Pentecostal Pacifism: A Lost (and Denied) Tradition

Recently here I blogged about the supernatural and how, in my opinion, many evangelicals have neglected, if not denied, it due to a general search for respectability. Nowhere is this evangelical search for respectability more evident to me than among Pentecostals. All Pentecostal Christians pay lip service to miracles, but how many actually believe in and pray for miracles? Many do, but I would guess their number is fewer than fifty years ago. To a very large extent, according to my observations, American Pentecostals have blended in with American society and lost their particularity—except on paper.

One notable feature of Pentecostalism that is gradually changing is its anti-intellectualism and that I consider a positive sign of maturation. In the past, intellectually inclined Pentecostals had to work outside their tradition (in non-Pentecostal evangelical organizations and institutions) or leave Pentecostalism altogether. Today there is a rich and growing intellectual subculture among American Pentecostals evidenced by the large and flourishing Society for Pentecostal Studies and its scholarly journal Pneuma. Pentecostal leaders are far less devoted to anti-intellectualism than fifty years ago. It’s not difficult to identify Pentecostal scholars with reputations beyond the movement’s borders: Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Amos Yong, Gary Tyra, Frank Macchia, Gerald Sheppard, Russell Spittler, Cheryl Bridges Johns, Stephen Land, Gordon Fee, Craig Keener, James Smith.

Pentecostal historical self-examination has uncovered a somewhat embarrassing fact. Nearly all American Pentecostals were originally pacifists—in the sense of being conscientious objectors in war. During the first half century of American Pentecostal history, from 1906 until sometime in the 1950s, most Pentecostal denominations had official or unofficial expectations that their members would not “bear arms” but serve as non-combatants if drafted. (I grew up in the Pentecostal movement in the 1950s and 1960s and knew of this although it was fading away. My youth pastor had served as a non-combatant in the Korean War and explained to us that, then, Pentecostals were so encouraged by their Pentecostal pastors and leaders.)

Several books by Pentecostal and post-Pentecostal scholars have brought this forgotten history to light. Most recently Warren Jay Beaman and Brian Pipkin have published Pentecostal and Holiness Statements on War and Peace (Pentecostals, Peacemaking and Social Justice) (Pickwick, 2013). Beaman is an old friend of mine. We attended seminary together and served for a while on the staff of a church. Long ago Jay published Pentecostal Pacifism (now republished by Wipf & Stock). Another scholar of Pentecostal pacifism is Paul Alexander, who, while an Assemblies of God minister and theologian, published articles and books on Pentecostal pacifism and peacemaking. (Alexander now teaches at Eastern University’s Palmer Theological Seminary and has left the AG.) My friend Darrin Rodgers, director of the Flowers Pentecostal Heritage Center, has confirmed to me that many Pentecostal denominations once had either official or semi-official statements or expectations about pacifism and that most have dropped them and many refuse to acknowledge that part of their history.

My question, to which no clear answer has emerged, is why Pentecostal denominations have almost all not only dropped their pacifist leanings but now either deny that part of their history or do not wish to talk about it. I have even known of Pentecostal pacifists working within denominations that once were pacifist who have been persecuted for advocating pacifism. To all appearances the Pentecostal attitude toward war has swung around completely. Many Pentecostal pastors are strong defenders of American foreign policy including war and some have called opponents of American wars “traitors.”

Whenever I see a change like this within a specific movement I want to know why it happened. One way to answer that is to look at other changes in the movement that happened around the same time and look for connections and patterns.

When I grew up in Pentecostalism the movement was almost entirely composed of what one scholar called “the disinherited” meaning the disadvantaged people of America. (See Robert Mapes Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism [Oxford University Press, 1979].) The vast majority of Pentecostals during the first half century of the movement’s history were relatively poor. I can remember when that began to change in the 1950s and especially in the 1960s. My father, a Pentecostal pastor for over fifty years, preached against “the sin of conspicuous consumption” and I know he wasn’t the only one. As Pentecostals became more affluent they were expected to give more to missions. When a family in our church (1950s) bought a new Cadillac they were subjected to church discipline. That money (over what a new Chevrolet would cost) could have gone to world missions—a major emphasis of Pentecostals then.

Then came the 1970s and a sudden increase in Pentecostals’ affluence. It began earlier, but became notable to me, anyway, in the 1970s. Suddenly Pentecostal church parking lots were filled with expensive new cars. I will never forget the controversy among Pentecostals sparked by some Pentecostal churches’ building of “fancy new church buildings.” Before the 1970s most Pentecostal churches were relatively simple—often older church buildings purchased from “mainline” churches that built new ones out in the suburbs. (Yes, there were exceptions to this such as Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, the “mother church” of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel built by Aimee Semple McPherson in the 1920s. But, for the most part, prior to the 1970s most Pentecostal churches, even new ones, were simple structures without expensive architectural flourishes.)

During my lifetime I have seen with my own eyes and experienced a process among Pentecostals that I would call cultural accommodations—absorbing of Americanism. Don’t get me wrong. Even in the 1950s and before Pentecostals loved America—mainly for its religious freedom. We were patriotic but resisted “worldliness” which included accommodation to “Hollywood culture” and politics. We cared about government and prayed for our national and local leaders, but we did not participate in government or even vote in elections. We were what I call “urban Amish.” Yes, we drove cars and had electric lights, etc., but we eschewed as much of modernity as possible while living in the city. When I was a teenager, for example, Pentecostal young people were expressly forbidden from dating non-Christians and the strong preference was to date Pentecostals. So we chose our friends and life partners from among our own. When I graduated from high school in 1970 there was no question of attending “prom.” We had our own “graduation banquet” on the same night as prom.

Some of that separatism was silly. But not all of it. And it was inconsistent, something I noticed very early and attempted to ask about without receiving any clear answers. (For example, our rather large church youth group could only roller skate when our church rented the rink for an evening, but the “disc jockey” played the same popular music as always [“Let me tell you ‘bout the birds and the bees….”]. Also, although boys and girls at summer youth camp were not allowed to swim together we could sit out and watch the other sex swim. That was almost more arousing to adolescents!)

I mentioned “separatism,” but I need to explain. We Pentecostals DID NOT practice fundamentalist “secondary separation” from other Christians. We actually scoffed at that practice that meant fundamentalist Baptists, for example, would not participate in Billy Graham evangelistic crusades, join the National Association of Evangelicals, or participate in trans-denominational parachurch organizations such as Youth for Christ. We did all of that. Which is possibly part of the reason why Pentecostals gradually dropped (for all practical purposes) women pastors and adopted belief in biblical inerrancy and began to enter into American culture including politics. (We believed in biblical authority for faith and practice but did not talk about “inerrancy,” a term I never heard until I attended a Baptist seminary, and we believed in good government but only prayed for it.)

Sometime during the 1950s a new impulse, disposition, began to emerge among American Pentecostals. It grew in the 1960s and came to full fruition in the 1970s. I would call that impulse “Americanization” in the sense of uncritical adoption of “the American way” of defining “the good life” according to middle class values, upward mobility, good citizenship (defined as participation in political life), American nationalism, individualism and consumerism. Along with that came not only a change in traditional Pentecostal pacifism but a denial of it—to the point of expunging records of it from Pentecostal statements, publications, etc. Pentecostal researchers have told me that they have a difficult time getting Pentecostal leaders to remember and reveal the changes their forebears made to their official doctrinal statements that often included pacifism.

Now, I am not a pacifist, so I am not personally opposed to that change in Pentecostal belief and practice. What I worry about is the tendency of Pentecostal leaders to deny that part of their heritage and be embarrassed by it. Such a change should be theologically considered and made in such a way that those who made it and their heirs can be proud of it and defend it. My suspicion is that it was not. For the most part, anyway, it crept up and in as part of a gradual process of cultural accommodation. Today pacifists among Pentecostals are often looked down on if not persecuted. And that’s not because of some well-thought-out and theologically reflective change; it’s because of Pentecostal Americanization—a gradual process of cultural accommodation that happened almost unconsciously and is still not fully recognized or admitted.

Jesus and the 20 Percent

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I am still reading Kristin Kobe Du Mez’s book “Jesus and John Wayne,” but I have decided not to review it chapter-by-chapter here. In the future I may still respond to something in the book, or the book as a whole, but I don’t want to drag this out. I want to say something else about the subject matter.

Du Mez is telling us why eighty percent plus of white, American evangelicals voted for Trump in both of his presidential elections. She builds a strong case that a long history of patriarchy and distorted masculinity played a major role in that statistic. I could continue to point out flaws in her argument, but I’d rather not.

My concern here is to attempt to answer a different question—namely, why did  about twenty percent of white evangelical Americans vote for Hilary Clinton and against Donald Trump. Given the evidence Du Mez marshals for her case, one might be surprised that as many as that voted for Clinton and against Trump. The portrait she paints of white American evangelicals is dark and depressing. Why the exceptions to it? Who are we white, American evangelicals who voted for Clinton and Biden and against Trump? Why didn’t all white American evangelicals vote for Trump?

I don’t have answers for all of us, the approximately twenty percent. But what saddens me is that now we are getting lumped in together with white American nationalists, misogynists, militant masculinists, simply because we still identify as evangelicals. Or we can stop identifying as evangelicals to avoid that. That is the route many of us have taken. I haven’t yet. I’m too stubborn and, as a scholar evangelical Christianity, I know it is a world wide spiritual-theological posture and not at all only American. In fact, I argue that most African-American Christians are evangelicals—in terms of their spiritual-theological ethos even if they don’t identify as evangelical.

All I can do is tell my story of why I belong to the almost twenty percent of white, American evangelicals who didn’t and don’t support Trump.

First of all, I think the region and type of evangelicalism in which I grew up has something to do with it. I grew up in the Upper Midwest among moderate Pentecostals who were quite ecumenical in terms of seeking out and enjoying real Christian fellowship with non-Pentecostals. But we, generally speaking, did not have Christian fellowship with real fundamentalists of the Independent Baptist, GARBC, or even Southern Baptist varieties. They rejected us even when we attempted to reach out to them. I was taught from a very early age that “we” were not “them.” In spite of being Pentecostal, we were also non-fundamentalist evangelicals. Conservative and orthodox in theology, sometimes agreeing with fundamentalists about doctrines, but not sharing their separatistic, theologically militant posture toward us and toward other Christians.

During my teen years I became deeply involved with Youth for Christ, a transdenominational youth-oriented evangelical organization that somehow or other began to affect me—moving me toward a “bigger tent” view of what it means to be authentically evangelical.

