It is political primary season in America. As the nation gears up for the next Presidential election, we will be hearing a great deal about moral values. Presidential candidates understand which way the wind is blowing, and that they must articulate “moral values” if their campaigns are to build momentum.
This issue of Cultural Encounters deals specifically with various moral issues and liberation themes, such as concern for race, the war on terror, poverty, HIV/AIDS, and the environment. It is not the editorial committee’s aim “to endorse” every point in the pages that follow, but to raise crucial, and sometimes controversial, issues of life and death as topics the church must engage—during the campaign season and beyond. On the one hand, it is important that we not be carried away by every wind of doctrine (Eph. 4:14) but test the spirits (1 Jn. 4:1-6). On the other hand, it is important that God’s holy and powerful Spirit of love carry us forward to care for those beaten down by the Katrinas and Tsunamis of life. While never easy to balance, we need to pursue orthodoxy as well as orthopraxis, matching biblical conviction with compassion—a truly liberating theology.
With these tension points and concerns firmly in mind, it is appropriate that we begin this issue with consideration of the work of one of the leading (and also one of the most controversial) liberation theologians, Brazilian Leonardo Boff. Boff was silenced by the Roman Catholic Church for what it deemed heretical teachings. Lutheran theologian Rudolf von Sinner writing from Brazil speaks of Boff as a Protestant Catholic—“Protestant” because of his protest of ecclesiastical power and “Catholic” because of the cosmic dimensions of his thought. Von Sinner also maintains that Boff’s ecclesiology is a Christology from the people, and therefore Protestant, emphasizing the priesthood of all believers. Moreover, it is an ecclesiology of liberation in that it is “built up by and from the poor.” Von Sinner also claims that Boff’s ecclesiology is truly catholic—open to those traditions beyond the walls of Roman Catholicism.
While the church had a privileged—sacramental—status as “God’s presence in the world” in Boff’s earlier writings, his later writings “give the impression that the Church is giving way to the cosmos as the privileged prism” of God’s sacramental presence. And while von Sinner affirms Boff’s cosmic theology as a corrective to Protestantism’s “overly rational and individualistic” tendencies, he cautions against Boff’s “overly harmonious view” of God’s relation to the world (panentheistically conceived) “that would not do justice to the ambiguity of human existence.” Going further, while von Sinner affirms the contextual and truly catholic nature of Boff’s theology, he draws attention to the loss of “precise focus” in his later theological reflections. And while Boff’s concern for the concrete situation of the poor and authentic communal existence is commendable, he “tends toward an excess of concreteness” in his deliberations on divine perichoresis, as von Sinner maintains. Von Sinner’s essay leads us to ask how we can, on the one hand, maintain concern for the particularity and uniqueness of God’s revelation in Christ and the unique significance of the church while, on the other hand, articulating a sense of the comprehensive scope of salvation? All that follows bears this question in mind.
The comprehensive scope of Christ’s saving work means that Christ has a bearing not only on Roman Catholicism in Latin America but also on evangelicalism and Pentecostalism in South and North America combined. Building on his constructive assessment of Boff, von Sinner also criticizes both evangelicalism for overemphasizing the individual in God’s salvific purposes and neo-Pentecostalism for its prosperity gospel preaching. Von Sinner’s critique hits close to home, drawing attention to the fact that the concern over winds of doctrine blowing us off course is something that concerns us ultimately north as well as south of the border.
The next essay, by Gary Deddo, draws attention to North American evangelicalism’s excessive preoccupation with the autonomous individual and how this impacts negatively the movement’s engagement of race problems. Deddo articulates a Trinitarian model of human existence that sees the individual as bound up in a relational matrix with God and other humans. Grounded in this Trinitarian model, Deddo argues that the greatest problem with racism (and even some correctives) is the absolutizing of “race” and relativizing of the more fundamental reality—that everyone is our neighbor. Deddo also reframes ethical obligation in view of this Trinitarian anthropology. Over against the recurring danger of the Galatian heresy (Gal. 3:1ff.), where “we begin with faith in grace but end with trying to muster hope in our own works,” Deddo maintains that “a faithful Trinitarian anthropology announces that ethical obligation is founded upon the completed work of Christ, who has created and restored humanity in actuality.” This perspective bears upon all ethical concerns, including matters of race. It follows from this orientation that Christ is the neighbor who loves those outside his circle, including his enemies. We have the privilege of participating in his reality and bearing witness in our lives to what he has already accomplished on behalf of the church and the world. Jesus’ identity and activity makes it possible for us to be authentic witnesses, freeing us from indifference and autonomous activity to love our neighbor, whoever our neighbor might be.
