Kingdom Ethics

Kingdom Ethics Archives

2008-2010

KINGDOM ETHICS D A V I D P. G U S H E E

The Paradox of Patriotism Deep cultural forces have changed the way most Americans think about their own country. The results are complicated.

At one level, America seems to be a highly patriotic nation. People put their hands over their hearts for the national anthem. We see numerous flags flown from public buildings. On many occasions we are called upon to “honor the troops,” and most of us are not reluctant to do that.

July 4th remains a big day in most communities. Fireworks light up the night all over the country. Many churches host patriotic celebrations on the Sunday nearest to Independence Day. These are sometimes quite elaborate, with the presentation of colors, the military service anthems, and recognition of veterans and active-duty military.This reminds us that, for better or worse, national loyalty is linked in our country to the military.

One might be forgiven for thinking that America is a very patriotic nation brimming with national loyalty, and the issue would be whether Christians should participate in that. But our apparent patriotism is actually only a thin veneer of sentimentality lacquered over a general indifference to life beyond the individual.

Do we define national loyalty to include serious interest in our history and government and serious commitment to our founding values? Both of these have been fading for quite a while among us.

Do we define national loyalty as a high level of motivation to act for the well-being of the nation? Few wake up in the morning asking what they can do to make America a better place.

Do we define national loyalty as a shared public commitment to shape citizens with a certain set of values that can advance the national interest? Hardly anyone is trying to do that right now.

Do we define national loyalty simply as straightforward, openly expressed love of country? We see little of that as well.

The church has a subtle message to offer concerning the place of national loyalty in the Christian’s life. Scripture’s witness is complex.

Israel, of course, was a nation that was also a faith community.The Old Testament tells the story of a nation created, chosen, and called by God. Loyalty to nation was also loyalty to God. To obey the laws of Israel was to obey the God of Israel. To love Israel was to love the God who gave birth to Israel.

people to envision themselves as part of a global community.They were taught a loyalty to their spiritual kin around the world that balanced and more often transcended their loyalty to their city, region, or nation.

This also laid the foundation for a broader global concern in Christianity.

Christians learned to care not just about their faith family but about the world itself. This is God’s world, God is the creator of all, and God loves every human being.

I suggest the following conclusions about the paradox of patriotism: s 4O THE EXTENT THAT !MERICANS ARE OVERLY focused on national loyalty and its symbols, Christian faith stands in tension with patriotism because of our primary loyalty to Christ, his global church, and the whole world.

Our apparent patriotism is s 4O THE EXTENT THAT SOME #HRISTIANS HAVE simply identified the United States with actually only a thin veneer of biblical Israel and transferred all that sentimentality lacquered over holy loyalty onto America, they are guilty of a significant theological heresy. a general indifference to life s "UT TO THE EXTENT THAT !MERICANS ARE overly focused on personal dreams and beyond the individual. ambitions so that they have no interest Many American Christians mistakin any transcendent loyalty, Christian enly transfer these categories of thought faith and national patriotism both point to the US. Israel becomes the US; the to the need for higher loyalties than US becomes God’s new chosen people. the self.

To love America is to love God. To be I am challenging us to be both more loyal to the United States is to be loyal and less patriotic than our neighbors: more to God. To fight and kill and die for the patriotic because we care about more US is to fight and kill and die for God. than our individual dreams and want But there are no biblical grounds for everyone in this land to flourish; less believing that God’s relationship to bib- patriotic because we see far beyond this lical Israel has ever been replicated with nation to every nation, and to the church or transferred to any other earthly nation. in every nation, our brothers and sisters In the New Testament, the church is in Christ. Q the new Israel, a people but not a nation.

From its early days, the church has tran- David P. Gushee is Distinguished University scended national boundaries.The church Professor of Christian ethics at Mercer Uniis a “catholic” entity, encompassing peo- versity in Atlanta, Ga., and the author or ple from just about every tribe, people, editor of 12 books, including Religious and nation.

Faith,Torture, and Our National Soul, just Christians were among the very first released by Mercer University Press.

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KINGDOM ETHICS D a v id p. G u shee

The Sanctity of Women’s Lives Brute force, gradually combined with technology to multiply its destructive power, has dominated human history.

But God’s intent has always been for a world ruled by his loving will and not by human violence. His will includes the treatment of all human beings as sacred, equal, and inviolable. He wills not just the survival and security but also the flourishing of every human life.

In a world dominated by physical force, women are inherently vulnerable to victimization and to permanent second-class status. Technology can help level the playing field, of course, and women have repeatedly surfaced as warriors in human history. But generally speaking, in cultures/eras dominated by force, violence, and killing and in which the warrior virtues are celebrated, women are at an inherent disadvantage. Even when they are not routinely victimized by male violence, they are often dominated by men and obliged to live in the fear of that violence, in all its cruel guises.

Patriarchy, in whatever form, is a humanly constructed ideology that provides cultural, political, and often religious sanction for the subjugation of women. I believe that patriarchy as an ideology originally represented a rationalization and moral justification of an already existing state of affairs in which women were subjugated and dominated by men.

Just as systemic white racism in the Western world eased the consciences of societies that permitted black slavery, so male patriarchalism eased the consciences of societies that permitted male domination of women. Ideology followed and justified unjust social conditions, rather

than preceding them.

Ideologies that offer elaborate moral and religious justifications for the unjust treatment of some groups by others offer ironic evidence of the law of God written on the human heart. It is precisely because the human conscience, even seared by sin, can become uneasy at participating in injustice that human beings develop the most ingenious rationalizations for such injustices. It is hard to sleep peacefully at night if we know we are doing evil to others. Sometimes the way we deal with that problem is to stop doing evil. But more often we redefine evil as good.

Under the pressure of movements for women’s equality, Western societies have gradually sloughed off patriarchalism.

and the desecration of some groups in favor of others. Everywhere Christianity goes, so go these resources for valuing each and every human life — including women’s lives.

But — and here is the paradox — Christians themselves have often missed the implications of their own faith. I vividly remember my discovery that Hitler and his propagandists taught German children to reject the creation story in Genesis because they knew it teaches the common origin and fundamental equality of all humanity. Hitler recognized that biblical faith threatened Nazi ideology, even when many Christians found the two totally compatible.

All of this is to say that the modern Western women’s movement should be seen as a revolutionary river with a number of different sources. Christianity, at its Christ-centered best, was one of those Biblical faith offers sources. But the resistance to overturnpowerful resources for ing patriarchy from within Christianity was fierce — and has not yet abated. It the equal valuing required the combined efforts of both of every human life — Christian egalitarians and secular egalitarians to break the power of patriarincluding chalism in Western societies. women’s lives.

Modern Western women face many challenges, often quite profound ones.

But culturally approved patriarchalism Whether that sloughing off is primarily is no longer one of them. This is a great attributable to religious or secular currents victory for moral principle over mere of thought is a highly contested question. physical power and the ideology that Similar questions are surfacing in my for so long sanctioned it. It is a great research on all aspects of issues related to victory for the sanctity of human life as the sanctity of human life: Did modern God intended it. understandings of racial equality emerge But these gains have not taken place because of, or in spite of, Christianity? all over the world. Western women who And what about modern understandings have benefited so greatly from these of human rights? hard-fought gains are perhaps the people The answer seems to be paradoxical. best positioned in the world to advoBiblical faith offers immensely power- cate for the liberation of non-Western ful resources for the immeasurable and women from the patriarchy that damages equal valuing of every human life. In their lives. n particular, the life, ministry, and saving death of Jesus Christ have continually David P. Gushee is Distinguished University motivated his followers to behave in Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer ways that undercut injustice, inequality, University in Atlanta, Ga. PRISM 2 0 1 0

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KINGDOM ETHICS D a v id p. G u shee

Bonhoeffer, Torture, and Christian Responsibility I spent much of last year rereading Dietrich Bonhoeffer. What began as a pleasant intellectual exercise became a spiritual necessity as circumstances unfolded in my work.

