Wesleyan philosophy 6c -- Wesleyan Fundamental Social Concerns

The next installment in a Wesleyan social and political philosophy (see bottom for posts thus far).  

______________________

What are some fundamental Wesleyan social concerns?

1. What are some fundamental Wesleyan social concerns? They are the biblical concerns. They are Jesus' concerns in the Gospels.

The Gospel of Luke presents Jesus' visit to Nazareth in Luke 4 as a kind of inauguration of his earthly mission. He has participated in the baptism of John the Baptist. He has been tempted in the wilderness. Now he goes to the synagogue in his hometown and is given the scroll of Isaiah. He reads from Isaiah 61.

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to herald release to captives and sight to the blind, to send those who have been oppressed with freedom, to herald the favorable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:18-19).

This is an announcement, not an altar call. [1] It is a summary of the activities in which Jesus then engages in the Gospel of Luke. He heals the blind. He liberates the demon-possessed. He indicates that poor individuals like Lazarus are about to be in bliss while the rich man will soon be in torment.

There is very little in Luke about saving souls in the evangelical sense. [2] Jesus does not tell them to let him into their hearts. He does not say, "The important thing is for you to be right with God spiritually. The rest is trivial." 

The special emphases of Luke-Acts are 1) the gospel is for the whole world, both Jews and non-Jews, 2) Jesus came to bring good news to the lowly, such as the poor and women (corresponding to this is bad news for those who were currently wealthy), 3) the importance of prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit, 4) the fact that believers are unified and peace-loving, although trouble often comes to them from others. While Luke brings these themes out distinctly, Jesus also heals and brings similar themes to those we find in Matthew and Mark. John is the most dualistic and spiritualized of the Gospels. As the most symbolic Gospel, it does push beyond the emphases of Jesus' earthly mission when his feet were on the ground, but it does not nullify the earlier Gospels.

My point is not to negate the importance of eternal salvation. Not at all. It is clearly the most important aspect of the gospel because it is ultimate. My point is that the most literal of the Gospels do not identify that subject as the focus of Jesus' earthly mission. Matthew, Mark, and Luke (often called the Synoptic Gospels) indicate that, on earth, Jesus was far more focused on the well-being and restoration of those right in front of him than on their eternal destiny.

2. The Wesleyan tradition has largely stood outside debates over whether social action is appropriate for Christians. John Wesley himself has heavily involved in the social concerns of 1700s England, from the desperate situation of coal miners and child laborers to his later support for the abolition of slavery. He knew of no chasm between spiritual concerns and concern for a person physically, socially, and economically.

The Wesleyan Methodist Church was founded as an anti-slavery movement. Orange Scott and Luther Lee were not only sick of the complacency and tip-toeing of the Methodist Episcopal Church around the issue of slavery. They were often unwelcome in a Methodist church that had become a little too comfortable with the social status quo. Frontier churches can become affluent in later generations, where there is more motivation for things to stay the same socially than to work for social change.

The Pilgrim Holiness Church was never a stranger to helping the poor and the down-and-out. God's Bible School in Cincinnati, often considered ground zero for the church's founding, always had an element of helping the downtrodden of the city in the early twentieth century. The Wesleyan church of my childhood in Fort Lauderdale, Florida was not only very conservative but always had a pantry for any needy individuals who might come by. 

3. Why am I belaboring this point? Because there are other Christian traditions that have a fairly negative view of this particular kind of social action. As we have tried to become more mainstream, it is inevitable that we would be influenced by other groups, and we have never really had a strong theological identity that might serve as a wall against absorbing extraneous influences of this sort. This can be true of larger churches that mingle in different theological circles and then pass that influence down the line. This can be true in an age of social media where grass-roots Wesleyans are constantly bombarded by the influences of broader Christian and non-Christian culture.

As we saw in a previous post, fundamentalist groups are very much in favor of social action (Christ above culture) in certain areas. For example, it is appropriate to try to stop abortion and gay marriage in the public legal sphere. However, inconsistently, it is not considered appropriate to try to help the poor with public means or to work against any societal structures that might have racial biases. These are considered liberal and thus anathema. These attitudes represent foreign influence on the Wesleyan tradition from the outside. 

