New Wine, New Wineskins

Editor’s Introduction

It is political primary season in America. As the nation gears up for the next Presidential election, we will be hearing a great deal about moral values. Presidential candidates understand which way the wind is blowing, and that they must articulate “moral values” if their campaigns are to build momentum.

This issue of Cultural Encounters deals specifically with various moral issues and liberation themes, such as concern for race, the war on terror, poverty, HIV/AIDS, and the environment. It is not the editorial committee’s aim “to endorse” every point in the pages that follow, but to raise crucial, and sometimes controversial, issues of life and death as topics the church must engage—during the campaign season and beyond. On the one hand, it is important that we not be carried away by every wind of doctrine (Eph. 4:14) but test the spirits (1 Jn. 4:1-6). On the other hand, it is important that God’s holy and powerful Spirit of love carry us forward to care for those beaten down by the Katrinas and Tsunamis of life. While never easy to balance, we need to pursue orthodoxy as well as orthopraxis, matching biblical conviction with compassion—a truly liberating theology.

With these tension points and concerns firmly in mind, it is appropriate that we begin this issue with consideration of the work of one of the leading (and also one of the most controversial) liberation theologians, Brazilian Leonardo Boff. Boff was silenced by the Roman Catholic Church for what it deemed heretical teachings. Lutheran theologian Rudolf von Sinner writing from Brazil speaks of Boff as a Protestant Catholic—“Protestant” because of his protest of ecclesiastical power and “Catholic” because of the cosmic dimensions of his thought. Von Sinner also maintains that Boff’s ecclesiology is a Christology from the people, and therefore Protestant, emphasizing the priesthood of all believers. Moreover, it is an ecclesiology of liberation in that it is “built up by and from the poor.” Von Sinner also claims that Boff’s ecclesiology is truly catholic—open to those traditions beyond the walls of Roman Catholicism.

While the church had a privileged—sacramental—status as “God’s presence in the world” in Boff’s earlier writings, his later writings “give the impression that the Church is giving way to the cosmos as the privileged prism” of God’s sacramental presence. And while von Sinner affirms Boff’s cosmic theology as a corrective to Protestantism’s “overly rational and individualistic” tendencies, he cautions against Boff’s “overly harmonious view” of God’s relation to the world (panentheistically conceived) “that would not do justice to the ambiguity of human existence.” Going further, while von Sinner affirms the contextual and truly catholic nature of Boff’s theology, he draws attention to the loss of “precise focus” in his later theological reflections. And while Boff’s concern for the concrete situation of the poor and authentic communal existence is commendable, he “tends toward an excess of concreteness” in his deliberations on divine perichoresis, as von Sinner maintains. Von Sinner’s essay leads us to ask how we can, on the one hand, maintain concern for the particularity and uniqueness of God’s revelation in Christ and the unique significance of the church while, on the other hand, articulating a sense of the comprehensive scope of salvation? All that follows bears this question in mind.

The comprehensive scope of Christ’s saving work means that Christ has a bearing not only on Roman Catholicism in Latin America but also on evangelicalism and Pentecostalism in South and North America combined. Building on his constructive assessment of Boff, von Sinner also criticizes both evangelicalism for overemphasizing the individual in God’s salvific purposes and neo-Pentecostalism for its prosperity gospel preaching. Von Sinner’s critique hits close to home, drawing attention to the fact that the concern over winds of doctrine blowing us off course is something that concerns us ultimately north as well as south of the border.

The next essay, by Gary Deddo, draws attention to North American evangelicalism’s excessive preoccupation with the autonomous individual and how this impacts negatively the movement’s engagement of race problems. Deddo articulates a Trinitarian model of human existence that sees the individual as bound up in a relational matrix with God and other humans. Grounded in this Trinitarian model, Deddo argues that the greatest problem with racism (and even some correctives) is the absolutizing of “race” and relativizing of the more fundamental reality—that everyone is our neighbor. Deddo also reframes ethical obligation in view of this Trinitarian anthropology. Over against the recurring danger of the Galatian heresy (Gal. 3:1ff.), where “we begin with faith in grace but end with trying to muster hope in our own works,” Deddo maintains that “a faithful Trinitarian anthropology announces that ethical obligation is founded upon the completed work of Christ, who has created and restored humanity in actuality.” This perspective bears upon all ethical concerns, including matters of race. It follows from this orientation that Christ is the neighbor who loves those outside his circle, including his enemies. We have the privilege of participating in his reality and bearing witness in our lives to what he has already accomplished on behalf of the church and the world. Jesus’ identity and activity makes it possible for us to be authentic witnesses, freeing us from indifference and autonomous activity to love our neighbor, whoever our neighbor might be.