I was fortunate enough to attend and graduate from an excellent high school where I had very good teachers and classes and throughout high school (and even before) I read all kinds of books voraciously. I was a bookworm and a nerd and enjoyed drama club more than sports. (Although I “went out” for wrestling and enjoyed that very much.)

My college experience was extremely depressing. It was a Bible college that tried its best to make me fit into a certain mold into which I did not fit and could not fit. To illustrate—I loved all kinds of music. One day the president of the college discarded all non-sacred record albums from the school library. I was threatened with expulsion several times for not conforming to the ideals of the college, of a good Bible college student. I dared to ask questions that my teachers and the administrators found uncomfortable. I began to question some of the more extreme views with which I was surrounded, including extreme anti-communism and extreme American nationalism. I was uncomfortable with the prayer service where we were supposed to pray that God would deprive the Unitarian church across the street of their property and building so our college could have it. In short, I was labeled a rebel although I kept all the rules and some of the college’s leaders attempted to keep me from graduating. I suspect they were only not successful because my uncle was president of the denomination. I graduated magna cum laude but had difficulty getting that on my transcript.

I was blessed to attend a very moderate-to-progressive evangelical (Baptist) seminary where I was introduced to major moderate-to-progressive Bible scholars and theologians as well as to neo-orthodoxy or “dialectical theology” and to liberation theology and Juergen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg (through their writings).

I was accepted into a Ph.D program in Religious Studies at a major American secular university and had wonderful professors, met amazing special guest speakers and teachers, hobnobbed with world class theologians.

Through my seminary years and my doctoral studies I determined to remain evangelical but with a “difference.” I was determined to shed all remnants of fundamentalism and enter the mainstream of American evangelicalism and do my best to help it move beyond those remnants of fundamentalism that adhered to it (or that it adhered to).

I strongly disliked Carl Henry and his ilk of mainstream evangelical theologians. I gravitated toward Bernard Ramm, Donald Bloesch, Ron Sider, and others who Carl Henry later called, to me, personally, “mediating theologians” (as opposed to true evangelicals). I studied liberation theology and became sympathetic with it; I studied feminist theology and adopted total egalitarianism. I became anti-capital punishment, moderately socialist (under the influence of John Rawls and Juergen Moltmann), anti-nationalist (but still patriotic), anti-war (without adopting absolute pacifism), and pro-civil rights for all people without regard to race or ethnicity or gender. I voted for Jesse Jackson and Shirley Chisholm in Democratic primaries.

And yet, through all of that, I was determined NOT to veer off into liberal theology. I read liberal theologians, belonged to three liberal congregations (in sequence), and experienced what I believed to be the spiritual-theological vacuity of liberal theology. I did not want to be that.

After receiving my Ph.D in Religious Studies and spending a year studying theology with Wolfhart Pannenberg in Munich, I found myself in the odd situation of having only one option for a full-time teaching position—at Oral Roberts University. How that came about I won’t tell here. I do feel now that I was sent there by God to undermine what students were hearing in chapel services (namely, the prosperity gospel of health and wealth) and introduce my students to real theology. I taught four classes of systematic theology as well as philosophy of religion and Christian ethics. I spent much of my class time “cleaning up” after chapel services. I knew I could not last at ORU as I saw Oral himself going insane (IMHO) and his son Richard moving up to replace him as leader of the university.

In 1984 I was offered a position teaching theology at Bethel College and Seminary (now Bethel University) in Minnesota. I thrived there for fifteen years and moved further in the direction of being a moderate-to-progressive evangelical, attending a Baptist church pastored by a woman and introducing my students to liberation theology. All was well until the open theism controversy broke out during which I did not identify as an open theist but defended open theism as a legitimate evangelical option—for which I was vilified by many conservative evangelicals becoming neo-fundamentalists.

During my time at Bethel I fully supported women in ministry, without limitations or qualifications, and equality of women with men in every area of society and church. I wrote several books of historical theology and was eventually recruited away from Bethel, at the height of the awful controversy over open theism, to teach theology at the relatively new Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University. There I taught liberation theology, feminist theology, black theology, all the while remaining solidly evangelical in terms of my commitment to the so-called “Bebbington Quadrilateral.” I eventually came to know David Bebbington personally, as well as many important evangelical and non-evangelical theologians, sociologists of religion, philosophers and others.

I supported Barak Obama in both elections. I developed the concept of “post-conservative evangelicalism” to counter the growing movements of neo-fundamentalism and American nationalism. I joined a Baptist congregation pastored by a woman. I encouraged women students to reject patriarchy and misogyny and I encouraged men students to be totally ethical in their thinking and acting toward women as well as other men.

As I read Du Mez’s account of white American evangelicalism I don’t see myself there. I and others like me considered Jack Hyles of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana someone not to take seriously. I and others like me were horrified by Jerry Falwell’s claim to speak for all evangelicals. I and others like me scoffed at Phyllis Schlafly and supported the ERA amendment and we considered Maribel Morgan and “The Total Woman” a joke.

I don’t recall ever considering John Wayne a Christian or a model of true masculinity for boys or men. I stayed loyal to Billy Graham while recognizing his mistakes even as he also recognized and admitted them. I wrote articles for “Christianity Today” and “Christian Century” and did my best, through my articles, to counter the rising tide of neo-fundamentalism among evangelicals. I wrote books like “Reformed and Always Reforming: The Postconservative  Approach to Evangelical Theology” and “How to Be Evangelical Without Being Conservative.”

I used my blog to criticize: American flags in Christian worship spaces and “God and Country worship services,” capital punishment, complementarianism, racism, unfettered capitalism, the United States’ mistreatment of immigrants, etc., etc. I very much wanted a woman to finally be president of the United States and voted for Hilary Clinton even while disagreeing with some of her policies. I gladly voted for Biden even while disagreeing with some of his (and the Democratic Party’s) policies. I never joined any political party.

Yet, through all of that I remained evangelical in terms of my spiritual-theological ethos and the only people I knew who questioned by evangelical credentials were people I consider neon-fundamentalists, strict inerrantists, heresy-hunters.

I will finish by asking Du Mez and others who highlight the eighty plus percent of white American evangelicals who voted for Trump—are we of the nearly twenty percent not also evangelicals? Is “evangelicalism” defined by political postures? Is white American evangelicalism so corrupted by toxic masculinity, nationalism, patriarchy and even misogyny that it is solidly defined by those attitudes and postures? Does the sordid history of white American evangelical (including fundamentalist and neo-fundamentalist) toxic masculinity define “evangelical Christianity?” I will keep reading “Jesus and John Wayne” and look for her answers there. But, so it seems to me so far, her book will contribute to the media stereotype of ALL white, American evangelicals as Trumpists.

“The Legacy of the Reformation in Contemporary Evangelicalism”

(Address at Symposium “The Living Reformation: 500 Years of Martin Luther” at Brigham Young University, September 15, 2017)

Roger E. Olson

Someone, somewhere, at some time, decided that the Protestant Reformation began on October 31, 1517 when German monk Martin Luther nailed “95 Theses”—propositions for public debate—to a church door in Wittenberg, Saxony. Throughout Christendom Protestant Christians celebrate the Sunday closest to October 31 as “Reformation Day” and sing Luther’s great hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and talk about distinctively Protestant doctrines such as “justification by grace through faith alone.”

This year, 2017, is being celebrated by many Protestants around the world as the 500^th anniversary of the birth of Protestantism with symposia being held in many places focusing on the Reformation. Most of them will focus primarily on two Protestant reformers—Martin Luther and John Calvin—because of their inestimable contributions to especially European and North American Protestant Christianity.

I am personally somewhat ambivalent about this celebration and focus. I will explain why in a moment. First, let me say publicly that I proudly call myself a Protestant Christian but without in any way excluding from Christianity faithful Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believers. At the same time, however, I do not feel the same enthusiasm some Protestants do for the Reformation as they remember and celebrate it.

One reason for my ambivalence is simply historical but with theological reasons wrapped up in the historical ones. Everyone who has studied the Reformation of the sixteenth century knows, but many conveniently forget, that, for the most part, especially with regard to the doctrines he espoused that brought about his excommunication from the church of Rome, Luther’s ideas were not new with him. What made Luther different from John Hus of Prague who was also a Protestant, who also founded a schism from the Catholic Church, and who a century before Luther preached the same then controversial religious doctrines? Only that Hus was burned at the stake, largely ending his ministry and movement, and Luther was not. But Luther was recognized as and labeled “The Saxon Hus” because of the similarity, if not identity, of his doctrines with those Hus preached earlier and not far away.

We could go back further to identify the real beginnings of Protestant Christianity. Peter Waldo of Italy founded a Protestant movement that survives as a distinct ecclesiastical body to this day and he preached many of the same doctrines as Hus and Luther—two hundred and three hundred years before Hus and Luther. The Waldensian Church of Italy—now existing in other countries such as Paraguay—may have historical claim to being the first continuing Protestant denomination. It is a full member of the World Communion of Reformed Churches.

Then there’s John Wycliffe of England who influenced Hus and through Hus Luther and whose followers, known as the Lollards, prepared the way for the later English Reformation. His doctrines were basically the same as Hus’s, Luther’s and Calvin’s.

So, my point is that there is something arbitrary and misleading about pinning the “birth of Protestantism” or the “beginning of the Reformation” to October 31, 1517 and identifying Luther as the first Protestant and real founder of the Reformation.

But I earlier mentioned that some of my ambivalence about the historical memory and celebration has to do with theology. Now I will explain that.

The three great Protestant reformers most talked about and celebrated were Luther, his contemporary Swiss counterpart Ulrich Zwingli, and the younger French reformer and theologian John Calvin in Geneva. These three, together with other contemporary reformers and theologians, are often referred to as the “magisterial reformers” to distinguish them from the so-called “radical reformers.” The radical reformers were a diverse group of preachers and theologians who believed Luther, Zwingli and Calvin did not go far enough in reforming the European churches. Once the break with Rome happened, the radical reformers all wanted to abolish medieval Christendom with its links between church and state. They decried and denounced the so-called magisterial reformers for permitting the princes and the city councils to determine the course and pace of the reformation. The radical reformers were restorationists; in spite of their manifest differences, they all agreed that the task of the Reformation was to recreate the New Testament church and they saw themselves as living in a cultural situation in the Holy Roman Empire much like that of the earliest Christians. And many of them were martyred, by both Catholics and magisterial Protestants, just like the primitive Christians of the Roman Empire.