I had always deeply admired Bonhoeffer’s difficult journey with Jesus through the harrowing circumstances of the Third Reich, circumstances that ended with his senseless execution just before the end of the war.

But reading Bonhoeffer after three long years of helping to lead the antitorture fight in this country cast his life and his writings in a new light. I don’t compare myself to him in any way. But I have indeed drawn inspiration from a Christian leader whose theological and ethical convictions, combined with his personal strength and God’s empowerment, led him into unflinching resistance to Nazi evildoing. And I have especially cherished the clarity of his moral vision at a time when the Nazis and their Christian collaborators in the churches were doing all they could to cloud the moral vision of the Christians of Germany. In a time when evil was called good and good called evil, when standing up for basic human decency was criminal and undertaking criminal acts was called decent, Bonhoeffer never wavered. He saw reality for what it was when all his nation’s powers were training his fellow countrymen to believe illusions and lies.

Bonhoeffer seemed strangely relevant to me when I read his statement in Ethics

that “only when Christian faith in God is lost do people feel compelled to make use of all means — even criminal — to force the victory of their cause” and that among those criminal means is “torture… the arbitrary and brute infliction of bodily pain, through the use of superior power.”

Or when he says that torture “means inflicting the deepest dishonor on the person, produc[ing] therefore a deep hatred and a natural bodily urge to restore the injured honor by using physical force in return.” Or when he states that torture “in most cases is an ineffective means for discovering the truth, which would only be a consideration if truth were really being sought.”

I wonder what Bonhoeffer would think about a nation whose evangelical Christians are more likely to support torture than any other group in that nation, including its secularists? Maybe he would turn to another section of his Ethics that I think needs more attention from today’s Christian readers. I refer to his discussion of the nature of moral responsibility.

Here Bonhoeffer argues that “the structure of responsible life” is determined not by abstract principles but by our bond to God and other people and by the responsibility that goes with that bond. Moral responsibility emerges in concrete situations in which I am accountable for how I respond to other persons.

Looking especially at the example of God in Christ, but also at the inbuilt structure of human relationships, Bonhoeffer says that responsibility involves acting on behalf of others, indeed, in “completely devoting one’s life to another person.”

Bonhoeffer was deeply repulsed by all the soaring talk of responsibility toward the cause or the nation or the race or even the principle. He argued that these easily become idols in the service of which we end up “destroy[ing] human beings by sacrificing them” on the altar

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of our causes.

Instead Bonhoeffer called for responsibility in relation not to causes or ideologies but to persons, to actual human beings. “The attention of responsible people is directed to concrete neighbors in their concrete reality,” he wrote.

In every horrible coffee table or lecture hall debate I have had to endure over torture, my adversaries have tended to make abstract arguments based on national security, just war theory, or extreme hypothetical cases. So an appeal is made to some subsection of just war theory and to a ticking time bomb that threatens us in New York. It’s amazing how many people find such theoretical or hypothetical constructs compelling.

But Bonhoeffer, I think, would teach us to ask about the actual human beings with particular histories and particular identities upon whose bodies our nation has already inflicted intense brutality.

He would direct us toward our response to this individual and that individual — “responsibility” means “responseability” — our ability to respond in an appropriate way to those concrete situations and persons. Christians are those whose model of response-ability is Jesus Christ.We draw our clues from him and how he responded to the actual people that he encountered.

This year we should ask ourselves about our response-ability toward the particular people our nation has detained indefinitely, often tortured and abused, in our name. Do we really want to continue sacrificing these human beings, and others to come, on the altar of national security? n David P. Gushee is a distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta, Ga., co-chair of the Biblical/Contextual Ethics Group of the American Academy of Religion, and president of Evangelicals for Human Rights.

KINGDOM ETHICS D a v id p. G u shee

A Theology of Common Ground Since my boyhood in the ’60s and early ’70s, I have witnessed a change in this country’s approach to public life.Where political adversaries could once debate stark differences without demonizing one another, today demonization is accepted as a routine feature of American life.

My father worked in Washington at the Congressional Research Service on energy and environmental policy while I was growing up. He would come home and talk about how much fun it was to help Congress hammer out that first round of environmental legislation. He admired how leaders could clash strongly over one issue but then work together on a different one. In those days Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, could disagree without turning each other into mortal enemies.

That’s what demonization is: viewing those we disagree with as if they are the embodiment of evil. It involves a profound loss of perspective on the humanity of our opponents, who stop being people just like us and instead become a kind of sinister force let loose in the world.

A number of factors seem to have contributed to a national slide from civility over the last 40 years. Redistricting has given us more and more politicians who come from overwhelmingly “blue” or “red” districts and who represent extreme views.The voracious 24-hour news cycle thrives on conflict and spectacle, and cable TV talking heads become famous for their incendiary rhetoric.

But I think it was the 1973 Roe v.

Wade abortion decision and the ensuing religious mobilization into political combat that made the most difference.

The Roe decision, which overturned

all state abortion laws to establish a very permissive national legal framework, became the centerpiece for religious right organizing.Within a few years, abortion policy became viewed not just as another difficult arena where differences could be debated in good faith but instead as a life-or-death struggle between the forces of good and evil. Shades of gray disappeared. Activist groups built their empires on absolutist stances and aggressive postures toward their foes.

The response and counter-response to Roe have distorted our culture over the years by creating the habit of demonization in American public life. If abortion was the seed, the fruit has blossomed with many other issues; everything from gay rights to immigration to energy policy has become fair game.

The pattern remains most obvious

er they agree with me or not. Since every human being is made in the image of God and loved by God, each is worthy of being treated with basic human decency and respect. Each also shares humanity’s common pool of frailties and is capable of error and sin, so when people get things wrong I am not surprised.

And whatever is true of others is also true of me. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, “The line separating good and evil passes...right through every human heart.”

A society is in deep trouble when people begin to think that “we” are “the good” and “they” are “the demonic.” Religious people may be especially susceptible to this delusion.

I try to look for the God-given goodness in people. I try to recognize the need of others for full voice in decisions that affect all of us. I try to understand the viewpoints of others and to dialogue respectfully with them even where the The Roe v. Wade decision disagreements are sharp. ushered in the demonization I cultivate a sense of gratitude about we see today. living in America and about the democwhenever anything related to abortion is racy we have developed over the centuries. under consideration — as with healthcare Reading history and looking around the reform, in which abortion has become a world makes it abundantly clear that what central part of the debate despite the efforts we have here is a huge achievement in of some Democratic leaders to keep the human civilization. Christians need to legislation abortion-neutral. The entire celebrate this achievement rather than healthcare reform effort has become an toying with language that comes right up episode in demonization; even arcane to or over the threshold of endorsing policy decision related to the best way to violence. To play with fire in this way is keep down health insurance costs evokes unconscionable. wild denunciations.

I dare to think that it’s still not too I am an evangelical Christian who late to be the kind of nation in which thinks Roe is bad law, but I am also drawn differences are debated honestly, votes are toward any effort to find common ground, cast, decisions are made, and we move whether on abortion reduction strategies forward together as one people. I would or on other issues. For this, I myself have like to see Christians contribute to that been demonized, which has led me to kind of society, rather than to the reflect a bit on why, as a Christian, I am so demonization that undermines it at its committed to the effort to find common foundations. n ground — and why I seek to resist demonizing others, although I am sometimes David P. Gushee is Distinguished University very tempted.

Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University.

I start by recognizing the shared A version of this was published as an op-ed humanity of everyone I encounter, wheth- in USAToday, September 28, 2009.

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KINGDOM ETHICS D a v id p. G u shee

Six Aspects of the Homosexuality Issue Homosexuality is rapidly replacing abortion as the most bitterly contested ethical issue on the American scene.

The tugging and pulling over gay marriage in California and on the East Coast dominate the news about this issue, but the issue is in fact everywhere visible, both in the churches and in the culture.

With emotions inflamed and takeno-prisoners politics engaged, it seems almost impossible to create the conditions for a constructive conversation about this subject.

I would like to suggest that one very small productive step is to try to separate out six distinctive aspects of the issue so that each can be addressed with care and precision. Here they are: 1. Identifying the origins of lesbian, gay, or bisexual orientation. Here our best guides are found in the personal testimonies of the human beings whose experience this is. Secondarily, we need to attend to current findings in the natural and social sciences. Evangelical Christians often lack the willingness to attend to either of these kinds of voices, unless they tell us what we are predisposed to hear. But we need to follow the data where it leads.

2. Interpreting theologically the phenomenon of sexual orientation that falls outside of the heterosexual paradigm. Any effort at such theological interpretation involves prior epistemological questions related to how Christians know what we know theologically. Evangelicals historically have affirmed the primacy of Scripture. Some emphasize more than others listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit; the role of

Christian tradition for contemporary Christian discernment is a matter of considerable conversation today. However we sift and arrange our sources of trustworthy knowing, we must employ them to tackle this issue just as skillfully as we can. Our outcome options include: (a) willful personal rejection of God and his will, i.e. sin; (b) unfortunate distortion of God’s design but not a matter of personal moral responsibility, on a level with congenital defects; (c) morally insignificant natural variation, comparable to the difference between lefthandedness and right-handedness; or (d) good gift from God, like the beauty of our God-given skin color.

3. Discerning the moral significance and status of covenanted same-sex erotic relationships. Let’s take it as a given that Christians cannot endorse non-covenantal sexual relationships in any context. That leaves open the question of our posture toward the covenanted same-sex relationships that exist in our world and sometimes in our churches. Our options here range from viewing such relationships as always gravely sinful, to sinful but praiseworthy as being preferable to promiscuity, to not sinful at all.

4. Deciding how to respond to persons involved in covenanted homosexual relationships who come into our local congregations seeking Christian community. Here I set aside either the person who acknowledges a latent but inactive homosexual orientation or a person involved in a promiscuous lifestyle to focus on those who come to us as committed couples.

Should the church (a) reject such couples as involved in a sinful lifestyle that cannot be countenanced, (b) welcome to membership but explicitly state that their behavior violates God’s standards, (c) welcome to membership without comment on this aspect of their lifestyle, or (d) affirm and encourage the couple in their fidelity to their covenant commitments? The answer to this question involves critical issues in ecclesiology PRISM 2009

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and not just in sexual ethics.

5. Determining the appropriate posture of the church in American public-policy debates related to homosexuality. Here our options seem to range as follows.We can believe that homosexual behavior is so gravely wrong that it is appropriate for the church to seek legal measures to block its legitimization and advance. Or we can decide that while homosexual behavior is wrong, personal and religious liberty interests are stronger than any public interests there might be in discouraging this behavior. We might conclude that while public interests might justify efforts to block advances for gay rights, the evangelistic mission of the church is harmed by our involvement in such efforts. Or, finally, we might conclude that covenanted homosexual behavior is not wrong and we should oppose all efforts to limit gay rights.

6. Deciding how to respond when a child, family member, or friend “comes out” to you as gay or lesbian. Thinking especially of the challenge facing Christian parents, the options appear to range from rejecting the child unless they seek to change their orientation or commit to a life of celibacy, to offering love to the child but no affirmation of a gay/lesbian identity or any relationships that might follow, to offering love to the child and affirming both their identity and their relationships.

These are excruciating challenges for Christians today. The culture is changing rapidly around us. Historic Christian beliefs in this area are being rejected not just by non-Christians but also by many younger Christians. Christian advocacy on this issue appears to be hurting our witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ. The issue demands our best thinking, immediately. n David P. Gushee is a distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta, Ga., and co-chair of the Scriptural/Contextual Ethics Group of the American Academy of Religion.

KINGDOM ETHICS D a v id p. G u shee

What Kind of People Succeed in Marriage?

It’s summertime, and the wedding magazines are everywhere. It seems time to consider once more the issue of marriage.

Marriage reveals and tests character.

It shows you who you are and who your partner is, in all your glory and in all your weakness.

Every marriage book or conference offers discussion of issues like communication, intimacy building, romance, conflict resolution, and so on. Most offer tested techniques and skills aimed at success in these arenas.

This is all very important, and yet there is another level that goes beneath all these techniques and skills and moves to the pivotal question of character. We can gain the right knowledge about what works and what doesn’t in these various areas. But we have to become the kind of people who have the core capacity to succeed in marriage. And this cannot be taught in a marriage seminar.

But here Christian faith does have particular insight. The Bible teaches us that we are God’s wonderful creation, made in his image and much beloved by him.

He made us full of capacities for relationship, love, reflection, growth, and change.

But the Bible also says that we are damaged, that the world is fallen, that nothing in the world is untouched by sin. It goes on to say that, in Christ, healing is possible.

There can be restoration toward what we were made to be.

Creation-Fall-Redemption is what this pattern is called in Christian theology.

And it is very clear from scripture and hard experience that the redemption process is never complete in this life. We can make

progress — but it never ceases to be a struggle, and we remain painfully imperfect all the days of our life.

So those heading to the altar this summer will do well to remember each day that your new spouse is a good yet fallen creature, who with God’s help is struggling toward being their best self but often falling short. And of you, too, this is true. Remembering this can help create a basic posture toward yourself, your spouse, and your marriage that simultaneously aims for excellence while being unsurprised at mistakes and failures.

I suggest that perhaps the first attribute of the “kind of people who succeed in marriage” is that they adopt a posture of being excellence-driven but always grace-filled.They seek to be the best they can be while showing plenty of mercy and patience toward their spouse (and yes, to themselves) when either misses the mark.

Here are some thoughts on some other character qualities important for success in marriage: A capacity for happiness. People who are incapable of happiness are going to be incapable of happiness in marriage. In marriage, those homely sayings about “the power of positive thinking” and “the behappy attitudes” are not so homely after all. People who smile and laugh and enjoy life are much more fun to live with.

Mental health. Sanity contributes greatly to success in marriage! I refer to the mind, emotions, and spirit working right; freedom from addictive, compulsive, sadistic, or masochistic behaviors; a decent level of self-control; clarity and lucidity in thinking. Such a spouse is peaceable — they don’t need drama to keep life interesting. Their moods are generally steady. (Medicine may be necessary.

Plenty of exercise. Whatever it takes.)

Trustworthiness. Trust is essential to marriage. A successful married person

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is both worthy of trust and capable of offering trust.They speak the truth, keep their promises, pull their share of the load, and keep faith with their marital promises in ways large and small.

Endurance and resilience. A lifetime marriage is a triathlon, not a sprint.

