koinonia, the Paulist Office for Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations, 22 (Summer 2006). 5 The Report of the Evangelical-Roman Catholic Dialogue on Mission, 1977-1984, can be found in published form in Growth in Agreement II, edited by Jeffrey Gros, FSC, Harding Meyer, William G. Rusch (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000) 399-437. It can also be found on the Website of the Centro Pro Unione, www.prounione.urbe.it/dia-int/erc/doc/e_e-rc_ev-cath.html (accessed 12.7.2012). The self-description of the evangelical participants in this dialogue with the Vatican can be found in the “Introduction.”

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in the Catholic Church’s listing of ecumenical and general councils of the West, redefined mission in such a way to include a commitment to form relationships with other Christians for cooperation in joint witness and for greater unity. Here is what the Catholic participants agreed to declare about themselves as a result of the renewal of attention toward scripture and toward mission that considers Christian unity: “Here indeed are the elements which have enabled Roman Catholics to acknowledge common ground with other Christians, and to assume their own responsibility for overcoming divisions for the sake of the mission of God and the fullness of his glory.” The Call to Cooperation

It is obvious by now how Dibelius’ book in 1927 was prophetic in the long run, published fifty years before the Evangelical-Roman Catholic Dialogue on Mission that convened in 1977 at the highly visible level of a dialogue with the Vatican. Dibelius foretold the unfolding ecumenical movement. He had served as an usher or page at the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910, which effused with exalted ambitions and a confident mood of missionary expansion.6 The conference was entitled, “The Third Ecumenical Missionary Conference,” though it was seriously limited in scope.7 There were no Catholics and very few others who were not Protestants from the North Atlantic world. The meeting retains its place in ecumenical history because a few far-sighted participants became pioneers in the modern ecumenical movement of the twentieth century. They realized that church division was being propagated along with the gospel. If you pray with fervor the prayer of Jesus in John 17:21, it becomes necessary to remedy this disunity, “so that the world may believe.” Historian Brian Stanley notes that after Edinburgh those who call themselves conservative evangelicals today would stand aside from, “the more inclusive ecumenical cooperation in mission that the Edinburgh Conference initiated.”8 No one talked of “church unity” at Edinburgh in a way that pointed towards reconciliation and table fellowship, for the differences preventing such unity were too nuanced and too distinctive. Dibelius was a full-fledged participant in the Life and Works conference in Stockholm in 1925 and attended the first Faith and Order conference in Lausanne in 1927, the same year that he published his book. World missionary interests were developing separately from the clearly ecumenical streams although the

6 Brian Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 6. 7 Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, 10-11: “It was a decidedly Protestant and broadly evangelical gathering, the principal exceptions being those amongst the thirty-five members of the High Church Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) who would have regarded themselves as Anglo-Catholic rather than Protestant....” 8 Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, 323.

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missionary conferences would later flow back several years after World War II in 1961 into some sort of coordination through the WCC. By then, absent from the missionary conferences would be the representatives of today’s evangelicals. Evangelical Christians who were ecumenically concerned at an early phase of the twentieth century remained so, despite not participating in structures leading to greater unity. In 1974, almost three thousand evangelicals from 150 countries agreed to “The Lausanne Covenant,” which reissued a call for cooperation with the same caution towards ecumenical structures: “We recognize... that organizational unity may take many forms and does not necessarily forward evangelism. Yet we who share the same biblical faith should be closely united in fellowship, work and witness.”9 A similar caution for human efforts of organization was harbored by Catholic officials through much of the first half of the twentieth century. Early in 1928 and in response to the Faith and Order meeting in Lausanne in 1927, Pope Pius XI issued his encyclical, Mortalium Animos, invoking the zeal of Catholic bishops to avoid the evil of attempts at unity by “pan-Christians.”1011 This was not new for American Catholics whose bishops had received a letter from Pope Leo XIII more than 30 years earlier in 1895, expressing grave concern that several bishops and Catholic leaders had participated in the public programs of the Parliament of Religions held in 1893 in conjunction with the Chicago Exposition. Pope Leo advised them not to participate any longer in “assemblies to which both Catholics and those who dissent from the Catholic Church come promiscuously to discuss together religion and morals.”" By the late 1920s, the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), forerunner of today’s U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), was on sure footing and addressed questions of coordination on common concerns among Catholics and also offering some representation to the appropriate offices of the federal government. Bishops continued to pull both the 1895 and the 1928 papal letters out of their files well into the beginnings of World War II when religious and denominational officials pressed bishops, and especially the bishop

9 “The Lausanne Covenant,” in New Directions in Mission and Evangelization 1, eds. James A. Scherer and Stephen B. Bevans (Man knoll, NY: Orbis, 1992) 256. 10 “Mortalium Animos,” Acta Apostolicae Sedis 20 (1928) 5-16; but easily available in translation on the Vatican Website: www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/ documents/hf_p-xi_enc_l9280106_mortalium-animos_en.html (accessed 7.13.2012). 11 Letter to Archbishop Satolli, 18 September 1895, Leonis XIII Acta 14, 323-324; see Francis J. Connell, “Pope Leo XIIl’s Message to America,” American Ecclesiastical Review 109, 4 (October 1943), 244-256; James F. Clean , “Catholic Participation in the World’s Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 1893,” The Catholic Historical Review 55, 4 (January 1970), 585-609.

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leadership of the NCWC, to make joint statements. Catholic bishops were willing to allow joint actions, but they remained reluctant to make joint statements.12 After the war, Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox ecumenical leaders finally brought the WCC into being in 1948. A little over a year later in 1949, though not made public until 1950, the Vatican’s Holy Office, predecessor to today’s Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued an advisory, Ecclesia Cattolica, judiciously reminding Catholic bishops that such efforts at unity, “although inspired by the best of intentions, and even when sprung from sound principles... do not avoid besetting particular dangers, as past experience has shown.”13 The Holy Office’s Instruction did allow new exceptions, conceding that local bishops could appoint trustworthy and sufficiently educated priests to attend ecumenical meetings as observers, because there was evidence that the Holy Spirit was at work in the desire to restore unity and in the prayers for God to bring unity to Christians. The fact that many Christians prayed for unity and joined in prayer fellowship for unity was evidence of the working of the Holy Spirit. The ecumenical movement was beginning to make sense, and the longer the Catholic Church remained on the sidelines, the more it risked loss of credibility. Vatican II and Christian Unity As this essay is written in 2012 to honor an esteemed evangelical leader, scholar, and activist during the latter half of the century of ecumenism and into a new century of common witness, Catholics are celebrating the jubilee, the fiftieth anniversary, of the Second Vatican Council. Pope John XXIII announced on January 25, 1959 that he was going to convene a council to the surprise of everyone. He first mentioned it privately to the heads of the offices of the Roman Curia at the conclusion of what we call today “the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.” Fr. Thomas Stransky, a Paulist Father who served on the staff of the original Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity (SPCU),14 has shown that as early as that magical year of 1927 the future Pope John XXIII (then-Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, first Vatican diplomat to Bulgaria) realized the pressing need to reach out in charity to other Christians to return to unity.15 Thus, on January 25, 12 See Earl Boyea, The National Catholic Welfare Conference: An Experience in Episcopal leadership, 1935-1945, Ph.D. Thesis, Catholic University of America, 1987, 287. 13 Acta Apostolicae Sedis 42 (1950) 143; English translation taken from Instruction on the Ecumenical Movement, Unit}' Studies 1, Commentary by Rev. William Conway (Garrison, NY: Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, 1954), 3. 14 The SPCU came into being as a preparatory commission for the Second Vatican Council or Vatican II. 15 Tom Stransky, “John XXIII 1881-1963,” in Ecumenical Pilgrims: Profiles of Pioneers in Christian Reconciliation, eds. Ion Bria and Dagmar Heller (Geneva, Switzerland: WCC, 1995), 114. Fr. Stransky is also a pioneer in Catholic-Evangelical relations during his ten

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1959, Pope John XXIII mentioned his intentions to call a council that included an ecumenical purpose to be of service “not only for the spiritual good and joy of the Christian people but also an invitation to the separated communities to seek again that unity for which so many souls are longing in these days throughout the world.”16 Remarkably, there were delegated observers, mostly Protestants, through all four sessions of Vatican II.17 Protestant, Orthodox, and Anglican guests at the first session (Fall 1962) were 53 in number, and by the end of the fourth session in 1965, the total number was 182. Although many of these would consider themselves “evangelical,” in how the term was understood at Edinburgh or in some other fashion, only a handful of these nearly 200 observers and guests were evangelicals in today’s use of the term.18 The SPCU had negotiated their attendance, staffed them, and received their comments on the work of the council. It was one of the most successful commissions of Vatican II producing on its own three of the most contested statements of the council - the Decree on Christian Unity, the Declaration on Religious Liberty, and the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions — and assisting with the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation. In all, one quarter or four of the sixteen documents of the council were the responsibility of the Secretariat advised, as it was, by Protestant delegated observers and guests. At numerous times, the observers and guests found ways to remind many of the 2500 bishops (or fathers of the council or their consulters or staff) that

years at the Secretariat in Rome (1960-1970) and through the several projects and volumes, often in partnership with Gerald H. Andersson. See their volume, Christ’s Lordship and Religious Pluralism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1981). 16 L’Osservatore Romano, January' 26/27, 1959. See also: Acta Apostolicae Sedis 51 (1959) 69; commented on by Stransky, “The Foundation of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity,” 62. Please note that it was unusual, if not historic, that a pope would personally close the church unity octave, as Pope John did in 1959; hence, not all the cardinals living in Rome chose to attend and did not hear the announcement that Pope John made privately in the sacristy afterwards to those who attended but read about it the next morning in the newspapers. With regard to Edinburgh 1910, there was one communication by a Catholic leader to the conference, Bishop Geremia Bonomelli of Cremona, Italy. To read more about the remarkable message of Bonomelli to the missionary conference and his relationship with Giuseppe Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, see: Joan Delaney, M.M., “From Cremona to Edinburgh,” The Ecumenical Review 52: 3 (July 2000), 418-431. 17 The best single volume account of Vatican II is John W. O’Malley, S.J., What Happened at Vatican //(Boston, MA: Harvard University', 2008). 18 Among these would be Oscar Hoffmann, Carl Meyer and Walter Wolbrecht (Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod), the Baptist Stanley Stuber, and Pentecostal David du Plessis of the Assemblies of God. See: Thomas F. Stransky, “Paul VI and the Delegated Observers/Guests to Vatican II,” in Paolo VI e L ’Ecumenismo, Colloquio Internazionale di Studio, Brescia, 25-26-27 settembre 1998, Pubblicatione dellTstituto Paolo VI, 23 (Brescia, Italy: Istituto Paolo VI, 2001), 118-158.

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ecumenism did not involve a return to the Catholic Church.19 They also made clear that the Decree on Ecumenism should not speak of a “Catholic ecumenism” but rather “Catholic principles for ecumenism” since the ecumenical movement is one just as the church is one. They also watched closely that the Secretariat’s Declaration on Religious Liberty was written in such a way that Catholics would support religious liberty for all religious communities. No statement of cooperation and partnership towards unity would seem genuine without an accompanying support for religious liberty. Karl Barth was prevented by poor health from accepting the invitation of the Secretariat to be its guest for the fourth session in the fall of 1965, but he did manage to come to Rome in September 1966 for five days of conversations. His visit included a meeting with Pope Paul VI, who had resumed the work after the death of John XXIII, in June 1963, and shepherded the council to a successful conclusion in December 1965.20 The last draft of the Decree on Ecumenism said this about separated Protestant churches of the west: “As the Holy Spirit moves them, they find in these very Scriptures God speaking to them in Christ.” This is the draft that had received a final vote from the assembly of bishops. Historians of Vatican II speak of the majority, usually around 1700 or more voting bishops and council fathers, and a minority, never more than 300 negative votes. Vatican II brought considerable change for Catholics, for example, in its development of an ecumenical view towards other Christians and in its endorsement of religious liberty. Pope Paul VI was sensitive to how considerable these changes were felt by not a few who held high offices in the church. With regard to ecumenism, he heard the final pleas of the minority, and reduced all but one to verbal improvements to the draft. That remaining one objection pertained to that particular statement on Scripture.21 With Pope Paul’s intervention, this sentence in the Decree in the end read this way: “While invoking the Holy Spirit, they seek in these very Scriptures God as He speaks in Christ.” In his commentary, Stransky points out that, “the changed text... does not mean that when one reads the Bible he in no way finds God therein and is in no way assisted by the Holy Spirit.”22 He makes the point, which

19 The voting participants or “Council Fathers” were nearly all bishops with every' bishop of the Catholic Church at the time invited to participate. A few heads of religious orders and abbots were also counted among the voting fathers. The various commissions were composed of these fathers along with scholars or experts (periti). In addition, individual bishops could appoint their own experts, taking care of their costs, and making them available if the commissions needed their expertise. In addition, there were the staff members of the various offices and commissions. Not only with other Christians among the invited guests, there were Catholics too, including 23 women auditors. 20 Karl Barth, Ad Limina Apostolorum, An Appraisal of Vatican II, trans. Keith Crim (Richmond, VA: John Knox, 1968). 21 Thomas F. Stransky, C.S.P., The Decree on Ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council, A New Translation by the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity with a Commentary (Glen Rock, NJ: Paulist, 1965), 10-12. 22 Stransky, The Decree on Ecumenism, 79.

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Pope Paul VI had made too, that engagement with the Holy Scriptures is never static but always communicating; we are always searching for God speaking through Christ. Astute readers will see that lurking in the background is the old problem between Catholics and Protestants regarding Scripture and Tradition. The Secretariat, with the assistance of the Protestant observers and guests, also worked on the text on divine revelation in which we read in its sixth chapter, “In the sacred books the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children and talks with them.” We also see this passage on Scripture and Tradition in paragraph 24 of the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: Sacred theology relies on the written Word of God, taken together with the sacred Tradition, as on a permanent foundation. By this Word it is most firmly strengthened and constantly rejuvenated, as it searches out, under the light of faith, the full truth stored up in the mystery of Christ. The Sacred Scriptures contain the Word of God, and, because they are inspired, they are truly the Word of God. Therefore, the “study of the sacred page” should be the ven soul of sacred theology . (Cf. Leo XIII, Encycl. Providentissimus'. EB 114; Benedict XV, Encycl. Spiritus Paraclitus: EB 483.) The ministry of the Word, too - pastoral preaching, catechetics and all forms of Christian instruction, among which the liturgical homily should hold pride of place - is healthily nourished and thrives in holiness through the Word of Scripture.2324

Vatican II did not settle the question of Scripture and Tradition, but it brought Catholics closer to evangelicals with regard to Scripture. Vatican II accomplished something else which undeniably has brought Catholics and evangelicals closer together, namely, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World}4 This was the final document of Vatican II that represented a major reversal of the Catholic Church’s refusal to address the modern world in any positive way since the French Revolution. For much of that time, U.S. Catholics, for example, often lived as insular communities, much like the withdrawal of evangelicals from prominent engagement in public life since certain reversals in their public views in the first decades of the twentieth century. As the ecumenical movement was mounting interest among historic Protestant and other churches, Catholics and evangelicals remained on the sidelines. This non-involvement ended in an official way for Catholics with the documents and spirit of Vatican II. The final constitution of Vatican II made a strong case for public witness for peace and justice.

23 Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_ councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_l 9651118_dei-verbum_en.html (accessed 4.4.2013). 24 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, http://www.vatican.va/ archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_ 19651207 gaudium-etspes_en.html (accessed 4.4.2013).