As a Free Church Protestant I will celebrate the real beginning of the Reformation in 2025—the 500^th anniversary of the birth of the Anabaptist movement in Switzerland. Not all of the radical reformers were Anabaptists, but that movement was the first major and enduring one, among Protestants, to declare openly that the church of Jesus Christ should not be controlled by the state or the empire. And they argued that true, authentic Christianity is a voluntary relationship with God and with the church that must involve a personal decision of faith in Jesus Christ marked by believer baptism as an act of mature commitment to Christ and his church.

Also, pushing further with my critique, while the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century recovered important biblical doctrines such as justification by grace through faith alone without merit, Scripture as the ultimate authority for Christian faith and practice, even over centuries of ecclesiastical tradition, and the right and ability of every true believer in Jesus Christ to approach God without an earthly human mediator, there were later Protestant movements that corrected and further reformed Protestantism in Europe and America.

Almost all, if not all, of the sixteenth century magisterial reformers were divine determinists who preached and taught that God alone, unilaterally, decides who is saved and who is damned. They denied free will participation in salvation, labeling that covert Catholicism by means of a return to human merit in salvation. In the first decades of the seventeenth century Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius and his followers, known as the Remonstrants, another word for “Protestant,” broke away from that deterministic theology of divine predestination and taught that although salvation is all of grace and by faith without good works the individual sinner must freely consent to the saving work of God in order to be saved. Like the Anabaptists before them, they were persecuted by both church and state but survived. The Remonstrant Brotherhood of the Netherlands, curiously enough, is also a charter member denomination of the World Communion of Reformed Churches—something that challenges any simplistic identification of “Reformed” with “Calvinism.”

Another later Protestant movement that added to the Reformation of the sixteenth century and corrected it was the Pietist movement launched primarily by three German Lutheran theologians: Philip Spener, August Francke, and Nicholas Zinzendorf. They added into Protestantism the idea of a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” that is transformative even toward perfection of character. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was profoundly influenced by the Pietists.

I grew up in the “thick” of American evangelical Christianity; my father was an evangelical pastor and many of my close relatives were evangelical ministers, evangelists, missionaries and denominational executives. As a child I had a vague sense of Protestantism and knew a little about the Reformation from looking at books in my father’s library. One was about Protestant martyrs and contained graphic depictions of their deaths at the hands of French Catholics. We were most definitely Free Church Protestants, Arminians and Pietists, so our feelings and thoughts about Luther, Zwingli and Calvin, insofar as we talked about them at all, were at best ambivalent. But, as I recall, we did always sing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” on Reformation Sunday.

I attended a Pentecostal Bible college and there endured my first church history classes. I say “endured” because, now as I look back on them, I don’t think they were very accurate or did justice to the richness of church history. It may be a caricature to say that they tended to focus on which church fathers, Reformers and post-Reformation Protestants might have spoken in tongues, but there was that constant issue being taught and discussed. Our study of church history actually began with Luther, almost completely ignoring everything before him since the New Testament. Only later, in seminary and doctoral studies did I really learn about church history and theology between the apostles and Luther.

In an evangelical Baptist seminary and then in my doctoral studies in theology at a major research university I was taught and I read the history of evangelical Christianity in its many facets including the historical and theological. Not until recently was “evangelical” a political identity; in my opinion the media has created that identity. “My evangelicalism,” the evangelicalism I grew up in and studied and still consider my religious identity, was not “the Republican Party at prayer” as the American media now portray it. In fact, my more mature studies of American and British evangelicalism taught me that throughout much of the nineteenth century evangelicals were in the forefront of progressive social and political change working hard as abolitionists of slavery, liberators of women from chattel status, and even for redistribution of wealth to help abolition poverty.

Eventually I came to consider true, authentic evangelical Christianity not so much a movement as a spiritual-theological ethos. Various movements, coalitions and alliances among evangelical Christians have emerged over the centuries, but what binds them together, if anything does, is not politics or even fundamentalist theology but four or five spiritual-theological commitments identified and now generally agreed on—as the hallmarks of evangelical Christianity—by David Bebbington, a leading Scottish evangelical historian. Mark Noll, perhaps the leading American historian of evangelicalism agrees.

Evangelical Christianity is marked by biblicism which Bebbington and Noll describe as belief in and love of the Bible as God’s uniquely inspired Word written. Contrary to most fundamentalist evangelicals, however, it does not necessarily include inerrancy or literalism of interpretation. Evangelical biblicism, however, in distinction from much liberal Protestantism, does believe the Bible is different in kind and not only in degree from other religious books; it is supernaturally inspired and uniquely authoritative for Christian faith and practice.

Evangelical Christianity is also marked by conversionism which Bebbington and Noll describe as belief that true, full, authentic Christian life, life in fellowship with God, always and necessarily includes a personal decision of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord which is more than “turning over a new leaf;” it is a work of the Holy Spirit and not merely a decision to join a church or live a better life.

Evangelical Christianity is also marked, according to Bebbington and Noll, by crucicentrism which is a strong devotion to the cross of Jesus Christ as the event that reconciles God to people and people to God. Christ’s atoning death on the cross, his atoning sacrifice for sins, is crucial to evangelical faith, life, worship and piety.

Finally, according to Bebbington and Noll, evangelical Christianity is marked by activism in evangelism and social transformation. How that activism is worked out, manifested, differs much among evangelicals, but the point is that evangelical Christianity is not quietist in the sense of a mystical withdrawal from the world. At its best, when it is true to its roots and essence, it includes a robust desire and effort for changing the world.

I have personally suggested a fifth hallmark of evangelical Christianity. It is historically and theologically committed to basic Christian doctrinal orthodoxy including belief that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, the second person of the Trinity, and that salvation cannot be earned but is a gift of God’s grace.

So that is a quick and unsophisticated portrait of evangelical Christianity as a spiritual-theological ethos. Its roots are in the Protestant Reformation but it is deeply influenced by Pietism and the revivalism of the first and second Great Awakenings.

The most recent evangelical movement was the post-World War 2 one led especially by evangelist Billy Graham. It was born out of dissatisfaction with the strong influence of liberal Protestantism in American society as well as with the anti-intellectualism and cultural indifference of American fundamentalism during the first half of the century. It was founded by evangelical pastor-theologian Harold John Ockenga who, together with some other non-fundamentalist conservative Protestants with an evangelical ethos, founded the National Association of Evangelicals in 1942. During the 1950s Billy Graham became its figurehead and he remained the “glue” that held it together for almost fifty years. With his retirement from the scene that evangelical movement has dissolved; it no longer exists. However, the evangelical ethos lives on in numerous manifestations. Unfortunately for those of us who grew up in and still identify with non-fundamentalist evangelicalism, contemporary American evangelicalism is increasingly being dominated publicly by fundamentalists and religious nationalists.

So where is, where can one still find, historical evangelicalism as an ethos not identified with separatistic, narrow-minded, anti-intellectual, anti-cultural, pro-nationalistic fundamentalism? Certainly not on television or in the print media. The media have turned popular opinion toward identifying evangelical Christianity with fundamentalism and nationalistic political conservatism. As an evangelical historian and theologian I find historical evangelical Christianity still alive and well in mostly Protestant denominations such as the Evangelical Covenant Church of America—one of the least known but one of the fastest-growing denominations in the United States. And I find it everywhere I travel and read and look; it’s just that most people whose thoughts are controlled by the media don’t identify those people and places, publishers and magazines, churches and parachurch organizations, as “evangelical” because they are not fundamentalist or politically conservative in any overt or activist way.

Now I want to turn to the historical-theological relationship between the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and contemporary evangelicalism—as I have described and portrayed it here.

First, the relationship between the Protestant Reformation and the evangelical ethos. The evangelical Christian ethos, as I have described it here, pre-dates the Protestant Reformation but was given great impetus by it. Unlike most medieval Catholics, Luther freely talked about being “born again” in his so-called “Tower Experience” at the University of Wittenberg as he read and studied Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Evangelicals like to think that this was Luther’s real initiation into authentic Christian life and experience. Of course, Luther placed high value on the Bible as God’s Word and translated it into the common language of the German people so that everyone could read it. This at a time when reading the Bible was restricted largely to priests, monks and noblemen. Luther also placed great emphasis on Christ’s death as the only means of salvation understood as justification—forgiveness and reconciliation with God. His own doctrine of the atonement focused on Christ’s triumph over Satan and the “powers and principalities” under Satan’s leadership. And yet one can find other images and metaphors including sacrifice in Luther’s treatments of the atonement. There can be no question about Luther’s strong emphasis on the cross which is not in any way to deny the medieval Catholic Church’s equal emphasis on the cross. But they were different. Like modern and contemporary evangelicals Luther regarded the cross as sufficient alone to effect salvation without any need of atoning suffering or punishment on the part of the repentant sinner who has faith in the cross. Finally, Luther was an activist in seeking to bring about change in the world. True, he did believe Christ would return during his own lifetime and no doubt died disappointed that it had not happened, but his belief in the imminent return of Christ did not stop him from seeking to influence worldly society for the better. His vehement opposition to the revolting peasants continues to dismay and disappoint church historians, but Luther did put pressure on the Protestant princes to treat their peasants more humanely.

And, finally, contrary to what so many people believe, Luther was not anti-tradition; he highly valued the church fathers and especially Augustine. In many ways he and Calvin, especially, considered their reforming works in theology a recovery of true Augustinian Christianity. But more to the point here, comparing Luther with the evangelical ethos as I have described it, the Saxon reformer held firmly to ancient Christian orthodoxy and considered the major councils and creeds of Christendom authoritative. He strongly opposed the radical, anti-Trinitarian reformers such as Faustus Socinus and Servetus.

The evangelical ethos can be found before the Reformation of the sixteenth century, but Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, Cranmer, Calvin and other magisterial reformers embodied it and promoted it more strongly than medieval Catholicism even if incompletely and imperfectly. One evangelical hallmark where many of us believe they fell short is conversionism. All the magisterial reformers, including the ones I have named just now, believed in infant baptism as a means of special grace and not only as a special means of grace. Many evangelicals baptize infants. The Evangelical Covenant Church of America which I mentioned earlier baptizes infants or mature believers after conversion. The difference is that the magisterial reformers did not emphasize conversion, making a personal decision for Christ, as strongly as evangelicals do.

I think it is fair to say, and most historians of evangelicalism agree, that what I am calling the evangelical ethos really was born, or at least given strong impetus, within the Pietist movement. The founders of Pietism were faithful Lutherans but believed Luther and the other magisterial reformers neglected the importance of individual faith in conversion and the Holy Spirit inspired and empowered life of holiness. This is what my friend evangelical theologian Stanley J. Grenz called “convertive piety” and it is not to be found in the magisterial reformers as strongly as in their Pietist heirs.