Successful married persons are tough enough to hang in there through the times of suffering, disappointment, boredom, frustration, and unresolved conflict. This involves the capacity for hope, the ability to see what is not yet visible. Even if for a time they are crawling rather than walking, running, or jumping, these spouses keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Humility. Those who succeed at marriage have no trouble acknowledging their imperfections, their constant need for growth, and the inevitability that they can and do mess up.They have the capacity to request forgiveness and to offer it.

They don’t let pride stand in the way of resolving conflicts; they are able to be kind amidst frustrations.

Godliness. Surely there are some unbelievers who succeed at marriage. But godliness — understood as a commitment to Christ, knowledge of Christian principles, and spiritual vitality—is a profoundly helpful resource to bring into the human drama that is marriage. Don’t approach the altar without it. n David P. Gushee is a distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta, Ga., co-chair of the Biblical/Contextual Ethics Group of the American Academy of Religion, and president of Evangelicals for Human Rights. He is the author of 11 books, including Getting Marriage Right: Realistic Counsel for Saving and Strengthening Relationships (Baker Books, 2004).

KINGDOM ETHICS D a v id p. G u shee

Holistic Ministry for the 21st Century (Part 3): How the Church Advances God’s Reign Just as Jesus was not for himself but for others—as Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminded us—so the church is for others. It exists to extend itself in love to hurting people, just as Jesus did. Jesus advances God’s reign through us.

But we must avoid the mistake of thinking that the only way the church advances the kingdom is through “social action.”

The church is, first, a worshipping community, gathering in response to God’s amazing love to us in Jesus Christ.

As such, we embody the kingdom— because one thing that is tragically wrong with this world is that it has turned against its Creator and refused even to acknowledge his existence, let alone his greatness.

So as we worship him, we embody the kingdom.The worshipful, joyful celebration of the presence of God is part of the kingdom itself. So every aspect of our liturgy and worship matters for the kingdom.

But through worship we also prepare ourselves for ethics; that is, expressing love for others as a response to God’s love for us. As we fall in love with God we resonate with the sacredness of all God’s works. As we remember how majestic is God’s name in all the earth, we likewise feel the majesty of all God’s works, including “the least of these,” all of whom are just a little lower than the angels (Psalm 8). Ultimately, ethics follows and depends upon worship, upon

a certain vision of our neighbor which flows from the blessedness of our encounter with God. We also embody and advance the kingdom as we teach and preach the Bible. I believe in the power of the preached and taught Word. I think that when people return again and again to our churches it is because they are hungry for that Word. Listeners formed and transformed by Scriptures are better prepared to advance God’s reign. And so, among other sacred truths, we must speak of Genesis 1 and the imago Dei, Matthew 25 and Jesus in the face of the naked and poor, Hebrews 13 and sacred hospitality to strangers, Luke 10 and compassion to the bleeding neighbor, Psalm 9 and a God who governs the world with justice

(addressing immediate needs and longer-term problems, or symptoms and diseases) — both are “social action,” and both are “kingdom work.”

Notice, as an addendum, that if we are only doing mercy and not also justice we are less likely to move into more serious social critique of current power structures. One thing that has divided white evangelicals from black and Hispanic evangelicals is white quietude about issues of justice other than the injustice of abortion. As we institutionalize a holistic justice vision and ministries of justice, we will find the walls tumbling down between the various racial-ethnic evangelical subgroups.

I am convinced that God calls all disciples to some ministry of mercy and/ or justice. Sometimes whole congregations get called to specific work. Other I call on each Christian times individuals have specific callings. to find one arena of justice Part of spiritual gifts identification in our churches must be the identification of and mercy to get involved passions and gifts in arenas of mercy and in — one Matthew 25 justice as well as evangelism and worship. project to invest in, which I call on each Christian to find one arena of justice and mercy to get involved in means one absolutely —one Matthew 25 project to invest in, desperate cause, one group which means one absolutely desperate cause, one group of completely despised of completely despised and rejected and ignored people to love and rejected and ignored and serve. people to love and serve.

I notice that this generation of Christian students is full of young people and is a refuge for the oppressed. As we who want a cause worth dying for—and teach and preach and study these things, living for. They identify with the big our hearts are changed and we come to kingdom projects, like Darfur, sex trafficklook at people differently — and at God ing, AIDS, Africa, prison reform, climate, differently. torture, war, poverty, and so on. They But then we live it. don’t want polemics or cheap politics.

We live this love, compassion, hospital- They want to serve; they want to make a ity, justice, and mercy in our individual difference. May they lead the rest of us. n interactions wherever we go. This is incarnational kingdom living in daily life, David P. Gushee is a distinguished univerand it’s where “social action” begins. sity professor of Christian ethics at Mercer We live this love through involvement University in Atlanta, Ga., co-chair of the in specific ministries intended to care Biblical/Contextual Ethics Group of the for hurting people and to advance American Academy of Religion, and presijustice. Mercy work and justice work dent of Evangelicals for Human Rights.

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Holistic Ministry for the 21st Century (Part 2): Evangelism, Discipleship, and the Church A kingdom reframing of Christian mission, as I argued in my last column, helps settle the evangelism vs. social action debate, once and for all. Let’s hope we never have to revisit it.

Evangelism happens when Christians invite non-Christians to respond personally to God’s reclaiming and redeeming love in Jesus Christ and to participate in God’s redemptive project on the planet.

Evangelism is the invitation to respond to God’s gracious offer to be transformed and to participate in transformation.The call to discipleship, and the beginnings of “social action,” must be built into the evangelistic message.

When we invite people to “accept Christ,” we should emphasize from the beginning that the call to faith is not just a call to believe something rather than something else. I tell student audiences that “accepting Christ” actually means a call to: a. Believe—accept the claims of and about Jesus Christ, as recorded in Scripture and attested to by Christian tradition and the church. In some ways, this is the easy part. b. Trust—lean into a personal existential confidence in Jesus Christ as the Savior who loves us even unto death—both his own and ours. Abandon any other grounds for confidence in self or life. c. Obey—study and practice the actual teachings of Jesus and the rest of Scripture

as refracted through Jesus. Do God’s a. The church is the body of Christ—the will, with no bracketed areas, blind spots, continuing presence of Jesus in the or exceptions. world, doing his work by his power d. Die—think of oneself and train oneuntil he returns.Whatever he did in his self toward becoming entirely dead to earthly ministry, we seek to do collecself-interest, dead to sin, dead to ungodly tively even now. He did the works of passions and actions, dead to any purthe kingdom. So must we. pose other than following Jesus where b. The church is a pioneering community he leads. This is an ongoing process —blazing a trail of fully human life of death to self in order to live for (redeemed creation, God-honoring, and Christ and his kingdom. obedient) for which the rest of the world truly hungers. The church embodies A person who believes, trusts, obeys, the kingdom, while also looking outand dies for Christ is a disciple. Making side itself for kingdom opportunities. disciples is the goal of Christian evangeThe very existence of a peaceable and lism. Many go to church. Few become just community of love is part of the disciples who have believed, trusted, obeyed, kingdom and also instrumental for died, and are therefore fit vessels for advancing the kingdom. doing God’s kingdom work. c. The church is a witness people—offerWe sometimes say in the South, where ing testimony to the goodness and power I live, that there are more Baptists than of Christ, using words when necessary. people here. Certainly there are more The church demonstrates the kingdom churchgoers than Christians, and more daily. The best answer Christianity can Christians than disciples. As Christian culoffer for the problem of evil is the church ture-religion fades, there will be fewer itself. churchgoers but, one hopes, more actual d. The church is a community of love.

Christians.