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It is worth drawing attention at this point to “The Chicago Declaration,” which Ron Sider described this way: “The Chicago Declaration... indicates that biblical repentance and conversion will entail confession of and turning away from all types of sin, and faithful discipleship will involve confronting social and economic injustice just as much as, say, individual acts of adultery or theft.”25 In 1973, less than a decade after Vatican II concluded with “The Church in the Modern World,” evangelicals in the United States were taking a similar stand. The similarity was clear in the commitment to social justice, as Sider summarized: “Biblical Christians will challenge and oppose the rampant racism, economic exploitation, and militarism of America and the world.”26 But similar to Vatican Il’s Decree on Ecumenism, which states in paragraph 7, “There can be no ecumenism worthy of the name without interior conversion,”27 Sider asked, “Are we not unbiblical if the first and constant component of our social action is not passionate, intercessory prayer that the Lord of the universe will use our efforts as he wills for the sake of justice?”28

Evangelicals and Catholics in Conversation for Action

Catholic authors have already written scholarly reflections on how evangelicals and Catholics have found ways to cooperate and come into dialogue in sound ecumenically and socially responsible ways.29 I need not repeat what they have covered. There have been numerous projects in the past twenty-five years through which Catholics and evangelicals have come into dialogue and have laid aside, at least individually, many of the false understandings of each other. Ecumenical work is gradual by definition, and history has proven that it takes considerably more time and effort to bring communities back together than it took for them to split apart. For example, thirty-one years of concerted efforts between Catholics and Lutherans finally brought them together in a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.30 Other dialogues have not been so

25 Ronald J. Sider, “An Historic Moment,” in The Chicago Declaration (Carol Stream, IL: Creation House, 1974), 30. 26 Sider, “An Historic Moment,” 39. 27 The Decree on Ecumenism, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_ council/documents/vat-ii_decree_l 964112 l_unitatis-redintegratio_en.html (accessed 4.4.2013). 28 Sider, “An Historical Moment,” 39. 29 See for example, Catholics and Evangelicals, Do They Share A Common Future? ed. Thomas P. Rausch (New York, NY: Paulist, 2000), or more recently, Jeffrey Gros, FSC, “Evangelical-Roman Catholic International Dialogue: Opening New Frontiers,” in Celebrating a Century of Ecumenism, Exploring the Achievements of International Dialogue, ed. John A. Radano (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012). 30 John A. Radano, Lutheran & Catholic Conciliation on Justification (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009.

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fruitful. Baptists and Catholics reached only minimal agreement on a list of terms applicable to scriptural study.3132 However, social justice problems cannot wait. Ecumenical cooperation allows common cause for social justice, and when it is done correctly and respectfully, commitment to serving others in witness to the revelation of Christ and commitment to ending disunity are both served. This is generally the case behind the six year effort known as, “Catholics and Evangelicals for the Common Good,” in which Ron Sider has been involved from the start. An exploratory meeting to determine the possibilities for a dialogue was held on March 24, 2006, at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. Discussions included reflections on two major documents: (1) The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (2004), collected and issued by the Vatican Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and (2) “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility,” unanimously adopted in 2004 as the official policy of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). “For the Health of the Nation” was studied within the context of a volume that Sider had co-edited with the late Diane Knippers, Toward an Evangelical Public PolicyfX few who attended that gathering began meeting within six months to discuss how a dialogue on the common good and public policy might be constructed. Efforts were made to involve as much as possible two leading officials, one from the USCCB and one from the NAE. The project was academic in character bringing Catholic and evangelical scholars together, enjoyed sponsorship and support of the Presidents of Georgetown University and Eastern University respectively, and mostly followed the method of presentations and papers to provide rationale and strategy for greater Catholic-Evangelical cooperation. A vision statement, finalized in 2009 offered this focused summary: By drawing from our shared traditions in Christian social ethics, Catholics and evangelicals can remind Americans that the common good is more important than individual self-interest. This group is especially interested in conveying this common vision of religious faith and the common good to a future generation based upon principles of engagement in public life that flow from our religious traditions as well as the heritage of American democracy and in discerning specific ways that Catholics and evangelicals can now cooperation on specific sets of issues affecting the common good.33

31 “Report on Sacred Scripture,” Southern Baptist-Roman Catholic Conversation, 1999, in Growing Consensus II, eds. Lydia Veliko and Jeffrey Gros, FSC (Washington, D.C.: USCCB, 2005), 334-338. 32 Ronald J. Sider and Diane Knippers, Eds. Toward an Evangelical Public Policy (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005). 33 This statement entitled, “Evangelical/Catholic Dialogue on the Common Good,” was never published, but in addition to the Vision portion, the rest of it reads, Background

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Pastor Rick Warren and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick co-convened a meeting of 24 participants in April 2008 at Georgetown University Law Center. Papers were presented on theological foundations for cooperation, political engagement, and American history. A third meeting in March 2009 at Eastern University focused on poverty, sanctity of human life, and immigration. Participants were ready to agree to a consensus statement that their co-conveners would present to the public. A committee drawn from the participants in the dialogue prepared a consensus statement in the form of an op-ed editorial to be submitted to a major national newspaper in time for Christmas 2009. The final text never appeared and the circumstances necessary for a public announcement never did materialize. The dialogue met again in 2010, 2011, and 2012. At the end of the final meeting, a public program was held in which four participants reflected on the work, “Catholics and Evangelicals for the Common Good.” A broadcast of the panel is available.34 Returning to the draft prepared for publication but never published by members of the dialogue, one can find some encouraging points of consensus. The participants could agree that, “the Lord we share says we will be judged by how we treat ‘the least of these.’” While they acknowledged that, “theological disagreements on important matters, of course, remain; yet, Catholics and Many Catholics and Evangelicals have reflected on an increasing convergence of views on issues of public policy. They believe the time is right for serious exploration of how they can work together more closely to discuss a common framework and to contribute to the common good of our nation. Both communities have grappled with the implications of their Christian witness in recent important theological statements on public policy. For example, in 2002, an International Consultation between the Catholic Church and the World Evangelical Alliance submitted its report of a series of meetings from 1993, “Church, Evangelization and the Bonds of Koinonia.” Other examples would include cooperation between Saddleback Church, where Rick Warren is founding pastor, and Catholic organizations on various projects in Africa. Although Catholics and Evangelicals have been meeting and cooperating, participants and their institutions continue to explore ways for them to speak and act together in ways that are authentic and representative of their larger communities. Purpose Summoned by a commitment to justice and the common good, a small group of Catholics and Evangelicals have formed as a dialogue group to promote religious cooperation on public policy and strengthening the institutions of civil society. They share a framework of respect for the dignity of the human person and support for human rights and religious freedom to study together issues relating to human life and domestic poverty and believe also that other topics, such as issues related to immigration, should be studied together as well, for cooperation and action. 34 The web host for Catholics and Evangelicals for the Common Good is the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs at Georgetown University. A video of the panel that concluded the dialogue can be viewed at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=_L23kaxNUnk (accessed 12.13.2012).

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evangelicals increasingly acknowledge a common commitment to social justice, rooted in recognition of the value of the life, dignity and rights of every human being.” Their faith told them that, “all life is precious to God, no matter how humble or broken, whether unborn or dying,” and that the sanctity of life does not exhaust the agenda of human dignity, but it is essential to it.” They concurred, “that access to health care for all is essential to safeguard human life and dignity, that health care must honor human life, that society has a moral obligation to assist those most in need, especially women in trouble and children in poverty, and that the law should protect the weakest.” They drew attention to “a consistent agenda of human life and dignity” that “requires priority for the poor and oppressed.” This means that “those at the bottom of economic life have a compelling claim on our consciences and society.” Taking on yet another compelling and controversial issue, they invoked the biblical presentation of how, “a Savior who was a refugee in Egypt does not allow Christians the options of indifference, hostility or prejudice toward those seeking a better life, whatever their legal status.”

Conclusion

After a century of ecumenism, polarity remains but somewhat re-configured. One hundred years ago, Catholics and evangelicals were very much apart from one another due to the vicissitudes of post-Reformation history. In the best scenarios, like the United States, Catholics and evangelicals worked together in society, fought together in wars, and contributed in coin and cooperation towards charity. They knew one another as neighbors and associates but less as believing Christians; old stereotypes, negative attitudes, and misunderstanding rose to the surface quickly when irritations called them forth. Because of a century of ecumenism, which in its latter-day form, includes equal commitments to social justice and cooperation, evangelicals and Catholics find themselves more and more together in faith and action, sharing a desire “that the world may believe” through their increasing unity and passion “to inherit the kingdom” of justice and service to those in need.

18. Civil Discourse

Heidi Unruh

The wise of heart is called perceptive, and pleasant speech increases persuasiveness. (Proverbs 16:21)

The call to civility extends to every realm of fractured relationships, from marital discord to cyber bullying to interfaith strife. This chapter addresses civility in public policy discourse, which takes several forms, including advocacy (e.g., a petition in support of a specific policy), commentary (e.g., an article analyzing a political issue), and campaigning (e.g., an ad on behalf of a particular candidate). Discourse can be as formal as a televised debate or as informal as a Facebook exchange. As public policy advocacy and analysis have been central to ESA’s mission, Ron Sider’s writings model the value of civility in crafting a public witness that honors Jesus Christ. Understanding Civility

Like many virtues, civility is easier to define by pointing out its opposites: name­ calling, obscenities, ad hominem attacks, derision, incendiary rhetoric and symbols, groundless accusations, hate speech,1 and false, exaggerated, or intentionally misleading claims.1 2 Incivility can also take the form of interfering with others’ speech, such as shouting down a speaker or hacking a website. At worst, incivility devolves from speech to threats and violence. Civility is marked first by a gracious and judicious restraint that curbs these hostile traits; secondly by a willingness to listen and respond to others in a way that promotes understanding; and finally by openness to admit one’s own potential for error. James Calvin Davis, author of In Defense of Civility, describes it as “the exercise of patience, integrity, humility and mutual respect in civil

1 Hate speech is defined as speech that disparages or intimidates a person or group on the basis of race, religion, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or other group characteristic. John Nockleby, “Hate Speech,” in Encyclopedia of the American Constitution, eds. Leonard Levy and Kenneth Karst, vol. 3. 2nd ed. (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2000), 1277-1279. 2 See the list of characteristics of uncivil speech in Toni Massaro and Robin Stry ker, “Freedom of Speech, Liberal Democracy, and Emerging Evidence on Civility and Effective Democratic Engagement,” Arizona Law Review v. 54 (2012), 409.

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conversation, even (or especially) with those with whom we disagree.”3 This mutual respect acknowledges a common right to participate in public dialogue, independent of the merits of what is being said. The Latin root civilis, from which also flow civilization and citizenship, implies that we are all inescapably part of a commonwealth, and that individuals bear responsibility for the public dimensions of their speech and actions. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.” Thus civility is more than skin-deep politeness. It arises from a fundamental desire to promote the common good (even at the expense of short-term personal gain), and the core belief that vigorous but respectful dialogue is essential to this process. Throughout his career as a writer and speaker, Ron Sider has upheld the ideal of civil discourse while resisting the tug of relativism that equates civility with tolerance. According to this cultural current, moral judgments are inherently offensive and discriminatory, and questioning the validity of another’s position is equivalent to personal attack. Yet civility becomes meaningless if it is confused with simply being nice or avoiding conflict. Some “make the mistake in believing that civility is the antithesis of passionately held principles, passionately expressed. ... Too often, those who tell us to ‘tone down the arguments’ simply want the arguments themselves to go away.”4 But too much is at stake to be bland. Civil discourse in pursuit of the common good must dive into tough issues and say hard things. Sider is well known for his provocative questions and bold proclamations. For example, his writings repeatedly claim that Jesus says people who neglect the poor are going to hell. Yet Sider has never publicly pointed a finger at anyone as hell-bound; he lets his audience infer their own judgment. His confrontations are coupled with pleas for repentance and renewal. His article daringly titled, “Are Evangelicals Going to Hell?” closes with this word of encouragement: “Let’s ask Christ to change us so we share [God’s] love.” 5 As Sider has modeled, we can and ought to uphold moral standards that call people to account. We ought to challenge ideas that are destructive or inaccurate - as long as we do so respectfully, truthfully, and humbly. 3 James Calvin Davis, In Defense of Civility: How Religion Can Unite America on Seven Moral Issues That Divide Us (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 2010), 159. For definitions of civil discourse see also Mark Kingwell, A Civil Tongue: Justice, Dialogue, and the Politics of Pluralism (State College, PA: Penn State, 1995); Russell Dilday, Higher Ground: A Call for Christian Civility (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2007); and Richard Mouw, Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World (Downers Grove, IL: I VP, 2010). 4 Peter Wehner, “Some Thoughts on Civility,” Commentary (14 January 2011), www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/01/14/some-thoughts-on-civility/. All online resources were accessed 11.12.2012 unless otherwise noted. 5 Ronald J. Sider, “Are Evangelicals Going To Hell? (Or: Do We Believe What Jesus Said?),” PRISM, http://issuu.com/prismmagazine/docs/areevangelicalsgoingto .

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In the civic arena, the presentation of the message matters as well as its meaning. It is possible, though not easy, to criticize others without vilifying them. Gabriel Salguero comments on this balancing act: Christian prophets must embody paradox to minister to all sides while standing on their convictions, specifically the paradox of combining empathy and compassion with zeal and passion. ... For instance, many of the Hebrew prophets reflected love for the people even as they denounced their sin and injustice. This paradox is not easy to balance; most modern-day prophets are all zeal and no compassion. A call to civility is not an excuse to ignore and obviate injustice but rather a call to denounce injustice and provide just alternatives.6

Just as the prophets sometimes used bizarre or even disturbing methods to convey the urgency of their message, “civil” need not be synonymous with insipid or tame in our political discourse today. Creativity inspires effective communication. Yet civility can easily get lost in the grey area between innovative and offensive, between intrepid and tactless, between artistic and tacky. This ambiguity suggests that civility is not so much a code of behavior as it is an attitude. For example, ESA attracted controversy for its use of sexually graphic images in its coverage of pornography and human trafficking in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Prism magazine. Yet such topics should violate our moral sensibilities. In such a context it is hoped that readers’ reaction to the imagery will fuel their activism. On the other hand, if we prioritize an image’s shock value over its potential to be a stumbling block for readers, we are guilty of incivility. Another example is a famous speech by Tony Campolo in which he pointed out to his audience that they were more upset at his use of a swear word than by the fact that poverty and disease kill thousands of children daily.7 Causing offense is not necessarily uncivil, especially when it unmasks sin in the offended party; but it should also lead the speaker to question their own motives. Another misconception of civility is that it leads to conformity. While civilis presupposes pursuit of the common good, this is not to be confused with a futile quest for unity in the public square. Civility does not mean glossing over our differences as we skip down a path to social harmony. Rather, by clearing away distractions and falsehoods, civil discourse casts our true differences in sharper relief. Again, attitude matters: Are we clarifying differences in order to improve dialogue and arrive at better ideas, or are we exploiting differences in order to support one side by tearing down the other? Given that diversity is inevitable,

6 Gabriel Salguero, “Prophetic Civility and the Huntington Thesis,” The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good (19 September 2010), www.newevangelical partnership.org/?q=node/68. Ted Olsen, “The Positive Prophet,” Christianity Today (1 January 2003), www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/january/l.32.html.

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civil discourse offers “a constructive middle way between seething aggression and resigned passivity.”8 Note that a civil approach does not always translate to a moderate position on an issue; nor are moderates always civil. Moderate points of view should be advanced by persuasion, rather than by dismissing alternate perspectives as too radical. Political labels have insufficient substance to replace discourse. In some circles ESA’s opposition to same-sex marriage is critiqued as quite reactionary; in others, ESA’s promotion of a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unacceptably radical. Regardless of its place in the political spectrum, ESA aims to offer a vigorous defense of the merits of its position while engaging other voices with respect. Finally, in certain circumstances, civil may not always mean legal. Civil disobedience may in fact be viewed as a special case of civil discourse.9 When normal channels of political speech and action alone fail to correct a significant injustice, and when obedience to the state means complicity with this injustice or when disobedience to a law creates an opportunity to instigate awareness or reform, then one may offer one’s own body as a declaration of resistance. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “We should meet others’ capacity for inhumanity with our humanity.”1011 In the face of great wrong, writes Sider, “We dare not stop with verbal communication. Civil disobedience infused with prayer, evangelistic proclamation and a profound respect for law and government will be necessary.”11 Civil disobedience respects law and government by accepting the legal consequences of breaking the law. For disobedience to be civil, it must be nonviolent. The only lives and property we may put in jeopardy are our own. Far from the angry anarchy of a riot, Sider paints a picture of noncompliant civility: “I dream of a movement of biblical Christians who even as they are carted off to jail will express Christ-like tenderness to policemen, who even as they are sentenced will explain Jesus’ way of love and justice to incredulous judges, who will even dare to risk their own lives in order to release the captives and free the oppressed.”12 Thus, on a cold December day in 1995, Sider joined more than 100 anti­ poverty activists in Washington, DC - including veteran civil activist John Perkins - in a vigil to protest a federal budget that would cut services to the poor 8 Daniel Meyer, “Convicted Civility: Living Like Christians in a Warring World,” Christ Church Media, www.cc-ob.tv/pdf/ConvictedCivilit} .pdf. 9 Civil disobedience may be defined as “Purposeful, nonviolent action, or refusal to act, by a Christian who believes such action or inaction is required of him or her in order to be faithful to God, and which s/he knows will be treated by the governing authorities as a violation of law.” Duane Heffelbower, “The Christian and Civil Disobedience,” Direction, vol. 15 no. 1 (Spring 1986): 23-30. 10 Cited in Salguero, “Prophetic Civility and the Huntington Thesis.” 11 Ronald J. Sider, “A Call for Evangelical Nonviolence,” Christian Century (15 September 1976), 753-757. 12 Ibid., 757.