Now what about the Radical Reformation of the sixteenth century—especially the Anabaptists? Without any doubt they also embodied much of the evangelical ethos and perhaps more strongly than the magisterial reformers. The one weakness in that regard was their tendency to retreat from world transformation—activism—into communal collectives separated from the world. But unlike the magisterial reformers they did emphasize the necessity of individual, personal conversion followed by baptism as a non-sacramental commitment to Christ and his church.

If I had to identify the first true evangelical Christians in the full modern sense of the word I would name the Anabaptists of the 1525 Swiss Brethren movement in Zurich. But I would criticize them for lacking a vision for world transformation and for their understandable but undesirable withdrawal into quietist communities apart from the world.

Now I want to turn to the modern and contemporary evangelical movement referred to earlier, the British and American one that had Billy Graham as its figurehead. This is what most American scholars mean when they refer to the modern/contemporary “evangelical movement.” Of course, it has much deeper roots and those I’ve already talked about. The catalyst for its formation as a coalition of relatively conservative Protestants sharing an evangelical spiritual-theological ethos was strong dissatisfaction, even bitter disillusionment, with American fundamentalism which coalesced as a movement in the early twentieth century with roots in the revivals of D. L. Moody in the late nineteenth century. Like evangelicalism, fundamentalism is both an ethos and a movement and the two can be distinguished. The ethos pre-dated the movement and will no doubt outlive it.

The fundamentalist ethos goes back at least to the rigid, narrow, dogmatic separatism of post-Reformation Protestant scholasticism that brought about many schisms among Protestants over relatively minor points of doctrine. One leading Protestant scholastic, Swiss theologian Francis Turretin, argued that, in order to protect the authority of the Bible, we must believe that God inspired the vowel points of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible. In the fight against free thinking Christianity in the nineteenth century Princeton Seminary theologian Charles Hodge, a leading grandfather of the fundamentalist movement, argued for the inerrancy of the entire Bible and scorned belief in evolution as incompatible with Christian belief in the inspiration of the Bible. The fundamentalist ethos appears in any tendency to elevate secondary doctrines of Protestant Christianity to the status of essentials of the Christian faith itself.

During the first decades of the twentieth century several pastor-theologians began to organize American fundamentalists to fight against the rise of what they called “modernism” in the Protestant churches. Two early leaders, both Baptist ministers, who joined hands across the Mason-Dixon Line stand out as examples. William Bell Riley pastored First Baptist Church of Minneapolis while J. Frank Norris pastored First Baptist Church of Fort Worth. Together they formed the Christian Fundamentals Association and preached that premillennialism is a “fundamental doctrine” of Christian faith. Some Reformed and Presbyterian fundamentalists disagreed but elevated double predestination to the status of a fundamental of Christian faith. Throughout the nineteen-twenties and nineteen-thirties American fundamentalism degenerated as a movement into a cranky, fissiparous, separatistic and fragmented movement noted for being against “godless evolution,” “godless communism,” “godless racial integration” and a host of other things they perceived as “godless.”

In 1942 New England Congregationalist pastor Ockenga formed the NAE, the National Association of Evangelicals, to give collective voice to a diverse group of relatively conservative American Protestant Christians with an evangelical ethos who were not fundamentalists. Although he invited fundamentalist leader Carl McIntire to bring into the NAE his American Council of Christian Churches he knew that was not likely to happen and, indeed, much to Ockenga’s relief, it did not. McIntire and fundamentalist leaders such as Bob Jones and John R. Rice shunned the new evangelicals as “neo-evangelicals” and wolves in sheep’s clothing.

The new evangelical movement probably would not have grown and had much influence if it were not for Billy Graham, the young Youth for Christ evangelist who departed from fundamentalism and became the figurehead of the new evangelical movement. Of course, from a liberal Protestant and probably from a Catholic perspective, there isn’t much difference between fundamentalism and the new evangelicalism, but a close examination, especially an insider’s one—of either movement—reveals tremendous differences. Yet, to be honest, there has always also been some overlap and movement back and forth.

Now to the influence of the Protestant Reformation on the new evangelicalism by which I mean the post-fundamentalist evangelical movement symbolized by Billy Graham, educated to a very large extent at Fuller Theological Seminary (or by its professors through their writings), and given voice since 1956 by the magazine Christianity Today.

The leading historians of the movement were, throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1990s, George Marsden and Mark Noll. However, many of us who grew up in the movement first studied its theological foundations by reading evangelical theologian Bernard Ramm’s extremely influential 1973 book The Evangelical Heritage (Word). Like Marsden and Noll and many other evangelical historians and theologians Ramm’s story of the “evangelical heritage” began with the Protestant Reformers, moved through the post-Reformation scholastics including the Old Princeton School theologians, and then jumped to the rise of liberal theology and then neo-orthodoxy. That story of evangelicalism strongly emphasizes the roles of Luther and Calvin and their heirs to the neglect of Pietism, Wesleyanism, revivalism and, of course, Pentecostalism.

Evangelical historian and theologian Donald W. Dayton, a Free Methodist, rebelled against this evangelical self-narrative in the 1980s and 1990s, publicly criticizing it in the pages of Christian Scholar’s Review, an evangelical scholarly journal jointly published by about fifty Christian liberal arts colleges and universities. Dayton labeled the Marsden-Noll-Ramm majority evangelical narration of evangelical history the “Puritan Paradigm” and argued for an alternative narration he labeled the “Pentecostal Paradigm.” This was at a time when the largest denomination in the NAE was the Assemblies of God and the second largest was the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee). Dayton argued quite cogently that evangelical history and theology was being unfairly dominated by Reformed historians and theologians and Calvinism was central to that one-sided narrative of evangelical history and theology. He also argued cogently that evangelical history, theology and spirituality have been just as much influenced by Pietism, revivalism and Pentecostalism and that the Wesleyan contribution to evangelicalism was being ignored or at least neglected by the likes of Marsden, Noll and Ramm.

I think Dayton was right, but I have preferred to label the two paradigms of evangelical self-description the “Puritan-Presbyterian Paradigm” and the “Pietist-Pentecostal Paradigm.” The former places at the center of the story of evangelical Christianity people like John Knox and Jonathan Edwards whereas the latter places at the center people like Philip Spener and John Wesley. Both paradigms admit that evangelicalism is an attempt to take the basic impulses of the Protestant Reformation along the reformers’ trajectory to its right and ultimate conclusion. But the paradigms diverge when it comes to saying which post-Reformation leaders best represent that trajectory.

I believe that one of the weaknesses of the new evangelical movement launched by Ockenga in 1942 was its being a combustible compound. Patched together with their basic differences papered over were these two very different versions of evangelical history, spirituality and theology. On the one hand were the Reformed represented, for example, by Westminster Theological Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. On the other hand were the Wesleyan-Holiness represented, for example, by Asbury Theological Seminary and the Free Methodists. What do these two parties have in common? Well, in 1942 they shared in common an antipathy to liberal Protestantism and disillusionment with separatistic fundamentalism. They shared in common admiration for the recovery of the gospel of salvation by grace through faith alone in the Protestant Reformation. They shared in common a strong belief in the Bible as God’s inspired and authoritative, if not inerrant, written Word. They shared a common confessional belief in the deity of Christ and the Trinity. However, their differences symbolized by Edwards and Wesley, for example, could not forever be papered over.

In a way, Edwards and Wesley represent the two grandfathers of the evangelical movement. Both were born in 1703 and both became leaders of the first Great Awakening in Great Britain and North America. Both indirectly influenced the second Great Awakening in the relatively young United States—Edwards more in New England and Wesley more in the Middle States and along the frontier. Edwards was a five point Calvinist who believed that God sovereignly and unconditionally chooses whom to save and gives them the gift of irresistible grace. His admirer Charles Hodge of Princeton Theological Seminary carried on his legacy among evangelicals. Today evangelical pastor-author-theologian John Piper channels Edwards. Wesley was an Arminian who believed that Calvinism besmirched the character of God and taught grace-enabled free will and human cooperation with grace in salvation. Edwardian evangelicals tend to emphasize biblical inerrancy and view the Bible as a not-yet-systematized systematic theology. For many of them the three volume system of Hodge remains the unsurpassed summary of biblical truth. Wesley-inspired evangelicals tend not to believe in biblical inerrancy and view the Bible as the inspired story of God’s love for all people and emphasize evangelism, conversion and sanctification over theology.

And then there are the Anabaptist evangelicals who form a third paradigm of evangelicalism which time forbids exploring here. I will just say that, in my estimation, that paradigm of evangelicalism will emerge in the future as equally important and influential. Unfortunately for Anabaptists their paradigm has no single champion like Edwards or Wesley and, unlike both of them, descends from the Radical Reformation with strong emphasis on pacifism, separation of church and state, soul liberty, congregational autonomy and a strong aversion to Christendom as a unification of church and culture. However, especially among evangelical “millennials,” Anabaptism is gaining ground and emerging as a live spiritual and theological option. These younger evangelicals have little use for Luther or Calvin, Edwards or Wesley and, because “evangelicalism” as a religious identity has been so tied to those men and their legacies, these younger Anabaptist evangelicals are comfortably shedding the evangelical label and identity even if they share the evangelical ethos.

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment only to me. If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective (very broadly defined), feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. Do not post links to internet sites here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among evangelical Christians (very broadly defined).

Can a Preemptive War Ever Be Justified?

Okay, let’s begin with a few caveats and conditions (for this post and the ensuing conversation).

First, anyone who knows my writings here and elsewhere, and my teaching and lecturing, knows I’m not a pacifist. I generally believe in just war theory and my basic underpinnings about this subject are the same as Reinhold Niebuhr’s. Some, very few, wars are morally and ethically justified.

Second, I highly respect pacifism and pacifists; I just happened to disagree insofar as they say war is never justified. As I have said here and elsewhere many times and places, I cannot be a pacifist because I know what I would do if killing a person was the only way to stop him or her from kidnapping or seriously harming my wife, one of my children, or one of my grandchildren.

Third, I happen to disagree with “virtue ethics” insofar as it rejects or neglects so-called “quandary ethics.” I think we do need to think “ahead,” so to speak, without sheer casuistry, about what the “right thing to do” might just be in realistic scenarios of moral dilemma.

*Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end.*

According to most scholars of just war theory it absolutely forbids preemptive war. That is, according to traditional just war theory, a nation-state (or other political entity with military reserves and power) is never, ever, under any circumstances morally or ethically justified in attacking another one with “first strike” force. One of the traditional rules of traditional just war theory is that for a war to be justified it must be defensive. The enemy must strike first.