Jesus said, “By this everyone will know And one hopes that they will find that you are my disciples, if you have nurture and a home in the local church. love for one another.” It was love that I am pushing hard at every opportuGod demonstrated in sending his one nity these days for a recovery and strengthand only Son to this violent, rebellious ening of the local church. Christ’s bride world, and love that Jesus demonis afflicted by all kinds of challenges these strated in dying on the cross even for days, with much evidence that many of his enemies, and love that we must our best and brightest young people are demonstrate as our cardinal virtue and so turned off that they will settle into the central obligation—love for God, love spiritual but not religious, or Christian for every human being. n but not churchgoing, category. Michael Lindsay showed in his important book David P. Gushee is a distinguished univerFaith in the Halls of Power that many top sity professor of Christian ethics at Mercer evangelical leaders in various fields are University in Atlanta, Ga., co-chair of the not regularly going to church. I think that Biblical/Contextual Ethics Group of the the future of the church in the next gen- American Academy of Religion, and presieration is really up for grabs. Many dent of Evangelicals for Human Rights. He is seminarians that I teach are not at all sure the author of 11 books, including Kingdom they want to invest in the local church, Ethics:Following Jesus in Contemporary at least in its current form.

Context (with Glen Stassen, IVP, 2003) And so we also need a kingdom and The Future of Faith in American reframing of the church, perhaps along Politics (Baylor University Press, 2009). these lines: PRISM 2009

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KINGDOM ETHICS D a v id p. G u shee

Holistic Ministry for the 21st Century (Part I): The Kingdom Message As you read this, our nation will be preparing to inaugurate Barack Obama as its new president. Half the country is thrilled; at least some of the other half is outraged. I find myself thoroughly convinced that Christians need to turn their attention now to a recovery of biblical theology, ecclesiological clarity, and missional self-discipline, weaning ourselves from the addictive focus on electoral politics. Those who are Christian leaders need to remember that our primary calling is to lead Christians.

In my next several columns, I will be laying forth the core biblical and theological themes undergirding a healthier evangelical Christianity in the United States. I begin with the kingdom of God. I join N.T.Wright, Greg Boyd, Brian McLaren, and a growing host of other theologians, biblical scholars, pastors, and ethicists who are reclaiming the kingdom of God as preached and inaugurated by Jesus as the central organizing framework for Christian mission and proclamation.

Ever since 1995, when Glen Stassen and I began our collaboration on Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (IVP, 2003), this focus on Jesus and the kingdom has anchored my work as a teacher and churchman. I have been pleased to see this theme spread over much of the Christian landscape, both because it is richly biblical and because it has salutary results theologically and ethically. I think it is big enough to encompass other subsidiary themes while

placing them in proper perspective. Its implications, still being discovered and worked out, are quite far-reaching.

This recovery of the kingdom of God means moving this central biblical (Jewish and Christian) concept to the center of Christian theology and church life in a way it hasn’t been since the Social Gospel movement. I hope we can do so without the theological errors that sometimes emerged in that otherwise laudable movement. It feels more like a first-century moment than an early 20th-century moment, which helps us read Jesus rightly and avoid earlier mistakes. This is an apocalyptic era with a minority remnant of committed disciples, not a sunny era with a syncretistic, Americanized Christian vision.

I really do believe that the good news Jesus came to preach is the same that we are to preach: that our sovereign Creator God was and is in Christ comprehensively reclaiming his rebellious, suffering world. God created everything, everything has been damaged by human rebellion, and everything is to be reclaimed under God’s reign. Jesus advanced this reclamation effort in his incarnation, ministry, suffering, death, and resurrection.

Specifically, the kingdom was advanced as Jesus went about: • teaching and preaching the nature of God’s eternal moral will for human beings, the ways our sinful habits and patterns block its practice in our lives with such tragic results, and the transformative initiatives that we can take

by God’s grace that lead us toward an obedience that liberates and transforms; • incarnating the kingdom in all of its dimensions: offering deliverance/salvation of people from their various distresses, advancing justice, teaching peacemaking, healing the sick, creating a new kind of covenant community, embodying and evoking joy, and incarnating God’s presence in vivid and obvious ways; • doing battle with Satan and all other forces (the “principalities and powers”) PRISM 2009

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that oppose the doing of God’s will on earth as in heaven and gaining victory over those forces, but not without great struggle, suffering, and his own death; • forming a community of followers/ disciples/co-workers who live to participate in the advance of God’s reign and are willing to die in the name of our King and his reign.

In all of this, Jesus exemplified trust in God the Father, celebrating and proclaiming the good news that God could be counted on to reclaim his world and to empower those involved in the effort.

Therefore the mission of the church is to continue and participate in the mission of the kingdom. Empowered now by the Holy Spirit, the church is called to: • evangelism—telling others what God is doing to reclaim his world in and through Christ; • disciple-making—inviting others not just to believe this story but to enter into it; • church-making—forming radically boundary-crossing communities of kingdom belief and action; • incarnating—doing the works of Christ as his incarnated body: preaching, teaching, healing, loving, exorcising, transforming, peace-making, justice-making, forgiving, welcoming, confronting; • worshiping—adoring God and celebrating God’s redemptive goodness to humanity; trusting—believing God for the consummation of the kingdom even as we work for it now and gain hope from mustard-seed victories.

A kingdom reframing of Christian proclamation leads inexorably to a holistic vision of Christian mission and a holistic practice of Christian ministry. It is the path we need to follow. n David P. Gushee is a distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta, Ga., co-chair of the Biblical/Contextual Ethics Group of the American Academy of Religion, and president of Evangelicals for Human Rights.

KINGDOM ETHICS D a v id p. G u shee

Where Do We Begin to Reconstruct Christian Sexual Morality?

dynamics. They divorced. Strike five.

Now 40 and still dealing with her God-given needs, Maggie decided to turn to online Christian dating sites. She mainly “swung and missed” in relationships triggered by these sites but did make a few short-term connections.

Finally, Maggie met another divorced man and found with him over time significant happiness and compatibility.

After a while, lovemaking became a regular part of their relationship (strike six).

There was talk of marriage.

Maggie decided, however, that havThe gap between the church’s official sexual/marital morality and the actual ing failed twice at marriage, and having lives of its people has grown profound, developed an adult life with considerable and perhaps insuperable. To the extent emotional and financial independence, that church leaders still teach that God’s she would not marry again. However, she design is for sexual intercourse to be and her boyfriend decided to move in enjoyed only within the bonds of life- together. Strike seven.

Throughout her adult life Maggie time marriage, we appear to be fighting a losing battle. As our people stray deeply has been in church each Sunday and has into patterns of living that diverge from occupied significant leadership roles. She Scripture, it becomes difficult to imag- considers herself a committed Christian and her faith to be a very important ine ways to call them back.

Consider the following scenario. A part of her life. Maggie’s story reflects Christian woman (let’s call her Maggie) daily realities for millions of churchgoing entered adolescence with the expecta- Americans, including many committed tion that she would live according to Christians.

There are many angles from which classic Christian sexual morality. Maggie refrained from intercourse through her this narrative can be viewed. We could high school years, succumbing late in analyze the story from Maggie’s percollege with the man she was planning spective, or from a broad historical to marry. Strike one against the church’s analysis, or even from the viewpoint of Maggie’s children. But let’s try to enter teaching.

They did marry and had three chil- into the perspective of Maggie’s pastor, dren, but the marriage was unhappy and Rev. Jones.

Like most pastors, Jones believes that finally ended in divorce, without particular grounds other than unhappiness. classic Christian sexual morality really is the will of God. He believes it is taught Strike two.

Now in her 30s, Maggie was left with in Scripture, affirmed by tradition, and the same emotional and physical needs is a way of life that blesses those who that most adults have. She began looking undertake it.

