 Follow this link to some of Gabriel Fackre's recent papers: http://home.comcast.net/~gfackre/ Contact Gabriel Fackre: gfackre@comcast.net | Theology and Culture Newsletter 48 Advent 2008
Dear friends and former students,
What a year! Financial crises, a presidential election, climate anxieties, wars and rumors of wars, ills of the flesh as well as these cares of the world….Our thoughts in this Newsletter turn to the resources in our faith for confronting the challenges of the hour. What does it mean to hope? How does the church speak and act in the public square? And where culture and theology meet, what can we learn from Pulitzer prize-winner Marilynne Robinson, who writes novels with theological depth?
Hope
Those with long memories will recall the “theology of hope” that burst onto the horizon of the late 1960s. As we then followed the pointing fingers of Juergen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg, much conversation ensued, also in secular settings. From the World Future Society to Christian commentary in a flood of books and sermons on the Not Yet, the dialogue went on, Gabe adding his voice in The Rainbow Sign and writing papers for the World Future Society, Dot doing her first banner, diverse hands reaching toward “EPOH” (seeing through “a mirror, dimly,”1 Cor.13:12), her buttons—“Aiglaton” and an interrobanged “Hope.” Now again there is talk of “Hope in a Time of Abandonment” (a Jacque Ellul title from those earlier days). Indeed, the very “ audacity of hope,” as president-elect Obama puts it, has resurfaced in our own troubled days. From the intriguing Surprised by Hope of biblical scholar, N.T. Wright, to the apocalyptic fundamentalism of the Left Behind books and films, it is a good time to revisit “eschatology.” Hence here some rumination from the projected volume 6 of Gabe’s Christian Story series on that subject.
There is hope, and then again there is hope.
1) “I hope it doesn't rain next week during our picnic." In this common usage, hope is desire. We want something in the future because it fits our agenda. Yet there is really no basis for it. Hoping here is wishful thinking.
2) "I hope there will be no earthquake in Massachusetts next year." This is a wish too. But it seems to be of a different order. There is some basis for it. Since earthquakes are quite rare in New England, the chances of this happening seem slender. Yet there have been such before. We felt a rumble in our Cape Cod living room in 1991. Hoping, here still has an "iffy" quality as in 1). It's still wishing, but now there is some rationale for hoping.
3) Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope gave a hint of his willingness to risk a run for president. Indeed, right up to November 4 polls indicated he might well win. And win he did. Hoping here was still uncertain as in the previous cases. Things might have gone differently. Yet the poll data suggested a trajectory toward the future. But so does the” I hope there will be no earthquake in New England….” The difference is that the data made the former patent rather than latent. Hope 3 is warranted hope. Thus the transition from hope as a verb to hope as a noun.
4) "We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner shrine…." (Heb. 6:19). The Christian symbol associated with this text is, of course, the anchor of hope. We have now moved from any kind of iffyness to a "sure and steadfast" hope, an anchor thrown out into the waves of the future and solidly secured.
Where has that anchor landed? In the absolute Future, the world to come. This is the noun for Christians, the Great Hope at the end of history, the last chapter of the Christian story. It is not a sure thing inside of history, not a utopian expectation for our plans and projects, although it has implications for them—some signs of a sobered hope in that history. The final Hope has to do with that coming Day when the wolf will lie down with the lamb, swords will be beaten into plowshares, every flaw will be mended and the prayer of Christ will come true: the Kingdom will arrive and God's will shall be done on earth as well as in heaven. To live out of that hope changes everything.
But why so sure and certain? Such has to do with the warrant, the patent trajectory and thus the relation of hope to a sister virtue, faith: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen" (Heb. 11:1). The anchor buried in the depths of history, wedged in the rock of Incarnation, and on closer inspection, Resurrection. Of course, the inspection is done with the eyes of faith that alone can give us the “assurance of things hoped for.”
While despair paralyzes—the despair so manifest in the face of today’s perils, hope mobilizes. To that the “theology of hope” that runs from Moltmann to Wright witnesses. The confidence that all will ultimately be well because that wellness has already arrived in Jesus Christ impels us to set up signs in the here and now to what will be when the wolf and lamb finally lie down together and the kingdom comes. Such a mobilizing hope and its warrant was spoken of by Karl Barth as he wrote to British Christians in 1941 when their future itself appeared about to be bombed into an extinction far worse than our own present troubles:
Just as Christ, according to the teaching of the whole New Testament, has already borne away sin and destroyed death, so also has He already (according to Col. 2:15) completely disarmed those “principalities and powers”.…in order finally to tread them down under his feet on the day of his coming again (1 Cor 5:15). It is only as shadows without real substance and power that they can still beset us. We Christians of all people, have no right whatsoever to fear and respect them….we should be slighting the resurrection of Jesus Christ and denying His reign at the right hand of the Father, if we forgot that the world in which we live is already consecrated, and if we did not, for Christ’s sake, come to grips spiritedly and resolutely with these evil spirits.