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while protecting tax cuts for the rich. They knelt in prayer and sang Christmas carols as they were being arrested for blocking an entrance on Capitol Hill. The police told them they were the most cooperative group they had ever been forced to arrest.13

Is Incivility on the Rise?

Compare this peaceful scene of civil disobedience with another act of resistance on Capitol Hill that took place in 1856. In reaction to the Kansas-Nebraska Act giving these new territories the option of slavery, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner denounced both the act and its backers, chiefly Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina. Sumner’s speech mocked not only Butler’s politics but his personal attributes, including his supposed sexual liberties with slaves. Two days later, Butler’s outraged nephew, a South Carolina Representative, brutally beat Sumner with a gold-tipped cane in the Senate chamber. Both congressmen were lauded by their respective parties for their behavior. Such verbal and physical assaults were not uncommon in earlier eras of our nation’s history.14 While tragic incidents such as the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in 2011 raise concerns about the specter of political violence, the norms of civil behavior have certainly shifted in the 150 years since Senator Sumner’s speech. Violence is no longer sanctioned as a way to resolve political disputes. Family members are generally considered off-limits for personal attacks. Overt racial and sexual remarks are not condoned. While political officials may privately indulge in remarks that “cross the line,” when their comments are publicly exposed they generally make a show of being contrite. On the other hand, Americans widely perceive incivility as a growing problem. Eighty percent believe political campaigns have become uncivil, and ninety percent say incivility has negative consequences for the nation.15 Negative campaign advertising has steadily increased, with political ads in 2012 breaking records for negativity.16 Uncivil discourse by Congressional Representatives on the House floor has increased, as measured by words ruled out of order and

13 “Christians Protest Welfare Cutbacks,” Christianity Today (5 February 1996), 106. 14 David Brady and Hahrie Han, “Polarization Then and Now: A Historical Perspective,” in Red and Blue Nation? Vol. 1: Characteristics and Causes of America’s Polarized Politics, eds. P.S. Nivola and D. W. Brady (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution and Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2006), 119-151. 15 “Poll Finds Politics Increasingly Uncivil," PRNew.swire (20 June 2011). 16 See Robin Stry ker, Carli Brosseau and Zachary Schrank, “Negative Campaigning,” Research Brief No. 7, National Institute for Civil Discourse, University of Arizona (12 September 2011), and Erika Franklin Fowler, “Presidential Ads 70 Percent Negative in 2012, Up from 9 Percent in 2008,” Wesleyan Media Project (May 2, 2012).

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comments requested to be stricken from the record.17 In 2008, Mark DeMoss and the Civility Project contacted every governor and member of Congress, inviting them to sign a simple civility pledge.18 Out of 540 public officials, only three would sign the pledge. Ironically, many of the public comments submitted on the Civility Project webpage were too vulgar or vicious to be printed. The general rise in incivility in America correlates with growing ideological polarization.19 Polarization tends to immerse people in a homogenous community of ideas while amplifying the “otherness” of diverse points of view. While polarization may not cause incivility, it at least reinforces it.20 More disturbingly, participation in extremist groups has been growing. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports over a thousand active hate groups in 2011, a 66% increase since 2000. Anti-government militia groups have more than doubled in the last decade, now numbering 330.21 When groups define themselves in opposition to others, political differences become so entrenched that destroying the other side rhetorically if not literally - appears the only option. Polarization has also contributed to the erosion of support for the ideal of the common good, which is foundational to civility. Concern for narrow interest groups is elevated over the flourishing of the political community as a whole. “This collapse of concern for the common good ultimately points to one dominant reality in American life - the preoccupation with the private good. And when concern for the private good displaces concern for the common good, incivility can never be far behind.”22 Another contributing factor to incivility has been the explosion of new media. Communications technology offers ever more opportunities for speech, and thus for uncivil speech. Slanderous allegations reach an audience of millions with the tap of a keypad. Technology has also escalated the speed of communication, allowing less time for careful, thoughtful responses. Like skimming a pond, speaking off the top of one’s head often yields less than pristine results. Technology fertilizes incivility in several other ways: 17 Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Erika Falk, “Continuity and Change in Civility in the House,” in Polarized Politics: Congress and the President in a Partisan Era, eds. J. R. Bond and R. Fleisher (Washington. D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 2000), 96-108. 18 The pledge reads: “1) I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior; 2) I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them; 3) I will stand against incivility' when 1 see it.” Mark DeMoss, “Why this fear of a civility pledge?” Politico (25 November 2010), www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45592.html. See also the Civility Project website, www.demossnews.com/civility project/. 19 Alan Abramowitz and Kyle Saunders, “Is Polarization a Myth?” The Journal ofPolitics, Vol. 70, No. 2 (April 2008): 542-555. 20 Robin Stryker, “Political Polarization,” Research Brief No. 6, (1 September 2011). 21 “U.S. Hate Groups Top 1,000,” Southern Policy Law Center (23 February 2011), www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/us-hate-groups-top-1000. 22 Richard Hughes, “Echoes From Gettysburg: How Americans Embrace Incivility and Ignore the Poor,” Huffpost Religion (21 January 2011), www.huffingtonpost.com/richardt-hughes/echoes-from-gettysburg-ho_l_b_809710.html.

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Advancements in technolog}- ... afford anonymity to those who criticize others, and distribute such expressions of disrespect to a broader audience. Informal modes of communication like social networking may embolden some to speak more harshly compared to traditional venues of political exchange which temper speech through accountability and transparency. The constant nature of modem communication ensures that acts of incivility are “captured, amplified, replayed and distributed - perpetually.”23

Expanding media technology has gone hand in hand with the growth of a “newstainment” industry that profits from incivility.24 The more sound and fury in public discourse, the better the show. Our win-at-all-costs political culture also creates incentives for incivility. Publicized shouting matches thrive in symbiotic relationship with a massive campaign industry that churns out rancorous, factually dubious political ads via anonymous contributions to shadowy independent groups. One study finds that while Americans disapprove of uncivil negative campaign ads, they nevertheless tend to be influenced by them.25 The proliferation of incivility is thus technologically feasible, economically profitable and politically effective. Given these incentives for incivility, a commitment to civil political engagement puts one at a disadvantage. Civil speakers must work harder to make their voice heard above the vitriolic hullabaloo that tends to attract the media microphone. Because civil discourse is more nuanced, it tends to be misunderstood as well as overlooked. Moreover, some perceive willingness to compromise or even dialogue with alternative points of view as weakness. Thus a civil approach opens one to attack not only from the opposing side but from hardliners in the same cause. As Tim Stafford wrote in a Christianity Today profile after the revised edition of Rich Christians was released, “Sider may not have grown more conservative, but he certainly has found points of agreement with his conservative critics. That leaves him somewhat lonely.”26

23 Christina Coloroso, “Political Incivility: Fleeting Trend or Enduring American Tradition?” Georgetown Public Policy Review (14 December 2009), gppreview.com/2009/ 12/14/political-incivility-fleeting-trend-or-enduring-american-tradition/. The quote within the quote is from Kathleen Parker, “Politics with a Little Politesse,” The Washington Post (15 November 2009), www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/13/ AR2009111 3O3329.html?sid=ST2OO9111703179. 24 Hughes, “Echoes.” Director of the Sider Institute at Messiah College, Hughes describes a “news business” that has “deteriorated on so many fronts into shrill pronouncements leveled from hardened ideological silos on both the right and the left,” which also functions to marginalize the poor. 25 Stryker et al., “Negative Campaigning.” Not all negative ads are uncivil. Incivility in negative campaigning entails “attacks that go beyond facts and differences, and move instead towards name-calling, contempt, and derision of the opposition,” or “claims that are inflammatory and superfluous” (3). 26 Tim Stafford, “Ron Sider’s Unsettling Crusade: Why does this man irritate so many people?” Christianity Today (1 March 2000).

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The Costs of Incivility While incivility benefits a few, it injures society as a whole. First, it is corrosive to democracy. Research suggests that those who are least politically informed are most susceptible to mudslinging campaigns.27 Thus incivility thrives on an uninformed electorate. Incivility also fosters a disengaged electorate, as political participation can make one the target of attack. Exposure to uncivil discourse erodes trust and creates an unfavorable impression of political institutions.28 Another public cost is the diminished potential for progress on pressing social problems. Adhominem attacks, exaggeration, deception, and similar tactics derail the hard work of sifting through political arguments to clarify better solutions. Sloppy thinking produces ineffectual policies. Writes Sider, “To succeed we must think more deeply, cooperate more vigorously, and learn how to engage public life in a civil, sustained, sophisticated way.”29 Rigorous civil dialogue creates the possibility for new ideas and partnerships to emerge. It does not guarantee good policy outcomes, but at least it helps to prevent simplistic, one­ sided positions. Thus many of Sider’s public policy writings follow the pattern, “This ... but also that.” Anti-poverty policies must address structural injustice ... but also reinforce individual responsibility. Deficit-cutting measures should eliminate wasteful or ineffective programs ... while also protecting services for the most vulnerable. Immigration policy must respect the integrity of families ... without undermining respect for law. And so on. Rather than becoming entrenched on one side of a debate, Sider has attempted to distill kernels of truth from many voices in order to find solutions appropriate to a complex social reality. Incivility also inhibits getting things done in the political arena. When negotiation is considered moral compromise, policy debates reach an impasse. Civil dialogue opens the door to small steps toward shared goals. On the divisive issue of abortion, for example, a growing number of evangelicals, especially younger evangelicals, agree that political leaders can stay true to their core beliefs while working to find common ground. Mega-church pastor Joel Hunter expresses this view: “1 am decidedly pro-life, but... by working together instead of arguing, both sides [for and against legal abortion] can get what they want.”30 Conversely, vitriolic arguments rarely produce gains for either side. 27 J. Taylor Danielson and Robin Stryker, “Political Knowledge, Persuasion and Campaign Rhetoric,” Research Brief No. 5, National Institute for Civil Discourse, Universit} of Arizona (30 August 2011). 28 Stryker, “Political Polarization.” 29 Ron Sider, “Organizing the New Center," PRISM(2009), 40. 30 Robert Jones, “Quick Facts about the Emerging Evangelical Center,” Public Religion Research Memo (January 2010), http://comeletusreason.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ Quick-Facts-About-The-Evangelical-Center.pdf. Joel Hunter, quoted in Marcia Pally, “Reduce abortions, realign U.S. politics,” USA Today (18 December 2011), www. usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story72011-12-18/abortion-religious-right-politics/ 52051806/1.

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In addition to these public harms, incivility damages interpersonal relationships. “There is a tendency in American politics to assume that political opponents are also bad and cynical people; that they are not just wrong, but evil and evil because they are wrong. This is the most basic explanation for political polarization in America - the tendency to deny the humanity of people we disagree with.”31 Critique of a position too easily devolves into contempt for the speaker. We dehumanize others if we fail to consider the potential human impact of our ideas. For example, I once wrote an ePistle32 article that poked fun at a particular political movement. Afterwards a family member confronted me because as a sympathizer with this movement, he felt I had been mocking him. My perspective completely shifted when I was no longer talking about an abstract issue but someone I knew and cared about. Incivility also damages our spiritual witness. Christians, particularly evangelicals, are broadly perceived as being judgmental and hypocritical. When people who call themselves “Christian” slander, insult and demonize their opponents, it casts a skeptical shadow on everything else Christians say and do. And when the target of incivility is other believers, we contradict Jesus’ prayer for Christian unity “so that the world may believe” (Jn. 17:20-21). By acting with incivility we drive people away not only from our arguments but from our faith. Convicted Civility

And yet ... is the ideal of civility consistent with what Jesus actually said and did? After all, Jesus called people names (Mt. 3:7), publicly mocked his opponents (Mt. 23), and made harsh accusations (Jn. 8:39-55). So was Jesus uncivil? Or is the Son of God simply held to a different standard? At the very least we can assert with confidence that Jesus’ motives remained pure, while ours are suspect. Even as he chastised his enemies, Jesus loved them, spent time with them and prepared to give up his life for them. We tend to love being right, keep our enemies at arm’s length and pursue our own interests. Perhaps we can learn from Jesus’ example that civility is not always inherently virtuous. Jesus saw through those who used courteous words to conceal the hatred and greed in their hearts (Mt. 12:34). As Richard Mouw points out, “It isn’t enough to make an outward show of politeness. Being civil has an ‘inner’ side as well.”33 Sometimes, in fact, calls for civility can be a tool of oppression. Scholar John Stauffer explains: “When public discourse threatens the existing social order,

31 Michael Gerson, “Let’s Disagree, But Not Hate,” Capital Commentary (17 June 2011), www.capitalcommentary.org/civility/lets-disagree-not-hate. 32 ePistle is the free weekly e-news of ESA. To sign up, go to www.evangelicals forsocialaction.org/epistle/. 33 Mouw, Uncommon Decency, 14.

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those in power often call it uncivil.”34 Civility becomes an excuse to silence what others do not want to hear. Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, was rebuked by contemporary religious leaders for being a troublemaker. When nonviolent activists like King expose the greed, hatred and fear in the hearts of those invested in an unjust status quo, they are often accused of inciting violence. In a speech to the Mennonite World Conference that became the catalyst for the formation of Christian Peacemaker Teams, Ron Sider challenged the idea that civility entails passivity. He said: Jesus disturbed the status quo - but not for mere love of change. It was his commitment to shalom, to the right relationships promised in messianic prophecy, that make him a disturber of an unjust peace. He brought right relationships between men and women, between rich and poor by his radical challenge to the status quo.35

Jesus challenged people in order to reconcile them to one another and to God in true shalom. He spoke hard words not out of arrogance or spite but costly, self­ giving love. Jesus modeled what Mouw calls a “convicted civility” that can “hold onto strongly felt convictions while still nurturing a spirit that is authentically kind and gentle.”36 Jesus, who was full of both truth and grace, could perfectly navigate this balance. Humanity, on the other hand, tends to wander from both truth and grace, as noted by the scholar Martin Marty: “The people who are good at being civil often lack strong convictions and people who have strong convictions often lack civility.”37 Or as Yeats put it poetically: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.”38 Given our sinfulness and fallibility, “convicted civility” must be tempered by the awareness that we could be wrong, and that others may possess insights we lack. Sider instructs, Any attempt to spell out a specific political agenda must be done with humility and caution. None of us can be presumptuous enough to suggest we speak for God. ... We never dare claim to have the biblical or the Christian position. At the same time, we dare not abandon the attempt to ground our political decisions in biblical norms. ... We are compelled to propose concrete political proposals and demonstrate how we have arrived at them. Then we rightly advocate such

34 John Stauffer, “Civility in American History,” transcript from “Civility and Democracy: A National Forum,” The Center for Civil Discourse (17 February 2012), www.centerforcivildiscourse.com. 35 Ronald J. Sider, “God’s People Reconciling,” Christian Peacemaker Teams (1984), www.cpt.org/resources/writings/sider. 36 Mouw, Uncommon Decency, 17. 37 Martin Marty, quoted in Mouw, Uncommon Decency, 14. 38 William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming,” quoted in Daniel Meyer, “Convicted Civility,” 1.

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proposals with humble confidence - even as we invite others to help us see where we have not done adequate thinking.3940

Sider has followed his own principles, particularly in his evolving thinking about economic policy. In 1981 David Chilton wrote a scathing rebuttal to Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, titled Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators.^ While never responding in kind to tear down his critics, Sider determined to glean from them what he could, and later editions of the book reflected a growth process. “I’ve learned considerably more,” Sider admitted in 1997, “and I’ve changed some things as a result of that.”41 Sider’s openness to critical dialogue has more sharply honed his policy analysis without compromising his core values or diluting his passion for justice. Biblical Foundations for Civility

Consistent with Sider’s call to “ground our political decisions in biblical norms,” the following five theological principles can motivate and guide civil discourse. 1. Love. “Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:1-3; see also Mk. 12:31, Mt. 5:43, 1 Cor. 13,1 Jn. 4:7-8). Harold Heie translates this theological principle for civil discourse: “Aspiring to be a follower of Jesus, I am called to love others. As a deep expression of this love, I can provide a welcoming space for someone who disagrees with me to express that disagreement, and I can engage that person in respectful conversation about our differences.”42 2. Peace. “Live in harmony with one another;... do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Rom. 12:16-18; see also Psa. 34:11-14, Mt. 5:9, Jms. 3:17-18, Heb. 12:1415). Peacemaking does not mean abandoning contentious convictions, but weeding from our discourse “all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice” (Eph. 4:31-32). Sider reminds us, “Our common membership in the body of Christ is far more significant than even the

39 Ronald J. Sider, I Am Not a Social Activist: Making Jesus the Agenda (Scottsdale, PA: Herald, 2008), 187-188. 40 David Chilton, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt-Manipulators: A Biblical Response to Ronald J. Sider (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1982). 41 Kevin Miller, “The Rich Christian: How Ron Sider has changed in the 20 years since his first book,” interview with Ronald Sider, Christianity Today (28 April 1997), www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1997/april28/7t5068.html. 42 Harold Heie, “Alternative Political Conversation,” Capital Commentary (20 January 2012), www.capitalcommentary.org/civility/altemative-political-conversation.