But who is my neighbor? Writing from New Zealand, Murray Rae brings the question to bear on the West’s war on terror and all its talk of Christian values. In the States, we are so bombarded with the rhetoric of Christian values and the terror campaign that we might fail to hear Jesus’ stump speeches on enemy love. In such situations, it is important to listen to brothers and sisters in Christ from around the world. In view of Jesus’ ethic disclosed in the biblical narratives, Rae is wary of talk of “Christian values.” He believes that we in the West isolate values from this biblical context. What is needed is “a properly theological account of Christian ethics.” He goes on to say: “The rhetoric of Christian values often serves this reductive purpose and thereby constitutes an attempt to preserve the perceived moral value of Christian faith while abandoning the central claims of the gospel, most especially the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” whereby God reorders creaturely life. Like Deddo, Rae also draws attention to Galatians. The fruit of the Spirit “are not values to be striven for, but reminders of what outcomes should ensue from our participation in the story of the gospel.” Whereas talk of “values” often involves removal of ethics from the particular gospel story, talk of “reminders” does not. On the latter view, the Gospel remains indispensable, and so too its radical call to discipleship.

Whether we are dealing with racism (as in the case of Deddo) or the war on terror (which Rae analyzes), Rae argues that revenge has no place in the ethic of the crucified and risen Christ’s kingdom. Whereas revenge breeds more violence, forgiveness—while costly—follows from adherence to Christ’s story. “Such acts of forgiveness cannot be ascribed a value; that is to say, they carry with them no surety, no banknote guarantee of success. They are acts of faith, rather, in which we entrust the outcome to the God who raised Jesus from the dead.” In spite of the Gospel story and all the talk today of “What would Jesus do?” there probably won’t be much talk of neighbor love or enemy love—certainly not a neighbor like Bin Laden—during the presidential primary season’s debates over moral values. Again, the candidates know which way the wind is blowing.

Which wind, though, are we concerned for as Christians? The cultural currents around us, or the wind of the Holy Spirit, who births a high pressure zone spirituality? We can never move toward enemy love if we are not captured by God’s love in Christ. For R.N. Frost, God’s love poured out by Christ’s Spirit “is like a high pressure zone in the souls of those captivated by Christ.” Like the wind that flows through the Columbia River Gorge from high pressure to low pressure, those compelled forward by the love of Christ will give themselves to causes requiring social activism, without being exhausted by such causes. With Rae, Frost is wary of what often passes for “Christian”—whether we are talking about values or love. We need to place love in the biblical context of Christ’s call on his disciples’ lives. “Moral values” as such will not involve the imitation of Christ’s kingdom: “What cannot be imitated is Jesus’ heart. If his Spirit is not present in those who claim to follow him, the transforming wind of his pneuma is also absent. But if the Spirit is present, so is a willingness to sacrifice all selfish ambitions” for one’s friends, as well as for one’s enemies. Moral lessons, propositions, and values will not do it—only God’s sacrificial, enemy-loving love. Such a perspective leads to infinite compassion—“Our care, and our compassion for others, is placed within a frame of reference as big as God himself” and will spill forth from our union and communion with God to a world that desperately “hungers to be loved.”

As the Christian community is swept along by God’s costly and expansive love poured out in our lives through the Spirit of the crucified, risen, and ascended Christ (Deddo, Rae and Frost), God’s people will inevitably engage in holistic outreach and action along the lines noted in the reflection pieces by Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo, Susan Slonaker, and Peter Illyn. These “Cultural Reflections” essays are not systematic treatises on theology and culture, but reflections that involve wrestling with our Christian faith in our concrete cultural context.