Of such is an audacious hope grounded in faith and expressed in a tough love.
Piety and Politics
Barbara Brown Zikmund pointed out in her October 2004 article in UCNews that “‘Election Day Sermons’ were common practice in 18th century New England.” These sermons took place in a time of church-state alliance, as in Massachusetts, with a cannon roar and “a procession of government officials from the seat of government to a nearby church” where the appointed pastor held forth for several hours on the theology of statecraft and the moral duties of elected officials. Our changed circumstances, among them the welcome separation of church and state, still allow us to learn from these Congregational practices.
In such a sermon, for our times, in one’s own congregation, the pastor could point out that this Congregational legacy goes back to the earlier Reformed heritage in affirming Christ’s rule over voting booth and counting house as well as the soul and the church. It harkens back to the time when Christians, confronted by the emperor’s demand that all Rome’s citizens must vow that “Caesar is Lord” said a firm No. Rather, “Jesus is Lord!.”--the first Christian creed. Many paid the price for challenging the political Powers-that Be by a Christian witness that brought death in the coliseum.
Yet parishioners may ponder: how can the church today make such a witness? Does the preacher tell members for whom to cast their ballot? Do we pass out voting guides on issues and candidates ? Does it entail having an office for lobbying in Washington ? Indeed, most denominations do have the latter, although when making a case on specifics, our representatives are understood to be speaking for themselves on the merits of the case, or against the background of resolutions of denominational judicatories. Also, as with other comparable efforts, such as policy declarations in denominational meetings or by their representatives, these are considered to be speaking to their members not for them. (On a local level, the same double focus would apply to a social action or mission committee, another helpful venue for a congregation to assure a public witness being made.) None of these approaches preclude individual pastors or parishioners making their voices heard with other Christians or interfaith groups on specific issues. On Cape Cod, for example, where homelessness is a pressing concern, UCC pastors have been highly visible at meetings of elected officials, appealing for monies for health and human services and the defense of the rights of the homeless. So too the Massachusetts Conference leadership has played a key role in organizing constituents on issues that run from gambling to global warming. And it can mean that clergy, collectively or individually, out in the world can make specific witness in marching deeds and unambiguous words.
As well as giving this kind of theological grounding for witness in the public square, and the multiple ways of doing it, what might go into an election day sermon today? Here is one guideline from our forebears’ practice and one learning from church experience ever since. All that was said was grounded in carefully exegeted Scripture; pastors called officials to account before the biblical norms of justice, peace, freedom and order.
They also did something called more recently in ecumenical circles, “middle axioms.” A middle axiom, or “middle principle”, is a churchly consensus as to how the more general biblical norms relate to our time and place. Thus, to connect with our present conversation on race, a faithful election day sermon today could declare not simply for justice, but assert that the church universal, learning from the struggles of the 1960s, walks down from generality in the direction of specificity to a middle norm, namely, justice for black citizens in housing, voting, education and public accommodations. , A candidate or an elected official is to be held accountable to these standards, thus representing “the mind of the church” in this area of moral concern. Here an important role is given to the church ecumenically in interpreting Scripture, affording a judgment avoiding, on the one hand, vague generalities, and on the other, pretending that the pastor knows the mind of God on a particular candidate or question. Indeed, that responsibility belongs to the individual member-- especially in a church tradition like ours which trusts that the Holy Spirit works from the bottom up rather than top down.
To this one must add another guideline,--this from Paul’s commentary on the church as a Body with any parts. Among them he lists “prophets”—the forthspeakers/forespeakers, those with their eyes on the not Yet, specially as it collides with the now, and thus regularly in trouble with those wed to the givens. Martin Luther King, Jr. is an example in our time, paying, as prophets often do, with their lives. Interestingly, this prophet planted the very seeds of the middle axioms cited above, as is often the case at the inception of such. So we need our prophets in the Body of Christ, and also, there, will be moments when even the non-prophets are called to risk their “Yes” to the not Yet and thus their “No” to the now.
A concluding caveat, from Reinhold Niebuhr who knew more than most how to link piety and politics: be alert to the sins of the righteous as well as those discernible in their foes, self-righteous fury—“God, I thank you I a not like other people.”(Luke 18:11). Not only is this the baleful sin of pride, but it also denies to the presumed reformer the sobriety that understands the limits of all political sorties, the self-criticism needed for effective action, and the ambiguity in the motives of all activists. No doubt this “Christian realism” accompanied those preachers crossing the 18th century greens.