A few years ago some philosophical and theological ethicists openly questioned this aspect of traditional just war theory and published articles and gave speeches suggesting that, in this nuclear age, and given seemingly insane dictators ruling some nation-states, a preemptive war might be justified. Most of the people who wanted to expand traditional just war theory to justify some preemptive wars surrounded that expansion and exception with many qualifications and conditions.

So, how, as usual, a story. I am old enough to remember—vividly—the “Cuban Missile Crisis” of the 1960s. My family did not usually have television (we were “urban Amish”), but somehow we rented one or something (maybe a neighbor brought one over to us) and I remember sitting in the living room of our tiny house watching the almost round-the-clock news programming about the crisis.

My stepmother was ecstatic about it. She thought it was a precursor to the Return of Christ. She was thoroughly apocalyptic in her eschatology. My father, who was a fundamentalist minister, seemed much more reserved about the crisis; he didn’t celebrate it the way my stepmother (and others like her in our religious form of life) did. I could sense his tenseness and deep concern.

For those of you who don’t remember or know about the Cuban Missile Crisis—we, the United States of America—came very close to going to war with Cuba and Russia. We blockaded Cuba to keep more missiles from being brought there and threatened war if Russia did not remove the already-installed missiles aimed at American cities. Our very act of blockading Cuba was, technically, an act of war. We stopped and boarded and searched ships going to Cuba and turned back, threatening deadly force, many vessels we suspected of carrying missiles or parts for them.

Few Americans in 2017 understand how close we—America and the Soviet Union—came to nuclear war during that early 1960s crisis. Many people believed it was inevitable.

So let’s begin with this question: Was the United States morally and ethically justified in using our navy to blockade a sovereign nation—Cuba? Were we morally and ethically justified in threatening and preparing for war against Cuba (and possibly Russia) if those nuclear missiles were not removed from Cuba?

Of course, some critics will always say no because we had nuclear missiles in Turkey just as close to Soviet cities as Cuba’s missiles (which were really Soviet missiles) were to us! But for purposes of asking and answering the question “Can a preemptive war ever be justified?” let’s set that aside. Suppose we did not have nuclear missiles near Russia aimed at Russian (or Soviet) cities. Then would our act of war (viz., blockading Cuba) have been justified—insofar as we really believed the Soviet Union really intended to use them against us?

Another story. In 1981 Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear facility it suspected of being used eventually to create nuclear weapons to be used against Israel. Was this preemptive act of aggression morally and ethically justified? (Let’s not bring into the picture, here, right now, questions about Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, etc. If you choose to join in this conversation please stick to the main points and don’t nitpick about the details of the examples given.)

As I recall (and I was living in Europe when this happened) most Western countries publicly criticized Israel but less publicly applauded its action. It was as clear violation of traditional just war theory, but what was Israel to do then and in other cases—insofar as it needed to protect itself from destruction?

So, now we come to America’s present situation. According to news reports (I know how unreliable they can be!) one world nation state is claiming to have developed nuclear-tipped missiles capable of reaching the United States. And its leader has publicly gloated that it has attained this status and ability and might just use it—preemptively. By many accounts, this dictator is mentally and emotionally unstable; it is reported that he has executed everyone he even suspects of being disloyal to him including close relatives. Some knowledgeable people think he just might launch a preemptive nuclear strike against a neighboring country and the U.S.

Now the question on many people’s minds is: If it is true that he is preparing for that and very well may do it, would the U.S. be justified in striking first—against military targets in that country? This is all very reminiscent of the 1960s Cuban Missile Crisis.

My question to you—my thoughtful, reflective, rational and civil readers and potential interlocutors—is this: What do you say about that and why?

In this case I must insist that you not mention any country (other than the U.S.) by name and not mention any world leader by name. Also, pacifists are not welcome into this conversation. It is for believers in just(ified) war only. Finally, rude responses will not be posted here; don’t waste your time if you intend to be rude, thoughtless, merely reactionary, etc. This is an invitation to civil, reflective dialogue and debate.

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment only to me. If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective (very broadly defined), feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. Do not post links to internet sites here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among evangelical Christians (very broadly defined).

Review of Greg Boyd’s Crucifixion of the Warrior God

Have you ever been perplexed about the Old Testament’s “texts of terror” including especially those in which God is reported to have commanded the merciless slaughter of not only men and animals but also non-combatant women and children? If you’re still perplexed and care enough about the problems these texts present for Christian theology (and Christianity’s reputation in a skeptical world), you need to read Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross published this year (2017) by Fortress Press in two volumes: Volume 1: The Cruciform Hermeneutic and Volume 2: The Cruciform Thesis. Don’t let the size of this work stop you. I just read it and you can, too, even though the total number of pages comes to 1301 not counting “Acknowledgements” and indexes, etc. (Volume 2 ends at page 1445.) Needless to say, this is a massive work on the subject that covers every conceivable problem presented by the Old Testament texts of terror and every conceivable solution to those problems. Most interestingly, though, it presents Boyd’s own proposed solution which is unique so far as I know.

I simply do not have the time or the wherewithal to describe or critique the whole work here. I can do no better than urge you to read it for yourself unless this set of problems simply doesn’t interest you. However, I will offer here a few very basic and broad indications of what Boyd says in this tome.

First, as an evangelical Christian Boyd finds that he cannot simply dismiss the narratives of violence attributed to God (or to God’s command) as historically untrue (that is, never happened). Throughout this work he takes the whole Bible seriously without taking all of it literally. While he does not embrace or make use of Origen’s allegorical method of interpretation (which he describes in depth and detail), he finds ways to embrace many Old Testament narratives of God’s violence as both historical and yet not literally true. That is, in many cases, he argues, “something else is going on” in the background of the stories that we can only surmise based on the character of God revealed in Jesus Christ. (His overall approach to hermeneutics is Christocentric and cross-centered.) That “something else” includes, in some cases, God’s permission and withdrawal, allowing humans and evil cosmic powers to commit the violence due to people’s rejection of God, and, in some other cases, God’s people’s committing the violence and attributing it to God due to their cultural captivity to ancient Near Eastern ideas about God. However, even though he does not believe God, the Father of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, ever commits violence, Boyd does believe God inspired the narratives that wrongly attribute such acts to his instigation. This, he argues, is an example of God’s accommodation to people’s inability to understand him rightly and of progressive revelation. For Boyd, the Bible must be read backwards, all of it in the light of Jesus Christ who is the crucified God and whose suffering love reveals finally and fully the true character of God.

Now, if you are thinking “O, well, I can think of twenty-five problems with that thesis,” you need to read Crucifixion of the Warrior God in which Boyd anticipates and responds to every conceivable problem with his own view and argues that every other view than his suffers greater problems. For example, he wrestles long and hard with Paul Copan’s defense of God’s good character from within a conservative evangelical literalism of the Old Testament texts of terror. He also wrestles with Walter Brueggemann’s non-literalist, liberationist interpretation of the Old Testament texts of terror.

*Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end.*

In order to buy into Boyd’s interpretation one has to buy into his overall “spiritual warfare worldview” approach to reality in which, as described in God at War and Satan and the Problem of Evil (both IVP) this world is a battleground between unseen cosmic “powers and principalities.” (In Crucifixion he repeats much of that materials and responds to its critics.) Also, one has to buy into his pacifism in which even God does not commit violence and in which violence is always wrong (i.e., not God’s will and even against God’s will). One has to buy into his general cross-centered hermeneutic in which the cross event is the key to understanding God’s character and the whole of God’s revelation in the whole of Scripture. And yet he doesn’t merely uncritically pose, presuppose or propose these ideas but defends them with great, sometimes excruciating, detail.

Ultimately, to make a very long story short (and fail to do justice to it!), Boyd argues that the Old Testament portraits of God commanding and committing extreme violence against even children cannot be taken at face value even as they must be interpreted seriously as “masks” God allows his fallen people to put on him. Just as God allowed people to crucify him, so God allowed even his own people to blame him for their (or invisible, spiritual cosmic powers’) wicked deeds. Although I don’t remember Boyd putting it exactly this way, I think it is fair to describe his view as that God voluntarily “took the blame” just as he “took the shame” on the cross.

I will just mention here one example of the numerous steps in Boyd’s overall argument. According to him, God never commits deadly violence, even when it is deserved, because his nature is love, but he does (often has and will) “withdraw,” step aside, as it were, to allow others (nations, armies, evil men, Satan and his minions) to wreak havoc with deadly force. But God only does this when people reject God’s loving embrace and non-violent defense and protection and insist on disobeying God with idolatry and violence. It is interesting how many examples Boyd mines from the Old Testament of references to non-divine agents actually doing violence the authors then attribute to God!

If you are thinking something like “This whole line of reasoning just sounds implausible” you really just need to read Crucifixion. Boyd masterfully anticipates every counter-argument and deftly deflects it.

Although I have read Origen, I was quite amazed at how much support for his overall view Boyd found in that extremely important church father who seems also to have believed that God never commits violence. But Boyd does not follow Origen’s allegorizing method; he instead argues that “something else is going on” in (behind) Old Testament texts of terror that we can discern only through focusing on the cross as the perfect revelation of God’s character.

You say “Well, this all sounds very interesting, but I just don’t have time to read 1300 pages.” That’s what I thought. But Greg (I’ll switch to using his first name because I count him a friend) finally convinced me to read it and the publisher sent me a complimentary copy (two volumes) and I finally read it all—cover to cover and cover to cover. Admittedly, it took me almost a month, but it was worth it. Not because I found it convincing (I’m still considering it) but because of the wealth of information and insight I found “along the way.” Boyd references scores of books and articles and discusses numerous theories and explanations—of the Old Testament texts of terror.

Even before reading Crucifixion I had concluded that all the known explanations of the Old Testament texts of terror (and there are a lot of them!) fall short of being plausible and satisfying. Whether Greg’s explanation is plausible and satisfying is something I will have to think about for a long time. Perhaps, right now, at this moment, the one problem I find in it is the claim Greg makes (repeatedly throughout the volumes!) that these Old Testament texts of terror are “God-breathed,” inspired by God, and also at the same time “literary masks” (put on God by human authors) largely drawn from the human authors’ cultural limitations. (And not only this but also that God wanted these “literary masks” put on him to exemplify his accommodating character displayed perfectly in the cross event.) It seems to me, right now, at this moment, that Greg wants to have his cake (viz., inspiration) and eat it, too (viz., believe the inspired texts are not really true—insofar as they attribute the command to commit extreme violence to God). In other words, in order to hold onto a weak kind of infallibility of the Bible Greg insists that these events recounted in the texts of terror really happened except insofar as they attribute the violence to God’s will, agency, and/or command. While I am tempted to agree with that explanation of the Old Testament texts of terror I am perplexed, right now, at this moment, as to why and how that can be reconciled with “inspiration” and “infallibility” of these texts. But, admittedly, Greg does define those terms and concepts very loosely so that they are compatible with much that is not literally true—including attributing “Show them no mercy!” to God.