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deepest political disagreements.”43 Destructive words reflect a heart that is not tuned to the goodness, mercy and reconciling work of God (Lk. 6:45). 3. Truth. “Speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. ... Putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another” (Eph. 4:14-15, 25; see also Prov. 15:14, 28, I Pet. 3: 15-16). Truth in civic discourse must be sought with wisdom and spoken with love. Biblical truth is not malleable, but neither is it a mallet. We do not compromise the truth by sharing it with gentleness and compassion. Moreover, the biblical injunction against bearing false witness obliges us to speak truth about our opponents. We must accurately represent the positions of those who disagree with us. 4. Imago Dei. “With [the tongue] we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. ... This ought not to be so (Jms. 3:9-10; see also Gen. 1:26-27). No matter how odious we judge their opinions, each person with whom we interact is stamped with God’s image, beloved of the Father and redeemed by the blood of Christ. “We treat others with respect, not because they agree with us, but because of who they are. Even when we disagree with others strongly, we affirm their inherent dignity and right of conscience. ... This is the firmest foundation for civility - a recognition of the image of God in one another.”44 5. The Lordship of Christ. “Keep an eye on those who cause dissensions and offenses. ... For such people do not serve our Lord Christ” (Rom. 16:17-18; see also Rom. 12:1-3, 15:5-7, Col. 3:23-24, Phil. 2:1-11, 1 Thess. 2:4). Christ the Lord is our Judge, to whom we must give account for every unkind word, every misrepresentation of Scripture, and every dodgy rhetorical tactic (Mt. 12:35-37). Our primary allegiance is to Christ’s kingdom above all political parties and ideologies. Our first priority is to honor and please the Lord, rather than to win support for our position. Spiritual Disciplines for Civility

Civil discourse flows from a civil character. The theological framework for civility is supported by muscular spiritual disciplines, i.e., practices and habits of the heart. These include: • Listening. “Be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” (Jms. 1:19). The goal of listening is not only to plan our next argument but to genuinely understand the other’s position and motives. Civil discourse entails “listening deeply enough that we earn the right to have our convictions truly heard by them.”45 43 Sider, “Organizing the New Center,” 40. 44 Michael Gerson, “Two Reasons for Civility,” Capital Commentary (28 January 2011), www.capitalcommentary.org/civility/two-reasons-civility. 45 Meyer, “Convicted Civility,” 4.

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Humility. We must not assume that we alone possess right motives, clear thinking and valid concerns. Rather we should “acknowledge what is good in the position of the other, and acknowledge what troubles us about our own position.”46 Conceding our limitations will not hurt our cause. Servanthood. A servant attitude entails trying on the other person’s point of view, respecting their needs, fears, and hopes, and considering their interests alongside our own (Phil. 2:4). This helps us anticipate when our arguments might be hurtful or do damage to relationships. Prayer. Praying for God’s will to be done on earth (Mt. 6:10) helps us remain focused on pursuit of the common good. Interceding for those whom we view as our political enemies, as Jesus directs us (Mt. 5:44), helps prevent us from devaluing their humanity. Patience. In a sound-bite political culture, constructive dialogue takes time and persistence. It takes determination to slog through assumptions, misunderstandings and knee-jerk reactions to reach the heart of a disagreement; then to digest the other person’s evidence and reasoning; and finally to reframe the issue and identify areas of potential common ground. Courage. Civility is seldom the path of least resistance or greatest popularity. The willingness to dialogue with opponents, to reject simplistic solutions, to assert convictions with both confidence and humility, often attracts criticism from all sides. Civility thus requires “the courage to be vulnerable in front of those we passionately disagree with.”47 Restraint. Avoid an “unhealthy interest in controversies ... that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction” (1 Tim. 6:3-4). Not every political battle is worth joining. Not every clever but controversial phrase is worth articulating. Not every juicy claim is worth repeating. Grace. The test of civility is how we respond when we become the target of incivility. Our first instinct may be to mount a counter-offense. But we can demonstrate Christ-like grace by remaining above the fray - and even asking how we can learn and grow from the exchange. This may break down walls to new partnerships. Creativity. If we eschew attention-getting tactics like mockery, inflammatory allegations, exaggerations, name-calling, and obscenities, we must develop other creative strategies. The imaginative use of rhetoric, humor and the arts help us communicate in a way that is winsome and robust.

46 Krista Tippett, “Listening Beyond Life and Choice,” interview with abortion rights activist Frances Kissling, On Being (11 August 2011), www.onbeing.org/program/ listening-beyond-life-and-choice/transcript/504#main_content. 47 Tippett, “Listening.”

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Responsibility. In order to speak the truth in love, we have to know the truth (as well as the limits of our ability to grasp it). It is our responsibility to be as informed as possible, to speak as accurately as possible, not to claim to know more than we do, and never to present or repeat information without having reasonable evidence for its veracity. Trust. Hear how Paul promoted his opinion: “All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you” (Phil. 3:15-16). When we have done all we can, some arguments are best left up to the God of truth and justice to resolve.

A Test for Civility While civility is not always a clear-cut standard, the above principles can be summarized in a test to help discern if our discourse is civil: 1. Is it truthful, to the best of our knowledge? 2. Does it respect the humanity of all persons involved? 3. Is it said in a way least likely to cause offense or damage relationships? 4. Is our goal to do good, or to make ourselves or our organization look good? 5. Would we say it to or about someone we love?

A Model of Civility48

Al Tizon summarizes the legacy that Ron Sider has left through the public policy ministry of ESA: Contrary to the idea that civil discourse means relinquishing strong convictions in order to avoid conflict, ESA has entered into the public square on the strength of its convictions, but not in a way that belittles those who disagree. ... Even amid vehement reactions ... Sider has refused to throw mud back; for it is not the way of Christ. ... Civil discourse - engagement with conviction, but wrapped in humility - has marked ESA’s presence in the public square. By its example, ESA has striven to break the ubiquitous stereotype of evangelicals as mean-spirited and judgmental. ... ESA has also hoped that its commitment to civil discourse has

Resources for civility' include: A Covenant for Civility http://faithfulpolitics.org/2011/01/12/a-covenant-for-civility/; Alternative Political Conversation, www.respectfulconversation.net; Center for Civil Discourse http://www.centerforcivildiscourse.com/; Civility' Center, http://www.civilitycenter.org; Institute for Civility, http://instituteforcivility.org; National Institute for Civil Discourse http://nicd.arizona.edu; New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, http://www.newevangelicalpartnership.org.

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been instructive to the evangelical church in how to engage the public in a Christlike way.49

For the sake of a healthy democracy, our ability to respond effectively to urgent social problems, and the unified witness of the church, we pray that the church increasingly embraces this model of civil discourse.

49 Al Tizon, “Leading Evangelicals for Social Action,” Religious Leadership: A Reference Handbook, ed. Sharon Callahan (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2013).

Afterword: Generous Christian Giant

John Dilulio, Jr

In 1999, the late Charles W. “Chuck” Colson and I co-authored the foreword to one of Ronald J. Sider’s many books, Just Generosity: A New Vision for Overcoming Poverty in America.' In the three years before, I had gotten to know both Ron and Chuck well. In 1996, I had what my evangelical Christian friends recognize as a “born again” moment and what my black Pentecostal friends describe as a “Holy Spirit” experience. All I knew then, as now, is that I had a changed heart and head. This change drove me to seek and find people in all walks of life, in all faith traditions - and in both political parties - who might advance the cause of advancing what would become known in due course as “faith-based and community initiatives” (under President George W. Bush) or “faith-based and neighborhood partnerships” (under President Barak Obama). Among the many great spiritual, intellectual and civic leaders I found and got to know were Ron and Chuck. Ron and Chuck, each in his respective way, proved deeply important to me not only in advancing faith-based policies and programs, but in guiding me down the path to a fuller Christian life and understanding. Chuck died in April 2012. As I wrote that month in my tribute to him in The Wall Street Journal, “Chuck Colson and Second Chances,” even as he and I continued to disagree strongly on many issues, Chuck was among those “who softened and spiritualized my views on crime,” and he was even more “ruthless” about promoting compassion toward prisoners, ex-prisoners, and the children, youth, and families of prisoners.1 2 Back in 1999, therefore, it was a special blessing to be able to join with Chuck in publicly praising Ron Sider— his past work, and his then new book. “Sider,” we wrote, “is a politically progressive yet steadfastly prolife evangelical Christian who has spent much of his adult life living and working among and on behalf of the poor.” Each of us, we continued, “has gotten to know Sider as a brother in Christ and to admire him as one who practices what he preaches about the biblical imperative to serve the poor.”3 Amen.

1 John Dilulio and Chuck Colson, “Foreword,” in Ronald J. Sider, Just Generosity: A New Vision for Overcoming Poverty (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1999). 2 John Dilulio, “Chuck Colson and Second Chances,” The Wall Street Journal (April 23, 2012) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB 10001424052702303459004577361700170847494. html (accessed 9.12.2012). 3 Dilulio and Colson, “Foreword,” 11.

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Shortly after I met Ron, he gave me a copy of his 1996 book, Genuine Christianity: Essentials for Living Your Faith? I was moved by the book, most especially the passage wherein Ron put his finger on our modem society’s “radical emasculation and privatization of historic Christianity,” and called on conservative evangelical Christians not to aid and abet “this privatization of religious faith” by behaving as if the “only way to change the world is through individual conversion.” “Sin,” he continued, “means things like lying, stealing, drunkenness, and adultery. Now those things are wrong, terribly wrong. But so are racism and economic oppression.”4 5 Amen again. And, as Chuck and I also wrote in Just Generosity, Ron has been steadfast in reminding one and all that we do not live in a “post-poverty America,” and “that helping the poor requires both a spiritual and a structural response.” We concluded: “In Sider and his new book, we recognize a sharp mind and a kindred Christian spirit dedicated to showing how the rest of us can and should serve the least of these.”67 The few years just before Chuck and I wrote those words laid the foundation of my relationship with Ron. Just a couple of anecdotes will have to suffice. In 1997,1 reviewed the 20th anniversary edition of Ron’s Rich Christians in An Age of Hunger for a leading conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard? I gave it a positive review, but pointedly noted that I had my doubts about Ron’s understanding of economics. Wearing his signature smile, the next time I saw Ron he thanked me for the “kind review” then teased me about my understanding of theology. By 1998, Ron rightly reckoned that I, as both a “faith without works is dead” Catholic and as a card-carrying public policy analyst, did not need lots of persuading on the importance of structural responses to poverty and other socioeconomic ills, including new and improved government anti-poverty programs, both domestic and international. But he also rightly gauged that I might need a tune-up on the personal and spiritual side; so he gently challenged me to practice a light form of lifestyle evangelism by “tithing” fees for speeches or writings on “faith-based” to community-serving charities. Without a second thought, I agreed, and later that same day I learned that I was being offered the fattest fee I had ever been offered to do a three-day symposium on “faith-based” at the University of Pennsylvania. Gulp. I would later take to “blaming” Ron for keeping me out of fancy vacation spots and such. But I nonetheless practiced what Ron had so gently preached (and have long since institutionalized, extending it to advances and royalties on

4 Ronald J. Sider, Genuine Christianity: Essential for Living the Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996). This was republished under the title, Living Like Jesus: Eleven Essential for Growing a Genuine Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998). 5 Sider, Genuine Christianity, 120-122. 6 Dilulio and Colson, “Forward,” 12. 7 John Dilulio, “Sider’s Socio-Christianity,” The Weekly Standard 3/8 (November 1997).

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relevant publications). And, seeing Ron’s smiling face in the standing-room-only audience, I felt moved to end the keynote address I delivered at the Penn symposium with a hymn, “Here I Am Lord,” and a virtual altar call (something that probably had not been done in Penn’s largest auditorium in years, if ever). In 1999, my arguments about “faith-based” had me featured in publications ranging from Christianity Today to a host of major secular magazines and newspapers. I was advising the presidential campaigns of both Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush. I had made inroads on the issue with think tanks on the Left, on the Right, and in the Center. And I had developed or launched a number of faith-based programs and demonstration projects, including one that became the “Amachi” program for mentoring the children of prisoners (and would later receive scores of millions of dollars in federal funding).89 It was a hectic and heady time, but Ron was among the few in-the-know friends, who not only urged me to keep my head, but also to mind my heart. One day in early 2000,1 got to the office and found there a copy of Ron’s 1994 book, Cup of Water, Bread of Life? Now, several years earlier, I had already gotten a copy of that book from Ron. But, even without the kind, hand-written note that accompanied my first copy (a brief, gentle plea not to forget prayer, not to try to do too much at once, and not to lose the godly mission through worldly methods), I knew what Ron was gently saying by sending another copy when and how he did. Each chapter profiled “effective Christian church leaders,” and his introduction admonished the reader not to “glorify the people in these stories as superheroes” or to “overlook their failures.” It also contained a paragraph in which Ron summarized his “own personal failure” with the holistic ministries he and his wonderful wife, Arbutus, had worked so hard to develop “in a desperately poor part of inner-city Philadelphia.”10 Lay that “own personal failure” passage of Ron’s 1994 book profiling effective Christian leaders alongside the conclusion of Fetzer and Carnes’ chapter on Ron in Religious Leaders and Faith-Based Politics', which reads in part: Ron Sider has achieved three major successes in his career as a politically active religious leader. The first is the publication of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger....Second, Sider’s founding of Evangelicals for Social Action has also had an impact on policy.... Sider’s third great accomplishment as a politically engaged religious leader has been his success in influencing the passage of the Endangered Species Act.... Sider’s career as a religious-political leader has been focused and successful. He admits that an overwhelming amount of work still

8 For more information on Amachi, go to www.amachimentoring.org/ (accessed 9.12.2012). 9 Ronald J. Sider, Cup of Water, Bread ofLife (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994). 10 Ibid., 12.

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needs to be done before economic and environmental justice will become a reality for all people.11

To that succinct but suggestive 2001 summation of Ron’s leadership legacy must now be added another decade’s worth of genuine Christianity. Over that period, Ron’s already vast corpus grew to include many new books and edited volumes. Two of my favorites are his 2005 book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience'11 2 and his 2008 book, I Am Not a Social Activist: Making Jesus the Agenda.'3 Neither of these books has been as widely read as Rich Christians, but they should be. In my 2007 book Godly Republic: A Centrist Blueprint for America’s FaithBased Future, I offered my own succinct summation of Ron’s leadership legacy: Decades before any other evangelical Christian in America had done so, Sider brought the Bible’s admonitions to honor and serve the poor into popular and policy-relevant focus.... Because of Sider’s prolife, pro-family, and pro-poor stands, he is an urban evangelical leader who is taken seriously by Catholics as well as by more conservative evangelical leaders.... In 2005 Sider was the driving force behind public statements on environmental issues and other policy matters that were endorsed by a broad spectrum of evangelical Christian organizations. But Sider’s local and national credibility within and beyond evangelical Christian circles is derived from his decades-long, suites-to-streets efforts to support community-serving religious congregations and faith-based organizations that help people in need.14

Of course, in Ron’s own words, he is no “superhero” (though, if I were Batman, I would not welcome the competition). And to this day, I can find things to disagree about with Ron, including the extent to which what 1 call “faithsaturated” religious nonprofit organizations should be free to hire with tax dollars only persons who profess or practice the organizations’ respective religious beliefs and tenets.15 Over the last decade, I have nurtured the “born-again Catholic” in me that Ron helped me to embrace in the 1990s and early 2000s, mostly through relationships and study with my fellow Jesuit Catholics. My friends at the Jesuits’ America

11 Joel Fetzer and Gretchen S. Carnes, “Dr. Ron Sider: Mennonite Environmentalist on the Evangelical Left,” Religious Leaders and Faith-Based Politics, eds. Jo Renee Formicola et al. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield), 170-171. 12 Ronald J. Sider, Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005). 13 Ronald J. Sider, I Am Not a Social Activist (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 2008). 14 John Dilulio, Godly Republic: A Centrist Blueprint for America’s Faith-Based Future (Berkeley, CA: University of California, 2007), 168-169. 15 Ron is for a more expansive public law regime on “religious hiring rights” than I favorthough the 2012 controversy involving new federal rules on religious nonprofits’ employee relations and health insurance has moved me several notches in his direction!