But who is my neighbor? Writing from New Zealand, Murray Rae brings the question to bear on the West’s war on terror and all its talk of Christian values. In the States, we are so bombarded with the rhetoric of Christian values and the terror campaign that we might fail to hear Jesus’ stump speeches on enemy love. In such situations, it is important to listen to brothers and sisters in Christ from around the world. In view of Jesus’ ethic disclosed in the biblical narratives, Rae is wary of talk of “Christian values.” He believes that we in the West isolate values from this biblical context. What is needed is “a properly theological account of Christian ethics.” He goes on to say: “The rhetoric of Christian values often serves this reductive purpose and thereby constitutes an attempt to preserve the perceived moral value of Christian faith while abandoning the central claims of the gospel, most especially the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” whereby God reorders creaturely life. Like Deddo, Rae also draws attention to Galatians. The fruit of the Spirit “are not values to be striven for, but reminders of what outcomes should ensue from our participation in the story of the gospel.” Whereas talk of “values” often involves removal of ethics from the particular gospel story, talk of “reminders” does not. On the latter view, the Gospel remains indispensable, and so too its radical call to discipleship.
Whether we are dealing with racism (as in the case of Deddo) or the war on terror (which Rae analyzes), Rae argues that revenge has no place in the ethic of the crucified and risen Christ’s kingdom. Whereas revenge breeds more violence, forgiveness—while costly—follows from adherence to Christ’s story. “Such acts of forgiveness cannot be ascribed a value; that is to say, they carry with them no surety, no banknote guarantee of success. They are acts of faith, rather, in which we entrust the outcome to the God who raised Jesus from the dead.” In spite of the Gospel story and all the talk today of “What would Jesus do?” there probably won’t be much talk of neighbor love or enemy love—certainly not a neighbor like Bin Laden—during the presidential primary season’s debates over moral values. Again, the candidates know which way the wind is blowing.
Which wind, though, are we concerned for as Christians? The cultural currents around us, or the wind of the Holy Spirit, who births a high pressure zone spirituality? We can never move toward enemy love if we are not captured by God’s love in Christ. For R.N. Frost, God’s love poured out by Christ’s Spirit “is like a high pressure zone in the souls of those captivated by Christ.” Like the wind that flows through the Columbia River Gorge from high pressure to low pressure, those compelled forward by the love of Christ will give themselves to causes requiring social activism, without being exhausted by such causes. With Rae, Frost is wary of what often passes for “Christian”—whether we are talking about values or love. We need to place love in the biblical context of Christ’s call on his disciples’ lives. “Moral values” as such will not involve the imitation of Christ’s kingdom: “What cannot be imitated is Jesus’ heart. If his Spirit is not present in those who claim to follow him, the transforming wind of his pneuma is also absent. But if the Spirit is present, so is a willingness to sacrifice all selfish ambitions” for one’s friends, as well as for one’s enemies. Moral lessons, propositions, and values will not do it—only God’s sacrificial, enemy-loving love. Such a perspective leads to infinite compassion—“Our care, and our compassion for others, is placed within a frame of reference as big as God himself” and will spill forth from our union and communion with God to a world that desperately “hungers to be loved.”
As the Christian community is swept along by God’s costly and expansive love poured out in our lives through the Spirit of the crucified, risen, and ascended Christ (Deddo, Rae and Frost), God’s people will inevitably engage in holistic outreach and action along the lines noted in the reflection pieces by Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo, Susan Slonaker, and Peter Illyn. These “Cultural Reflections” essays are not systematic treatises on theology and culture, but reflections that involve wrestling with our Christian faith in our concrete cultural context.