In other traditions, we can trace this influence back at least to the early twentieth century, when conflict over what was called the "social gospel" arose. In those days, "Liberal Christianity" was an actual name for a segment of Christianity. It is true that many in this group had ceased believing in a number of core orthodox beliefs, such as the divinity of Christ or the inspiration of Scripture. That criticism of the group is fair. 

What did this movement believe? They focused their energies on doing good in the world, on making society a better place. A well-known example would be Charles Sheldon's In His Steps and the well-known slogan, "What would Jesus do?" (WWJD). A little-known fact is that Sheldon did not actually believe in the virgin birth or the divinity of Christ. He believed instead that Jesus was the model human being. The world would thus be a better place if we approached our lives with Jesus as our model. What would Jesus do in this situation? If we lived our lives like that, how changed would the world be!

This is a tale of two mistakes. On the one hand, Liberal Christianity was wrong in its sense of Jesus as only a moral example. Yet the opposition to the social gospel was wrong to dismiss the very things that Jesus modeled when he was on earth. We are not whole Christians unless we have both pieces to the puzzle. Both orthodoxy and social concern for others are essential features of the gospel in the Bible. The Wesleyan tradition has historically held these two pieces together even while other traditions have divorced them.

From a Wesleyan perspective, the problem with the social gospel is not the part about helping others, even by addressing the structures of society. From a Wesleyan perspective, the problem is not "the imitation of Christ." From a Wesleyan perspective, the problem is that the other half of the equation was missing. You can work to change society for the better and believe Jesus was the divine Son of God. You can live a life that tries to imitate Jesus and believe in the virgin birth. Such beliefs and practices are not contrary to the Bible. They are in fact the consistent teachings of Scripture!

4. We should probably also mention that dispensationalist influence on the Wesleyan tradition was also influence from the outside in the late 1800s. It became essential theology in the Pilgrim Holiness Church but the merged denomination chose more flexibility on end times teaching. Prior to that influence, the Wesleyan tradition was not oriented around a sense that the world would get worse and worse until Jesus finally returned.

In relation to social change, we might describe dispensationalism as having a kind of lifeboat theology. The world is on fire and will spin out of control until it consumes itself. There is no hope to save the world. The best we can do is get as many people as we can into the eternal lifeboat. It's foolish to try to work for change in the broader society. 

This is not Wesleyan theology. It is foreign influence. I would rather summarize truly Wesleyan theology in this area as, "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." Although these words are often attributed to John Wesley, there is no evidence that he actually even said these words. Nevertheless, they certainly suit his theology.

I might add that it has been over 150 years since John Darby introduced the world to dispensationalism in its modern form. A very large number of those looking for an imminent antichrist and Tribulation have come and gone. They could have done a lot of good in the world if they had stayed in the world a little longer instead of getting in the lifeboat prematurely. "We'll work till Jesus comes." 

There is thus nothing Wesleyan about the idea that the government cannot play a role in the betterment of society. Psalm 72 would suggest the contrary. This idea is foreign influence on Wesleyanism and Christianity in general. There is nothing biblical or Wesleyan about the idea that we cannot imitate Jesus because he's divine and we aren't. This idea violates the full humanity of Jesus.

To return to an earlier conversation, this is not a suggestion that Christianity take the reigns of government or fuse with the state. It is rather a "do all the good you can" principle. When the movement of the state aligns with the movement of Christ, there is no reason not to collaborate. This is Galatians 6:10: "As we have opportunity, let us do good to all [people]." Similarly of the state Paul says that a ruler "is God's minister for you for good." 

The Bible knows no prohibition of the state from doing good. Does the state sometimes mess up doing good? Absolutely. Has the state sometimes done good. Absolutely.

5. There is an aversion in many Christian circles currently to the words "social justice," and some people are sometimes mocked as "social justice warriors." This mocking is, again, foreign to the Wesleyan tradition and reflects the continued influence of the external forces I have mentioned above. However, I have no problem using the phrase "biblical justice" and backing up all values with Scripture.