*Note to commenters: This blog is not a discussion board; please respond with a question or comment only to me. If you do not share my evangelical Christian perspective (very broadly defined), feel free to ask a question for clarification, but know that this is not a space for debating incommensurate perspectives/worldviews. In any case, know that there is no guarantee that your question or comment will be posted by the moderator or answered by the writer. If you hope for your question or comment to appear here and be answered or responded to, make sure it is civil, respectful, and “on topic.” Do not comment if you have not read the entire post and do not misrepresent what it says. Keep any comment (including questions) to minimal length; do not post essays, sermons or testimonies here. Do not post links to internet sites here. This is a space for expressions of the blogger’s (or guest writers’) opinions and constructive dialogue among evangelical Christians (very broadly defined).

Can a Bridge Be Built between the Christian Political Ethics of

Reinhold Niebuhr and Stanley Hauerwas?

Part Two

The Currie-Strickland Distinguished Lectures in Christian Ethics

Howard Payne University 2017

Roger E. Olson

In Part One of this two-part lecture series I explained my love for both Reinhold Niebuhr and Stanley Hauerwas and my agreement with both of their general approaches to Christian ethics. For those of you who were not there I will briefly summarize the main points of that talk. First, however, I will repeat my “impossible dream,” as I described it, of uniting the best of these two theologians’ ethical programs. In Part One I spoke of my desire to construct a bridge over which people like I can walk between the types of Christian ethics well represented by Niebuhr and Hauerwas. A different and perhaps better metaphor would be discovering a via media, a middle ground space, which one might inhabit—taking the best of Niebuhr’s ethical approach and the best of Hauerwas’s ethical approach. I mentioned how absolutely Quixotic some experts and scholars would consider that; I acknowledged the difficulties such a project poses. Niebuhr and Hauerwas are usually considered opposite representatives of incommensurate visions of Christian social and political ethics. It is usually assumed that one has to choose between them, that one cannot agree with both of them without being double-minded and even falling into incoherence.

Why is that? Well, to give one simple reason, Hauerwas himself declared Niebuhr not a Christian because of his allegedly compromised, allegedly purely pragmatic social and political ethic. That was stated and explained in Hauerwas’s Gifford Lectures published as With the Grain of the Universe. One can only guess what Niebuhr might say about Hauerwas; when Niebuhr died in 1971 Hauerwas had not yet written a book and was virtually unknown. I personally doubt Niebuhr would have declared Hauerwas not a Christian, but I don’t doubt he would have dismissed him, or I should say his approach, to social and political ethics, as insufficient and ineffective.

That guess at what Niebuhr might say about Hauerwas provides a nice segue into the single most important issue seemingly dividing them and their followers. The difference has to do with the ultimate goal of Christian social and political ethics: effectiveness versus faithfulness. In brief, Niebuhr was concerned throughout his career with Christian effectiveness in influencing the nation state, including governments, especially America, to discover and establish justice. Contrary to what both John Howard Yoder, Hauerwas’s mentor, and Hauerwas, however, I do not believe Niebuhr dismissed love as irrelevant to Christian social and political ethics. For example, in his classic 1935 book An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, Niebuhr included an entire chapter on “The Relevance of an Impossible Ideal” in which he spelled out very clearly the role of agape love—perfect, disinterested, equal love as taught by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount—for Christian social and political ethics. It is to serve as a purifying if impossible ideal; it may never be achieved especially by nation states. But it serves nevertheless as a critical principle for relative justice. It calls justice to higher approximations to perfect love and injects into rational justice the element of mercy. Still, and nevertheless, I think it is fair to say that Niebuhr’s main focus was on Christian effectiveness in influencing, even helping shape, public policies to make them more just. And he recognized and acknowledged that after Christendom, in a context of separation of church and state, “justice” has to be defined rationally. So, in order to implement justice in public policy, Niebuhr would say, for the sake of effectiveness, a Christian will have to turn to non-Christian sources such as the late Harvard University professor John Rawls and his theory of “justice as fairness.”

Hauerwas, on the other hand, was and is primarily concerned with faithfulness in Christian social and political ethics. He regards Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount as something more than a “counsel of perfection,” and “impossible ideal,” or a “critical principle” to keep us Christians from going too far down the slippery slope of compromise with secular philosophies, with “real world politics.” For him, Hauerwas, non-violent non-resistance and active peacemaking form the non-negotiable core, the heartbeat, of Christian social and political ethics. Now it is simply not true, as many believe, that Hauerwas eschewed all Christian involvement in politics, but he did and does warn stringently against Christians compromising the gospel, at the heart of which he sees peacefulness, in that involvement. For Hauerwas, the Christian’s first duty is to faithful discipleship of Jesus Christ including suffering for the cause of peace.

What I have given here and even in Part One of this lecture series are really only thumbnail sketches of Niebuhr’s and Hauerwas’s seemingly incommensurate approaches to Christian social and political ethics. Time prevents a fuller and more detailed explanation of each. I think both have been widely misunderstood even by their own interpreters and disciples. Niebuhr was not a warmonger as some have claimed and Hauerwas does not advocate withdrawal from the rough and tumble world of political engagement as some have claimed. Their first and major difference, however, is one of general attitude toward the basic impulse at the heart of Christian social and political ethics—either effectiveness or faithfulness. And the way each fleshes out his own general attitude toward his chosen basic impulse often brings them into seemingly irreconcilable conflict.

Please be patient as I attempt to make this difference even clearer. While Niebuhr did not think war was ever a righteous crusade and while he criticized most wars as unjustified, he did think that in some rare cases even Christians need to support and be involved in armed conflict using deadly force. He thought and argued quite heatedly, during the 1930s, that American Protestant pastors, most of who were pacifists, were playing into the hands of tyranny and despotism, even genocide, insofar as they lobbied for America to stay out of the European conflict between the Allies and the Axis powers. Therefore, to that end of convincing them to change their minds, Niebuhr argued that all human life is tainted by sin, there is no perfection in human life, even among Christians, and because of the way the world is even Christians must occasionally use coercive means to hold back evil. He did not consider that something to celebrate, but he did consider it justified and forgivable in some situations such as crushing the Nazi and other fascist campaigns to rule Europe if not the world and to wipe out world Jewry (as the Nazis called it).

Hauerwas considers that compromise and lack of faithfulness to the revelation of God’s will in Jesus Christ. He calls Christians to take the Sermon on the Mount seriously, even more literally than Niebuhr and most Christians have taken it, and form alternative communities, alternative social orders within the world living by entirely different standards of behavior—especially non-violent non-resistance even against the worst evils. After all, Jesus did not use violence or even coercion against this torturers and killers. And he said in the Sermon on the Mount “Do not resist the evil doers.” To dismiss Jesus’s example and clear teaching about peace is, Hauerwas argues, to sacrifice Christian faithfulness to dreamed of effectiveness.

I think it’s important to note that Niebuhr would argue that effectiveness in bringing about justice by almost any means is faithfulness—in this fallen and corrupt world filled with tyrants of all kinds. And I think it’s important to note that Hauerwas would argue that faithfulness in honoring the example and teaching of Jesus is effective in witness to the way of Jesus Christ, a better way than the world’s, and that is the kind of effectiveness we need.

I am still left with a dilemma. When I read Niebuhr I agree almost wholly with him; when I read Hauerwas I agree almost wholly with him. Am I then doomed to double-mindedness, to incoherence, to unintelligible belief and action in Christian social and political ethics? I hope not.

In Part One I suggested one way forward—toward overcoming the seeming incommensurability between the approaches to social and political ethics represented by Niebuhr and Hauerwas and that is to stop back and away from seeing them as personalities and regarding them instead as somewhat extreme and idiocyncratic representatives of types of Christian social and political ethics. What do I mean? Well, to put it bluntly, so it seems to me, Niebuhr and Hauerwas as personalities are overly reactionary which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to see any middle ground between them. Niebuhr was obsessed with American liberal Protestant pacifism which he considered almost criminally ineffective as Hitler and Mussolini stormed against Poland and Ethiopia slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians. Hauerwas is obsessed with Niebuhrian “realism” which he considers halfway, if not all the way, down the slippery slope of accommodation to the culture of violence and death. But what if we could look past these personalities and their personal obsessions and look instead at the overall theories they represent? I suspect then we would find common ground between them.

But, some may ask, how can there be common ground or even a bridge between violence and non-violence? Indeed, that’s a good question and one I wrestle with much. However, a close reading of Niebuhr and Hauerwas reveals this to me if not to everyone. Niebuhr abhorred violence and regarded it as at most a necessary evil for which one ought to repent. This reminds me of the fourth century Eastern church fathers John Chrysostom, known as “Golden Mouth” because of his great preaching, whose policy it was, as Patriarch of Constantinople, even during the time of the so-called Christian Roman Empire, to prohibit Christian soldiers who committed violence from communion for a year long time of penitence. He did not condemn them or forbid them from serving in the Roman legions; he simply acknowledged the reality of Christians in the Roman legions and laid upon them the task of penitence if they had to kill someone. Chrysostom was also acutely aware of the sinful compromises every Christian had to make in order to be involved in running the empire, which in his time was primarily done in Constantinople. On the other hand, he spoke out loudly against the emperor and empress when and insofar as they led the empire in ways unnecessarily sinful and immoral. For such outspoken prophecy against corrupt so-called Christian political leaders he was killed.

My point in mentioning Chrysostom is not so much to say he is a bridge between Niebuhr and Hauerwas as to say he embodied in his own social and political ethic aspects of both. For him the burden of peace as well as the burden of simple, honest, servant leadership was laid by Christ on every Christian. And he held them accountable to bear those burdens. On the other hand, he knew that utopia was God’s eschatological gift not to be found in this world and proffered a way of finding forgiveness and restoration for those Christians who found it impossible to lead and live perfectly Christian lives according to Jesus’s example and teaching.