Wallis speaks of “two great hungers in our world” today—the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social justice—and these hungers are inspiring a movement that is sweeping the nation. In this context, Wallis calls for a new and expansive conversation over moral values, which is concerned with more than the two issues of abortion and marriage. Wallis believes it is not only important that political discourse include this discussion on moral values, but that this conversation on moral values transforms politics. “Politics is failing. While one should not withdraw from politics, one doesn’t just join politics either. One has to change it, move it, transform it. You can’t just replace one wet-fingered politician with another. You have to ‘change the wind,’ and then politicians move in a different direction.” Speaking like a revivalist and civil rights preacher at times, Wallis alludes to “Amazing Grace” and “altar calls.” It reminds me that without a fresh outpouring of God’s Spirit and without a firm grasp of the triune God’s redemptive ways, we will not be able to contend against the crises of our day. Without a firm hope that Jesus has gone through the grave to be raised by the Spirit, and that we are called to ride his Spirit’s storm of holy love, we will not be able to do in our day what Wilberforce and Newton, Wesley, Finney, and King did in theirs.

Tony Campolo and Susan Slonaker of REACH Ministries address the church’s failure to respond redemptively and compassionately in the HIV/AIDS crisis situation. Rather than reaching out to these modern day lepers with the healing touch of Christ, we often call out, “Unclean! Unclean!” When we act in this way, we fail to experience a fresh sense of Christ’s presence in our lives. Quoting Jesus’ words in Matthew 25, Campolo says: “Whatever we do ‘for the least of these,’ we do for Christ himself. The Christ, who died on Calvary, who was resurrected, and who is in the world today, chooses to use children such as those found at the REACH Camps as a sacramental means through which to present Himself to us. Mother Teresa once said, ‘Whenever I look into the eyes of a man dying of AIDS, I have the eerie sensation that Jesus is staring back at me.’” Mother Teresa and Campolo have taken a lot of heat for such statements, oftentimes from religious leaders who have not likely taken the time to reach out to “the least of these” of whom Mother Teresa and Campolo speak.

I have the rare privilege of looking into the eyes of Mother Teresa whenever I meet with Susan Slonaker of REACH Ministries. “Caught in the whirlwind of God,” this tiny woman is a mighty force to reckon with. However, if it weren’t for God’s overwhelming whirlwind presence in her life, and her being overwhelmed by the beautiful and often neglected children stricken with HIV/AIDS, she would not be able to cope with the religious establishment and secular forces that stand in the way of ministering Christ’s healing touch to these children. Woe to the person who stands in the way of letting the little children come unto him. I encourage you—the reader—to get involved with REACH Ministries, to be caught up in the whirlwind of God as you reach out to touch a child in need through REACH. As in the case of Slonaker—whose life changed dramatically when she was “whipped off” her “feet by the whirling wind of the Spirit,” your life will never be the same again.

I also encourage you to consider carefully the whirlwind world tour of “the Cossack and the Cannibal,” which Peter Illyn of Restoring Eden narrates. You will come face to face with a Christian tribal leader from Papua New Guinea named Yat, and will learn that your neighbor not only lives next door to you, but also lives across the world, and is impacted by the choices we in the West have made for centuries—choices that are taking the natural world around him and his people away from them forever. Yat senses which way the wind is blowing this primary season, and the winds of change do not bode well for him. Hopefully, as you read, you will be moved as Yat was moved in South Dakota—not standing before the finished monument to the four presidents, but before the unfinished monument to Crazy Horse. How crazy is it that for all our talk about moral values in America, and access to Christian Scripture, the church in America has “become so embedded in the culture of our present world that we do not recognize that our way of living, which we implicitly view as divinely sanctioned, is not rooted robustly in biblical truth,” as Illyn notes. Whether we are thinking about those of other races, adherents of other religions with whom the West is at war, little children with HIV/AIDS, or the indigenous peoples of Papua New Guinea, we are thinking about our neighbors. What is our God thinking about us? And which way is the wind blowing in your life?

—Paul Louis Metzger, Editor

Leonardo Boff–a Protestant Catholic

In this essay, Rudolf von Sinner offers a reinterpretation of Liberation theologian Leonardo Boff’s theology. He describes Boff as a “Protestant Catholic.” Boff was Catholic in the sense of being a theologian with a very broad cosmic vision and protestant because he was not afraid to confront ecclesiastical power-bases and dogmatic theologies. Boff sought always to establish his theology in the reality of life, not in ivory towers. Von Sinner highlights four major themes in Boff’s theology: the Church, the Cosmos, the Triune God, and Praise to God—explaining the significance of each, while remaining aware of Boff’s shifts of opinion over time. Von Sinner points out that as Boff moved further away from his Roman Catholic origins, his theology became less religious and more spiritual—concerned with reconciliation and justice for all people. Regardless of the specific Protestant and Catholic aspects of his theology, von Sinner explains that Boff was always Evangelical, in that the Gospel was his principal guide for life’s journey.

