The Little Friar

What is the role of faith in the pursuit of social justice?  Should Christian faith have a public, legal/political expression, or should its sole focus be the regeneration and transformation of committed followers?  Wherever one lands in that debate, history will demonstrate that Christianity has indeed played a public role in legal and political action.  Charles Marsh argues for a perspective of mission of the church in The Beloved Community that demonstrates that Christians should indeed see a public strategy for social change.  But that strategy must remain rooted within the theological expression that brings about regeneration and transformation as the mission of the church to inspire the pursuit of the beloved community.  His book is divided into three parts:  The first describes the faith-based origins of the civil rights movement in two notable figures from that era; MLK and Clarence Jordan’s Koinonia Farms.  The two leaders were motivated in...

In Sex, Gender and Christian Ethics , Lisa Cahill offers readers a way of reasoning that seeks to overcome the harmful social effects of Enlightenment universals, while avoiding the tribalism that radical deconstructionists leave us with.  The goal is to practice a healthy Christian morality that avoids patterns of domination and exploitation of women and minorities that has masqueraded as "Christian" moral tradition. "This book", Cahill explains, "is written from a feminist perspective, by which is meant simply a commitment to equal personal respect and equal social status for women and for men" (p 1). Cahill can be understood to be working predominately within Stassen's way of reasoning dimension of his character ethics grid, and with the principles vector.  This is important for understanding what she is doing, for although she has Christ's incarnation and attention to the embodied needs of real people as an "all-inclusive love" (p 1...

Traci West in her Disruptive Christian Ethics:  When Racism and Women's Lives Matter proposes an alternative way of doing Christian social ethics.  West can be interpreted as working primarily within the Way of Seeing dimension, with the strategies for social change variable.  West proposes a liberative Christian ethic in order to bring about positive social change in which the particular experiences of the marginalized will be valued in the broader context of a caring community.  Attention to the perspective and experience of those who are typically not considered provides our Christian social ethics with tools for analysis that can disrupt the notions, and practices of hegemony and oppression. She argues that the popular methods are primarily conceptual and depend on theory to do their hermeneutical and strategic work. This is problematic, since the theory-driven models are not equipped to deal with the particular concrete experiences of those who exist on the m...

In Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust , David Gushee uses the story of the Holocaust as an inductive study of the ethics of non-Jewish Europeans who risked their lives to help Jews.  What was it about them and their ethics that enabled some Gentiles to see Jews so differently than the majority of Gentiles of their era?  Why did some Gentiles see Jews as belonging within the realm of their moral responsibility when most did not?  How do we reproduce this way of reasoning within Christians today? This was Gushee's dissertation, and he wrote it without attention to Glen Stassen's Holistic Character Ethics method.  Yet one can see the presence of Glen's method within the study, and attention to all four dimensions.  Gushee is primarily working within what Stassen calls the "Way of Reasoning" dimension with a variable that will be added to his method in the new edition of Kingdom Ethics .  This new variable in that dimension is what Stassen calls Historical V...

In After Virtue , MacIntyre traces the development of Western moral philosophy through the Enlightenment into our current postmodern era to make the case that our current moral discourse is in a deep crisis.  He argues that the moral decline of Western culture has occurred in three stages:  (1) moral theory and practice are grounded in something objective; (2) an unsuccessful attempt to ground that objectivity in something uniquely human (e.g., Hume attempted to ground morality in the passions, Kant in reason and Kierkeegard in radical choice); and (3) the rejection of claims of objectivity altogether. For MacIntyre, contemporary Western culture is in stage three and consequently moral discourse recedes into personal opinion.  The result is the Nietzschean emphasis on power as a way to assert one's opinion in society.  MacIntyre argues that the key to our current crisis in moral discourse is the upshot of rejecting the Aristotelian notion of a telos for human...

Just the title of Uncommon Decency gives a hint at the direction of his argument.  Mouw is encouraging Christians in particular, to practice a method of social interaction that is not typical in the history of our communities.  Decency unfortunately, is not a trait popularly attributed to Christians.  That is not only a disparaging statement, it is a factual one that recognizes a real past of accumulated social interaction, and the difficulty of living a life of conviction in a sinful and increasingly pluralist world.  The problem is made clear when he talks about convictions:  "Typically people who are good at being civil often lack strong convictions and people who have strong convictions often lack civility" (p. 12).  In an effort to promote a better way of being Christians, Mouw advocates a "convicted civility" (p. 12). Convictions, Mouw argues, are beliefs that are held with a passionate intensity and without willingness to compromise (p...

