A Critical Look At The ELCA’s Draft Social Message On Government And Civic Engagement: Discipleship In A Democracy

The following reflections refer to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s draft Social Message on Government and Civic Engagement: Discipleship in a Democracy.

“Social messages are teaching documents of the ELCA focused on particular social topics. They are intended to focus attention and urge action on timely, pressing matters of social concern to church and society.”

The ELCA invites responses to the draft during an initial comment period (March 20-May 27). I post these public reflections as part of that comment process. My first critical response calls for a reconsideration of the process of the formation of the draft document itself. The remaining comments raise topics I hope will be addressed by the process of the ELCA Church Council if they meet in June.

I. A Fundamental and Significant Procedural Problem

This draft indicates in footnote 15, “ELCA teaching has emphasized care and justice for all categories of particularly vulnerable people.” That being the case, it would seem wise for the draft of a social message on government and civic engagement to be authored, from its very beginning, by the vulnerable people for whom the ELCA cares.

It is uncertain whether the social statement is authored by anyone from such affected groups. Instead, the draft has as I understand it, been directed by the director for theological ethics in the Office of the Presiding Bishop and has utilized a consulting group of 12 people (as far as I can tell unnamed). The creation of the draft involves rounds of response by consultants (also unnamed) and reviewed by members of the Conference of Bishops and the ELCA Church Council.*

Nothing against the individuals involved in this process. I’m sure they’re great people. But this process, and the speed with which it is undertaken, plays into the same procedural suspicion I have developed over the years for our way of developing these guiding documents.

The ELCA explainer for this process says, “Social messages are teaching documents of the ELCA focused on particular social topics. They are intended to focus attention and urge action on timely, pressing matters of social concern to church and society. ELCA social statements are more comprehensive documents developed via a five-year process led by a task force and adopted at churchwide assemblies.”

Having a small anonymous team as the primary authors of the text leaves readers in the dark (or at the very least disguises any input from) important voices. It’s hard to see how such primary anonymous authorship can adequately represent what our whole church needs or is seeking in a social message of this sort.

What it does do is pretty much guarantees the document is what it is: written in the voice of Minnesota nice (fancy word: civility), prioritizing Reformation-era and European political theory (all the footnotes refer to Luther or confessional documents, although there is one footnote mentioning Adam Smith, David Hume, and philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment… and an enigmatic footnote referring to Parker Palmer), and centering forms of civic engagement preferred by middle class Midwest intelligentsia.

So my first recommendation is simple: make the formation process of the social message more transparent, and delay the June vote. Anonymous authorship of a document that will so quickly represent our whole church is deeply problematic.

II. Is the Two Kingdoms Framework Helpful in 2020?

There are not two realms [kingdoms], but only the one realm of the Christ-reality, in which the reality of God and the reality of the world are united (Bonhoeffer).

Now I will proceed to ask a series of questions, or offer a series of comments, that I hope the task force can consider. Top of mind: Lutherans still continue to riff on, whenever they are considering issues of government, Luther’s reflection in his essay “Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed.”

Luther’s theory on God’s right and left hands is fascinating and somewhat useful. It is also burdensome and forced. It lends itself to a hyper-spiritualization of those things considered on the right hand (forgiveness, grace) and a cynical view of those on the left (institutions, laws, etc.) At some points, it even appears anti-semitic.

Proof of this can be found even in this document itself. “If God governed only through the left hand, Christians would feel condemned without the possibility of forgiveness, and so experience a constant, miserable, and losing struggle against human moral failure” (113-115). Well, that’s certainly not how Jewish people, who see the law as good and salutary, understand the joy of the left hand. But it’s definitely the way some Christians have corrupted it in order to denigrate others.

The draft of this document spends pages and pages unpacking God’s “two governing strategies,” and although some of it is intriguing, if you are looking for a quick elucidation of two kingdoms thinking, in the end the average reader of this social message, seeking guidance in 2020 for civic engagement, will find it tedious and unnecessary.

Why would we only or exclusively engage Reformation-era political theology in this social message and not engage the political theology of intervening centuries, in particular reflections on the founding of our nation (like the Federalist Papers) and significant 20th century developments (from Niebuhr to liberation theology and more)?

If we do still want to engage the right-hand, left-hand analogy, we should do so along the lines colleague and friend Russell Meyer has described it, “It’s time to spiritualize the left hand and materialize the right hand purposes of God.”

But we need to be done with the kingdom language. Even Paul in his day figured out how to move on to more inclusive governmental analogies, like commonwealth.

It’s unfortunate the document takes no account of Bonhoeffer’s significant criticism of two kingdoms. “This thinking in two realms ‘deeply contradicts both biblical and Reformation thought,” argues Bonhoeffer, who saw in the two kingdoms doctrine a kind of regressive theology tethered to orders of creation thought that played into national socialism and it’s conservative co-optation of the church.

In its place, he proposed a more nuanced doctrine of four “mandates”: work, marriage, government, church,” that, although certainly needing more work (he didn’t get to complete his Ethics, after all, they nevertheless weren’t autonomous realms like the two kingdoms model, but a model of reality with mandates that work in relationship to each other.

III. Can We Please Have Direct Examples Of Civic Engagement?

Some who work in the ELCA do a ton of work for us at the governmental level with civic engagement. Can we please hear from those who work at the Lutheran Public Policy offices at the state and federal levels? They are in the trenches. They know how things work. We should lead with insights from them.

Second, there are groups around the country reflecting carefully on creative civic engagement. Some of them are our allies and partners. We could hear from them as well. As just one example in my personal life, I have been learning in an ongoing fashion from the work of Sangita Shresthova and Henry Jenkins at the Civic Imagination Project about the forms of civic engagement young people engage in that makes use of new media and popular culture.