Neighbors in Racial Reconciliation: The Contribution of a Trinitarian Theological Anthropology

Progress in racial reconciliation among evangelical Christians, especially at the attitudinal level, has been documented and acknowledged. Yet there is the recognition that injustice along racial lines has persisted to a significant degree. It has been suggested by Emerson and Smith in their book Divided by Faith that such persistence is related, at least in part, to certain theological roots of Evangelical belief. This essay explores those roots and shows that a fully Trinitarian theological anthropology addresses and calls them into question and recommends a more faithfully Christian and so Evangelical foundation. More particularly the love for the neighbor embodied in the Person and Work of Christ and rooted in the Trinitarian life revisions both the nature of the problems of racism and racialization and also shows the way forward towards true reconciliation through participation in the accomplished renewal of humanity as neighbors one to another in Jesus Christ.

The Ethics of Jesus or, Why Christian Values are a Bad Idea

In an effort to show the continuing relevance of Christian ethical ideals to contemporary culture, Christians have commonly attempted to commend the gospel in the language of values. I argue that this is a mistake. The reduction of the gospel to a set of values constitutes a betrayal of the gospel itself and contributes to rather than counters the perceived irrelevance of Christian faith. I develop, by contrast, an account of Christian ethics that is grounded in and inseparable from faith in the risen Christ, and trace, by way of example, the implications of such an ethics within the context of global error.

High Pressure Zone Spirituality

The double entendre of pneuma in John 3, as both wind and Spirit, is extended to a broader analogy of Christian spirituality. The expansive love of God’s Spirit in and through Christians stirs them, in response, to express that love to those around them. This exchange is compared to an atmospheric high pressure zone that spreads as wind into nearby low pressure zones. Those who experience God’s love as a dynamic reality become spontaneous agents of transformation, stirring both Christians and non-Christians: hearts moved move other hearts. This imagery offers a more theocentric and holistic understanding of faith and ministry, so that the proper motivation for Christian conduct is described as a response to Trinitarian relationality—of God as love—than as the more common stoic and programmatic motivations of duty and discipline.

A New Vision for Faith and Politics in America

Wallis says that the two great hungers in the world are for spirituality and social justice, but too often we see the two as incompatible. His essay reveals a new movement within Christianity based on a holistic engagement of moral values. He believes that America is ready for a national discussion on moral values. But it must be a debate supporting a broader and deeper view of politics “grounded in all of our values.” He says that abortion and gay marriage should not be the only issues stimulating Christians to action. We must address poverty, war, disease, exploitation, environmental and economic concerns as well as many others. Wallis sees a movement emerging that can “change the wind” and force politicians and governments to take notice and take action on issues of moral values. He is just one of many voices calling Christians to action and shouting the new altar call for the moral values campaign.

A Chance to Show Off Jesus

Campolo graphically illustrates the misconceptions and prejudices that Christians have about AIDS. Christians often associate the disease with sexual immorality, specifically homosexuality, and ostracize those who are afflicted by it because we suppose they are under a punishment from God for their sins. Campolo believes that AIDS is the modern equivalent to leprosy. We are unwilling to accept AIDS victims into our church communities—even though Jesus embraced and healed lepers, the ‘unclean’ of his day. Campolo then describes the work that REACH ministries, directed by Suzie Slonaker, does with children afflicted by AIDS. He sees in their staff and volunteers people who display “a beautiful expression of God’s love” in forming relationships with these children, showing them that God loves them no matter what. Campolo observes that Bono has made us aware of the plight of those who suffer from AIDS in Africa, and that likewise, Suzie Slonaker and REACH are doing the same at home in the Pacific Northwest.

Caught in the Whirlwind of God

The prostitute Rahab’s scarlet cord weaves through time, rippling under the power of God’s breath, offering a way to safety and freedom for those who observe it.

The breath of God swirls around and through the community of REACH, refreshing, encouraging “the least of these,” the broken, the down trodden, the forgotten. God’s love for children infected by HIV/ AIDS has called REACH to serve, calls the church to join us in a myriad of programs and education that offer love, hope and courage for children who suffer life-threatening diseases. Through REACH God invites all to the table of healing and justice.

REACH is a slender ministry vitalized by the sweet and sustaining breath of God. REACH is a cord tossed from a sinner’s window marking a place of safety and hope.