How are we to think of the relationship between Christians and politics, or church and state?  Since Constantine adopted Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, history has seen Christianity and government intertwined in various ways.  The blending of church and empire caused Christians to think of the gospel in generalizing terms to support Christendom, and Christian ethical claims that everyone in the empire could adhere to.  Even more troubling, when the emperor became Christian, Christian ethical analysis was done in consideration of Constantine, i.e. the ruler, resulting in an ethics of vocation in response to the question should the "Christian" ruler be expected to practice Christian faith and be held to the same Christian Christian standards as everyone else?  Hence vocation became another grid that ethical analisis was filtered through. Also, after the Enlightenment, meta-ethics -- ethical foundationalism, utilitarianism, situationalism...

In The Common Good and Christian Ethics , David Hollenbach argues that two pressing problems have demonstrated the inadequacy of the prevailing virtues of "tolerance" and "non-judgmentalism" in liberal democratic culture.  These two problems are the existence of the urban poor and the increasing globalization of the international community.  Hollenbach maintains that in the case of the urban poor, especially those of African-American heritage, racial "tolerance" has increased, but the plight of the poor in the cities of America has stayed the same or worsened in the global community, Hollenbach demonstrates that a way to make judgments on the actions of people in other cultures is necessary.  For Hollenbach, this demonstrates the inadequacy of "tolerance" as the defining virtue of society.  He argues that more is needed:  A vision for the common good that moves beyond tolerance to address these pressing social problems. Hollenbac...

Scripture:  Matthew 20:1-16 Jesus tells us the Kingdom of Heaven is like a landowner who hired people to work, and who reserved the right to choose how to pay those workers--and avoided conventional wisdom in the process. Jesus is describing a God who is not stingy, whose dream is to bless the whole world. Those who heard Jesus' parable complained because the landowner (God) didn't think like them. Like the disciples, we hear Jesus' words as an invitation to get involved in God's work at any hour, in any life situation, without needing to analyze how others are called or rewarded. "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven," we pray as followers of Jesus. We need not stop to think about how God's Kingdom or God's way of doing things will be scandalously different than the ways we might construct with our prejudices and limited sight. God is God. God gets to choose. Not us. Prayer:  Merciful God, your ways are beyond us, but w...

Darryl Dash's How to Grow:  Applying the Gospel to All of Your Life explores, in a conversational style, the importance topics of spiritual growth and development in the Christian life.  This is an extremely useful, habit-based approach to the Christian spiritual life.  But it's also a deeply-formed spirituality that realizes the importance of grace:  Dash is very direct at saying what spiritual growth is not; it isn't reaching a new level spirituality in a kind of "levelling up" way, but it means to constantly return to the ABCs of the gospel and grow in them and their applications.  Spiritual growth is not something that we can muster up by ourselves; it's not a form of self-help but it is an utter dependence and reliance on God and God's grace. Dash's approach ultimately rejects the individualization that names so much Christian spirituality, in favor of a worship-full life together with others. How to Grow analyzes not only the "bad"...

Alistair Begg's Made for His Pleasure:  Ten Benchmarks of a Vital Faith originally published twenty years ago.  This new edition, entirely unchanged from the first, is still a simple, yet profound, collection of thoughts about the elementary elements of a vital faith. I knew I was in trouble from the opening pages of the first chapter.  To illustrate the Christian's need for spiritual fitness, Begg points out the need for physical fitness.  course he subordinates physical fitness to spiritual fitness, but nonetheless the conviction had begun.  And it only continued as he covered prayer, personal sacrifice, the marriage relationship, service, laziness, evangelism and others. Particularly poignant was Begg's chapter on humility.  After the Bible, that chapter should be required reading for every Christian.   The book may be small, but its impact can be enormous. _____________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publish...