Now let me jump centuries ahead to another Christian who I regard as at least attempting to live in the liminal space between Hauerwas’s seeming perfectionism in Christian social and political ethics and Niebuhr’s realism in the same. He has been largely forgotten, but during his own lifetime—1842-1919—Christoph Blumhardt lived, ministered and worked in Germany in a similar tension-filled “space.” Blumhardt is interesting partly because he fits no known category; he was the only one of his kind. He was a Lutheran pastor, revivalist preacher and evangelist, Christian retreat owner and leader, exorcist, “faith healer,” universalist, pacifist, socialist. He believed in and practiced both spiritual warfare against the invisible powers and principalities that rule this fallen, corrupt world and political struggle against the visible powers and principalities that oppress people. After decades of radical Christian ministry around Europe he surrendered his pastor’s credentials and ran for and won a seat in the German parliament. He had one foot firmly planted in Hauerwasian radical Christianity, leading a separatistic intentional Christian community something like the “church” Hauerwas talks so much about. When German Kaiser Wilhelm declared war on France, Russia and Great Britain in 1914 Blumhardt, on Christian and political principles openly opposed it. He was almost entirely alone. And yet, he did not think the Kingdom of God would ever arrive through human effort and acknowledged the need for Christians to be involved in the rough and tumble world of politics. He joined the Socialist Workers Party and represented them in parliament even though he strongly disagreed with their atheism.

Blumhardt may be a Christian example of a hybrid of a Niebuhrian-type Christian realism in social and political ethics and a Hauerwasian-type Christian perfectionism in Christian social and political ethics. Like Niebuhr he was not afraid to get his hands dirty, so to speak, by borrowing aspects of his social and political ethics from non-Christians. Like Hauerwas, however, he was not afraid to form an almost utopian intentional Christian community dedicated to peace. With Hauerwas, Blumhardt clearly believed the church’s main social ethic is being the church as Christ intended it to be which is why he founded Bad Boll, his Christian retreat center where some of his followers lived permanently while others visited for long periods of time.

Now I would like to turn to my third example of a Christian social and political ethicist who might already have bridged the gap between Niebuhr and Hauerwas, although I make no claim that they would agree with him. Again, if we regard them not as personalities but as representatives of general Christian approaches I think we can recognize in all but forgotten Swiss Protestant theologian and ethicist Emil Brunner a thinker who anticipated the divide and sought to bring the best of both sides together.

Emil Brunner lived from 1889 to 1966 and, unfortunately, is best known now for his famous or infamous debate over “natural theology” with Karl Barth. Brunner really introduced “dialectical theology” to British and American audiences and was better known than Karl Barth especially in the English speaking world until the late 1950s and even into the 1960s when Barth made his one visit to America for a speaking tour. Brunner taught for many years at the University of Zurich as well as at the Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. He wrote dozens of books and a three volume systematic theology titled Dogmatics. His social and political ethic is found in several of his books including Volume 3 of Dogmatics titled The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith and the Consummation. Earlier, however, he wrote a one volume comprehensive Christian ethic entitled The Divine Imperative. In 1943 at the height of World War 2 he wrote Justice and the Social Order and his 1947 Gifford Lectures were published under the English title Christianity and Civilisation in two volumes.

However, the third volume of Brunner’s Dogmatics was published much later, in 1960, and contains many refinements of his earlier social and political views. (It is also dedicated to Christoph Blumhardt!) It is to his scattered reflections on the subject there that I will turn here. I think one can find in Brunner’s mature thought a guide toward linking together the best in both Niebuhr and Hauerwas. No claim is made, however, that Brunner provides a complete or perfect synthesis of the two types.

Hauerwas loves to say that theology always begins in the middle, meaning there is no much sought-after “beginning point” or “first principle” that provides the “place to begin” in doing theology. One always, inevitably begins “in the middle” and works forwards and backwards. So I will begin “in the middle,” so to speak, of Brunner in order to explicate his social and political thought for Christians. The last section of his chapter on “Conversion” in Dogmatics 3 includes this statement: “The man who is really converted to Christ is the man turned towards the world. The end [goal] of conversion is the complete worldliness of the man who lives in Christ, the worldliness of the man whose security is in Christ.” (288) Then, also, “Every believer [in Christ] is interested in the world of the nations, he knows himself called to dedicate himself to the goal of the coming Kingdom.” (288) Brunner makes clear in this context that he does not just mean prayer for the Kingdom or witness about Christ and the Kingdom of God to get people converted spiritually; he makes clear that he also means “active participation” in the work of social and political transformation.

Then, in his chapter on “Sanctification” Brunner continues that theme. For him true sanctification means a universal hope for humanity for the coming of the Kingdom of God which embraces “all mankind.” (296) “All individualism,” he wrote, “as a religiosity directed to the salvation of one’s own soul is a contradiction of the will of God revealed in Jesus Christ.” (296) Now that might not sound especially surprising, but the next sentence is almost shocking: “What is at stake [in true Christian discipleship] is the realization of the ‘theocractic’ purpose of God in the world, a purpose which has been revealed in Jesus Christ.” (296) The question that naturally arises, especially for those of us who live in and appreciate separation of church and state, is what Brunner might have meant by “theocratic purpose of God in the world.” Let’s move on and find out.

Later in the same chapter on “Sanctification” Brunner claims that true Christian discipleship is always bound up with “the will to assert God’s Lordship in the world.” (302) What that means, Brunner explains, is that “To assert the love of Christ in the world means to show it to our neighbour [sic] in his involvement in structures of the world which operate according to their own laws.” (302) Then, “And just because the world is bound by law in this manner, this will never be directly but always only more or less indirectly possible.” (302) What does this mean? It can only mean that the Christian, in his or her political involvement, must step out of any perfectionism and adapt the love of Christ to the conditions of the laws that bind the structures of the world which are never themselves based solely on the love Christ showed and taught.

But let’s look further into this political ethic of Brunner’s. Please excuse a rather lengthy quotation here:

Christian love accepts the task thus given of reshaping itself and does not let the alien character of the world deter it from realizing this indirect manifestation of love in the world, even when the world repeatedly misunderstands this manifestation because of the reshaping it has undergone. Only in relation to the person of my neighbour [sic], in immediate personal relation to him, can love assert itself directly, as it were without concealment. But this must not be a reason for limiting neighbourly [sic] love merely to the field of “personal relationships’; quite the contrary. The energy with which Christian interest penetrates into the world and expands in social and even political activity is the measure of the power and purity of love, that is, of its dependence on Christ. (302)

Brunner is here cautiously laying the foundation for what he says later in Dogmatics, Volume 3, about “The Christian in the World.” There he unpacks his understanding of what it means to be “in the world but not of it.”

For him the “world” is “humanity estranged by sin from God.” (314) It is especially the structures of life fallen under the control of sin, corrupted from their original purpose as created by God but still vital for human survival and flourishing. Government is one of these. Brunner rejects three traditional Christian approaches to relating Christian living “in but not of the world.” One is withdrawal. Another is explicit theocracy—government controlled by a church. A third is Martin Luther’s “two kingdoms” theory in which a Christian lives by two conflicting ethical principles. Brunner does not give his alternative view a name but spells it out.

First, according to Brunner, we must understand the autonomy of the world and its spheres and structures of life. Of the Christian who seeks to serve Christ in the world but not of it he says “the autonomy of the world is always and everywhere a frightful reality which, when it…confronts him, impresses the individual [Christian] with a sense of his own impotence.” (319) In other words, it is not “putty in his hands.” The Christian cannot simply change the world into the church, nor can the church do it. Furthermore, according to Brunner, it is “quite simply [impossible] to act according to the commandment of the Sermon on the Mount” in the world. “The policeman or the judge cannot obey the word about turning the other cheek or about not judging without neglecting his duty as a policeman or a judge.” (319) Life in the world “cannot be brought into harmony with this rule of love.” (319)

However, Brunner goes on to say, “this does not mean that this law of the world is not accessible to influences exercised by the Ekklesia; that the State, for example, must be accepted just as it is and that there is no critical principle by which all secular institutions can be measured, and by which, even if they cannot themselves become Christian, they can at least be improved, made more humane, more serviceable to mankind.” (319) Notice the emphasis in this quote on the influences of the Ekklesia, the church, on the state. For Brunner, not only the individual Christian but the church as a whole is called by God to exercise influence on the state to make it more humane, more serviceable to humanity.

So, to recap, for Brunner the individual Christian ought to work in the world and serve in whatever secular vocation he or she finds himself or herself in for Christ which means living and working with both idealism and realism. The idealism means putting love into effect wherever and whenever possible; the realism appears in realizing that the Christian cannot perfect the world and must work with it and within it as it is. Also, for Brunner the church ought to influence the world, especially the state, to bring it as much as possible into conformity with the love of Christ by making it more humane and serviceable to humanity.

My special interest lies in the church and political ethics and action toward government. While Niebuhr and Hauerwas wrote about much else, that, broadly meant, seems to lie at the center of their attentions and their differences. Brunner seems to me to take a “both-and” approach to the attitudes and approaches advocated by Niebuhr and Brunner, but I admit that in order to flesh that out in practical terms I have to add words to anything Brunner wrote. I think I am faithful to his intentions, however.

First, there is obvious tension and even conflict between the social order, including government, of the world and the Kingdom of God. They are never the same. The principle of the latter is love; the principle of the former is justice. Justice in the world is always at least partially retributive which conflicts with love. In the world justice also always includes the possibility of coercion. And it is impossible to be directly involved in the world, especially in the sectors of the social order that governs it, without having something to do with violence.

Second, the Christian and the church must not withdraw into a “safety zone” of pure love apart from the rough and tumble world of social order policy making and enforcement. The Christian and the church may draw a “line in the sand,” so to speak, at overt violence and decline to use deadly force, but anywhere it is involved in the world it cannot remain innocently pure. The structures of the world depend on violence; being in the world, even if not of it, means some of that stain of violence that sustains the social order, keeping it from falling into anarchy, seeps onto the Christian, corrupting him or her.

Third, the Christian and the church can only influence the world with love, especially in the world’s social structures where public policy is created and enforced, indirectly—as witness of the “better way” Jesus articulated in the Sermon on the Mount. They cannot intend or hope to control the world, turning it into the Kingdom of God.

So what could Brunner have meant by “the theocratic purpose of God in the world?” Is there a possible meaning of that, in light of everything else he says, that both Niebuhr and Hauerwas could agree with? Obviously Brunner did not mean a theocratic purpose of Christians or the church. First, almost without doubt, he was speaking there teleologically and eschatologically—as referring to God’s ultimate purpose for the world—to bring it to his Kingdom and his Kingdom to it. Second, possibly without very much doubt, he was speaking of Christian service and action in the world helping anticipate the Kingdom of God by helping the social orders of this world become more humane and serviceable to humanity—all humanity.