The Cossack and the Cannibal World Tour

A self-proclaimed “Christian environmental evangelist,” Illyn questions the dominant Evanelical Christian culture’s “manifest destiny” approach to natural resources and the subordination of indigenous peoples. Illyn believes that Christians need to rediscover the “bellybutton Christianity” of his indigenous Papua New Guinean friends, recognizing our vital connection to, and responsibility for, the earth that God has given us. Illyn sees the problem as based in the false presupposition that European Christians have been blessed by God to use the earth for their own material benefit; in turn, exiling indigenous populations to its cultural and geographic fringes. The western utilitarian ethic views man (specifically white Christian men) as the pinnacle of an ordered hierarchy of being—with everything below intended to serve those above. Illyn believes that the utilitarian-hierarchical ethic informs Evangelical Christians’ indifferent (and even hostile) attitudes towards environmental ethics. Illyn calls for an Evangelical environmental ethic better informed by “bellybutton Christianity,” which he sees as being closer to the biblical teachings on man’s intended relationship with the rest of creation.

Editor’s Introduction

Building community through reconciliation is a central motif of the incarnational and Trinitarian theology to which Cultural Encounters is dedicated. It is also a theme that resonates with a thoughtful pursuit of civic life. Consequently, this current issue of Cultural Encounters explores the theme of “Building Beloved Community: Calling for an End to the Culture Wars.” Essays in this issue were presented in October 2005 at a conference by the same title under the sponsorship of The Institute for the Theology of Culture: New Wine, New Wineskins of Multnomah Biblical Seminary in Portland, Oregon. The editorial team has sought to preserve the allusions and styles of presentation at those proceedings wherever possible. Not even the names have been changed to protect the “innocent”!

While the conference allusions and styles may be evident, what may not be so evident is the charged atmosphere surrounding the conference in Portland and Multnomah County in Oregon. Multnomah County made the national news in early 2004, following the county’s decision to award marriage licenses to gay and lesbian partners. Tensions escalated during and after the November 2004 elections. My friend, Kyogen Carlson, a Zen Buddhist priest, contacted me that winter to see how we could partner together—“with hands palm-to-palm,” to use his words—to build bridges of compassion and mutual respect between our liberal and conservative communities. The “Building Beloved Community” conference was one of several bridge-building actions—small steps in efforts toward more reconciled civic life, while still informed by differing convictional rationales.

The culture wars did not begin in 2004. In many respects, the warfare can be traced back to the Scopes Monkey Trial over creationism and evolution in 1925. In the opening essay, Brad Harper helps us understand this history so that we will not repeat it. American historian George Marsden has claimed that one can hardly overestimate the significance of the Scopes Monkey Trial for understanding the emerging Fundamentalist psyche. Harper helps us see how the trial continues to shape the Fundamentalist and Evangelical sub-cultures, impacting their engagement of the culture at large to this day.

Following the Scopes Trial, the Fundamentalist movement became relegated to the cultural fringe in popular perceptions, fueled by the vitriolic rhetoric of writers like H. L. Mencken. In reaction, isolationist practices and attitudes of the Fundamentalist Right sowed seeds that have grown into recent attempts to “take back” America from the Left. Both Left and Right were wrong, Harper argues, and both sides must work together to right the wrongs. Each side must complicate its tactics and its outlook. The secular (and in some cases religious) Left, for example, must cease calling for the privatization of religion, and the Right must move beyond balloting their beliefs. Both sides must reject settling for “stereotypes and straw man arguments” and begin recognizing the complexity of other people and their positions. To quit repeating the harmful patterns established during the Scopes Trial, both Right and Left need to imagine being in the others’ shoes and stop trying to force “them” to come over to “our” side.

Christopher Zinn, a self-professed secular humanist, certainly made the effort to cross over to the other side by stepping onto Multnomah Biblical Seminary grounds in the conference’s shared quest for common ground. Zinn’s essay urges that we not shy away from conflict. He appeals to Martin Luther King Jr., who employed Josiah Royce’s phrase “Beloved Community” in his own culture war with his opponents in search of America’s greatest ideals that would ultimately bind all of them together. “King was prepared to fight whatever battles were called for in order to achieve ‘beloved community.’” Following King as well as Abraham Lincoln, Zinn pursues beloved community, not through avoiding conflict, but through a better, more discerning practice of conflict. Conflict is not the problem. The problem stems from styles of conflict which lack charity, and from tactics of conflict which neglect “the tools of liberal study,” among other things. For Zinn, the toolbox of liberal study includes “critical thinking, historical understanding,” and “an appreciation for the variety of ideas.”