There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of effective organizations around our country attempting to do the creative work that happens when groups come together as “publics of strangers” (321).

I’m sure if the ELCA sent an e-mail out to its rostered leaders and published the question on social media: who do you work with that is most effective at government advocacy and civic engagement? what’s one thing you’ve learned from them that should be in our social message on civic engagement? that the replies would be tremendously instructive. Much better than burying a social message in theological jargon and easy platitudes.

IV. What is the greatest threat to our democracy right now?

The text prophetically names many threats to our neighbors in this democracy. Throughout the document, I wrote notes along the side: good list, radical, yes! when it called out, as examples, the drinking water crisis in Flint, our insufficient government response to the hurricane in Puerto Rico, lack of adequate presentation for many U.S. territories and the District of Columbia, the need for protections for whistleblowers, greater protections for asylum seekers, etc.

But one item I saw lacking in the draft that is central to everything else is quite simple: our government has been completely compromised by the manipulations of the wealthy.

We need to talk about the rich, and a return to taxation patterns that place a just burden on the hyper-wealthy to care for their neighbors. We need to talk about the problem with the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that allows the wealthy and corporations to buy elections.

The document argues rightly that government and regulation are good things. But they are good things to a large degree because government in a mixed economy regulates corporations and keeps the economy more just. It controls the otherwise completely self-interested idolatry of the free market.

V. This Document By Necessity Needs To Be Very Good At Ecumenical and Interfaith Approaches

Let me cite a paragraph from the document that I find deeply problematic as soon as Lutherans attempt to organize for civic engagement with other traditions, especially non-Christian traditions:

First, God’s law is God’s will for human life, used in two ways. From God’s left hand, enshrined in the Bible, the law tells us to love God and our neighbors. At the same time, the law drives Christians to recognize that we are estranged from God and our neighbors, and impels us to seek forgiveness and reconciliation from God’s right hand, through Christ. Strengthened by such assurance, Christians see that the same law that invalidates every effort by humans to save themselves is intended by God to support human community. It finds expression, however imperfect, in the “civil” law from God’s left hand. (122-128)

Can you see how unhelpful this assertion is if we are attempting civic engagement with non-Christian organizations or partners? Even if I were to grant this a helpful theological construction of the function of the law as it relates to our justification through faith apart from the works of the law, and our turn toward human community (something I tend not to grant, because if the law is so convicting as it relates us to God, it’s hard to see how it can then have a salutary role in our loving neighbors in need), I cannot see how this doesn’t significantly weaken our opportunities to partner with others not of our faith in the work of self-government.

In other words, for this social message to be useful, it will necessarily need to be much more secular. The current draft hints at this in fits and starts (“It is the political form that Christian love takes in the world of civil governance. It diminishes the power of self-interest and selfishness in human motivation), but it needs to center this so as to gain a voice in relationship to the type of government and economic we have today.

VI. We Need Tools As Lutherans To Think About Participation In A Basically Two Party System of Government

So many of our most significant fights, in every context, are related to the divide in our country between Republicans and Democrats. Nothing in our constitution says there can only be two major parties, and Christian theology seems not to have any direct tools for reflection on bipartisan politics, but nevertheless this is the elephant in the room.

Any document developed by the ECLA for government and civic engagement misses a major opportunity if it does not take this divided bipartisanship head on and address it.

Whether such work refers to material like that from Leah Schade on ministry in the red-blue divide, Angela Denker’s work on Red State Christians, or Tad Delay’s work on trying to sort out what white evangelicals are so against, those of us reading this social message need it to give us concrete guidance on leading in an age of polarization and effective organizing for change that leads to better care of our neighbor in need.

VII. Needs to Emphasize What the Church as an Institution Can’t Do

The document does an adequate job distinguishing between various kinds of institutions and their proper role, but the drafting team (once it is made a public team and not a secret enclave) could consider including content on how churches and communities of faith (or volunteer organizations more generally) can never really replace the social net provided by government.

A recent study from Duke indicated the average church spends $1500 on social services per year (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/budget-religion/520605/). But to replace our current social net of services like welfare, every single congregation in the United States, of any size would have to add $750,000 to their budget. see Robert Wuthnow.

And if the social message is really going to adequately address the way government and private enterprise fail to serve as checks and balances on each other in the 21st century, the drafters of the social message absolutely need to read and engage American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper. This is the best study available on what we’ve forgotten, and what we’ve lost, with the ideological war on government in the late 20th century.

VIII. Since Over 50% of the Current U.S. Budget Funds A Past, Present, Or Future War, Does The Social Message Need To Include Material On National Defense?

It seems a glaring oversight to draft a social message on government and civic engagement that never mentions in any fashion our current national commitment to participating in perpetual warfare. Not only would we have the opportunity to link back to previous social statements on peace, but we could address in the document our current warring ways and the vast and immoral expenditure of our tax dollars on the continuing war economy.

Of course perhaps the task force avoided this topic because they know, as MLK Jr. learned late in his career, and Dorothy Day, that speaking out against war is not popular. But that would be all the more reason for a social message that is focused on civic engagement to offer resources for effective advocacy on this issue.

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* Important correction: I previously and erroneously (mea culpa) believed it was authored by one primary author, a professor from the Midwest. This is both my mistake, and also (in terms of procedure) a misunderstanding on my part between the process for our social messages and our social statements, there being also a social statement on church and state under development.

Additionally, I have learned the names of the author/consultants of the document. They are as follows:

Consultants:

David Bleich

Victoria Bosin

Douglas Casson

Rev. Tiffany Chaney

Rev. Joann Conroy

Sara Lilja

Rev. Carmelo Santos

Kit Kleinhans

Staff & Staff consultants

Roger Willer