He also feels a sense of responsibility for a new partner, finally sleeping with (strike three) and then marrying (in some to try to guide his flock toward the will traditions, this is strike four) a man who, of God in this and other areas of life. like her, was also divorced and a parent. He is disheartened that he is having so Their marriage had promise but was little impact on Maggie’s choices. Because finally destroyed by their incompatibility her pattern is typical in his congregation, and by stresses caused by blended family his discouragement is severe.

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What is Jones to do?

He could decide that the classic Christian sexual ethic is simply out of step with the times. He could then explicitly abandon it from the pulpit or (more likely) implicitly abandon it as an aspect of his ministry.

He could continue to teach classic Christian sexual morality, with full knowledge that his teaching will be ignored and no plan for dealing with this practical rejection of his message.

Or he could continue to teach this sexual ethic and develop a church discipline strategy for enforcing it. Doing so, however, risks alienating many of his members and possibly costing him his job.

Unless, that is, he serves a congregation that has corporately chosen to resist the tides of culture in this arena—and in others. No minister alone can stand against the capitulation of Christians to the cultural collapse of sexual morality.

The people of God must continue to resist that collapse in their own lives.

Trying to help the Maggies in our churches to work their way back to something resembling Christian sexual morality is at best a rearguard action that will see more failures than successes.We need a kind of Christian community life in which the people of God choose massive collective resistance to the winds of culture and learn how to make that commitment stick, from adolescence forward, one life at a time. n David P. Gushee is a distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta, Ga., co-chair of the Biblical/Contextual Ethics Group of the American Academy of Religion, and president of Evangelicals for Human Rights. He is the author of 11 books, including Getting Marriage Right: Realistic Counsel for Saving and Strengthening Relationships (Baker, 2004) and The Future of Faith in American Politics (Baylor University Press, 2008).

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Bleeding Neighbors This summer I took students to Europe for a Holocaust travel course.This sobering visit to Berlin, Prague, Cracow, and Warsaw—and to such sites as the Nazi concentration camps Ravensbruck and Auschwitz—did more than deepen our understanding of the details of Nazi evil and Jewish suffering. It also clarified for me what matters most in Christian public engagement.However, the misuse of JWT, especially in the United States, is a common “worst practice” that contributes to war. It happened in the runup to the misbegotten Iraq War, and it happens in the run-up to just about every US war. Partly because of the abuse of JWT, we are a church that can’t “just say no.” That is a violation of the teachings of Jesus and thus a failure of discipleship.

The Holocaust was a project of state-sponsored mass murder. It remains breathtaking in its grandiosity, hubris, and evil. The Nazi German state made a policy decision to murder every Jew it could reach.The bureaucracy then calmly developed the plans necessary for implementing that policy.At what is now called the Wannsee Conference, top officials from the key agencies of the state gathered together to discuss these plans and to clarify lines of authority. The minutes of the meeting actually give country-by-country estimates on the number of Jews still remaining in each European nation and describe a plan to “comb through Europe from west to east” to find each and every one of these Jews and “evacuate” them eastward to forced labor and euphemistically described extermination.

The results, of course, are well known.

The Nazis lost World War II but essen-

tially won their “war against the Jews.”

They didn’t manage to kill every Jew, but they did destroy European Jewish civilization and murdered at least twothirds of all Europe’s Jews. Only tiny Jewish communities now exist in such places as Berlin, Prague, Cracow, and Warsaw.The great majority of all pre-war synagogues have been destroyed, abandoned, or converted to museums that memorialize a lost civilization. A walking tour of former Jewish quarters yields endless mementos of both the oncegrand Jewish civilization that flourished there and the five-year spasm of state violence that destroyed it.

Any tour of “old Europe” also requires visits to her grand Christian churches, and we did that. Not to overstate the case, but these are pretty much museum pieces now as well. Our guide in Prague told us cheerfully that fewer than 20 percent of the Czech people claim any religious affiliation at all. The numbers are somewhat better in Poland, in part because Catholicism proved a bulwark of Polish national identity against both Nazism and communism.

Pope John Paul II remains a great hero and is depicted everywhere you go in Poland. But in most of Europe, it is clear that the traces of Christianity are a vestige of a lost civilization.

Many factors have contributed to this atrophy of faith, but one of them is the loss of Christian moral credibility during the Nazi era. “Christian Europe” spawned a generation of apostate mass murderers, and neither official church leaders nor grassroots Christians did enough to resist the genocide occurring right in their midst. “Where were you during the Holocaust?” This is the question that must come to mind when one visits grand Christian cathedrals in cities from which Jews were being deported and murdered. Some, but not enough, Christians understood that when your neighbor lies bleeding by the side of the road you must stop what you are doing PRISM 2008

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and go to her, bandage up her wounds, and take her to safety—even at the risk of your own life.

Christian political engagement must focus on the bleeding neighbor by the side of the road. This is a clear lesson of the Holocaust and the Nazi era. Of course, this means first that we pay attention to things that are going on outside our own little cathedrals. It means that we understand that resolving internal church theological disputes and undertaking numerical growth efforts and institution-building projects are never the most important things we are doing. All internal church projects—and all personal growth projects—are in principle provisional and interruptible. All can and must be set aside when a human emergency beckons from outside our walls.

More precisely, it is the bleeding neighbor by the side of the road that ought to be the focus of what is called “Christian political engagement.” The Holocaust clarifies that matters of life and death, of human rights and the sacredness of the human person, ought to be the center of our public work. There is something more than a little odd about, say, a primary focus on preventing social gains for homosexuals, in a world with millions of bleeding neighbors. Our eyes should turn to war, genocide, abortion, ecological disasters, hunger, crime, and every other worldly evil that takes or threatens human life.

At least, this is the lesson that came home to me as I walked among the lifeless remnants of Jewish and Christian civilization in Europe. n David P. Gushee is a distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta,Ga., co-chair of the Biblical/Contextual Ethics Group of the American Academy of Religion, and president of Evangelicals for Human Rights. His latest book is The Future of Faith in American Politics, reviewed on page 42.

KINGDOM ETHICS D a v id p. G u shee

Just a Man with a Family Each year during the Christmas season we watch Holiday Inn, the old Bing Crosby movie about a man who withdraws from the show biz rat race and retreats to a farm in New England. Not surprisingly, he finds cow-milking and hay-baling not quite as much fun as anticipated, and finally opens his farm as a “holiday inn,” producing shows only on national holidays.

In an early scene in the movie, Bing’s character meets Linda Mason (played by Marjorie Reynolds), a lovely young blonde trying to break into show business. As they talk together by the fireside in his homey inn, Linda reflects on her father and their family life. She says of her dad that “he never amounted to much. He was just a man with a family.”

He never amounted to much. He was just a man with a family.

Whenever we watch that scene, I feel at least a twinge…of, well, guilt. It touches a kind of raw spot in the life story of my own marriage and family.

When Jeanie and I met and fell in love over 25 years ago, we were just teenagers. I was going to be a Baptist minister. She was going to be a minister’s wife. Later the plan shifted a bit and I was going to be a seminary professor.

No major change there. We were going to have a family and raise kids together.

Jeanie imagined that we would spend every evening together, with the kids and with each other. I might take one trip away a year, as her own father did when she was growing up.

I had other kinds of dreams that I shared with her sometimes, but they were pretty remote, so far away. I would read C.S. Lewis or, later, Reinhold Niebuhr, and dream about just maybe, someday,

and others. Most moral leaders either never marry or do marry but place their family relationships under great strain as they engage in their public ministry. It almost seems to be a necessary choice.