Does Scripture show concern for those who are "poor," that is, those who are knocked off track. Does it show concern for those who struggle to survive because they lack the means to do so? Frankly, God wants us to do more than survive since we are created in the image of God. The answer is an unambiguous yes from a biblical perspective. Is this concern limited to other Christians? No. It may be focused on other Christians, yes, but it is not limited to them as Galatians 6:10 indicates.

Richard Mouw once wrote a piece in Christianity Today that I found personally helpful. [3] In it, he suggested that we as Christians should agree on core social values but leave some room for disagreement on how to play out those values concretely in society. For example, it is a core Christian value to want to help the poor. However, the situation is complicated. Sometimes helping with resources isn't actually helping a person in the long term. As we will see in a later post, while communism may seem like the book of Acts in some respects, it is not clear that it works as an overall societal system.

So our aim should be to agree on the overall values while leaving much room for disagreement on the particulars of solutions. The value that everyone should have health care is solidly biblical and Christian as a desire. But what is the best way for that to happen? Part of the problem with the evangelical church at present is that there is so much clutter in our environment that we are unclear even on what the core values are.

Take immigrants. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament solidly and without reservation would urge us to value the foreigner in our midst (e.g., Deut. 10:18-19; Ezek. 22:7; 1 Tim. 5:10). It would be highly anachronistic to make some supposed biblical distinction between legal and illegal strangers--such distinctions did not exist in biblical times. Some corners of Christianity at present, however, have been influenced by the world into a very hostile attitude toward "others." These skewed values can hide behind nuances. "They are illegal." "They are criminals and rapists." These are sometimes smokescreens for anti-Christian values.  

I watched a certain news outlet recently for a few days. The selection of stories in relation to illegal immigrants not so subtly proclaimed, "These people are all evil." In fact, one segment criticized other news outlets for not mentioning that a certain rapist was an illegal immigrant. Why? It seemed clear to me that the other outlets did not want to perpetuate the false impression that most illegals are unusually evil people, while this outlet did want to emphasize the false impression that all illegals are evil people. Yet I know many Christians feed on this particular news outlet, very likely misshaping their minds and values in these particular ways.

6. The quintessential Wesleyan verse on social structures is Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is not 'male and female.'" Paul is talking about our adoption into Christ to be sure, but the principle of equal value stands in the background. 

It is true that he does not fully play out this equal value into the social structures of society. But he pushes against them. He does not tell Philemon to free Onesimus, but that would have been completely appropriate given what he does say. He does not remove the wife from under her husband's headship but that is a fitting completion of the trajectory in our society today.

We come back to the principle, "Do all the good you can." Wives will not be subordinated to husbands in the kingdom of God (Mark 12:25). There will be no human servants in the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God represents the trajectory of biblical values. If we can make the world more like the kingdom of God now, why wouldn't we?

There is a distinction often made today that is unfortunately sometimes mocked even by those who call themselves Christians. It is a distinction between equality and equity. In this scenario, equality refers to equal opportunity. So let's say there is some bread on a shelf that is on a shelf seven feet up. One person is six feet tall and the other four foot six. Both are allowed to reach for the bread. They have equal opportunity but not equal access.

This is equality. Nothing is stopping the shorter person from getting the bread. We just know they're not going to be able to do so without help from something like a step stool or another person. In this scenario, equity is about giving the shorter person the means to actually reach the bread. 

I recognize that life isn't fair, and I don't think God intends for us to pretend otherwise. If you cannot pass math, you cannot be a math teacher. If you cannot run fast, you cannot run in the Olympics. There are many circumstances where merely equal opportunity is appropriate and sufficient.

The Christian value of equity relates to more fundamental concerns. No one should starve to death. Everyone should have access to basic medical treatment when they need it. Everyone should have access to a roof over their head. If we can see these values play out in the world, why wouldn't we, especially since they also seem to play out the fundamental values of the American experiment?