Wallis speaks of “two great hungers in our world” today—the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social justice—and these hungers are inspiring a movement that is sweeping the nation. In this context, Wallis calls for a new and expansive conversation over moral values, which is concerned with more than the two issues of abortion and marriage. Wallis believes it is not only important that political discourse include this discussion on moral values, but that this conversation on moral values transforms politics. “Politics is failing. While one should not withdraw from politics, one doesn’t just join politics either. One has to change it, move it, transform it. You can’t just replace one wet-fingered politician with another. You have to ‘change the wind,’ and then politicians move in a different direction.” Speaking like a revivalist and civil rights preacher at times, Wallis alludes to “Amazing Grace” and “altar calls.” It reminds me that without a fresh outpouring of God’s Spirit and without a firm grasp of the triune God’s redemptive ways, we will not be able to contend against the crises of our day. Without a firm hope that Jesus has gone through the grave to be raised by the Spirit, and that we are called to ride his Spirit’s storm of holy love, we will not be able to do in our day what Wilberforce and Newton, Wesley, Finney, and King did in theirs.
Tony Campolo and Susan Slonaker of REACH Ministries address the church’s failure to respond redemptively and compassionately in the HIV/AIDS crisis situation. Rather than reaching out to these modern day lepers with the healing touch of Christ, we often call out, “Unclean! Unclean!” When we act in this way, we fail to experience a fresh sense of Christ’s presence in our lives. Quoting Jesus’ words in Matthew 25, Campolo says: “Whatever we do ‘for the least of these,’ we do for Christ himself. The Christ, who died on Calvary, who was resurrected, and who is in the world today, chooses to use children such as those found at the REACH Camps as a sacramental means through which to present Himself to us. Mother Teresa once said, ‘Whenever I look into the eyes of a man dying of AIDS, I have the eerie sensation that Jesus is staring back at me.’” Mother Teresa and Campolo have taken a lot of heat for such statements, oftentimes from religious leaders who have not likely taken the time to reach out to “the least of these” of whom Mother Teresa and Campolo speak.
I have the rare privilege of looking into the eyes of Mother Teresa whenever I meet with Susan Slonaker of REACH Ministries. “Caught in the whirlwind of God,” this tiny woman is a mighty force to reckon with. However, if it weren’t for God’s overwhelming whirlwind presence in her life, and her being overwhelmed by the beautiful and often neglected children stricken with HIV/AIDS, she would not be able to cope with the religious establishment and secular forces that stand in the way of ministering Christ’s healing touch to these children. Woe to the person who stands in the way of letting the little children come unto him. I encourage you—the reader—to get involved with REACH Ministries, to be caught up in the whirlwind of God as you reach out to touch a child in need through REACH. As in the case of Slonaker—whose life changed dramatically when she was “whipped off” her “feet by the whirling wind of the Spirit,” your life will never be the same again.
I also encourage you to consider carefully the whirlwind world tour of “the Cossack and the Cannibal,” which Peter Illyn of Restoring Eden narrates. You will come face to face with a Christian tribal leader from Papua New Guinea named Yat, and will learn that your neighbor not only lives next door to you, but also lives across the world, and is impacted by the choices we in the West have made for centuries—choices that are taking the natural world around him and his people away from them forever. Yat senses which way the wind is blowing this primary season, and the winds of change do not bode well for him. Hopefully, as you read, you will be moved as Yat was moved in South Dakota—not standing before the finished monument to the four presidents, but before the unfinished monument to Crazy Horse. How crazy is it that for all our talk about moral values in America, and access to Christian Scripture, the church in America has “become so embedded in the culture of our present world that we do not recognize that our way of living, which we implicitly view as divinely sanctioned, is not rooted robustly in biblical truth,” as Illyn notes. Whether we are thinking about those of other races, adherents of other religions with whom the West is at war, little children with HIV/AIDS, or the indigenous peoples of Papua New Guinea, we are thinking about our neighbors. What is our God thinking about us? And which way is the wind blowing in your life?
—Paul Louis Metzger, Editor