Trade as One

This is a video some of my students at the Academy put together to promote Trade as One. It's part of a program I've been working on there to bring together worthy causes with state of the art media and visual effects in order to help them have a visual impact for their message that a nonprofit could not normally afford. On top of that, it allows the students to get involved in some really important causes, opening their minds up to how they can make a difference in the world with their artistic abilities. Like the video says, "It's good to be upset, it's better to be inspired."

I was really pleased with how it turned out. Take a look, and then go visit the Trade as One website to see how you can get involved.

Faith and Work. (Is that it?)

I was recently asked to speak to a group of graduating high school students at a Christian school about faith and work. One of the questions our panel was asked was how we bring our faith into the workplace. I have to say I was a bit shocked when I heard the answers of the other two panelists. Both of them said that the way they brought their faith into their work was in having honest business practice, and in being patient and kind when dealing with difficult clients. Now these are of course good things to do, but I found myself thinking, "is that it?" Doesn't every professional adult pretty much do that? Who doesn't have to deal in a mature way with difficult clients? Isn't that just called being a professional?

It really got me to thinking about what our vision is of how we can apply our talents and training and expertise in our given fields to bear into seeing the kingdom of God working in our world?. How many times have you heard it preached from the pulpit that really all we need to do is do our work with integrity, and that's it? Is that really all there is? I have to say seminary is not any better. The only occupations on their horizon are professors and pastors. Seminaries are not structured to accommodate any other possible jobs, which explains why they have so little vision for how to bring faith into work. Is that it? Work hard and be nice?

The context that the above statement comes from is Colossians 3:23-24 "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving." Now I have no problem with this. Of course you should do your work well. But let's remember who Paul was addressing with these words. He was talking to slaves. Yes, that's right, slaves. So what I want to really challenge here is whether advice given to slaves on work should really be the sole teaching we have in church on faith and work? We've come a long way since then, and many of us have high ranking professional careers. We are doctors, lawyers, psychologists, educators, and engineers. We are people who potentially have quite a bit of impact and pull in our world. So what foundation can we give to a business owner or lawmaker for how they can bring the kingdom of God into what they do? Does the church really have nothing to say here? Is that it?

Way back in the 80's in "The Grave Digger Files" Ox Guinness bemoaned how privatization had made the church "socially irrelevant even if privately engaging". Guinness writes, "Look for a place where the Christian's faith makes a difference at work beyond the realm of purely personal things (such as witnessing to colleagues and praying for them, or not swearing and not fiddling with income tax returns). Look for a place where the Christian is thinking 'Christianly' and critically about the substance of work (about say, the use of profits and not just personnel; about the ethics of a multinational corporation and not those of a small family business; about a just economic order and not just the doctrine of justification). You will look for a very long time." Since he wrote this in 83, faith did move out of the private sphere, but it did so in a way that it was completely co-opted by the ideals of nationalism and capitalism masquerading as so-called Christian "family values". That politicized private morality has dominated the western Christian political imagination for two decades. It other words, when we were engaged socially and politically, our thinking was on a private and individual level. Thankfully there are signs of a growing social awareness among Evangelicals, but this is really in its infancy, and the mindset of thinking only in privatized individual terms is still deeply entrenched.

There was recently an excellent interview on the Emergent Village podcast with Joe Carson a high ranking nuclear safety engineer at the Dept. of Energy on bringing one's faith into their work on a structural level. Joe begins by explaining that engineering "builds the infrastructure that society is run on, and the weapons to tear it down". So we're talking about a profession here that has some pretty major impact on the world; one with the potential to do great good, and one that can and has done great harm as well. Joe asks for example, should an engineer care that the work they are doing is helping to fuel a genocide in Darfur? It's the kind of big-picture question many of us in the professional world could ask of our own work's impact. What Joe stresses in the interview is that a single individual often can do very little. That's why it is so important he says for there to be a collective voice which can influence industry and power. So he for his part is working to found the Affiliation of Christian Engineers who seek to bring Christian ethics to play in the engineering profession.