In their call for an end to the community-crippling practices of the culture wars, conference organizers shared the sense that we all need deeper awareness of what we are really fighting about. Zinn quotes Mick Jagger responding to the bloodshed at the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, “Who’s fighting and what for?” Zinn urges us to ask the same question today. Unlike many, Martin Luther King Jr. fought not simply for rights for his people, but also for reconciliation between warring peoples. Better conflict means moving beyond battling for special interests to fighting for grander, nobler human ideals—including reconciliation.

Such moves will certainly entail maneuvering wisely in traffic, avoiding bumper-sticker rhetoric, and accounting for the whole of Jesus’ life and teaching. Communication professor Nathan Baxter and Unitarian Universalist minister Marilyn Sewell help us on our way. While King played the role of prophetic warrior, he always called people to look upon the Promised Land from mountain heights, not valleys of despair. In his constant efforts to love his enemies, King inspired his hearers by the vision of promise that tempered the potential harm of what Baxter terms “repeated recourse to the language of war.” King’s communication practices made it possible for people to envision the beloved community. Baxter explores how better listening skills (quicker ears and slower tongues) and reflex actions can help us “become less inclined to bump into each other’s roadwarrior slogans, and more likely to bump into each other in growing friendship, more accepting and accepted as the complex people we are, flawed but far more alike than our bumper stickers make it seem.”

Sewell points to the complex nature of Jesus, who “turns everything upside down—all our normal expectations,” and who is so unlike us in so many ways. Jesus challenges structures and laws that run counter to the law of love, calling us to give ourselves away on behalf of the poor and hungry, the sick and imprisoned. Sewell contends that we are all too comfortable with the prosperity gospel and children living in poverty in this nation. We fund soup kitchens, but rarely ask uncomfortable questions about structures that sustain poverty. As a “Christian” nation, we are all too comfortable with war. While religious in many ways, we fail too often to recognize the uncomfortable truth that Jesus often associated with the unreligious: with prostitutes and the tax-collector traitors of the nation. We are all too comfortable with hate crimes committed against gays and lesbians, and I would add, with the uncomfortable fact that Jesus died not simply for his friends but also for his enemies.

Christian radio show host Georgene Rice helps us see that Christians are called to be counter-cultural, but not called to be hostile toward opponents. Rice understands how hostile things can get in live dialogue. Yet she also understands the call to respect opponents. Such respect entails “humility, a willingness to admit mistakes, and the intent to resolve conflicts quickly. We need to acknowledge our tendencies to want to be right all the time, to stick with the familiar, and to be defensive.” Rice’s own story of vulnerability and weakness in attempting to treat her political opponents with respect, and of the response it generated from the other side of the debate is encouraging. Such stories offer paradigms for navigating the culture wars, and more importantly, they signal hope for more meaningful engagement in the midst of our various conflicts.

One of Rice’s, and conservative Evangelicalism’s, opponents in local and national culture wars has been Portland’s leading alternative weekly newspaper, the Willamette Week. Zach Dundas, who until recently worked as a writer for the Willamette Week, alludes to these tensions in his essay about venturing out of his comfort zone. Wedding wit to wisdom, Dundas tells the story behind the story that he wrote about Portland’s Evangelicals following President Bush’s reelection and the passage of the state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Dundas winsomely reveals how researching the story helped him recognize that his own preconceptions of the movement lacked complexity. The media’s coverage of religion, remarks Dundas, “is often riddled with generalizations and lacking in nuance.” From his brief sojourn into Evangelicalism, Dundas draws lessons as a citizen and human being from which we can also benefit: “All Americans now exist in a crazily diverse society full of segmented pods of special interest, with a perpetual invitation to cocoon ourselves with others who share our values, interests, and tastes. That is okay—as long as we remember there are other worlds out there, just as valid and rich as our own. We should all, every one of us, make periodic efforts to learn a little bit about people who are not like us.”