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magazine and other Jesuit institutions talk about men and women who live life “in the service of others” and are “contemplatives in action.” Ron is the ultimate “Jesuit.” In every dimension of his life, Ron is a justice-seeking, generous, and gentle Christian giant: a giant intellectually, a giant as a religious-political leader, and a giant in the smallest recesses of personal relationships that bring people blessed enough to know him to seek to know and love God. What a blessing to know him, and what an honor to be among those who have come together in this volume to honor him (yet, as 1 am sure Ron would have me add, giving to God all the glory).

Ron Sider, 2009

List of Contributors

Paul Alexander is Co-President of Evangelicals for Social Action and Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Policy at Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University. He is editor of Christ at the Checkpoint and author of Pentecostals & Nonviolence. Jim Ball is Executive Vice-President for Policy and Climate Change for the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN). He is author of Global Warming and the Risen LORD: Christian Discipleship and Climate Change.

John Borelli is Special Assistant for Interreligious Initiatives to President John J. DeGioia of Georgetown University, and co-managed Catholics and Evangelicals for the Common Good with Ronald J. Sider. Manfred Branch is Professor Emeritus of Biblical Theology at Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University and the author of Abusing Scripture. Tony Campolo is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Eastern University and author of many books including Red Letter Christians.

Shane Claiborne is Co-Founder and Visionary Officer of The Simple Way, a Christian community that has helped to define the New Monastic Movement. He is an activist and author of many books including The Irresistible Revolution. John J. Dilulio, Jr. is the Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion, and Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania and directs UPenn’s Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society. He served as the first director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Samuel Escobar teaches at the Facultad Protestante de Teologia of the Spanish Baptist Union in Madrid. He was the Thornley B. Wood Professor of Mission at Eastern Baptist (now Palmer) Theological Seminary from 1985 to 2005. He is the author of many books including The New Global Mission.

Wesley Granberg-Michaelson is General Secretary Emeritus of the Reformed Church in America. His memoir, Unexpected Destinations, was published in 2011. David Gushee is the Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at McAfee School of Theology of Mercer University. He is the Board Chair and co­

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founder of New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good and is the author of The Sacredness ofHuman Life. Craig Keener is Professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is the author of seventeen books, including the best-selling IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament and more recently Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. Jo Anne Lyon is General Superintendent of the Wesleyan Church and founder of World Hope International. She served as President and CEO of World Hope until 2008 when she stepped down in order to assume the highest post in her denomination. John M. Perkins is the Founder and President of the John M. Perkins Foundation for Reconciliation & Development, Inc, and Co-founder of the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA). He is considered by many as the father of Christian community development and racial reconciliation ministries among American evangelicals and the black church in the United States.

Kristýn Komarnicki has been the editor of PRISM, the award-winning magazine of Evangelicals for Social Action since 2000. Melba P. Maggay is founder of the Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture (ISACC) in Quezon City, Philippines and served as its Executive Director for many years. She had been cited for her outstanding leadership in organizing the evangelical Protestant presence at the EDSA barricades during the February People Power Uprising in 1986. She is the author of numerous publications including her classic, Transforming Society.

Douglas Petersen is the Margaret S. Smith Distinguished Professor of Missions and Intercultural Studies at Vanguard University of Southern California. He is Co-founder of the Latin America ChildCare and served as its President for many years. Among other publications, he co-edited The Globalization of Pentecostalism with Murray Dempster and Byron Klaus.

Vinay Samuel is Executive Director of the Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life (OCRPL) and founding secretary of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians (INFEMIT, which today stands for International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation). Glen Stassen is Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is the author of numerous books including Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, with David P. Gushee.

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Chris Sugden is Executive Secretary of Anglican Mainstream. Member of the founding board of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (OCMS), he served as Registrar and Director of academic affairs at OCMS from 1983 to 2004.

Al Tizon is Co-President of Evangelicals for Social Action and Associate Professor of Holistic Ministry at Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University. He is the author of Transformation after Lausanne and Missional Preaching.

Harold Dean Trulear is Director of Healing Communities, a prison ministry and prisoner reentry project of the Philadelphia Leadership Foundation and Associate Professor of Applied Theology and Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program at Howard University. He is co-author of Ministry with Prisoners & Families with W. Wilson Goode and Charles E. Lewis. Heidi Unruh is director of the Congregations, Community Outreach and Leadership Development Project. She is the author of numerous books including Churches that Make a Difference with Ronald J. Sider and Philip N. Olson.

Jim Wallis is founding CEO of Sojourners in Washington DC. He is a bestselling author, public theologian, speaker, and international commentator on ethics and public life. He is the author of many books, including Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street - A Moral Compass for the New Economy.

Bruce Wydick is Professor of Economics at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of Games in Economic Development.

Appendix I: The Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern

As evangelical Christians committed to the Lord Jesus Christ and the full authority of the Word of God, we affirm that God lays total claim upon the lives of his people. We cannot, therefore, separate our lives from the situation in which God has placed us in the United States and the world. We confess that we have not acknowledged the complete claim of God on our lives. We acknowledge that God requires love. But we have not demonstrated the love of God to those suffering social abuses. We acknowledge that God requires justice. But we have not proclaimed or demonstrated his justice to an unjust American society. Although the Lord calls us to defend the social and economic rights of the poor and oppressed, we have mostly remained silent. We deplore the historic involvement of the church in America with racism and the conspicuous responsibility of the evangelical community for perpetuating the personal attitudes and institutional structures that have divided the body of Christ along color lines. Further, we have failed to condemn the exploitation of racism at home and abroad by our economic system. We affirm that God abounds in mercy and that he forgives all who repent and turn from their sins. So we call our fellow evangelical Christians to demonstrate repentance in a Christian discipleship that confronts the social and political injustice of our nation. We must attack the materialism of our culture and the maldistribution of the nation’s wealth and services. We recognize that as a nation we play a crucial role in the imbalance and injustice of international trade and development. Before God and a billion hungry neighbors, we must rethink our values regarding our present standard of living and promote a more just acquisition and distribution of the world’s resources. We acknowledge our Christian responsibilities of citizenship. Therefore, we must challenge the misplaced trust of the nation in economic and military might a proud trust that promotes a national pathology of war and violence which victimizes our neighbors at home and abroad. We must resist the temptation to make the nation and its institutions objects of near-religious loyalty. We acknowledge that we have encouraged men to prideful domination and women to irresponsible passivity. So we call both men and women to mutual submission and active discipleship. We proclaim no new gospel, but the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ who, through the power of the Holy Spirit, frees people from sin so that they might praise God through works of righteousness. By this declaration, we endorse no

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political ideology or party, but call our nation’s leaders and people to that righteousness which exalts a nation. We make this declaration in the biblical hope that Christ is coming to consummate the Kingdom and we accept his claim on our total discipleship until he comes. November 25, 1973 Chicago, Illinois

Original signatories:

John F. Alexander Joseph Bayly Ruth L. Bentley William Bentley Dale Brown James C. Cross Donald Dayton Roger Dewey James Dunn Daniel Ebersole Samuel Escobar Warren C. Falcon Frank Gaebelein Sharon Gallagher Theodore E. Gannon Art Gish Vernon Grounds Nancy Hardesty Carl F. H. Henry Paul Henry Clarence Hilliard Walden Howard Rufus Jones Robert Tad Lehe William Leslie C. T. McIntire Wes Michaelson

David 0. Moberg Stephen Mott Richard Mouw David Nelson F. Burton Nelson William Pannell John Perkins William Petersen Richard Pierard Wyn Wright Potter Ron Potter Bernard Ramm Paul Rees Boyd Reese Joe Roos James Robert Ross Eunice Schatz Ronald J. Sider Donna Simons Lewis Smedes Foy Valentine Marlin Van Elderen Jim Wallis Robert Webber Merold Westphal John Howard Yoder

Appendix II The Works of Ronald J. Sider

Books Andreas Bodenstein Von Karlstadt (“Studies in Medieval & Reformation Thought,” No. 11; ed. Heiko A. Oberman). Brill, 1974. The Chicago Declaration. Creation House, 1974 (ed. & contributor). Rich Christians in an Age ofHunger: A Biblical Study. Intervarsity and Paulist, 1977. Revised Edition, 1984,1990. Hodder and Stoughton, (England) 1978. AussaatVerlag, 1979 (Germany ). Gideon (Dutch), 1980. Editora Sinodal (Portugese), 1984. Seibunsha (Japanese), 1989. I VP (Korean), 1998; R.O.C. (Chinese), 1998. Over 400,000 copies in print. Twentieth Anniversary edition (1997) by Word; 5th edition (2005), by W Publishing Group. Evangelism. Salvation and Social Justice. Grove, 1977. IVP (Korean), 1985. Karlstadt’s Battle with Luther: Documents in a Liberal-Radical Debate. Fortress, 1978. James Clark, Cambridge, 1982. Christ and Violence. Herald Press, 1979. Lion Publishing, (England), 1980. Skeab forlag (Sweden), 1981. Ediciones Semilla (Guatemala), c. 1992. Cry Justice: The Bible on Hunger and Poverty, (ed.) Intervarsity and Paulist, 1980. GKMI (Indonesia), 1991. New edition: For They Shall Be Fed. Word, 1997. Living More Simply, (ed.) Intervarsity, 1980. Hodder & Stoughton, 1980. Evangelicals and Development: Toward a Theology ofSocial Change, (ed.) Essex: Paternoster, 1982. Westminster, (US), 1982. Lifestyle in the Eighties: An Evangelical Commitment to Simple Life-Style, (ed.) Essex: Paternoster, 1982. Westminster, (US), 1982. Preaching on Peace, (ed. with Darrel Brubaker) Fortress, 1982. Nuclear Holocaust and Christian Hope, (with Richard K. Taylor) InterVarsity and Paulist, 1982. Hodder and Stoughton (England) and Aussaat Verlag (Germany), 1984. Peace and War: A Debate About Pacifism (with Oliver O’Donovan). Bramcote Notts, Grove Books (England), 1985. Evangelical Faith and Social Ethics (In Chinese). Hong Kong: China Graduate School of Theology, 1986. Completely Pro-Life. Intervarsity, 1987. Preaching About Life in a Threatening World (with Michael A. King). Westminster, 1988. JustLife/88: A 1988 Election Study Guide for Justice, Life and Peace (With Kathleen Hayes). Eerdmans, 1988. Testing the Limits ofNonviolence. Hodder and Stoughton, 1988. (U.S. edition: NonViolence: An Invincible Weapon? Word, 1989). Good News and Good Works: A Theologyfor the Whole Gospel. Baker, 1999. Originally published as One-Sided Christianity? Uniting the Church to Heal a Lost and Broken World (Zondervan/Harper, 1993, US; Hodder and Stoughton, UK,1993; Brendow [German], 1995; Campus Evangelical Fellowship [Chinese], 1998). Cup of Water, Bread ofLife: Inspiring Stories About Overcoming Lopsided Christianity (Zondervan/Harper, 1994; Triangle, UK, 1995; IVP (Korean), 1999. Christianity and Economics in the Post-Cold War Era: The Oxford Declaration and

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Beyond. Eerdmans, 1994 (Co-editor with Vinay K. Samuel and Herb Schlossberg); Dar El-Thaqafa (Arabic), 1997. Living Like Jesus: Eleven Essentials for Growing a Genuine Faith. Baker, 1999. Originally published as Genuine Christianity (Zondervan, 1996; IVP [Korean], 1997; Editora United Press [Brazilian], 1998; Arabic,1998). Just Generosity: A New Vision for Overcoming Poverty in America. Baker, 1999. 2nd edition, March, 2007. Churches That Make a Difference: Reaching Your Community with Good News and Good Works. With Philip N. Olson & Heidi Rolland Unruh. Baker, 2002. Doing Evangelism Jesus ’ Way: How Christians Demonstrate the Good News. Baker, 2003. The Freedom ofFaith-Based Organizations to Staffon a Religious Basis, with Carl H. Esbeck and Stanley Carlson-Thies. Center for Public Justice, 2004. Toward an Evangelical Public Policy: Political Strategies for the Health ofthe Nation, co-edited with Diane Knippers. Baker, 2005. The Scandal ofthe Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World? Baker, 2005. Saving Souls, Serving Society: Understanding the Faith Factor in Church-Based Social Ministry, with Heidi Rolland Unruh. Oxford Universit) Press, 2005. Hope for Children in Poverty: Profiles and Possibilities, co-edited with Heidi Rolland Unruh. Judson Press, June, 2007. The Scandal ofEvangelical Politics: Why Are Christians Missing the Chance to Really Change the World? Baker, 2008. I Am not a Social Activist: Making Jesus the Agenda. Herald Press, 2008. Linking Arms, Linking Lives: How Urban-Suburban Partnerships Can Transform Communities, with Al Tizon, John M. Perkins, and Wayne L. Gordon. Baker Books, 2008. Fixing the Moral Deficit: A Balanced Way to Balance the Budget. IVP Books, 2008. The Early Church on Killing. Baker Academic, 2012. Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement. Brazos Press, 2012.

Chapters in Books “The Christian as Peacemaker: A Response,” in Perfect Love and War; A Dialogue on Christian Holiness and the Issues of War and Peace, ed. Paul Hostetler. Nappanee, IN: Evangel Press, 1974, 83-88. “The Messiah Urban Satellite Campus,” in The Urban Mission, ed. Craig Ellison. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974, 92-99. “The Peace of Christ,” in Preaching on National Holidays, ed. Alton M. Motter. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1976, 99-104. “A Biblical Perspective on Stewardship,” in The Earth is the Lord’s: Essays on Stewardship, eds. Man Evelyn Jegen and Bruno V. Manno. New York, NY: Paulist, 1978, 1-21. “Science and Technolog}': A Response,” in Evangelicals Face the Future, ed. Donald E. Hoke. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Libran , 1978, 55-60. “Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt: Zwischen Liberalität und Radikalitat,” in Radikale Reformatoren, ed. Hans-Jurgen Goertz. Germany: Verlag C. H. Beck, 1978, 21-29. “God and the Poor: Toward a Theology of Development,” in The Ministry of Development in Evangelical Perspective, eds. Carl F. H. Henry and Robert Lincoln Hancock. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Libran; 1979, 35-39.