That's just one example of a person thinking through how they can bring their faith to bear on their professional life. I found it really challenging because it pushes the boundaries of how we think about what it means to be a Christian in the work place. This is exactly the kind of application that I see as the next step for the emerging church. Beyond all the re-thinking about theological formulations which has been the focus of the emergent movement, the next phase is to ask how we can really live that out. What would it mean for each of us to not simply be a worker with a good attitude fueling the status quo, but for us to be part of a force for change and good? What would that look like in your life and mine? It's a talk that is long overdue.

One suggestion I have, that builds off of what Joe Carson says above, is that in order to affect change in our work world, we will need to learn not only to think about morality and meaning on a social global scale, but we will need to also learn how to act not simply as lone individuals, but collectively. Church needs to grow beyond an institution setup to meet our private spiritual needs, and become one that helps us to organize together to impact our world with our collective ability.

Wesleyan Holiness

I've been reading though Wesley's sermons, trying to get an idea of his theology. If Luther's gift to us was the idea of justification by faith, then Wesley's gift was the idea of regeneration and the new birth. But Wesley puts a particular spin on being born again that is in many ways good, and in some ways bad. His focus is on holiness. First of all I deeply appreciate this focus and think that we evangelicals desperately need to learn about social justice, compassion, and living in grace. We have in the past divorced our faith from social engagement and been advocates for the establishment and powers that be rather than the least. So Wesley's focus on personal and social holiness - a deep vibrant personal faith coupled with compassion and care for the needy and love for our enemies - so something we can learn a lot from.

What I question is Wesley's focus on holiness rather than on relationship. I appreciate Wesley's drive to seek to be holy and loving, but I question his notion that this in fact the central aim of religion. I would say that the central aim is in fact relationship, and the holiness is subordinate to and the product of a relationship with God. It is crucial that a genuine relationship with God leads to us loving others as a fruit of the genuineness of our relationship. I am concerned however that by his putting the focus on works of holiness and thus in many ways having a focus on performance and law that Wesley is giving us an incorrect and unrealistic focus on holiness over relationship that reflects his own particular perfectionist personality (and that of his mother) rather than the thrust of the New Testament.

Said differently, it seems that Wesley was always driven towards works of holiness and that his relational encounter with God was focused on assurance and relationship with God through the indwelling of the Spirit, but that he was continually drawn to seek holiness. First in thinking that the new birth would result in his immediate and total sanctification and then after he discovered he was mistake, in his continual preaching and striving towards holiness. In the same way that Luther really only and always talks about faith and not works, Wesley only and always talks about holiness. As I've said, there are many good things about this seeking after holiness especially when it means seeking to love God and others, but it also strikes me as a weakness of Wesley's as well, a drive that can become a foil possibly leading to legalism and a lack of compassion for those who are fallen. Just as Luther's drive and constant need for justification lead him to great heights, so did Wesley's drive, but Luther's drive was also an occation for the devil to continually torment him. A thorn in his flesh that continually prodded him to be dependent on grace. We might say that "genius has its origin in neurosis".

I think it is vital that we keep in mind that driving passion, both is good parts and its bad parts that lie behind the great theologians so that we can have a theology that takes into account their real human striving and struggles, rather that one that systematizes their thoughts into an abstract system of doctrine. I think this approach is very much in keeping with the raw passion of Luther and the experiential and practical faith of Wesley.

Chicago Declaration

Here are some excerpts from the 1973 Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern which launched Evangelicals for Social Action. Sojourners tells of how their vision was detailed in the 80's by the Moral Majority making Evangelicalism synonymous with right wing politics. So they got together again two decades later to issue Chicago Declaration II: A Call for Evangelical Renewal. The following excerpts are from the 1973 declaration written in the form of a prayer of repentance.