Les Parrott's Love Like That:  5 Relationship Secrets from Jesus is a real gift.  Parrott, in his usual, approachable style, gives us sustained meditations on the five spiritual practices -- mindfulness, approachable, grace-filled, boldness, and self-giving love -- that are at the heart of every Christian relationship.  Some, doubtless, will expect that Parrott focuses (as do most of his books) on dating and marriage.  But Love Like That is much bigger.  Here, every relationship finds its heart.   This is an amazing, up-front look at how Jesus lived his life -- and a vocation for how we must live ours! Spend time with this book.  It's deceptively simple, but its message is the transformative message of the Gospel. _____________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.

Marcus Peter Rempel's Life at the End of Us vs Them:  Cross Culture Stories is a book I expected to love.  In the end, it's a book I believe is important enough to engage, yet ultimately found falling a bit flat in my own soul. Rempel's writing reflects important sustained and humble attentiveness to his experiences as well as intellectual engagement with significant cultural and theological writers.  I was impressed with Rempel's self-awareness of his own limitations and the potential for abuse and misunderstanding that can come in addressing the issues he raises.  The chapters in this book run the length and breadth of hot topics covered in churches, social media and politics. It's his personal confessions that stand out as he wrestled with understanding indigenous/settler relations, liberal and religious uses of violence, sexual orientation and gender abuses, economics, terrorists, etc.  Rempel hits all the talking points often with surprisi...

"A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without the cross" (p. 193). This famous phrase by H. Richard Niebuhr (Reinhold's brother) represents the progression of Christianity in America from a dynamic constructive experiment grounded in the sovereignty of God in the seventeenth-century to the institutionalized liberalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century.  Niebuhr traces this progression in his book, The Kingdom of God in America (KGA). Niebuhr's project in KGA is to do a historical analysis of the common threads of Christianity in America in order to understand the current trends of his day and to project the direction of faith in the future.   He focuses on history in order to let Christianity speak for itself and not superimpose an ideological structure (like Marxism or Freudianism) over Christianity to understand its influence.  The starting point of Niebuhr's analysis...

In Moral Man and Immoral Society, Reinhold Niebuhr argues that there is a sharp distinction between the moral and social behavior of individuals and the moral and social behavior of groups.  Individuals can act altruistically, but groups can seldom transcend themselves and therefore always act out of self-interest.  Because of this distinction Niebuhr advocates a dual ethic:  An ethic for the individual and a political ethic for groups. For Niebuhr, the ideal of a just society will never be realized because it is a vision rooted in the conscience of the individual -- who has resources for living in groups that are not available to the groups themselves.   These two resources are reason and conscience.   Groups lack a collective conscience and often use reason for their own purposes.  (Niebuhr does say that individuals use reason for their own self-interest, but they are, at times, able to transcend themselves and use reason altruistically.)...

I've fallen a bit behind in posting my devotionals, but this one is from last Monday. Scripture:  James 3:13--4:8 In Proverbs, we learn how the foolish and unrighteous contrast to the  wise and righteous in their reactions to hardship. Now we learn how  this plays out within the church as a community. The church that James  is writing to is caught up in the middle of social upheaval and an  uncertainty about how to deal with those changes. James does not  specifically indicate what the issues are or which side of those  issues he is on, but he reminds everyone of the need for mercy and  peace. James also differentiates between earthly and divine wisdom.  Earthly wisdom seeks political power and attracts ambition, while  divine wisdom is peaceful and "full of mercy." Conflict itself is seen as the result of foolishness. These conflicts  are not born of being correct or of being wise. They result from  greed, covetousness and a...

Chuck Ammons' Life in the Overflow is a challenge to the blase form of American Christianity that passes so often in our culture.  Life with Jesus, Ammons is quick and right to contend, is a transformed life -- radically transformed by the love of God in Jesus Christ.  We content ourselves with second best.  Ammons reminds his readers that there is more -- much more -- to the life of faith, and the way to receive more is to let go of what we have. That said, Life in the Overflow left me feeling a bit uneasy.  Not in what he calls us to, but in the way he issues that call.  For example, Ammons encourages that we self-identify as "saints".  While the New Testament is quick to insist that the Church is a body of the saintly, it would be a mistake to understand "saint" in individual terms -- much less as one who is without sin.  The saints, after all, are the ones most aware of our less-than-ness.  In the end, I like the book, but I feel ther...