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“Evangelicalism and the Mennonite Tradition,” in Evangelicalism and Anabaptism, ed. C. Norman Kraus. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1979, 149-68. “An Evangelical Theology of Liberation,” in Perspectives, on Evangelical Theology, eds. Kenneth S. Kantzer and Stanley N. Gundry. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1979, 117-134. “Resurrection and Liberation: An Evangelical Approach to Social Justice,” The Recovery ofSpirit in Higher Education, ed. Robert Rankin, New York, NY: Seabury, 1980, 15477. “International Aggression and Nonmilitary Defense,” in What About the Russians? ed. Dale W. Brown. Elgin, IL: Brethren, 1984, 143-49. “The Way of the Cross,” in Perspectives on Peacemaking: Biblical Opinions in the Nuclear Age, ed. John A. Bernbaum, Ventura, CA: Regal Books,1984, 129-46. “Miracles, Methodology , and Modem Western Christology,” in Sharing Jesus in the Two Thirds World, eds. Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden. Oxford et al.: Regnum, 1983 and Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985, 351-370. “An Evangelical Theology of Liberation,” in Piety and Politics: Evangelicals and Fundamentalists Confront the World, eds. Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Cromartie. Washington DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1987, 143-60. “An Evangelical Vision for American Democracy: An Anabaptist Perspective,” in The Bible, Politics and Democracy, ed. Richard John Neuhaus. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987, 32-54. “Mennonites and the Poor: Toward an Anabaptist Theology of Liberation,” in Freedom and Discipleship: Liberation Theology in an Anabaptist Perspective, ed. Daniel S. Schipani. Mary knoll: Orbis, 1989. 85-100. “Christian Ethics and the Good News of the Kingdom,” in Proclaiming Christ in Christ’s Way: Studies in Integral Evangelism, eds. Vinay' Samuel and Albrecht Hauser. Oxford: Regnum, 1989, 122-43. “Christian Ethics and the Good News of the Kingdom: Doing Christian Ethics in an Eschatological Key,” in Within the Perfection of Christ, eds. Tern L. Brensinger and E. Morris Sider. Nappanee, IN: Evangel, 1990. 13-22. “Two Very Special People,” in What My Parents Did Right, ed. Gloria Gaither. Star Song, 1991, 222-227. The copy of this book that Ron gave me is copyrighted in 2002. The publishing info for it: West Monroe, LA: Howard Publishing, 2002 “Connecting the Welfare Tragedy” with Heidi Rolland, in Welfare in America, eds. Stanley W. Carlson-Thies and James W. Skillen. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996, 454-479. “Seeking the Face of Jesus,” in Godward: Personal Stories of Grace, ed. Ted Koontz. Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1996, 160-165. “Evaluating the Triumph of the Market: Where Do We Go From Here?” in The Jubilee Challenge: Utopia or Possibility? ed. Hans Ucko. Geneva, Switzerland: WCC, 112133. “Economic Justice: A Biblical Paradigm” with Stephen Mott, in Toward a Just and Caring Society: Christian Responses to Poverty in America, ed. David P. Gushee. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1999, 15-45 “An (Ana)Baptist Theological Perspective on Church-State Partnership: Evaluating ‘Charitable Choice’” with Heidi Rolland Unruh, in Welfare Reform and Faith-Based Organizations, eds. Derek Davis and Barry Hankins. Waco, TX: Bay lor, 1999, 89138. “No Aid to Religion? Charitable Choice and the First Amendment” with Heidi Unruh, in What's God Got to Do with the American Experiment? eds. E. J. Dionne, Jr., and John Dilulio, Jr. Washington, DC: Brookings, 2000, 128-137. “Toward an Evangelical Political Philosophy,” in Christians and Politics Beyond the

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Culture Wars: An Agenda for Engagement, ed. David P. Gushee. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2000, 79-96 “Why Would Anyone Ever Want to Be an Evangelical?” The Gospel with Extra Salt: Friends of Tony Campolo Celebrate His Passions for Ministry, ed. in Joseph B. Modica. Valley Forge. PA: Judson, 2000, 75-93. “Naming Sin and Communicating Compassion,” in What Mennonites Are Thinking2001, eds. Merle and Phyllis Pellman Good. Intercourse. PA: Good Books, 2001, 2729. “How Should Christians Respond?” in Strike Terror No More, ed. Jon L. Berquist. St. Louis, MO: Chalice, 2002, 326-328. “Evangelism and Social Services” with Heidi Rolland Unruh, in Christianity and Social Work: Readings on the Integration of Christian Faith and Social Work Practice, eds. Ben i Hugen and T. Laine Scales. Botsford, CT: NACSW, 2002, 305-26. “An American Evangelical Approach to Politics and Government” (72-79) and “Problems in American Society for Evangelical Christians” (pp. 50-58) in Religious Leaders' Conference on Monotheistic Religions 2004. Japan: CISMOR/Doshisha University, 2004. “Why Politicians Should Embrace the Faith-Based Initiative” in Faith-Based Social Ministries: Flourishing But Imperiled, ed. Stanley Carlson-Thies. (Annapolis, MD: Carlson-Thies, 2007 67-71. “The Whole Gospel for the Whole Person” in A Place for Truth: Highlights from the Veritas Forum, ed. Dallas Willard. Downers Grove, IL: 1VP, 2010, 301-318. “What if We Defined the Gospel the Wax Jesus Did?” in Holistic Mission: God’s Plan for God’s People, eds. Brian Woolnough and Wonsuk Ma. Oxford et al.: Regnum and Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010), 17-30. “Seven Dreams” in Letters to a Future Church: Words of Encouragement and Prophetic Appeals, Chris Lewis. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2012, 130-139. “Completely Pro-Life” a sermon in Al Tizon, Missional Preaching. Valle} Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2012, 133-138.

Articles “Troeltsch Revisited,” Perkins School of Theology Journal, XXI (1967-68), 40-44. “Karlstadt and Luther’s Doctorate,” Journal of Theological Studies, XXII (1971), 168-9. “Historical Methodology and Alleged Miracles: A Reply to Van A. Harvey,”Fides et Historia, Il (1970), 22-40. “Karlstadt’s Orlamunde Theology: A Theology of Regeneration,” Mennonite Quarterly Review, XLV (1971), 191-218, 352-76. “A Case for Easter,” HIS, (April 1972), 27-31. “The Historian, the Miraculous and Post-Newtonian Man,” Scottish Journal of Theology, XXV (1972), 309-19. “The Ministry of Affluence: A Graduated Tithe,” HIS, (December 1972), 6-8. Spirituality and Social Concern,” The Other Side1 IX (1973), 8-11,38-41. “Allegiance,” “Communal Love,” “Conflict of Duties, Interest,” “Zeal, Zealot” in Baker’s Dictionary ofChristian Ethics, ed Carl F. H. Henry (1973). “Christian Cluster Colleges,” Christianity Today, XVIII (1974), 982-6. “The Pauline Conception of the Resurrection Body in I Corinthians 15:35-54,” New Testament Studies. XXI (1975), 428-39. “The Values-Oriented Cluster College,” CASC Newsletter, XVII, No.4 (March 1974), 1315.

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“Watching Over One Another in Love,” The Other Side, XI (May-June, 1975) lOff. “Evangelism, Salvation and Social Justice,” International Review ofMission LXIV (1975), 251-67. “Evangelicals and the WCC,” Engage/Social Action. IV (Feb-March 1976) 41-45. "Where Have All the Liberals Gone?” The Other Side, (May-June 1976) 42-44. “Mischief by Statute: How we Oppress the Poor,” Christianity Today, (July 16, 1976), 14-19. ' “A Call for Evangelical Nonviolence,” Christian Century. (September 15, 976), 753-57. “Evangelism or Social Justice: Eliminating the Options,” Christianity Today, (October 8, 1976) 26-29. “Spare the Rod and Spoil the Church,” Eternity, (October 1976), 18ff. “The Values-Oriented Cluster College: A New Model for Christian Higher Education,” Religion in Life, (Fall 1976), 436-48. “Corporate Guilt and Institutionalized Racism,” Action, XXXVI (Spring 1977) 11-12, 2628. “Sharing the Wealth: The Church as Biblical Model for Public Policy,” Christian Century (June 8-15, 1977), 560-66. “St Paul’s Understanding of the Nature and Significance of the Resurrection in I Corinthians 15:1-19,” Novum Testamentum, XIX (1977), 1-18. “A Biblical Perspective on Stewardship,” New Catholic World, (Sept-Oct 1977), 212-20. “Is God Really on the Side of the Poor,” Sojourners, (October 1977) 11-14. “The Christian College: Beachhead or Bulwark?” The Other Side. (August 1978), 17-25. “Reconciling Our Enemies,” Sojourners, (January 1979), 14-17. “Cautions Against Ecclesiastical Elegance,” Christianity Today, (August 17, 1979), 1519. “Jesus’ Resurrection and Radical Discipleship,” Presbyterian Communiques (Nov-Dec 1979)3-4, 12-15. “Kreuz und Gewalt,” Evangelische Mission Jahrbuch (1979), 75-94. “Christ and Power,” International Review ofMission, (January 1980), 8-20. “Words and Deeds,” Journal of Theologyfor Southern Africa, (Fall 1979) 31 -50. “The Awesome Danger of Nuclear War,” The Other Side, (January' 1982), 10-17 (with Richard K. Taylor). “Jesus’ Resurrection and the Search for Peace and Justice,” Christian Century. (Novembers, 1982), 1103-08. “Fighting Fire with Water,” Sojourners, (April 1983) 14-17 (with Richard K. Taylor). “International Aggression and Nonmilitary Defense,” Christian Century, (July 6-13, 1983), 643-47 (with Richard K. Taylor). “Let’s Get the Church Off the Soapbox,” Christianity Today, (March 16, 1984), 54. “Are we Willing to Die for Peace?” Gospel Herald, (December 25, 1984), 898-901. “Why Me Lord: Reluctant Reflections on the Trip to Nicaragua,” The Other Side, (May, 1985), 20-25. “An Evangelical Vision for Public Life,” Transformation, (July-Sept., 1985), 1-9, 13-14. “Green Politics: Biblical or Buddhist?” SCP Newsletter, Fall, 1985, 7-11. “Returning to Our Roots,” Evangelical Visitor (October, 1986), 4-9. “The Hottest Race Issue in the World,” World Christian, (Sept.-Oct., 1987), 19-24 (co­ authored with Donald McGavran). “A Plea for Conservative Radicals and Radical Conservatives,” Christian Century, Oct. 1, 1986, 834-38. “AIDS: An Evangelical Perspective,” Christian Century, Jan. 6-13, 1988, 11-14. “Toward a Biblical Perspective on Equality': Steps on the Way Toward Christian Political Engagement,” Interpretation, April, 1989, 156-69.

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“Uncle Jesse,” Moody Monthly, June 10, 1989, 71-73 (Numerous reprints). “Babies, Bombs and the Bible; Abortion is Not the Only Issue,” Christianity Today, July 14, 1989, 28-32. “Our Peace and Our Evangelism Must Come Together,” Gospel Herald, March 17, 1992, 1-4. “Redeeming the Environmentalists,” Christianity Today, June 21, 1993, 26-29. “Has Evangelism Become Politically Incorrect?” Sojourners, July, 1993, 12-16. “Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger-Revisited,” Discernment, Spring, 1995, 2-7. “The Place of Humans in the Garden of God,” The Amicus Journal, Spring, 1995, 12-14. “Toward a Defining Center for Mennonites: Loving People the Way Jesus Loved People,” Gospel Herald, November 21, 1995, 1-4. “Toward an Evangelical Political Agenda,” Quaker Life, (September 1996), 20-22. “Our Selective Rage”, an editorial in Christianity Today, August 12, 1996, 14-15. “Can God Use Democrats?” Charisma, October 1996, 48-53. “Rich Christians in an Age ofHunger - Revisited,” Christian Scholar’s Review, Spring, 1997, 322-344. “Why Evangelicals Need a Political Philosophy,” Transformation, July, 1997, 1-10. “Should We Give Up on Government?” Christianity Today, March 2, 1998, 53-54 (co­ authored with Fred Clark). “No Aid to Religion? Charitable Choice and the First Amendment,” Brookings Review, Spring 1999, 46-49 (co-authored with Heidi Unruh). “Maximizing the Contribution of Faith-Based Organizations to Solve Today’s Most Urgent Social Problems,” Social Work & Christianity, Spring 2000, 71-79. “The Ethical Challenges of Global Capitalism,” Discernment, Winter 2001, 2-3. “Evangelism and Church-State Partnerships,” Journal ofChurch and State, Spring 2001, 267-95 (co-authored with Heidi Unruh). “Among White Evangelicals,” Boston Review, April/May 2001, 15. “Revisiting Mt. Carmel Through Charitable Choice,” Christianity Today, June 11, 2001, 84-89? “Grossly Unfair: Evaluating the Bush Proposal,” Christian Ethics Today, August 2001, 18-19. “God’s Heart for the Oppressed,” Discipleship Journal, November/December 2001, 5659. “The Case for ‘Discrimination,’” First Things, June/July 2002, 19-22. “Just Generosity: A New Vision for Overcoming Poverty' in America,” CCDA Restorer, Part I (Summer-Fall 2003), Part II (Winter-Spring 2004); Part III (Spring-Summer 2004). “Widespread Poverty in the Richest Nation in Human History,” Enrichment, Spring 2004, 40-48. “Typology’ of Religious Characteristics of Social Service and Educational Organizations and Programs,” co-authored with Heidi Rolland Unruh, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, March 2004, 109-134. “Evaluating the Faith-Based Initiative: Is Charitable Choice Good Public Policy?” Theology Today, Vol. 61, No. 4 (January , 2005), 485-498. “An Anabaptist Perspective on Church, Government, Violence and Politics,” Brethren in Christ History and Life, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2 (August, 2005), 255-278. “Faith-Based Service,” Blueprint, 2005, No. 3, 39-40. “Developing an Evangelical Political Framework: Moving Toyvard Consensus,” Evangelical Review of Theology, April 2008, 103-117. “Bearing Better Witness,” First Things, December 1, 2010, 47-50. “An Open Letter to This Generation,” in Relevant Magazine, March-April 2001, 52-55.

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“How the National Budget is a Moral Issue” in Relevant Magazine, September-October 2012. “A Critique of J. Denny Weaver’s Nonviolent Atonement” Brethren in Christ History and Life XXXV, April 2012, 214-241.

Op-Eds ‘“Charitable choice’ addresses the spiritual roots of social problems,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 23, 1999, Al3 (co-authored with Sen. Rick Santorum). “Bush’s references to Jesus Christ evoke uneasy civic role of religion,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 23, 1999, A19. “Bush can build bridges over divide,” The Dallas Morning News, December 19, 2000, 23A. “Bush can make world believe in compassionate conservatism,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 26, 2000, A27. “Can faith help solve our tough social problems?” The Boston Globe, January 30, 2001, All. “Evangelicals don’t fit political stereotype,” The Dallas Morning News, March 6, 2001, 15A. “Evangelical leaders not in support of tax cut,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 13, 2001, E5. “Bush must address other half of poverty ,” The Dallas Morning News, May 26, 2001, 27A. “The path to a better future,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 6, 2002, D5. “At a time of growing poverty, new tax cut plan is an outrage,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 12, 2003, A23. “Dems: Change or stay on sidelines,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 19, 2004. “Christians seek love, not hate,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 28, 2005, A17.

Interviews/Articles about Ron Sider Committee for Justice and Liberty Newsletter, (Winter 1978) 5-8. Eternity, (April 1979), 19-21. Buzz, (February 1979), 48-51. Wittenberg Door, (October-November 1979), 12-16,25-28. Festival Quarterly, (Winter 1985), 7-11. The Other Side, (October 1986), 10-14. Quaker Life, (July-August, 1987), 8-9. Equipping the Saints, (Summer 1989). Christianity Today, (Cover Story ), April 27, 1992. Tear Times, (on Rich Christians'), Winter 1996, 12-13. Christianity Today, (on Rich Christians), April 28, 1997, 68-69. “Dr. Ron Sider: Mennonite Environmentalist on the Evangelical Left,” by Joel Fetzer and Gretchen S.Cames, in Jo Renee Formicola and Hubert Morken, eds., Religious Leaders and Faith-Based Politics: Ten Profiles (New York: Rowan and Littlefield, 2001), Ch. 8. The Door Magazine, March/April 2002, 19-23.

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REGNUM EDINBURGH CENTENARY SERIES David A. Kerr, Kenneth R. Ross (Eds) Mission Then and Now 2009/978-1-870345-73-6/343pp (paperback) 2009 7978-1-870345-76-7/343pp (hardback) No one can hope to fully understand the modern Christian missionary movement without engaging substantially with the World Missionary Conference, held at Edinburgh in 1910. This book is the first to systematically examine the eight Commissions which reported to Edinburgh 1910 and gave the conference much of its substance and enduring value. It will deepen and extend the reflection being stimulated by the upcoming centenary and will kindle the missionary imagination for 2010 and beyond.

Daryl M. Balia, Kirsteen Kim (Eds) Witnessing to Christ Today 2010 7978-1-870345-77-4/301pp (hardback) This volume, the second in the Edinburgh 2010 series, includes reports of the nine main study groups working on different themes for the celebration of the centenary of the World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910. Their collaborative work brings together perspectives that are as inclusive as possible of contemporary world Christianity and helps readers to grasp what it means in different contexts to be ‘witnessing to Christ today’.

Claudia Wahrisch-Oblau, Fidon Mwombeki (Eds) Mission Continues Global Impulses for the 21s' Century 2010 / 978-1-870345-82-8 / 271pp (hardback) In May 2009, 35 theologians from Asia, Africa and Europe met in Wuppertal, Germany, for a consultation on mission theology organized by the United Evangelical Mission: Communion of 35 Churches in Three Continents. The aim was to participate in the 100th anniversary of the Edinburgh conference through a study process and reflect on the challenges for mission in the 21st century. This book brings together these papers written by experienced practitioners from around the world. Brian Woolnough and Wonsuk Ma (Eds) Holistic Mission God’s Plan for God’s People 2010 / 978-1-870345-85-9 /268pp (hardback) Holistic mission, or integral mission, implies God is concerned with the whole person, the whole community, body, mind and spirit. This book discusses the meaning of the holistic gospel, how it has developed, and implications for the church. It takes a global, eclectic approach, with 19 writers, all of whom have much experience in, and commitment to, holistic mission. It addresses critically and honestly one of the most exciting, and challenging, issues facing the church today. To be part of God’s plan for God’s people, the church must take holistic mission to the world. Kirsteen Kim and Andrew Anderson (Eds) Mission Today and Tomorrow 2010/ 978-1-870345-91-0 / 450pp (hardback) There are moments in our lives when we come to realise that we are participating in the triune God’s mission. If we believe the church to be as sign and symbol of the reign of God

in the world, then we are called to witness to Christ today by sharing in God’s mission of love through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. We can all participate in God’s transforming and reconciling mission of love to the whole creation.