I see so many ways that my own life simply mirrors the values of the culture around me, and long deeply to exhibit the counter-cultural radical grace of the Gospel in my life and community. It is easy to sit back and criticize the failures of the church from my high horse of trendy postmodernism, but it is my church, and so I want to do all I can to let the change begin with me. So I join them in their confession and commit my life to making changes to promote a total life of being the Gospel. Come Lord Jesus.

On Racism
"We deplore the historic involvement of the church in America with racism and the conspicuous responsibility of the evangelical community for perpetuating the personal attitudes and institutional structures that have divided the body of Christ along color lines. Further, we have failed to condemn the exploitation of racism at home and abroad by our economic system."

On Materialism and Poverty
"As a nation we play a crucial role in the imbalance and injustice of international trade and development. Before God and a billion hungry neighbors, we must rethink our values regarding our present standard of living and promote a more just acquisition and distribution of the world's resources."

On Nationalism and War
"We must challenge the misplaced trust of the nation in economic and military might - a proud trust that promotes a national pathology of war and violence which victimizes our neighbors at home and abroad. We must resist the temptation to make the nation and its institutions objects of near-religious loyalty."

On Sexism
"We acknowledge that we have encouraged men to prideful domination and women to irresponsible passivity. So we call both men and women to mutual submission and active discipleship."

Finney the Feminist

Charles Finney, the wild eyed revivalist preacher pictured here who was at the forefront of the 2nd Great Awakening was the president of Oberlin college. Oberlin is now a progressive ivy league school. My sister who went to Oberlin tells a story of a girl student who Finney confronts on campus saying, "repent child of the devil!" the girl unphased responds "Good day to you too professor Finney".

It's a cute anecdote, but one thing that you might miss is the fact that a woman is in college at all in the mid 1800's. In fact Finney's Oberlin became the first college in the world to admit women, and I might add blacks as well who were not segregated from the white students. That's in the 1850's people. Oberlin was also a part of the underground railroad housing and even liberating escaped slaves, and practicing civil disobedience in defiance of laws that required escaped slaves to be returned to their owners. Finney was outspoken in his public opposition to slavery. Finney lists a failure to confront social evil and advocate for humans rights as one of the reasons revival is hindered. Shockingly, these statements have been edited out of many Evangelical editions of Finney's work. For example V. Raymond Edmond in "Finney lives on: The man, his Revival Methods, and His Message" lists only 22 of Finney's 24 reasons that revival is hindered, renumbering them so as to make it look like Finney made no connection between the personal and the social.

Finney was also controversial because he allowed women to speak publicly in his revival meetings. Oberlin allowed many women to have the education that would further the feminist movement (ie women's suffrage) including Lucy Stone who was famous for keeping her "maiden name" in marriage, and Betsey Cowles who went on to be president of the Second National Women's Rights Convention of 1851. If that is not enough, Finney's Oberlin were also mostly vegetarians, and into health food. At the time that meant they followed the health advice of Syvester Graham - the inventor of the Graham Cracker. This involved abstinence from alcohol, cafeene, tobacco, and other "stimulants". If you's like to read more of this, it is documented in detail in "Discovering an Evangelical Heritage".

All this draws our attention to the fact that the split between progressive social justice and Evangelical personal faith are a rather recent phenomenon that dates back to the rise of Fundamentalism in the 1930's. For centuries, for such major Evangelical figures of the American revivals and awakenings such as Finney and Wesley, social justice, caring for the poor, prisoners, and marginalized, opposing violations of human rights and social evil and other such "liberal" causes were considered to be an integral part of what holiness meant in the life of a person who had been born again.