The remaining essays reflect on such periodic efforts to learn a little bit about those who neither share nor “validate” our views. As Donald Miller points out, Jesus was comfortable hanging out with people who did not validate his views. Miller explores attitudes that hinder and those that help bridge the cultural divides that became entrenched after the Scopes Monkey Trial. “Building the bridge back,” as Miller puts it, is a kind of action Evangelicals are attempting, but are not yet fully comfortable doing.

Some hopeful attempts at building bridges back to the broader culture are underway right here in Portland, some of which have been initiated with our Buddhist friends at Dharma Rain Zen Center. Kyogen Carlson, mentioned earlier, and many of his fellow Buddhists at the temple have been intentional about building relationships with those of us in Evangelical Christianity. Carlson’s essay, the coauthored piece by Domyo Sater and Matthew Farlow, and my own article speak to these attempts. Sater writes that in Buddhism, “there is no other” in the ultimate sense. Thus, she can say of her engagement with conservative Christians, “I met the ‘other,’ and they were me.” While orthodox Christian theology conceives of otherness in the ultimate sense, it could still in certain respects affirm Sater’s point. For orthodox Christianity avows a shared solidarity among all humans—all are created in the image of God, and all participate in primal sin and its impact. Carlson highlights solidarity metaphorically in terms of “the ecology of society.” The “toxic waste” of our culture-war hostilities does not go anywhere. Past culture-war toxins “remain with consequences in the future.” While the Right has had the upper hand in the recent past, Carlson cautions that the pendulum-swing back toward the Left may be perceived as an opportunity for “payback.” True to his Buddhist tradition, he warns, “With the illusion of repaying others, karma goes on unendingly.” For Carlson, those in positions of power on both sides of the chasm may have too much invested to lay down their arms. “The best chance to reduce the extremes in this oscillation may be for moderates on both sides to speak out for reconciliation as the pendulum moves toward the center” on its way back toward the Left. “I hope we make the best of this opportunity.”

Two hope-inspiring Christian leaders with little time for payback are the late Dr. King and Dr. John M. Perkins. In my essay, Perkins especially provides a model of compassionately caring for the “other,” a theme Farlow connects with St. Francis of Assisi. Compassionate care involves seeking more to understand than to be understood, seeking more to love than to be loved. For Farlow and for me, the triune God is an overflowing communion of divine persons who makes relational space for otherness in the divine being and in God’s engagement of otherness in the world. This same God pours out the divine love into the world through Christ’s incarnate work and into human hearts through the Spirit’s work. In turn, Christ’s followers—such as King or Perkins or St. Francis—pour out their own lives as witnesses to Christ as they seek to build beloved community inside and outside the church’s walls. Such followers of Christ build bridges back in cruciform fashion by laying down their lives over the chasm for their enemies inside and outside the church to cross for the greater good of all.

—Paul Louis Metzger, Editor

“The Scopes Trial, Fundamentalism, and the Creation of an Anti-Culture Culture: Can Evangelical Christians Transcend Their History in the Culture Wars?

The culture wars did not begin in 2004. In many respects, the warfare can be traced back to the hostilities between liberal and conservative Christianity culminating in the Scopes Trial in 1925, which pitted the traditional understanding of the Bible against Darwinism. Historian George Marsden has claimed that one can hardly overestimate the significance of the Scopes Trial for understanding the emerging Fundamentalist psyche. Harper seeks to show how the trial’s legacy continues to shape Fundamentalist and Evangelical sub-cultures, impacting their engagement of the broader culture to this day. The essay also explores ways in which both Left and Right might move beyond isolationist and polarizing practices and attitudes, working together to find common ground to pursue shared values and build “beloved community.”

‘Who’s Fighting and for What?’: Finding a Use for the Culture Wars

As we look at the culture wars of our own time with their ranks of implacable antagonists, Zinn urges us to pursue beloved community, not through avoiding conflict, but through a better, more discerning practice of conflict. Conflict is not the problem. The problem stems from styles of conflict which lack charity, and from tactics of conflict which neglect “the tools of liberal study,” among other things. Through reflections on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and Abraham Lincoln’s “Second Inaugural Address,” Zinn illustrates the potential of tools of liberal study, including “critical thinking, historical understanding,” and “an appreciation for the variety of ideas.”