Tormod Engelsviken, Erling Lundeby and Dagfinn Solheim (Eds) The Church Going Glocal Mission and Globalisation 2011 / 978-1-870345-93-4 / 262pp (hardback) The New Testament church is... universal and local at the same time. The universal, one and holy apostolic church appears in local manifestations. Missiologically speaking... the church can take courage as she faces the increasing impact of globalisation on local communities today. Being universal and concrete, the church is geared for the simultaneous challenges of the glocal and local.

Marina Ngurusangzeli Behera (Ed) Interfaith Relations after One Hundred Years Christian Mission among Other Faiths 2011 / 978-1-870345-96-5 / 338pp (hardback) The essays of this book reflect not only the acceptance and celebration of pluralism within India but also by extension an acceptance as well as a need for unity among Indian Christians of different denominations. The essays were presented and studied at a preparatory consultation on Study Theme II: Christian Mission Among Other Faiths at the United Theological College, India July 2009.

Lalsangkima Pachuau and Knud Jorgensen (Eds) Witnessing to Christ in a Pluralistic Age Christian Mission among Other Faiths 2011 / 978-1-870345-95-8 / 277pp (hardback) In a world where plurality of faiths is increasingly becoming a norm of life, insights on the theology of religious plurality are needed to strengthen our understanding of our own faith and the faith of others. Even though religious diversity is not new, we are seeing an upsurge in interest on the theologies of religion among all Christian confessional traditions. It can be claimed that no other issue in Christian mission is more important and more difficult than the theologies of religions. Beth Snodderly and A Scott Moreau (Eds) Evangelical Frontier Mission Perspectives on the Global Progress of the Gospel 2011 / 978-1-870345-98-9 / 312pp (hardback) This important volume demonstrates that 100 years after the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, Evangelism has become truly global. Twenty-first-century Evangelism continues to focus on frontier mission, but significantly, and in the spirit of Edinburgh 1910, it also has re-engaged social action. Rolv Olsen (Ed) Mission and Postmodernities 2011 / 978-1-870345-97-2 /279pp (hardback) This volume takes on meaning because its authors honestly struggle with and debate how we should relate to postmodernities. Should our response be accommodation, relativizing or counter-culture? How do we strike a balance between listening and understanding, and

at the same time exploring how postmodernities influence the interpretation and application of the Bible as the normative story of God’s mission in the world?

Cathy Ross (Ed) Life- Widening Mission 2012/978-1-908355-00-3 / 163pp (hardback) It is clear from the essays collected here that the experience of the 2010 World Mission Conference in Edinburgh was both affirming and frustrating for those taking part affirming because of its recognition of how the centre of gravity has moved in global Christianity; frustrating because of the relative slowness of so many global Christian bodies to catch up with this and to embody it in the way they do business and in the way they represent themselves. These reflections will - or should - provide plenty of food for thought in the various councils of the Communion in the coming years.

Beate Fagerli, Knud Jorgensen, Rolv Olsen, Kari Storstein Haug and Knut Tveitereid (Eds) A Learning Missional Church Reflections from Young Missiologists 2012 / 978-1-908355-01-0 / 218pp (hardback) Cross-cultural mission has always been a primary learning experience for the church. It pulls us out of a mono-cultural understanding and helps us discover a legitimate theological pluralism which opens up for new perspectives in the Gospel. Translating the Gospel into new languages and cultures is a human and divine means of making us learn new ‘incarnations’ of the Good News. Emma Wild-Wood & Peniel Rajkumar (Eds) Foundations for Mission 2012 / 978-1-908355-12-6 / 309pp (hardback) This volume provides an important resource for those wishing to gain an overview of significant issues in contemporary missiology whilst understanding how they are applied in particular contexts. Wonsuk Ma & Kenneth R Ross (Eds) Mission Spirituality and Authentic Discipleship 2013 / 978-1-908355-24-9 /248pp (hardback) This book argues for the primacy of spirituality in the practice of mission. Since God is the primary agent of mission and God works through the power of the Holy Spirit, it is through openness to the Spirit that mission finds its true character and has its authentic impact.

REGNUM STUDIES IN GLOBAL CHRISTIANITY David Emmanuel Singh (Ed) Jesus and the Cross Reflections of Christians from Islamic Contexts 2008 / 978-1-870345-65-1 / 226pp The Cross reminds us that the sins of the world are not borne through the exercise of power but through Jesus Christ’s submission to the will of the Father. The papers in this volume are organised in three parts: scriptural, contextual and theological. The central question

being addressed is: how do Christians living in contexts, where Islam is a majority or minority religion, experience, express or think of the Cross?

Sung-wook Hong Naming God in Korea The Case of Protestant Christianity 2008 / 978-1-870345-66-8 /170pp (hardback) Since Christianity was introduced to Korea more than a century ago, one of the most controversial issues has been the Korean term for the Christian ‘God’. This issue is not merely about naming the Christian God in Korean language, but it relates to the question ol theological contextualization - the relationship between the gospel and culture - and the question of Korean Christian identity. This book demonstrates the nature of the gospel ir> relation to cultures, i.e., the universality of the gospel expressed in all human cultures. Hubert van Beek (Ed) Revisioning Christian Unity The Global Christian Forum 2009 / 978-1-870345-74-3 / 288pp (hardback) This book contains the records of the Global Christian Forum gathering held in Limurte near Nairobi, Kenya, on 6 - 9 November 2007 as well as the papers presented at that historic event. Also included are a summary of the Global Christian Forum process from its inception until the 2007 gathering and the reports of the evaluation of the process that was carried out in 2008.

Young-hoon Lee The Holy Spirit Movement in Korea Its Historical and Theological Development 2009 / 978-1-870345-67-5 /174pp (hardback) This book traces the historical and theological development of the Holy Spirit Movement in Korea through six successive periods (from 1900 to the present time). These periods are characterized by repentance and revival (1900-20), persecution and suffering under Japanese occupation (1920-40), confusion and division (1940-60), explosive revival in which the Pentecostal movement played a major role in the rapid growth of Korean churches (1960-80), the movement reaching out to all denominations (1980-2000), and the new context demanding the Holy Spirit movement to open new horizons in its mission engagement (2000-).

Paul Hang-Sik Cho Eschatology and Ecology Experiences of the Korean Church 2010 1 978-1-870345-75-0 1 260pp (hardback) This book raises the question of why Korean people, and Korean Protestant Christians in particular, pay so little attention to ecological issues. The author argues that there is an important connection (or elective affinity) between this lack of attention and the other­ worldly eschatology that is so dominant within Korean Protestant Christianity. Dietrich Werner, David Esterline, Namsoon Kang, Joshva Raja (Eds) The Handbook of Theological Education in World Christianity Theological Perspectives, Ecumenical Trends. Regional Surveys 2010 / 978-1-870345-80-0 / 759pp This major reference work is the first ever comprehensive study of Theological Education in Christianity of its kind. With contributions from over 90 international scholars and

church leaders, it aims to be easily accessible across denominational, cultural, educational, and geographic boundaries. The Handbook will aid international dialogue and networking among theological educators, institutions, and agencies. David Emmanuel Singh & Bernard C Farr (Eds) Christianity and Education Shaping of Christian Context in Thinking 2010/978-1-870345-81-1 / 374pp Christianity and Education is a collection of papers published in Transformation: An international Journal of Holistic Mission Studies over a period of 15 years. The articles represent a spectrum of Christian thinking addressing issues of institutional development for theological education, theological studies in the context of global mission, contextually eware/informed education, and academies which deliver such education, methodologies and personal reflections. J.Andrew Kirk Civilisations in Conflict? Islam, the West and Christian Faith 2011 / 978-1-870345-87-3 / 205pp Samuel Huntington’s thesis, which argues that there appear to be aspects of Islam that .could be on a collision course with the politics and values of Western societies, has provoked much controversy. The purpose of this study is to offer a particular response to Huntington’s thesis by making a comparison between the origins of Islam and Christianity. David Emmanuel Singh (Ed) Jesus and the Incarnation Reflections of Christians from Islamic Contexts 2011 / 978-1-870345-90-3 / 245pp In the dialogues of Christians with Muslims nothing is more fundamental than the Cross, the Incarnation and the Resurrection of Jesus. Building on the Jesus and the Cross, this book contains voices of Christians living in various ‘Islamic contexts’ and reflecting on the Incarnation of Jesus. The aim and hope of these reflections is that the papers weaved around the notion of ‘the Word’ will not only promote dialogue among Christians on the roles of the Person and the Book but, also, create a positive environment for their conversations with Muslim neighbours.

Ivan M Satyavrata God Has Not left Himself Without Witness 2011 / 978-1-870345-79-8 / 264pp Since its earliest inception the Christian Church has had to address the question of what common ground exits between Christian faiths and other religions. This issue is not merely of academic interest but one with critical existential and socio-political consequences. This study presents a case for the revitalization of the fulfdlment tradition based on a recovery and assessment of the fulfillment approaches of Indian Christian converts in the pre­ independence period.

Bal Krishna Sharma From this World to the Next Christian Identity and Funerary Rites in Nepal 2013 / 978-1-908355-08-9 / 238pp This book explores and analyses funerary rite struggles in a nation where Christianity is a comparatively recent phenomenon, and many families have multi-faith, who go through

traumatic experiences at the death of their family members. The author has used an applied theological approach to explore and analyse the findings in order to address the issue oi funerary rites with which the Nepalese church is struggling.

J Kwabena Asamoah-Gyada Contemporary Pentecostal Christianity Interpretations from an African Context 2013/978-1-908355-07-2 / 194pp Pentecostalism is the fastest growing stream of Christianity in the world. The real evidence for the significance of Pentecostalism lies in the actual churches they have built and the numbers they attract. This work interprets key theological and missiological themes in African Pentecostalism by using material from the live experiences of the movement itself.

Isabel Apawo Phiri & Dietrich Werner (Eds) Handbook of Theological Education in Africa 2013/978-1-908355-19-5 / lllOpp (hardback) The Handbook of Theological Education in Africa is a wake-up call for African churches to give proper prominence to theological education institutions and their programmes which serve them. It is unique, comprehensive and ambitious in its aim and scope.

Hope Antone, Wati Longchar, Hyunju Bae, Huang Po Ho, Dietrich Werner (Eds) Asian Handbook for Theological Education and Ecumenism 2013 / 978-1-908355-30-0 / 675pp (hardback) This impressive and comprehensive book focuses on key resources for teaching Christian unity and common witness in Asian contexts. It is a collection of articles that reflects the ongoing ‘double wrestle’ with the texts of biblical tradition as well as with contemporary contexts. It signals an investment towards the future of the ecumenical movement in Asia.

David Emmanuel Singh and Bernard C Farr (Eds) Inequality, Corruption and the Church Challenges & Opportunities in the Global Church 2013 / 978-1-908355-20-1/217pp This book contains papers from the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies’ quarterly journal, Transformation, on the topic of Christian Ethics. Here, Mission Studies is understood in its. widest sense to also encompass Christian Ethics. At the very hearts of it lies the Family as. the basic unit of society. All the papers together seek to contribute to understanding how Christian thought is shaped in contexts each of which poses its own challenge to Christian, living in family and in broader society.

Martin Allaby Inequality, Corruption and the Church Challenges & Opportunities in the Global Church 2013 / 978-1-908355-16-4/ 228pp Why are economic inequalities greatest in the southern countries where most people are Christians? This book teases out the influences that have created this situation, andi concludes that Christians could help reduce economic inequalities by opposing corruption. Interviews in the Philippines, Kenya, Zambia and Peru reveal opportunities and challenges, for Christians as they face up to corruption.

REGNUM STUDIES IN MISSION Kwame Bediako Theology and Identity The Impact of Culture upon Christian Thought in the Second Century and in Modern Africa 1992 / 978-1870345-10-1 / 507pp The author examines the question of Christian identity in the context of the Graeco-Roman culture of the early Roman Empire. He then addresses the modern African predicament of quests for identity and integration.

Christopher Sugden Seeking the Asian Face of Jesus The Practice and Theology of Christian Social Witness in Indonesia and India 1974-1996 1997 /1-870345-26-6 / 496pp This study focuses on contemporary holistic mission with the poor in India and Indonesia combined with the call to transformation of all life in Christ with micro-credit enterprise schemes. ‘The literature on contextual theology now has a new standard to rise to’ - Lamin Sanneh (Yale University, USA).

Hwa Yung Mangoes or Bananas? The Quest for an Authentic Asian Christian Theology 1997 /1-870345-25-5 / 274pp Asian Christian thought remains largely captive to Greek dualism and Enlightenment rationalism because of the overwhelming dominance of Western culture. Authentic contextual Christian theologies will emerge within Asian Christianity with a dual recovery of confidence in culture and the gospel. Keith E. Eitel Paradigm Wars The Southern Baptist International Mission Board Faces the Third Millennium 1999 /1-870345-12-6 / 140pp The International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest denominational mission agency in North America. This volume chronicles the historic and contemporary forces that led to the IMB’s recent extensive reorganization, providing the most comprehensive case study to date of a historic mission agency restructuring to continue its mission purpose into the twenty-first century more effectively.

Samuel Jayakumar Dalit Consciousness and Christian Conversion Historical Resources for a Contemporary Debate 1999 / 81-7214-497-0 / 434pp (Published jointly with ISPCK) The main focus of this historical study is social change and transformation among the Dalit Christian communities in India. Historiography tests the evidence in the light of the conclusions of the modern Dalit liberation theologians.

Vinay Samuel and Christopher Sugden (Eds) Mission as Transformation A Theology of the Whole Gospel 1999 / 978-18703455-13-2 / 522pp This book brings together in one volume twenty five years of biblical reflection on mission practice with the poor from around the world. This volume helps anyone understand how evangelicals, struggling to unite evangelism and social action, found their way in the last twenty five years to the biblical view of mission in which God calls all human beings to love God and their neighbour; never creating a separation between the two. Christopher Sugden Gospel, Culture and Transformation 2000 /1-870345-32-0 / 152pp A Reprint, with a New Introduction, of Part Two of Seeking the Asian Face ofJesus Gospel, Culture and Transformation explores the practice of mission especially in relation to transforming cultures and communities. - ‘Transformation is to enable God’s vision of society to be actualised in all relationships: social, economic and spiritual, so that God’s will may be reflected in human society and his love experienced by all communities, especially the poor.’

Bernhard Ott Beyond Fragmentation: Integrating Mission and Theological Education A Critical Assessment ofsome Recent Developments in Evangelical Theological Education 2001 /1-870345-14-2 / 382pp Beyond Fragmentation is an enquiry into the development of Mission Studies in evangelical theological education in Germany and German-speaking Switzerland between 1960 and 1995. The author undertakes a detailed examination of the paradigm shifts which have taken place in recent years in both the theology of mission and the understanding of theological education. Gideon Githiga The Church as the Bulwark against Authoritarianism Development of Church and State Relations in Kenya, with Particular Reference to the Years after Political Independence 1963-1992 2002 / 1-870345-38-x / 218pp ‘All who care for love, peace and unity in Kenyan society will want to read this careful history by Bishop Githiga of how Kenyan Christians, drawing on the Bible, have sought to share the love of God, bring his peace and build up the unity of the nation, often in the face of great difficulties and opposition.’ Canon Dr Chris Sugden, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies.

Myung Sung-Hoon, Hong Young-Gi (Eds) Charis and Charisma David Yonggi Cho and the Growth ofYoido Full Gospel Church 2003 / 978-1870345-45-3/218pp This book discusses the factors responsible for the growth of the world’s largest church. It expounds the role of the Holy Spirit, the leadership, prayer, preaching, cell groups and

creativity in promoting church growth. It focuses on God’s grace (charis) and inspiring leadership (charisma) as the two essential factors and the book’s purpose is to present a model for church growth worldwide.

Samuel Jayakumar Mission Reader Historical Models for Wholistic Mission in the Indian Context 2003/1-870345-42-8 / 250pp (Published jointly with ISPCK) This book is written from an evangelical point of view revalidating and reaffirming the Christian commitment to wholistic mission. The roots of the ‘wholistic mission’ combining ‘evangelism and social concerns’ are to be located in the history and tradition of Christian evangelism in the past; and the civilizing purpose of evangelism is compatible with modernity as an instrument in nation building. Bob Robinson Christians Meeting Hindus An Analysis and Theological Critique of the Hindu-Christian Encounter in India 2004 / 987-1870345-39-2 / 392pp This book focuses on the Hindu-Christian encounter, especially the intentional meeting called dialogue, mainly during the last four decades of the twentieth century, and specifically in India itself. Gene Early Leadership Expectations How Executive Expectations are Created and Used in a Non-Profit Setting 2005 /1-870345-30-4 / 276pp The author creates an Expectation Enactment Analysis to study the role of the Chancellor of the University of the Nations-Kona, Hawaii. This study is grounded in the field of managerial work, jobs, and behaviour and draws on symbolic interactionism, role theory, role identity theory and enactment theory. The result is a conceptual framework for developing an understanding of managerial roles. Tharcisse Gatwa The Churches and Ethnic Ideology in the Rwandan Crises 1900-1994 2005 / 978-1870345-24-8 / 300pp (Reprinted 2011) Since the early years of the twentieth century Christianity has become a new factor in Rwandan society. This book investigates the role Christian churches played in the formulation and development of the racial ideology that culminated in the 1994 genocide. Julie Ma Mission Possible Biblical Strategies for Reaching the Lost 2005 / 978-1870345-37-1 / 142pp This is a missiology book for the church which liberates missiology from the specialists for the benefit of every believer. It also serves as a textbook that is simple and friendly, and yet solid in biblical interpretation. This book links the biblical teaching to the actual and contemporary missiological settings with examples, making the Bible come alive to the reader.