Evangelicals and Social Action

I've been doing a lot of thinking about why we Evangelicals are so behind on issues of social justice. In "American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving" sociologist Christian Smith conducted a nationwide survey and hundreds of detailed interviews with Evangelicals and found that the problem was not that we Evangelicals don't care about social justice or the poor - we overwhelmingly do. The problem had to do with how we view social change from within the lens of personal conversion. Over and over Smith found Evangelicals expressing the idea that real change needed to come "from the inside out", meaning that rather than reforming things on an institutional level, we believe that change should happen one person at a time, and as that person - say the CEO of a company, or a politician - has Christ in their life that this will lead them to acts of voluntary benevolence. This is not only a popular opinion, it has been expressed by many prominent thinkers and theologians with Evangelicalism for decades.

One contemporary example of this is Greg Boyd in his recent "Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church", Boyd takes on the current marriage between Evangelicalism and Conservative power-politics arguing that because all politics operate through the principle of coercion and control, they are opposed to the kingdom of God which operates individually “from the inside out”. Boyd advocates using “power under” to serve and support rather than “power over” to force and dominate without achieving any inner reform. There is much to admire in Boyd's stand - his advocacy of social welfare and care for the needy, his compassionate stance to those others judge, his rejection of violence, his critique of Conservative power politics co-opting the Gospel - but in the end what is lacking in Boyd's perspective is a guiding ethic that would offer a kingdom of God prescription for structural and institutional change that goes beyond mere individual transformation leading to voluntary benevolence.

What is absent from the Evangelical imagination, both in its leaders and laity, is any concept of a social or political ethic to guide these converted politicians, public officials, or CEO's in their work towards addressing the structures and systems that perpetuate societal injustice and suffering. Because Evangelicals view sin in the terms of individual failings, they are largely unaware of the systemic and institutional aspects of the social world. For example, a person caught in a cycle of poverty will not be able to escape it simply because they have been born again. Their conversion may effect them inwardly and personally, which can have a profound impact on the debilitating effects of poverty to a person's self-worth, which can lead to a host of self-destructive behaviours. However as important as these personal factors are, they do not change the external social structures that keep a person trapped in poverty. Similarly, if a CEO of a company is converted, this may lead to them refraining from dishonest or unethical business practices, but it will not effect the larger competitive world in which their business operates. So if that economy operates - as ours has in the past - on slave and child labor, an individual business owner who abstains from these practices is placed in a significant economic disadvantage in that market unless those social evils are addressed.

In "Disposable People: New Slavery in the Globaal Economy" Kevin Bales says that in fact child and slave labor is a part of today's global economy, and asks what we can do about it. The solution as you might have guessed needs to involve both us personally, as well as address the issue on a structural level. These slave companies in developing countries operate outside the bounds of law, and are not afraid to use ruthless violence to protect their profits. Companies who do business with them - say retail chains in the US like Nike or The Gap - opperating on the logic of economic profit say that they need to buy the cheapest product to stay completive. So they turn a blind eye to where the product came from, as long as the price is right. But public pressure can make a difference. When the public became aware that major retailers like Nike and The Gap were using slave labor in sweatshops, these companies were forced to change their practices because of consumer pressure.

One example Bales gives is Rugmark. If you own an oriental rug, there is a good chance it was made with child slave labor. Rugmark works with retailers to guarantee that rugs are made without slave or child labor. In order to get a "rugmark" label, the retailers had to agree to not use slave labor, and strict independent monitoring is set up by Rugmark to ensure compliance. Additionally, the retailers agreed to give 1% of the profit towards development projects. With that money, Rugmark set up schools for the children who were either former slaves or vulnerable to slavery. This way rather than simply shifting the slave market to another product, they worked to change the societal conditions that make children potential victims in the first place. Major retailers in the USA and Europe signed on, including Otto Versand Group, the largest mail order retailer in the world.

It is a complex issue that involves both our personal involvement and addressing the social structures that perpetuate the problem. That's the reality of evil in our world, and we as Evangelicals need to learn to think about applying the Gospel to the problem of evil on that kind of large scale as well. We need to move beyond a message that only addresses people as isolated individuals and think through what it would mean for Jesus to be Lord in all of life.