This kind of talk worries Hauerwas, perhaps mainly because of what he perceived to be Niebuhr’s pragmatic accommodations of Christ’s love to the realities of the world in justifying Christian use of coercion and even deadly force. And yet, in his most recent book The Work of Theology, he adamantly asserts that he never advocated Christian withdrawal from the world or from involvement in politics. There he says that he never advised Christians to abstain from partisan politics or even military service. The only thing a Christian cannot do, he says, is participate in violence. Brunner does not disagree, although I think it’s debatable what he thought about that. Blumhardt, on the other hand, was opposed to war; he was a pacifist. But my point is that if Hauerwas believes a Christian, indeed the church, can rightly be involved in politics even prophetically, then he is not that far from Niebuhr! And if Niebuhr thought that Christian use of violence is always at best only necessary and never righteous he is not that far from Hauerwas!

Are we making some headway toward uniting Niebuhr and Hauerwas? I don’t know, but I think possibly so.

Now that I reflect back on these matters in light of Brunner, it seems to me that I was “set up,” as it were, to agree with both Niebuhr and Hauerwas by first reading Brunner. I devoured Brunner in seminary in the 1970s—along with numerous other evangelical and Baptist students. He was our liberator from fundamentalism. Then, during my first year of doctoral studies at Rice University under Baptist theologian and philosopher of religion John Newport I read Brunner more deeply. It always seemed to me, and still seems to me, that Brunner’s deepest ethical impulse is a unity of faithfulness and effectiveness in Christian involvement in the world. But, in good Protestant fashion, and I’m not always sure how Protestant Hauerwas is, Brunner, like Niebuhr, believed in something akin to total depravity and justifying grace. In other words, faithfulness in the world is effectiveness and vice versa—up to a point, up to a line that cannot be crossed. He is not as clear as Hauerwas attempts to be about where that “Do Not Cross” line lies. For Hauerwas it is coercion and violence. But, no doubt Brunner would simply say that coercion and even implication in violence is unavoidable in Christian life in the world unless one becomes a hermit monk living in a cave somewhere.

Well, I need to move on here—to my own proposal for uniting Hauerwas and Niebuhr however uncomfortable that unity might be.

I see myself as a citizen of two “worlds,” two “kingdoms,” two “cities.” I think every Christian should and most do. Only a very few find it possible to withdraw from citizenship of the world entirely and that only by living as hermits or by living in intentional Christian communities that are self-sustaining. I am not sure either one of those attempts, however, ultimately succeeds in being pure and unstained by the world.

For better or for worse I am an American. Sometimes I’m proud of that and sometimes I’m ashamed of it. For me it’s always an ambiguous identity. But it is part of who I am. I’m not sure that I could ever escape it no matter what I tried to do. And I don’t want to escape it. I suspect that’s true of Hauerwas, too. Whatever he says about the grave dangers of patriotism, he is an American.

For better or for worse I am a member of the Christian church. Sometimes I’m proud of that and sometimes I’m ashamed of it. For me that also is always an ambiguous identity. But it is part of who I am. I’m not sure I could ever escape it no matter what I tried to do. And I don’t want to escape it. I suspect that was true of Niebuhr, too. Whatever he didn’t say about the importance of the church for Christian social action, political ethics, he was a churchman.

Only for better am I a member, a citizen, of the Kingdom of God, the City of God, which is not the same as America or the church. The Kingdom of God is my primary citizenship. What is it? Many Christians mistakenly identify the Kingdom of God with heaven; it’s not heaven. The Kingdom of God is God’s rule and reign wherever God’s will is being done. Before Christ returns it is event, not institution or territory. But it is also people among whom that event of the will of God done, however imperfectly, stirs and transforms.

My first loyalty is to the Kingdom of God and my second loyalty is to the ekklesia, the true church which is the people of God being transformed by fellowship with Christ among ourselves, his followers, into Kingdom people. I do not think those two identities and loyalties can ever be separated. As a citizen of the Kingdom of God and as a citizen of the church, my charter for social and political ethics is the Sermon on the Mount and the way of Jesus the Messiah, his example of life within the world. Unlike the Essenes, for example, he lived among the Israelites and regarded himself as also one of them.

But, finally, my citizenship and loyalty is also, even if less so, to America. Yes, to the world, to all of humanity, but because I am formally a citizen of the Unites States, I will say “to America” for now. That is where the rubber hits the road in this conversation about Christian social and political ethics.

So the “starting place,” even if with Hauerwas “in the middle,” in this conversation is with these three citizenships. I hope most of you can identify with what I am saying here. You may substitute some other nation state for “America,” because you were born there and not here and retain that identity. All well and good; my point will ultimately be the same.

From Dietrich Bonhoeffer I have learned the distinction between the “ultimate” and the “penultimate” in ethics. Here, my ultimate loyalty is to the Kingdom of God and the church. Ultimately, my energy, my concentration, my focus, must be poured out into making the church what it is called by its Lord to be. That is, with Hauerwas, the first, the ultimate, but not the only focus of my Christian social and political ethic. I agree with Hauerwas, perhaps against Niebuhr, but maybe not, that the main task of the church is simply to be the church—an alternative community and social order within the world, a city set on a hill, a light to the nations, living out peacefulness and peace-making in a world of violence.

With Brunner, however, and also with Blumhardt and perhaps also Niebuhr, I have a penultimate citizenship and loyalty and that is of and to America. Can Hauerwas really reject that—even for himself? I don’t think so. Why worry about the church being the church and thereby being a witness to the world, which for him means primarily America, if you don’t identify as a citizen of America and don’t feel any loyalty to it? I agree with Hauerwas that we Christians must strongly distinguish between our ultimate loyalty and and our penultimate loyalty, between the Kingdom of God and America. But I sincerely doubt that he really means it when he suggests that changing America to make it more just is not our business as Christians. In fact, in many places he suggests otherwise by calling for prophetic speech from the church toward America about war, for example.

These three citizenships and loyalties form for me a hierarchy with the Kingdom of God, virtually inseparable from Jesus Christ himself, at the top and the church below that and America below that. To the extent possible I seek to unify, bring into coherence, these three loyalties. I exercise every reasonable effort to bring the church into alignment with the ideals of the Kingdom of God. One thing that means for me is a church where worldly status means absolutely nothing and preferential treatment is given to the weak, the powerless, and the poor. To the extent possible I exercise every reasonable effort to bring America into alignment with the ideals of the church as it reflects the Kingdom of God—but without expecting the two or three to merge and become one. That will not happen by my or our efforts.

So what does that mean? What does it look like to even attempt to bring the ideals of the Kingdom of God and the church conformed to the Kingdom of God to bear upon the social order of America? As Brunner said, it cannot be done directly but only indirectly. What does that mean?

With Niebuhr I agree that justice is the closest approximation to perfect love under the conditions of sin and that means in the context of secular America. Brunner would agree. What would Hauerwas say? I suspect all he could say is that within the church love and justice are one and the same. But what about the state, the social order, the government? He admits that there they are not the same which is why Christians must have minimal involvement there. Yet, he says now that he has never forbidden Christians from being directly involved in politics and even government—up to that vague line of exercising violence.

What if Hauerwas were drafted to be a U.S. Congressman? I know it’s a crazy question, but play along with me. Imagine a North Carolina Congressman died and the governor appointed Hauerwas to fill the vacant seat in Congress until an election could be held. And imagine that, for whatever reason, he accepted the appointment. Then what? I doubt that Hauerwas thinks there are no Christians in the U.S. Congress. So what would Hauerwas do? He could not draft and promote bills to abolish poverty and war based on the principles of the Sermon on the Mount. So he might just look around to see if there are any philosophies useful for creating public policies that are more humane and serviceable to humanity. But then he would be doing exactly what he has criticized Niebuhr for doing so many times! He would be reaching outside the sphere of Christ and the church, outside if not away from the Sermon on the Mount, indirectly, if not directly, to manage human history—something he has said is God’s business.

Now, you might want to sweep away my hypothetical situation as unthinkable and therefore irrelevant, but I suspect it’s not as unthinkable as that. After all, there are, or have been, good, reflective, Christ-following Congressman in the past if not in the present. I will mention Mark Hatfield of Oregon, an evangelical Christian who served in the U.S. Congress for many years between 1967 and 1996. Hatfield spoke and wrote often of his agonistic feelings about being a Christian in public office. He knew well that he could not escape all taint or compromise with the fallenness of the world while serving in the U.S. government. Hauerwas has never said that a man like Hatfield seems to have been—primarily loyal to the Kingdom of God and the church—cannot remain Christian and serve in public office in government. He has warned about its dangers and pitfalls, but he has not said it’s impossible.

So, one necessary building block of the bridge between Niebuhr and Hauerwas, a bridge still on the drawing board, would be an agonistic attitude toward direct involvement in politics—more than Niebuhr seemed to encourage but less, perhaps, that Hauerwas seems to encourage. Sometimes Hauerwas’s personality and prophetic style of speech, including writing, gives the impression that he has nothing but disdain for Christians who go into public life for the common good of America. But he says himself that he has never forbidden it; I suspect he only wants to encourage Christians with that calling to experience the agony more than the ecstasy of such power.

Another necessary building block of the bridge, should it ever be built, would be injecting love and peace as much as possible into all public policies and decisions regarding the poor and the enemy. Hatfield, for example, argued vehemently against war in Vietnam in the 1960s; he wanted to pressure the aggressive communists of North Vietnam and their Chinese supporters using economic sanctions rather than violence. One might think that his advocacy for that tactic paid dividends in some later potential conflicts such as our current one with Iran over nuclear weapons. Some Christians in public policy decision making offices use the secular philosophy of John Rawls, “justice as fairness,” “maximizing the minimum,” to inject some element of Christian love into economic justice—as an alternative to the prevailing Social Darwinism of much American economics.

Finally, another necessary building block of the bridge, should it ever be built, would be knowing when to stand down and move away from public office and taking a strictly prophetic stand toward government. This Niebuhr did not talk about which favors Hauerwas, and yet I could imagine scenarios in which Niebuhr would definitely call for a Christian to give up, resign, and simply prophecy against government. One historical example of such a Christian comes from before either Niebuhr or Hauerwas. William Jennings Bryan, unfortunately best known for his role in the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennesss in 1925, was actually a progressive politician who worked in government for many years on behalf of the poor and for peace. He resigned as Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State when the president got Congress to declare war on Germany during World War 1.

I do not pretend to myself or anyone that I have already designed the perfect bridge to unite the ethics of Niebuhr and Hauerwas, but I will continue working on the design as I continue to find much that is powerful and convincing and even prophetic in both of their social and political ethics. My dream is, if nothing else, to bring them together someday in heaven (or perhaps purgatory) for a hopefully constructive and fruitful conversation leading to agreement about the fundamentals of Christian involvement in the world.