I. Mark Beaumont Christology in Dialogue with Muslims A Critical Analysis of Christian Presentations of Christ for Muslims from the Ninth and Twentieth Centuries 2005 / 978-1870345-46-0 / 227pp This book analyses Christian presentations of Christ for Muslims in the most creative periods of Christian-Muslim dialogue, the first half of the ninth century and the second half of the twentieth century. In these two periods, Christians made serious attempts to present their faith in Christ in terms that take into account Muslim perceptions of him, with a view to bridging the gap between Muslim and Christian convictions. Thomas Czovek, Three Seasons of Charismatic Leadership A Literary-Critical and Theological Interpretation of the Narrative of Saul, David and Solomon 2006 / 978-1870345-48-4 / 272pp This book investigates the charismatic leadership of Saul, David and Solomon. It suggests that charismatic leaders emerge in crisis situations in order to resolve the crisis by the charisma granted by God. Czovek argues that Saul proved himself as a charismatic leader as long as he acted resolutely and independently from his mentor Samuel. In the author’s eyes, Saul’s failure to establish himself as a charismatic leader is caused by his inability to step out from Samuel’s shadow. Richard Burgess Nigeria’s Christian Revolution The Civil War Revival and Its Pentecostal Progeny (1967-2006) 2008 / 978-1-870345-63-7 / 347pp This book describes the revival that occurred among the Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria and the new Pentecostal churches it generated, and documents the changes that have occurred as the movement has responded to global flows and local demands. As such, it explores the nature of revivalist and Pentecostal experience, but does so against the backdrop of local socio-political and economic developments, such as decolonisation and civil war, as well as broader processes, such as modernisation and globalisation.

David Emmanuel Singh & Bernard C Farr (Eds) Christianity and Cultures Shaping Christian Thinking in Context 2008 / 978-1-870345-69-9/271pp This volume marks an important milestone, the 25th anniversary of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (OCMS). The papers here have been exclusively sourced from Transformation, a quarterly journal of OCMS, and seek to provide a tripartite view of Christianity’s engagement with cultures by focusing on the question: how is Christian thinking being formed or reformed through its interaction with the varied contexts it encounters? The subject matters include different strands of theological-missiological thinking, socio-political engagements and forms of family relationships in interaction with the host cultures.

Tormod Engelsviken, Ernst Harbakk, Rolv Olsen, Thor Strandenaes (Eds) Mission to the World Communicating the Gospel in the 21st Century: Essays in Honour ofKnud Jorgensen 2008 / 978-1-870345-64-4 / 472pp (hardback) Knud Jorgensen is Director of Areopagos and Associate Professor of Missiology at MF Norwegian School of Theology. This book reflects on the main areas of Jorgensen’s commitment to mission. At the same time it focuses on the main frontier of mission, the world, the content of mission, the Gospel, the fact that the Gospel has to be communicated, and the context of contemporary mission in the 21st century. Al Tizon Transformation after Lausanne Radical Evangelical Mission in Global-Local Perspective 2008 / 978-1-870345-68-2 / 281pp After Lausanne '74, a worldwide network of radical evangelical mission theologians and practitioners use the notion of "Mission as Transformation" to integrate evangelism and social concern together, thus lifting theological voices from the Two Thirds World to places of prominence. This book documents the definitive gatherings, theological tensions, and social forces within and without evangelicalism that led up to Mission as Transformation. And it does so through a global-local grid that points the way toward greater holistic mission in the 21st century.

Bambang Budijanto Values and Participation Development in Rural Indonesia 2009 / 978-1 -870345-70-4 / 237pp Socio-religious values and socio-economic development are inter-dependant, inter-related and are constantly changing in the context of macro political structures, economic policy, religious organizations and globalization; and micro influences such as local affinities, identity, politics, leadership and beliefs. The book argues that the comprehensive approach in understanding the socio-religious values of each of the three local Lopait communities in Central Java is essential to accurately describing their respective identity. Alan R. Johnson Leadership in a Slum A Bangkok Case Study 2009 / 978-1-870345-71-2 / 238pp This book looks at leadership in the social context of a slum in Bangkok from a different perspective than traditional studies which measure well educated Thais on leadership scales derived in the West. Using both systematic data collection and participant observation, it develops a culturally preferred model as well as a set of models based in Thai concepts that reflect on-the-ground realities. It concludes by looking at the implications of the anthropological approach for those who are involved in leadership training in Thai settings and beyond. Titre Ande Leadership and Authority Bula Matari and Life - Community Ecclesiology in Congo 2010 / 978-1-870345-72-9 / 189pp Christian theology in Africa can make significant development if a critical understanding of the socio-political context in contemporary Africa is taken seriously, particularly as

Africa’s post-colonial Christian leadership based its understanding and use of authority or* the Bula Matari model. This has caused many problems and Titre proposes a LifeCommunity ecclesiology for liberating authority, here leadership is a function, not a status, and ‘apostolic succession’ belongs to all people of God.

Frank Kwesi Adams Odwira and the Gospel A Study of the Asante Odwira Festival and its Significance for Christianity in Ghana 2010 /978-1-870345-59-0 / 232pp The study of the Odwira festival is the key to the understanding of Asante religious and political life in Ghana. The book explores the nature of the Odwira festival longitudinally in pre-colonial, colonial and post-independence Ghana - and examines the Odwira ideology and its implications for understanding the Asante self-identity. Also discussed is how some elements of faith portrayed in the Odwira festival can provide a framework for Christianity to engage with Asante culture at a greater depth.

Bruce Carlton Strategy Coordinator Changing the Course of Southern Baptist Missions 2010 / 978-1-870345-78-1 / 273pp This is an outstanding, one-of-a-kind work addressing the influence of the non-residential missionary/strategy coordinator’s role in Southern Baptist missions. This scholarly text examines the twentieth century global missiological currents that influenced the leadership» of the International Mission Board, resulting in a new paradigm to assist in taking the gospel to the nations.

Julie Ma & Wonsuk Ma Mission in the Spirit: Towards a Pentecostal/Charismatic Missiology 2010 / 978-1-870345-84-2 / 312pp The book explores the unique contribution of Pentecostal/Charismatic mission from the beginning of the twentieth century. The first part considers the theological basis of Pentecostal/Charismatic mission thinking and practice. Special attention is paid to the Old Testament, which has been regularly overlooked by the modern Pentecostal/Charismatic movements. The second part discusses major mission topics with contributions and challenges unique to Pentecostal/Charismatic mission. The book concludes with a reflection on the future of this powerful missionary movement. As the authors served as Korean missionaries in Asia, often their missionary experiences in Asia are reflected in their discussions. Allan Anderson, Edmond Tang (Eds) Asian and Pentecostal The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia 2011/978-1870345-94-1 / 5OOpp (Revised Edition) This book provides a thematic discussion and pioneering case studies on the history and development of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in the countries of South Asia, South East Asia and East Asia.

S. Hun Kim & Wonsuk Ma (Eds) Korean Diaspora and Christian Mission 2011 / 978-1-870345-89-7/ 301pp (hardback) As a ‘divine conspiracy’ for Missio Dei, the global phenomenon of people on the move has shown itself to be invaluable. In 2004 two significant documents concerning Diaspora were introduced, one by the Filipino International Network and the other by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization. These have created awareness of the importance of people on the move for Christian mission. Since then, Korean Diaspora has conducted •similar research among Korean missions, resulting in this book

Jin Huat Tan Planting an Indigenous Church The Case of the Borneo Evangelical Mission 2011/978-1-870345-99-6 / 343pp Dr Jin Huat Tan has written a pioneering study of the origins and development of Malaysia’s most significant indigenous church. This is an amazing story of revival, renewal and transformation of the entire region chronicling the powerful effect of it evident to date! What can we learn from this extensive and careful study of the Borneo Revival, so the global Christianity will become ever more dynamic? Bill Prevette Child, Church and Compassion Towards Child Theology in Romania 2012 / 978-1-908355-03-4 / 382pp Bill Prevett comments that "children are like ‘canaries in a mine shaft’; they provide a focal point for discovery and encounter of perilous aspects of our world that are often ignored.” True, but miners also carried a lamp to see into the subterranean darkness. This book is such a lamp. It lights up the subterranean world of children and youth in danger of exploitation, and as it does so travels deep into their lives and also into the activities of those who seek to help them.

Samuel Cyuma Picking up the Pieces The Church and Conflict Resolution in South Africa and Rwanda 2012 / 978-1-908355-02-7 / 373pp In the last ten years of the 20th century, the world was twice confronted with unbelievable news from Africa. First, there was the end of Apartheid in South Africa, without bloodshed, due to responsible political and Church leaders. The second was the mass killings in Rwanda, which soon escalated into real genocide. Political and Church leaders had been unable to prevents this crime against humanity. In this book, the question is raised: can we compare the situation in South Africa with that in Rwanda? Can Rwandan leaders draw lessons from the peace process in South Africa? Peter Rowan Proclaiming the Peacemaker The Malaysian Church as an Agent of Reconciliation in a Multicultural Society 2012 / 978-1-908355-05-8 / 268pp With a history of racial violence and in recent years, low-level ethnic tensions, the themes of peaceful coexistence and social harmony are recurring ones in the discourse of Malaysian society. In such a context, this book looks at the role of the church as a

reconciling agent, arguing that a reconciling presence within a divided society necessitates an ethos of peacemaking. Edward Ontita Resources and Opportunity The Architecture ofLivelihoods in Rural Kenya 2012 / 978-1-908355-04-1 / 328pp Poor people in most rural areas of developing countries often improvise resources in unique ways to enable them make a living. Resources and Opportunity takes the view that resources are dynamic and fluid, arguing that villagers co-produce them through redefinition and renaming in everyday practice and use them in diverse ways. The book focuses on ordinary social activities to bring out people’s creativity in locating, redesigning and embracing livelihood opportunities in processes.

Kathryn Kraft Searching for Heaven in the Real World A Sociological Discussion of Conversion in the Arab World 2012 / 978-1-908355-15-7 / 1422pp Kathryn Kraft explores the breadth of psychological and social issues faced by Arab Muslims after making a decision to adopt a faith in Christ or Christianity, investigating some of the most surprising and significant challenges new believers face. Wessley Lukose Contextual Missiology of the Spirit Pentecostalism in Rajasthan, India 2013 / 978-1-908355-09-6 / 256pp This book explores the identity, context and features of Pentecostalism in Rajasthan, India as well as the internal and external issues facing Pentecostals. It aims to suggest 'a contextual missiology of the Spirit,' as a new model of contextual missiology from a Pentecostal perspective. It is presented as a glocal, ecumenical, transformational, and public missiology. Paul M Miller Evangelical Mission in Co-operation with Catholics: Pentecostalism in Rajasthan, India 2013 / 978-1-908355-17-1 / 291pp This book brings the first thorough examination of the discussions going on within Evangelicalism about the viability of a good conscience dialogue with Roman Catholics. Those who are interested in evangelical world missions and Roman Catholic views of world missions will find this informative.

REGNUM RESOURCES FOR MISSION

Knud Jorgensen Equipping for Service Christian Leadership in Church and Society 2012 / 978-1-908355-06-5 / 150pp This book is written out of decades of experience of leading churches and missions in Ethiopia, Geneva, Norway and Hong Kong. Combining the teaching of Scripture with the nsights of contemporary management philosophy, Jorgensen writes in a way which is practical and applicable to anyone in Christian service. “The intention has been to :hallenge towards a leadership relevant for work in church and mission, and in public and :ivil society, with special attention to leadership in Church and organisation.” Mary Miller What does Love have to do with Leadership? 2013 / 978-1-908355-10-2 / lOOpp Leadership is a performing art, not a science. It is the art of influencing others, not just to iccomplish something together, but to want to accomplish great things together. Mary Miller captures the art of servant leadership in her powerful book. She understands that servant ■eaders challenge existing processes without manipulating or overpowering people.

Mary Miller (Ed) Faces of Holistic Mission Stories of the OCMS Family 2013 / 978-1-908355-32-4 / 104pp There is a popular worship song that begins with the refrain, Took what the Lord has done, ook what the Lord has done’. This book does exactly that; it seeks to show what the Lord aas done. Fifteen authors from five different continents identify what the Lord has indeed Deen doing, and continues to do, in their lives. These are their stories.

GENERAL REGNUM TITLES Vinay Samuel, Chris Sugden (Eds) The Church in Response to Human Need 1987/1870345045 /xii+268pp

Philip Sampson, Vinay Samuel, Chris Sugden (Eds) Faith and Modernity Essays in modernity and post-modernity ' 1994/1870345177/352pp

Klaus Fiedler The Story of Faith Missions 1994 / 0745926878 / 428pp Douglas Peterson Not by Might nor by Power A Pentecostal Theology ofSocial Concern in Latin America 1996 /1870345207/xvi+260pp

David Gitari In Season and Out of Season Sermons to a Nation 1996/1870345118/ 155pp

David. W. Virtue A Vision of Hope The Story of Samuel Habib 1996 /1870345169 /xiv+137pp Everett A Wilson Strategy of the Spirit J.Philip Hogan and the Growth of the Assemblies of God Worldwide, 1960 -1990 1997/1870345231/214

Murray Dempster, Byron Klaus, Douglas Petersen (Eds) The Globalization of Pentecostalism A Religion Made to Travel 1999 /1870345290/xvii+406pp Peter Johnson, Chris Sugden (Eds) Markets, Fair Trade and the Kingdom of God Essays to Celebrate Traidcraft's 21st Birthday 2001 /1870345193 /xii+155pp

Robert Hillman, Coral Chamberlain, Linda Harding Healing & Wholeness Reflections on the Healing Ministry 2002 / 978-1- 870345-35- 4/xvii+283pp David Bussau, Russell Mask Christian Microenterprise Development An Introduction 2003 /1870345282/xiii+142pp David Singh Sainthood and Revelatory Discourse An Examination of the Basis for the Authority of Bayan in Mahdawi Islam 2003 / 8172147285 /xxiv+485pp

For the up-to-date listing of the Regnum books visit www.ocms.ac.uk/regnum

1111 regnum

Regnum Books International Regnum is an Imprint of The Oxford Centre for Mission Studies St. Philip and St. James Church Woodstock Road Oxford, 0X2 6HR

Following Jesus

Regnum Studí*

Journeys in Radical Discipleship: Essays in Honor of Ronald J Sider

in Global Christianity

What does it mean to follow Jesus in the 21 st century?

The same that it always has: radically and faithfully. Ronald J. Sider and the organization that he founded, Evangelicalsfor Social Action, are most respected for their pioneering wor in the area of evangelical social concern. However, Sider’s great contribution to soci; justice is but a part of a larger vision namely, biblical discipleship. His works, whic span more than four decades, have guided the faithful to be authentic gospel-bearers ■ ecclesial, cultural and political arenas. This book honors Ron Sider, by bringing togethe a group of scholar-activists, old and young, to reflect upon the gospel and its radic* implications for the 21st century. This list includes Craig Keener, Vinay Samuel, Melt Maggay, John Perkins and Heid Unruh. There arefew people I trust more at the intersection offaith and public policy than Ron Sider. The. essays in Ron’s honor show the depth of his theology and how it influences his views on public polip Jim Wall Followers ofJesus Christ in ways that Ron’s theology and prescribed lifestyle suggest would indee subvert the lifestyles and the cultural values that we too readily affirm... Tony Campol

Editors Al Tizon (left) and Paul Alexander (right) have be working alongside Ron Sider (middle) for the last several years faculty colleagues at Palmer Theological Seminary of Easte University as well as ministry colleagues at Evangelicals for Soc Action, both near Philadelphia, PA. Co-Presidents of ESA, Al and P carry on Ron’s legacy as they advance ESA’s holistic ministry, pub policy and cultural transformational initiatives throughout the wor

ISBN: 978-1-908355-27-0

regnum www.ocms.ac.uk/regnum