[1] Intriguingly, Luke does not include Jesus' call to repentance for forgiveness of sins. It is there in Mark 1:15 in his source, but he introduces Jesus' ministry in a different way.

[2] Another example is how Luke represents Mark 10:45. While Mark speaks of Jesus being a ransom for the sins of many (a unique statement even in Mark), Luke's version of the statement would seem to be Luke 19:10: "The Son of Man came to seek and rescue that which has been lost." I translate sozo here as rescue so that we do not read meaning into the word that was not Luke's focus.

[3] "Carl Henry Was Right," 2010.

___________________________

Introduction

• What is philosophy and is it Christian?

Logic

• What is good thinking?

Philosophy of Religion

• What about God?

Philosophical Psychology

• What is a human being?

Ethics

• How should we then live/be as individuals?
• Gender and sexual ethics (part I: general principles)
• Gender and sexual ethics (part II: homosexuality and transgenderism)

Social and Political Philosophy (How should we then live together?)

• How should the church relate to the world?
• What is the best way to govern society?

I (Still) Believe: Walter Brueggemann

This week's sample from John Byron and Joel Lohr's, I (Still) Believe is Walter Brueggemann. Last week we sampled the chapter on Richard Bauckham.

1. The name of Walter Brueggeman will be familiar to many. The work that put him on the radar of many of us was The Prophetic Imagination, in which he traces the rise of power in the Old Testament and then shows the prophetic critique of that power. He is thus a champion for those who emphasize social justice and the social dimensions of the gospel.

In this chapter, we catch a possible hint of the origins of that emphasis in his childhood. His father was a dirt poor pastor for a community with extensive financial resources.

2. Brueggemann grew up in the "Evangelical and Reformed Church," which at the time he was being ordained merged to form the United Church of Christ. I have of course heard of the UCC, but knew nothing of its origins. It goes back to 1817 and Prussia when the king of Prussia got tired of the Lutherans and Calvinists fighting each other theologically and created a "Prussian Union." Because theology could not be the uniting point of the church, its principle of unity became more pietist and social justice focused.

Since theology was not the focus of Brueggemann's tradition, modernism did not create a serious crisis for his tradition. By the time he was born, his pastors and teachers already knew about German criticism but it was of little concern to them. The focus of preaching was on social justice and on an irenic spirit. He speaks of his rural home community: "The contrast between an evangelical congregation [his] and that of the Missouri Synod could not have been sharper. The Missouri Synod was (and continues to be) militantly exclusionary and vigilant about its doctrinal purity in a way that let the evangelical church be seen, by contrast, as wondrously free and open" (31).

This comment sparked a question about our current religious landscape in the US. I wondered if you took the fervor and organizational skill of a mega-church pastor and put it in a UCC pastor, might not that tradition be able to spark a revival among the nones right now, to save them from the abandonment of Christianity in a way that no remnant church is likely to do at this time? I don't expect it to happen, of course.

3. I'm probably telling too much. Pre-order the book! Brueggemann tells of the important teacher influences of his life at Elmhurst College and Eden Seminary. The Niebuhr's are mentioned, along with James Muilenburg, Brevard Childs, and Paul Ricoeur. His teachers/influences enabled him to listen to the story of the Old Testament as a story full of truths, rather than to get preoccupied with questions of historicity, along with source and form analysis.

"When our certitudes and our formulations of them are small, they cannot withstand the force of biblical criticism" (41). "I have never felt that critical study has in any way jeopardized my faith" (40). "The church is my 'natural habitat' for work" (41).

4. He gives some good advice at the end of the chapter, including "Do not arrive too soon at fixed, settled positions" (41). "Read widely and deeply." "Remember that we are not the first ones to struggle with these issues" (42). And perhaps most importantly, "We are always the 'junior partner' in interpretation. The senior partner is God's own Spirit."

5. Ricoeur has played a similar role in my own ability to transcend the "smally formulated certitudes" of fundamentalism. Brueggemann mentions Ricoeur's "orientation-disorientation-reorientation" schema. A solid training in biblical studies will often lead to disorientation to those who grew up in narrow circles. But this need not lead to a loss of faith. Faith-ful scholars like Brueggemann show us one way.

