Winter 2000
Volume 4 Number 4
Winter 2000
Volume 4 Number 4
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The Gospel and politicsHendrix: When we consider the Gospel and politics historically, we
notice immediately that our period is very different from the Reformation.
The Reformation was a public, political event. There was no separation of
church and state in the sixteenth century, and it would never have
occurred to pastors or to Reformers in the sixteenth century to be silent
on social and political issues. They spoke out automatically about local Johnson: We’ve had a tendency
to relegate religion to a private
sphere. This split between the public and the private has been most
problematic for modern religion. Some reduce the Gospel to an anodyne that
makes us feel good, and so then Black: I think in worship the church is constantly reminded, if the church is worshiping faithfully, that no aspect of ordinary existence remains untouched or hermetically sealed from God’s love and the power of the Gospel. God cannot be shut out or privatized. "The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof." We’ve tried to shrink God down into a manageable size that would allow us to live our lives in a compartmentalized way without bringing the pieces together. With respect to politics, we should not forget — and I don’t think that the authors of the New Testament did, because it was so real for them — that the cross was a political execution. It makes all the difference in the world that Jesus didn’t die by being run over by a chariot outside of Jerusalem, or after living to a ripe old age. He died as he lived. And how did he live? He lived as one who constantly reminded his heirs, as he still reminds us, that both the powerful and the powerless are deeply in need of a healing that refocuses our politics and our religion in alignment with God’s justice and mercy. The Gospel and pluralismBlack: I sometimes wonder if pluralism looks especially daunting to us
now because, truth be told, we are on the ragged edge of the dissolution
of Christendom. When Christianity Hendrix: On this point, the first-person pronoun in Romans 1:16 strikes me. I may be stuck with the universal claim of the Gospel, but I do not have to be put to shame by this claim because of the way in which I bring the Gospel to others. Rather, I can find ways to understand it and to articulate it for others that will affirm them instead of belittling them. I can invite response instead of silencing others with the Gospel’s claims. This articulation is my own, and it does not need to disrespect another person’s conscience or religion. As long as I speak in this way, my claims about the Gospel need neither shame me nor intimidate other people. Johnson: We need to remember that the Gospel itself comes to us in many
forms, in an open-ended way. We have this treasure in earthen vessels of
differing, and sometimes even conflicting, configurations — the Gospel
according to this evangelist or that evangelist, the Gospel construed
within different theological frameworks. Unfortunately, instead of
embracing these many forms, the church has a dark history of anxiety over
the truth of its own truth claims, resulting in intolerance toward the
truth claims of others. Too often theologians have been in the business of
reducing cognitive dissonance and bending the Gospel to suit
self-interested goals. Maybe we need to be a little less invested in
advancing our own truth claims about the Gospel, and more invested in the
transforming power of the Gospel itself. The Romans passage does Black: So maybe religious conversation that is consonant with the Gospel is a conversation that reflects the gift of gracious love that we have known through the Lord Jesus Christ. Articulation of the Gospel is an expression of the peculiar gift that has been given to Christians. Johnson: I think we are saying much the same thing. As Christians, we are not in a position of standing above the other, but in humility we engage the other with that same grace with which God in Christ has engaged us. Black: But the other trap that we can and often do fall into is a humility that deteriorates into functional cowardice. In that case the church, for whatever reasons, capitulates and in effect reconfigures the message of the Gospel into a bland un-Gospel that sounds just like what everybody else is saying. It’s the flip side of the arrogant posture by which Christianity in its darkest moments has promoted conversions at sword point.
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In This Issue
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politics, about what was going on in the next duchy or the next city or
the next kingdom. I realize that pastors today are in a different
situation, but regular commentary on social and political matters in Bible
studies and in sermons is a legacy of the Reformation tradition. Clergy
need not push a particular party line, but they can raise awareness about
the public implications of the Gospel. To be unashamed of the Gospel in
the political realm means to be unafraid to make applications of our faith
in the public realm, even though we must not insist that our position is
the absolute truth or that the Gospel can be reduced to a political
stance. Romans 1:16 does not say the Gospel is an ethical teaching, a
religious system, or a political position, but rather the power of God.
That power went public, and the Reformation gives historical precedent for
public involvement by Christians and by Christian pastors.
religion and religious worship become just
others in a series of consumer products. The Roman Catholic theologian
Johann Baptist Metz has complained that in modern religion God has no
recognized public realm. Nevertheless, we know that the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, who was tortured and executed between two political
insurrectionists, always has a political thrust, calling powers and
principalities into question, especially, I suspect, those powers in which
we are most invested.
was born in the first century, it was a
minority voice. It was a child’s whisper in the bubbling cauldron of
cacophonous religious and philosophical voices of every stripe. If the
numbers in mainline Christian denominations in North America continue to
dwindle, in an odd way that could put us in an analogous situation to that
of the early Christians. In that kind of minority situation, you make your
claim for the truth that has seized you, with a sense of due modesty that
comes from recognizing your own fragility and the limits of a particular
expression. You bear witness to the Gospel through what you say, through
how you act, fully expecting and, indeed, hoping that those from other
religious perspectives will tell you how the world looks to them. Part of
the Christian testimony is that we love and respect, listen to and care
for, other persons — even if they do not share our beliefs.
not say
that the Gospel is a "truth claim" for everyone who has faith,
but that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. In shorthand form,
the Gospel proclaims that the God of Israel has raised Jesus Christ from
the dead. Or to put it another way, the God who is for humanity and with
humanity in Jesus Christ calls human beings, by the Spirit’s power, to
be for and with the "other." Hence all dialogue and interaction
with those outside the church must not fail to embody the grace of God in
Jesus Christ. Let me add, parenthetically, that the passage speaks of God’s
power "to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." In other words,
the Gospel is the engrafting of us Gentiles within the gracious covenant
God first made with Israel. In a postmodern, post-Holocaust age, the first
issue in inter-religious dialogue has to be a recognition of our sibling
relationship with Israel, on the one hand, and then, on the other hand,
our acknowledgment that the particular calling of God on our lives is for
the sake of the other. Our election, in short, is not to a special status
but to a special service.