Bumping into Ourselves: Awakening from the Sound-Bite Stupor

As condensed statements of belief, bumper stickers serve as regular reminders that some people share our ideas and other people don’t. Baxter offers a brief discussion of bumper stickers as a metaphor for contemporary reflexes we often bring to understanding and engaging belief-conflicts: our range of responses to bumper stickers illustrates how sound-bite attitudes and expectations shape our perceptions of others and hinder our practices in public dialogue. This “sound-bite stupor” can be seen in the ways that familiar metaphors like “culture war” coach attitudes and practices counterproductive for collective life. Drawing upon the insights of social and linguistic theorist Kenneth Burke, psychologist Michael Nicoles, and religious historian John Woodbridge, Baxter suggests ways to awaken from the sound-bite stupor by attending to patterns of reactivity, cultivating more complex and patient listening habits, and practicing more accessible and civic-building discourse.

Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?

Reflecting on the complexity of her own religious experience and the complex nature of Jesus, who “turns everything upside down—all our normal expectations,” and who is so unlike us in so many ways, Marilyn Sewell contends that we are all too comfortable with limited responses to the Jesus we profess to follow. We fund soup kitchens, but rarely ask uncomfortable questions about structures that sustain poverty. As a “Christian” nation, we are all too comfortable with war. While religious in many ways, we fail too often to recognize the uncomfortable truth that Jesus often associated with the unreligious: with prostitutes and the tax-collector traitors of the nation. As the essay reiterates, what is ultimately lost is the point that Jesus’ radical message focused on others, not on ourselves.

Getting Along in the 21st Century: Building Beloved Community

Through reflections on her own experiences as a social advocate and radio-talk-show host, Rice explores what personal integrity in “getting along” might look like. Taking us beyond merely getting through life and putting up with one another, the essay explores the real-life contours of accepting one another’s differences, agreeing to disagree, and respecting each other’s right to be wrong. Rice argues for both the livability and urgency of the Christian calling to not be hostile toward opponents, but to be counter-cultural, through humility, sacrifice, and understanding.

Venturing out of the Comfort Zone

Dundas offers a personal narrative of how writing a feature on evangelicals took him, as a writer for an alternative newspaper, out of his own comfort zone and into an important insight. The narrative becomes emblematic of the social challenges we face in America: we exist in a diverse society full of segmented pods of special interest, with a perpetual invitation to cocoon ourselves with others who share our values, interests, and tastes. This, Dundas remarks, is okay—as long as we remember there are other worlds out there, just as valid and rich as our own. Every one of us should make periodic efforts to learn a little bit about people who are not like us. Dundas winsomely reveals how researching the story helped him recognize the limits of his own preconceptions through an experience of diversity.

Mutuality and Particularity: Contours of Authentic Dialogue

How can the Christian community engage in authentic dialogue with other traditions in search of the mutuality so necessary for civil society and yet remain true to the particular truth claims of the Christian faith? This paper attempts an answer to this question by setting forth a Trinitarian model of authentic dialogue, one that pursues mutuality while preserving the particularity of the Christian truth claims. It is even argued that the Christian community is called and enabled to pursue such mutuality because of the particularity of the Trinitarian faith. The essay concludes with insights regarding the nature of dialogue. Dialogue assists those from diverse traditions persuade one another to go more deeply into their respective traditions in view of what they can learn from one another in search of sources that will advance further a compassionate form of shared existence.

All Wounds are Our Own

The essay argues that no matter how great the wall that divides or separates, there really is no “other” place. The connectedness of “me” and “you,” “self” and “other,” “near” and “far”—the deeper sense that we are all of one community, one body, as it were, whether we are aware of it or not, and whether or not we accept it. Carlson contends that greater appreciation of our interconnection can help moderate the divisions and rancor occurring in even the most homogeneous groups—for every injustice or injury hurts all in some way.

Dining with the ‘Other’

The essay illuminates the way in which the desire for community can and should outweigh our differences. Offering a narrative of how the desire to understand the “other” led people from both camps, Buddhist and Christian, to sit down over one table as one family for one dinnertime discussion. The discussion between the followers of Buddha and followers of Jesus sought to draw closer to one another while growing in a deeper understanding of what it means to be players upon the world’s stage.

Building the Bridge Back

The essay reflects on periodic efforts to learn a little bit about those who neither share nor “validate” our views. As Donald Miller points out, Jesus was comfortable hanging out with people who did not validate his views. The essay explores attitudes that both hinder and help us in bridging the cultural divides that became entrenched after the Scopes Monkey Trial. “Building the bridge back,” as Miller puts it, is a kind of action Evangelicals are attempting, but are not yet fully comfortable doing.