You can amount to something. Or you can be a man or woman with a family.

But most of us end up attempting an ongoing balancing act that requires the very best efforts from everyone in the family, plus a lot of grace and mercy.

Jeanie has over the years adjusted to the public life I have come to lead. How grateful I am to her for her grace and patience. And we have established certain relationship-building commitments that have kept us healthy, such as our weekly date night, our family vacations, and our weekend getaways now and then. I spend individual time with each of my kids doing things that we enjoy.

But there is less of that time now than there has ever been. And there are many days I seriously consider dropping 90 percent of what I am doing to be just a man with a family.

A caveat is called for here: I believe that being a father (or mother) is a worthy calling in and of itself, and one that involves influence as well, albeit in a limited sphere. A man who devotes himself to his family at the price of a career can certainly amount to much in the private sphere, and even exert a public influence in the future if his children Most of us end up attempting go on to lead a public life. an ongoing balancing act But it seems to me that most of the visible history of the world is made by that requires the very best efforts deeply exhausted people whose family from everyone in the family, relationships are often strained and sometimes destroyed by their public responplus a lot of grace and mercy. sibilities.They “amounted to something,” but it cost them and their families.

Just about every admirable or heroic It’s time to end this column. I have to person I have studied lived a life like this. get ready for my next speaking gig. n I have a wall at work with pictures of the heroes I like to teach about and imitate. David P. Gushee is a distinguished univerIt includes Mandela, King, Lincoln, sity professor of Christian ethics at McAfee Gandhi, Bonhoeffer, Nightingale, School of Theology at Mercer University in Wilberforce,Wiesel, Day, Mother Teresa, Atlanta, Ga. being a person of influence like that.

But everyone knows that only a few people achieve such dreams.

All these years later, as presidents like to say, “the state of our union is strong.”

But it has had to achieve that strength amid circumstances that Jeanie, especially, did not anticipate. I would blame it on God’s will or just how things happen, but that would be a cop-out. The truth is that I was unwilling to be “just a man with a family.” My desire to leave a mark on the world, to make a difference for God, to be a person of influence, to be remembered after I die, to advance the kingdom of God, was just too strong for that life. I had some gifts, the time was right, and the fire of ambition burns hot within me.

And so, this year especially, there have been far too few nights of just sitting on the couch reading and talking.

I write in early April, and so far in 2008 speaking gigs have taken me to California, Alabama,Tennessee, Pennsylvania,Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Alberta, Canada. I am speaking about my new book on faith and politics, a good cause indeed, but there is always a good cause, and after a while there are always more speaking engagements and more reasons to be gone from home and hearth, wife and children.

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KINGDOM ETHICS D A V I D P. G U S H E E

Rescuing JWT There is a lot of talk these days about “best practices”—a concept that fits the Wikipedia age of shared knowledge and pooled resources. Now that we’re into the fifth year of our apparently endless war in Iraq, I suggest here that the historic Christian just war theory (JWT) is a best practice that can help Christians think about war and help world leaders mitigate war’s worst consequences.

However, the misuse of JWT, especially in the United States, is a common “worst practice” that contributes to war.

It happened in the run-up to the misbegotten Iraq War, and it happens in the run-up to just about every US war.

Partly because of the abuse of JWT, we are a church that can’t “just say no.”That is a violation of the teachings of Jesus and thus a failure of discipleship.

Most presentations of JWT begin with a listing of its criteria, which are more or less as follows: Just cause—War’s cause is just if it is aimed at stopping the systematic or longlasting violation of the rights of life, liberty, and community of large numbers of people. This can include situations of national self-defense, the defense of neighbors or allies, or international humanitarian intervention.

Just authority—War is just if it is declared and waged by the legitimate governmental authority following transparent and honest constitutional deliberations.

Some role for the international community is also increasingly vital in our globalized world.

Last resort—All means of conflict resolution and prevention must be exhausted before going to war.

Just intention—The motives of the warmaker must be restoration of a just peace for all involved. Illegiti-mate motives include personal vengeance, econom-

ic gain, territorial conquest, national revenge, or ideological conquest.

Probability of success—No matter how legitimate the war on other grounds, the costs suffered in war require that there must be a reasonable chance of success in waging it.

Clear announcement—The government about to wage war must announce its intentions, the reasons for war, and the conditions that could be met for the war to be avoided.

Proportionality—War is so costly in lives and treasure that the total gain to be achieved by the war must outweigh the reasonably anticipated costs of that war.

In most presentations of JWT, all seven criteria must be met before a war can be legitimately waged. Moreover, once a war has begun, vigilance must be used constantly to assure that the principle of “noncombatant immunity” is being observed, and “proportionality” (costs and benefits) must be readdressed frequently.

Although they purport to be applying the same criteria, there are two distinct types of JWT adherents in US churches today: the “permissive just war” people, who always or almost always support specific US wars; and the “strict just war” people, who rarely or sometimes support such wars. I believe the split exists because there are assumptions underneath the principles of JWT that strongly tilt their application.

Permissive JWT fears injustice and disorder more than war and assumes that war is essentially inevitable in a sinful world. It tends to trust the US government and sees JWT primarily as an elite tool to be used by national security leaders who alone have the information necessary to make decisions about war.

It strongly distrusts international institutions, treaties, and perspectives related to US policies and offers a somewhat looser or more expansive interpretation of specific just war criteria.This version of JWT is the one most widely employed in politically conservative Christian circles PRISM 2008

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and is wide open to supporting wars that should not be supported.

Strict JWT, on the other hand, fears the horrors of war most profoundly and assumes that peace, though a difficult achievement, is both normative and possible. It tends to be skeptical of US government claims about the need for war, sees JWT as a tool for discernment and prophetic critique, and believes that international institutions, treaties, and perspectives function as a critically important corrective to US myopia. Finally, it offers a strict interpretation of the specific just war criteria.

I believe that the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament—together with the witness of the world’s bloody history, the destructiveness of modern war, the sobering evidence of how we ended up fighting in Iraq and its grievous costs— provide plenty of reason to embrace strict rather than permissive JWT. Only strict JWT is a Christian “best practice.” The other version must be abandoned.

What should Christ-followers do?

Learn the criteria of just peacemaking theory and JWT so well you can say them in your sleep. Teach them in your churches or ask your leaders to teach about them. Establish a peacemaking small group or add a peacemaking dimension to your existing small group/s. Read, watch, and listen widely in diverse news sources so that you have the best information possible about peace/war issues as they emerge.

Sharpen your critical edge as a follower of Christ in a sinful world and in a nation that has initiated military action dozens of times in the last two decades.

Assume a starting point of skepticism.

Be very hard to convince that it is time to start killing people again. Be prepared to say a very public “no.” For the sake of Jesus Christ. ■ David P. Gushee is a professor of Christian ethics at McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta.

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The Ultimate Ethical Issue?

Global warming is becoming the ultimate ethical issue, and both political and faith leaders must mobilize immediately to address it. No society is more reluctant to accept these two claims than the United States, and no faith community is less sympathetic to them than “Bible-believing” Christians. What will it take for us to change our ways?

Last November the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) offered a powerful summary of its latest research. The report ends the debate about whether man-made emissions of fossil fuels, along with deforestation, are primarily responsible for the rise in atmospheric temperatures. The data is in: Human beings are indeed culpable.

Their findings are staggering (though not new), and it is not surprising that it has taken us a while to wrap our minds around it. No one anticipated at the dawn of the industrial era that somehow the very success of the industrialization project would bring in its wake a dangerous change in the very conditions of life on this planet. But that is where we are.