Protestant Liberal Thinking

Working on a textbox in conjunction with a section in the philosophy book on Leo Tolstoy's view of art.
___________
Protestant Liberal Thinking
Although many speak today generally of something being "liberal" in a very broad sense, "Liberal theology" was the formal name of a stream of Protestant thinking especially in the late 1800's and early 1900's (not to be confused with the economic liberalism of the previous chapter).  Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) was the "father" of liberal theology when he sought to protect Christianity from the challenges of the Enlightenment by defining religion in terms of religious experience: "Religion is neither thinking nor acting but intuition and feeling" (On Religion).  In this regard the influence of the Romantic Era on him is unmistakable.

However, the height of Protestant liberal theology came in the optimistic spirit of the late 1800's and early 1900's prior to World War 1.  Albrecht Ritschl (1822-89) built on Schleiermacher's sense that religion was about experience rather than knowledge, but he sought to give that experience a more objective basis in the origins and history of Christianity.  He also saw it more as a lived out experience in community (ethics) rather than Scheiermacher's focus on an experience of complete dependence on God.

Ritschl found part of his objective basis for Christian experience in his idealized picture of Jesus as the supreme moral example of all history, a demonstration of the perfect human relationship with God lived out in community.  He did not actually believe Jesus was divine, even if in a unique class by himself.  Part of the job of the theologian for him was to strip the authentic substance of Christianity from its later accretions, such as the later creeds of Christianity.

Protestant Liberalism would then reach its peak at the beginning of the twentieth century, before World War 1 dashed its optimistic view of humanity to pieces.  Adolf Harnack (1850-1930) saw the essence of Christianity as "the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of humanity."  The essence of Christianity was thus to love your neighbor and what came to be known as the "social gospel," where the overwhelming focus of Christian faith is on helping others rather than on saving souls from damnation.

In many (though not all cases), the key figures in Protestant Liberalism did not view Jesus as truly divine. Even the pastor who started the slogan, "What would Jesus do?" (Charles Sheldon) saw Jesus more as a  moral example rather than as divine or as Savior.  Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that what was defective in the Protestant Liberalism of that time (or of the neo-liberalism of our own day) is not the focus on loving our neighbor, imitating Jesus, or promoting social justice.  What was defective was what they did not teach, rather than what they did.

Social Gospel (5.3)

Desperately trying to finish my second Paul book... still.  Here's an excerpt from a section on Romans 13.
____________
A final argument that is sometimes used is an artifact of American history and perhaps to a large degree an explanation for why so many Christians can go against the clear tenor of Scripture on this sort of topic. In the early 1900s, helping the poor among Christians became associated with what was called a “social gospel.” Those who most emphasized helping others were “liberal” Christians, often Christians who questioned things like the virgin birth or the divinity of Christ. As is often the case, we disassociate ourselves not only with the things we disagree with in others, but also with good aspects of their thinking that we might just as well agree with. Such was the case in mainstream evangelical circles of the mid-twentieth century with regard to helping the poor and needy.

The Wesleyan tradition of which I am a part did not fully participate in this reaction, nor of course did Christians from other countries. The Salvation Army, the Free Methodist Church—it would be hard to say that this over-reaction had much of any impact on them. The Wesleyan-Methodist tradition was born with an emphasis on social action, abolition, and the women’s rights movements. Thankfully, our isolation from the broader discussion largely kept our food pantries intact. If we have been affected, it has only been of late because of the political climate of the last few decades.

But is essential to realize that the social gospel message of mainline churches in the early twentieth century was not a reaction against the truth. It was all that was left of the truth. After so many mainline churches had lost their belief in miracles, in the divinity of Christ, in the revelation of Scripture, all they had left was the Christian ethos of loving our neighbor. There was nothing wrong with these drives. It was all they had left of Christianity, the only thing that motivated them to continue to call themselves Christians. Let us therefore not be deceived by the accidents of history into abandoning one of the central messages of the Bible and of Jesus' ministry.