The election day sermons of former times are said to have helped shape the ethical premises of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Rightly understood in terms of our new context, this practice could make its own important impact today, as well.
Home
The novel, Home, (finalist for the National Book Award) by the author of Gilead which won a Pulitzer prize several years ago should be read with full awareness of Marilynne Robinson’s love for Calvin (her dining room is lined with his books and commentaries), Jonathan Edwards, Bonhoeffer, Barth et al., and what she describes as a “selective” appropriation of classical Christian teaching from the Apostles Creed forward. To grasp some of the background theology at work in her novels, The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998) is helpful, as is her article “Credo” in a recent Harvard Divinity School Bulletin (see on-line route to it on the Divinity School site).
As our Cape Cod Theological Tabletalk group read weekly along in Home , we constantly found the author working, tacitly, and sometimes explicitly with deep theological themes--from “grace to glory,” the very names of some of her characters. The “prodigal son,” Jack, returns to the town of Gilead, wondering if he will be accepted, especially so by his retired and ailing Presbyterian pastor father Boughton and the aging but still active Congregational pastor Ames. We see grace at work even in the reprobate, as in Jack’s solidarity with the aborning civil rights movement of the 50s in spite of his own tawdry conduct on other matters, and this juxtaposed to the good intentions but also the insensitivities of the otherwise pious clergy. And then there is sister Glory, also back home, with her own failed relationship, but her caring life with both Jack and Father Boughton. Ambiguity everywhere! But also grace everywhere (simul iustus et peccator?), and even latent questions of “predestination” the latter talked about by Jack and family, with an interjection of “people can change!” by Lila, the new young wife of old Ames, and thus Donald Baillie’s “paradox of grace” taking off from St. Paul’s “I…yet not I.” All this played out in the quotidian, slow-moving world of an Iowa town. Given the stunning reviews of the book, and its enthusiastic readership, is author Robinson right that a presumedly secular society really cares about theology, even though they might not recognizes it as that? READ THIS BOOK…and join our on-line discussion of it in the Internet Confessing Christ Open Forum.
Comings and Goings
2008 was a year of more comings than goings for the two of us. Wonderful family gatherings at “home,” in Treetops, by children, grandchildren and visiting friends and colleagues; the 25th annual Craigville Theological Colloquy on “Confronting the Many Faces of Violence” at the Tabernacle 500 feet away (and preparing for the 26th --“Spirituality and the Holy Spirit,” July 13-17, 2009, (don’t miss it J); the 15th year of “Confessing Christ” calling the UCC to remember its theological charters and ecumenical commitments in our active Massachusetts chapter and beyond ; a consultation-to-be in February, 2009 on “God and Globalization,” featuring Max Stackhouse (whose 3 edited and one written volume on the subject make him a premier commentator), co-sponsored by the Acton Congregational Church, UCC with the support of Confessing Christ (ACC being led now by its new pastor, Andy Armstrong and spouse, Janice-- fondly-remembered former students. Skye, Chris, Cole and Kyr are active members there); Other remembered students, Steven Small and Gail Miller scheduled to be the new co-conveners of Confessing Christ ( a national meeting in the offing in Lancaster, PA in April organized by present national convener, Lee Barrett, to recall the UCC to its ecumenical origins and commitments) ; Dot’ regular get-togethers by presence and phone with colleagues Mary Bosley and Betty Lehman; Gabe participating in a weekly Theological Tabletalk group, spending 4 months this year on the remarkable Secular Age by Charles Taylor.... Yes, some local goings too: struggles for the homeless in a county whose commissioners chose to defund important health and human services programs ; trips to doctors for both of us octogenarians; Dot’s painting, helping to train her grand-children in the same; Gabe contributing to a Festschrift for Carl Braaten and one for Max Stackhouse, and to a surprise book of Eerdmans authors for our memorable publisher, Bill; along with Internet e-mailing to family and friends, daily comments on a Confessing Christ Open Forum and sometime CC blog, upstairs-downstairs drafts of parts of our joint memoir; checking now and then on YouTube for the use of Gabe’s series on our Christian Basics ; a videocam greeting to former parishioners on the 110th anniversary of Grace Church, Duquesne, Pa , a congregation we served in the 50’s ; trips now and then to speak to Harvard Lutherans about the UCC or to give a paper at a NACCC symposium in the Henry Ward Beecher church in Brooklyn on “the church and the public square”(a congregation well-served by friend David Fisher); almost finished on work toward the publication of all 48 of these Newsletters under the title of On a Journey of Faith and Thought: Epistles on the Passing Scene, 1967-2008; finally, our 16th year of almost daily trips to a local health for swimming and cycling. Along with the good Lord’s pleasure, the latter has helped to keep us fit in this 63rd year of wedlock!
As ever in Advent, Gabe and Dot |