McClendon's first volume of his 3-volume Systematic Theology is Ethics .  Why have ethics as a starting place for an in-depth look at theology?  He does not ask and answer that question without first opening chapter one by asking "what is theology?"  His answer:  "[Theology is] the discovery, understanding, and transformation of the convictions of a convictional community, including the discovery and critical revision of their relation to one another and to whatever else there is" (page 23).  This description of theology gives a hint about the direction this volume on ethics will take.  We begin with ethics in order to understand the shape of our theological convictions (discovery) within the Christian community (page 45).  His intent is to discover how theology looks on the ground within the Christian community and then to understand the doctrines that support the common life and shape of the community. To be sure, the community he is referring to...

Love and Justice is a collection of various articles by Reinhold Niebuhr during the lead up to World War II.  Niebuhr draws on the resources of the Christian faith to address his contemporary national and international issues.   Central to any application of Christianity to any moral, political or social issue was the "problem of love and justice" (p. 9). Niebuhr defines love as the perfect sacrificial commitment to the "other".  This kind of love is demonstrated in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.   In Christ, this perfect agape is demonstrated by his willingness to give himself up to the cross for the redemption of the world.  The cross is the perfect symbol for love.  Niebuhr contends that this kind of love is to be held is the ideal Christian virtue, but not possible in the real world.   Because of sin -- the self-interest of individuals and groups -- another virtue besides love is necessary to govern human relationships....

When Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan, he finished the story with the admonition "Go and do likewise".  William Spohn makes that command the title of his book ( Go and Do Likewise:  Jesus and Ethics ), in which he probes the implications for contemporary Christian obedience to that command.  What does it mean for us to follow Jesus' command to "go and do likewise" today? Spohn, asks and answers that question as a matter of Christian ethics, and when asked the question "what does Jesus have to do with Christian ethics" some Christian ethicists say "everything" and others "very little".  (Spoiler alert:  I'm in the "everything" camp.)  Spohn agrees with the Christians that claim "everything" but his appropriation of the "everything" sees Christ-the-norm very differently.  Indeed, Christ is the normative paradigm for the Christian moral life (page 10).  But Spohn does not relate Jesus to ...

Andrea Lingle's Credulous:  A Journey through Life, Faith, and the Bulletin takes us on a journey of one "life-long Methodist" -- who both comes from a Methodist minster's family and has married a Methodist minister -- into the twists and turns of life in the journey with Jesus in the Church.  But this isn't your typical church-memoir of late.  Instead, Lingle finds her life's story narrated through the themes of a "church bulletin" (one of those leaflets you're handed that give you an idea what happens each worship service). With each chapter following a theme -- welcome, opening hymn, scripture reading, sermon, communion, and so on -- together they become a series of anecdotes, reflections about the larger world in which the Church finds itself, alongside some deep scriptural reflection. The chapter on "Offering" was by far my favorite.  It moves from a basic description of how churches approach this part of the service to the a...

Cornel West's Race Matters  was one of the more important non-curricular texts I read in seminary. The prospects for democracy in the U.S. are connected to our ability to see and comprehend tragedy.  The plight of African Americans in the US is that presence that provides a lens through which to see all human suffering, and thus broaden our ability to create a better society.  But, we must not simply reduce suffering to the typical conversation about race alone.  That perspective alone is too narrow. We must use the conversation about the treatment of "the least of these" to include the plight of everyday people (p. 150),that is, all people facing oppression who are commonly left out of the conversation about the common good. There are common foes in this battle for a better democracy; capitalism and racial reasoning. With capitalism, we see that the invasion of marketplace reasoning into the black community has caused hedonistic a pursuit of pleasure to replac...

In Democracy and Tradition , Jeffrey Stout (with whom I rarely agree) takes up Alasdair MacIntyre's (with whom I do tend to agree) definition of a tradition -- a narrative through time that has withstood external and internal challenges to its beliefs, texts and authorities—and argues that democracy is more than a minimalist form of representative government, but a burgeoning tradition.  In contrast to MacIntyre's conclusions about the liberal democratic tradition (abbreviated LDT hereinafter) -- that it is vacuous morally and has contributed to the ethical regression of Western society -- Stout argues that democracy is a robust tradition that "inculcates certain habits of reasoning, certain attitudes toward deference and authority in political discussion, and love for certain goods and virtues ..." (page 3). By utilizing MacIntyre's definition of a tradition, Stout is attempting two projects:  (1) redeeming democracy from resentment and (2) trying to create s...