The IPCC group has also sharpened its warnings related to the likely consequences of climate change.These include the loss of one-quarter or more of the world’s species, more violent hurricanes, drought and famine, further Arctic and Antarctic melting, and a significant sealevel rise that will threaten coastal and low-lying regions. We are already facing the likelihood of a significant decline in the quality of life in many regions of the world, with spillover effects throughout the planet. And we face the possibility of the eventual collapse of the planet’s ability to sustain human life. This is not an “environmental” issue, as in “save the

whales.”This is a “save the humans” issue.

Will that suffice to get our attention?

The IPCC scientists are now saying that time is running out for us to stabilize emissions of greenhouse gases. We must stop the increase of GHGs and find a point of stabilization by 2015—which means, in the words of IPCC leader Rajendra Pachauri, “What we do in the next two or three years will determine our future.” Specifically, the US—along with the rest of the world—must implement a cap on carbon emissions within the next two years.

After 2015, assuming we have made the enormous changes necessary just to slow down this runaway train, we must globally move toward significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions (and deforestation) and finally towards a transition away from carbon-emitting technologies by the middle of this century.

I turned recently to a careful reading of Collapse (Penguin, 2005), a hugely significant book by geographer/anthropologist Jared Diamond. Diamond distills decades of his own fieldwork in the climate history of the planet, especially with regard to civilizations that eventually collapsed. In researching civilizations as diverse as Easter Island and Norse Greenland, Diamond finds that a combination of human-caused ecological damage, climate change, deteriorating relations with neighboring countries and trading partners, and an inadequate societal response to these growing challenges have been at play in various degrees when cultures have collapsed.

Reading Diamond’s panoramic view of the rise and fall of human civilizations helped me to see once and for all that the survival of, for example, our beloved United States of America is hardly a sure thing—because the survival of no nation, no civilization, is a sure thing. And Diamond points out quite tellingly that one difference between previous collapses and the one we might now face is that the world is indeed connected PRISM 2008

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in a way never before seen. When Afghanistan sneezes, Des Moines catches a cold. As China industrializes using dirty coal, all of us get sick. And if we go over the tipping point toward abrupt climate change, no one will be spared.

Diamond essentially pleads for our own country and the world to find the leadership needed to respond to what is becoming a question of human survival. We need leaders who will avoid the mistakes made by those long-dead civilizations, which failed to anticipate problems before they arrived, failed to perceive problems even after they had arrived, failed to even try to solve problems once they were perceived, and if they finally tried to solve the problems failed to find the right solutions in time.

Because human well-being is at stake, even human survival, those looking to affect politics must now say that this is the ultimate moral values issue.

Where is God—and the church—in all of this? This is not Diamond’s topic, but he does say this: One reason some dead civilizations responded sluggishly to threats to their very survival was that their existing system of values was not up to the task—and they were unwilling or unable to change those values in time.

I suggest that any Christian theology /ethic that believes that human beings are too puny to affect the planet’s ecosystem, that God will not let anything bad happen to us, that anything that happens (good or evil) is the result of God’s direct will and purpose, that social ethics and morality are unimportant, that gay marriage and judicial activism are the key values issues in 2008, or that nothing must be done to hinder or regulate the free market is part of the problem, not part of the solution, and needs to change before it is too late. For evangelicals, our responsibility is great indeed. ■ David P. Gushee is a professor of Christian ethics at McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta, Ga.

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The “Both/And” Vision That Changed My Life It is very exciting to return to the pages of PRISM, a magazine I edited 15 years ago—and before that, the ESA Advocate.

This inaugural “reunion tour” column has stirred many thoughts about the journey on which God has led me in the intervening years, reminding me that the vision Ron Sider and ESA have offered along the way was not just instrumental in shaping me but also clearly preferable to every other alternative I have met along the way.

The original ESA language from the 1970s focused on “combining evangelism and social action.”This “both/and” approach addressed the long-standing problem within evangelicalism of emphasizing personal piety at the expense of moral/social concern, a problem mirrored in the mainline denominations of emphasizing social concern at the expense of personal piety. These “evangelicals” were therefore going to be for “social action.” To the extent that there remain large pockets within evangelicalism that continue to embrace an otherworldly faith (an amazingly large sector, actually), this message remains relevant. And to the extent that progressive or liberal Christians can’t quite embrace personal conversion and serious piety, the message remains deeply relevant on that side as well.

When I worked for ESA in the early 1990s, I was already thinking that the main problem, within evangelicalism anyway, had shifted.The rise of conservative evangelical social engagement meant that many were indeed “combining evangelism with social action.” But the problem was the kind of social action they were embracing—a narrowly focused social

agenda closely tied to conservative worldly politics. Ron Sider and ESA were saying as early as the 1980s that a holistic, politically independent moral agenda that dealt with all ethical issues addressed by Scripture must be the way forward. Ron and I were both struck by the Catholic “consistent ethic of life” language that was being articulated by John Paul II and Cardinal Bernardin, and this “seamless garment” vision of moral concern remains central to both of us.

Another “both/and” characteristic of ESA has to do with where the action is for Christian engagement in the world.

In an era in which many Christians have chosen between either the church (as locus of God’s activity) or the world (state, politics, culture, and law), ESA has consistently sought to combine both arenas. Evangelicals need to figure out what God requires of us ethically and then seek to embody that in the church and (with proper care and limits) advance it in the public arena—which itself has multiple sectors, all of which require different strategies and approaches. And of course ESA has faithfully sought to be serious about individual Christian discipleship as well.

Many American evangelicals fixate on our own nation. Others tend to think internationally, especially to focus on global missionary efforts. ESA has been “both/and” here as well. Ron Sider’s own efforts to remain closely involved with the international evangelical community were visible to me when I worked with him in Philadelphia, even though they are not always widely publicized.

This commitment has borne good fruit in many ways, one of them being the correction of overly Americanized Christian perspectives by listening to voices from overseas. This theme made its way into the pivotal “For the Health of the Nation” statement that Ron played such a key role in making happen in 2004.

ESA also helped me find the balance between trusting God and working hard.

Some Christians emphasize trusting God and, especially in highly determinist theology (such as in versions of a resurgent Calvinism today), end up with a remarkable moral passivity. Others emphasize working hard to make good things happen and end up seeming rather desperate, as if Christ were not alive and at work in the world made by and for him.

A final “both/and” for Ron and ESA has been the commitment to being both evangelical and ecumenical. ESA has been consistently evangelical in that it has remained closely tied to the cardcarrying evangelical world with all of its church and parachurch institutions.

This world itself is amazingly ecumenical in that it involves so many dozens of denominations and thousands of organizations. Meanwhile, Ron and ESA have always related to the broader ecumenical structures provided by, for example, the National Council of Churches—not to mention ongoing dialogue with Roman Catholic leaders.

The ingredients of healthy Christian existence in the world are not really all that mysterious. But we so often get it wrong. Start with a transformative commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and never stray. Rely on the inspired Scriptures for authority. Commit to the body of Christ both congregational and universal.Attend to all aspects of the church’s divine commission. In the ethics arena, attend to all dimensions of biblical morality. Never stop trying to change the world and never stop trusting in God’s providence.

It is good to reconnect visibly with this vision, which has changed many lives, including my own. ■ David P. Gushee is a distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta, Ga., co-chair of the Biblical/Contextual Ethics Group of the American Academy of Religion, president of Evangelicals for Human Rights, and the author of 11 books, two forthcoming this year.

PRISM 2008

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